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Speaking at HDI 2007
This week I'm in sunny Las Vegas at the Help Desk Institute's annual conference and expo. Over 2800 people are attending this year, and I'm one of 300 faculty members. On Wednesday 5/2 I'll be leading a "Breakfast Bites" session called "Stump the Office Productivity Wiz." On Thursday, I deliver my breakout presentation, "What Should Analysts Do Between Calls?" To learn more about HDI, check out http://www.thinkhdi.com.
Jeff goes back to full time employment
As some of you know, I'm no longer a full time consultant. In December 2006 I accepted an offer to join a local bank full time as an IT project manager. My first task is to project-manage a software upgrade of a homegrown system that handles more than $1 billion in transactions every year between January and March. The programmers I work with use ASP, C#, and SQL 2005.
The red hawks have procreated!
May 17 '06 Two red hawks have nested in our back yard and they have two healthy appearing chickks. I'll post pictures soon. One of our neighbors uses our deck to take incredible pictures of the momma hawk, daddy hawk, and the two chicks.
Listen to my podcast!
May 2 '06 What should help desk analysts do during downtime, when they aren't answering telephone calls? That's what I discussed with Bill Detwiler from TechRepublic.com, a CNET network, in a podcast available for listening and download. It lasts around 15 minutes and you can listen to it here: Podcast Interview with Jeff Davis.
Epiphanies from Microsoft Word training
April 26 '06 Recently I taught a course called "Mastering Microsoft Word" for CNPE.org. One of the things I say when I warm up the group for the 9-12 a.m. session is, "I have a modest goal. I just want to change your lives forever -- or at least that part of your lives you spend using Word." Corny, I know, but it's got to be seen and heard to be fully appreciated.
At some point when I'm typing some sample text in a document, which is being projected onscreen at 200% zoom setting, I accidentally tapped the Insert key. As a result, I started typing over text instead of inserting text. I said, "Oh, look at that. I accidentally toggled to typeover mode..." You would have thought I'd given them the secret to eternal youth, the way the 18 people in that room went on about that lesson. For years, some said, they had been baffled by that seemingly random behavior. "So that sounds like one in the life-changing column to me" I said, and apparently it was.
Perennial Time-saving Keyboard Shortcut: Stop typing http, www., and .com
April 1 '06 If you use Internet Explorer or Mozilla FireFox, you're probably wasting precious time and keystrokes when you're on the Internet. Hear me now and believe me immediately: You don't have to type www-dot or dot-com to get to a Web site. Just type the domain name and press [Ctrl][Enter].
Every day I see high-tech and low-tech people alike practicing a bad habit that wastes valuable time: They type http://www. and .com the Address bar. My cyber-friends, just stop wasting those 15 keystrokes, already!
Here's how it works. In Internet Explorer, click in the Address field and type the domain name first. (No http, no www, just the Web site's name.) Then press [Control][Enter]. When you do, IE will wrap the http://www. and .com around the domain name for you. Heck, if you just press [Enter], and not [Ctrl][Enter], IE will usually find the right Web site. I just like the [Ctrl][Enter] keystroke because it's swift, sure, and it's fun to type, because it's a left pinky-right pinky combination.
Here is where I go on a soapbox about efficiency: If you don't care about wasting time, don't worry about this tip. But if you believe time is money, burn it into your brains, folks. It's worth it. By the way, there's another benefit to getting into the habit of typing just the domain name. When you do, Internet Explorer's history feature will show a dropdown list of all the pages you've visited that contain that domain name. Stop and pay attention to that dropdown list, because all you have to do is press down-arrow or up-arrow to select one of those addresses, then press [Enter] to go there.
Jeff types 162 words per minute!
Feature Story: Thanks to Frank Hulsman, a math and information systems teacher at St. X High School in Louisville, for inviting me to do a typing demonstration for two of his keyboarding classes recently. I took a blind typing test and scored 162 words per minute on a one-minute writing. In the second session, the kids picked a more advanced typing test for me, and I committed the time-wasting sin of backing up to correct an error, and so had to settle for 154 in the second demo.
To schedule a Power Keyboarding training session for the Office users in your organization, contact me here: thejeffdavis at gmail.com.
Over 100 attend Jeff's speech at HDI
March 28 '06 For the third year in a row, I had the honor of being on the faculty of the Help Desk Institute's annual conference and expo, this year in Nashville, Tennesse. I had around 100 people attend The Policy Analyst Hour: Tips for Writing Help Desk Security Policies & Procedures. That was a pretty good considering it was one of the 8:45 sessions on the last day of the conference. I thought the presentation rocked and the reviews were 4s and 5s out of 5. I'll post more after I get my free audio CD and the session reviews. After HDI talleys them in their database, they send the original session reviews to the speakers. It's pretty cool.
New non-profit client saves $26,700 on software
Case Study: This is a case study of the kind of on-call IT director work I do. Recently I replace dan aging NT4 network and dilapidated desktop systems for a company with 30 users in their Louisville office and 25 in the Lexington office..
We upgraded over 50 desktop operating systems, licensed over 50 copies of the latest Office, and replaced the network software and e-mail system, and saved $26,700 on the software licenses compared to off-the-shelf retail prices. How? We purchased the systems from vendors with special pricing offers available exclusively to non-profits.
Here's a shameless plug for Larry Minners, aka Terry Meiners, the afternoon host of the eponymous name on 84 WHAS. This pic was taken when Terry came in for one of my Microsoft Word training sessions. Check out Terry's site at TerryMeiners.com.
Jeff (left) with Terry
Thanks to my sponsors:
Peter Herbener. If you could only afford him, he would provide the best computer consulting advice you can find. He generously hosts this Web site. Email me to send Peter feedback about the site.
Louisville's Center for Nonprofit Excellence
You don't have to be a nonprofit to take advantage of their training programs.
Privacy statement: I won't share your e-mail address with any other third party.
My name is Jeff Davis, I'm the fastest typist in Kentucky. I provide in-person, over-the-Web, and over-the-phone technical services, incuding technical writing--documentation people actually read and use-- technical training, desktop database design, and SQL lessons. Your satisfaction with service is guaranteed.
As your "virtual computer person," I can serve you via snail mail, e-mail, the phone, and the fax. I am also available for on-site support and training, as well as transcribing. Need a confidential transcript made of any tape recording? I specialize in medical and legal recordings.
As a freelance writer, I have written over 1,200 articles for TechRepublic.com, a Web portal dedicated to information technology professionals. My articles have generated more Web traffic than any other author published on TechRepublic.com. I am currently under contract to write enterprise-wide system security policies for a Fortune 500 healthcare provider.
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