Looking for a place to post local information I can’t easily find online.  One such topic is on what to eat when you are on a diet.  It’s easy enough to find and play with recipes. But, what about when you are done cooking and just want to eat out? Low carb diets such as Atkins and Keto are tough when you may only have a few select restaurants and fast food options available.  Cooking meals can also get old when you run out of ideas and don't cook many low carb meals regularly.  I am hoping to re-purpose this blog to fill that need.

I just had my first run-in with Office 2013

I just had my first run-in with Office 2013.  It was time I got my Work PC upgraded so it was done.
I opened a document in Excel, yeah.. ok.  looks fine i guess.  Spreadsheet has a bunch of stuff in it.  OK. Microsoft Word.... ok, it's just Word.  Doesn't look too bad.  Then I open Outlook.....  I'm in this light blue on white on gray, with little gray dividers kind of thing called an email client.  I focus on it for a while.  I can see my email and such.  I look to my other screen and do some work.  I look back and start looking for the Outlook icon on my task bar.  I finally figure out that it is open right in front of me.  I thought I had a blank page open.

I think google.com has more color than this.

 I take another 30 minutes to an hour to finally focus on Outlook 2013......

I do some 'Google'ing around--trying to find a way to adjust the colors.  Not much luck.  I can make my unread emails stand out a bit better.  OK, that's a start.   I realize that I'm lucky to be running Windows 7 and not 8.  Especially after I see this guy, for lack of better terms, 'trip'n' over it:

taken from Microsoft Technet Forums 

You start Windows 8...and see all the crazy colors. Wow...there are colors EVERYWHERE....it's like Teletubbies land. Then, you launch the Excel 2013 app...and all the life is instantly sucked right out of Windows 8. You can feel it in your bones. The Office apps are a barren, Boot Hill-esque, cold wasteland....with grey and white tumbleweeds and gravestones. Then, you go back into Metro...and WHAM...it's the Skittles rainbow monster voraciously attacking everything in sight. Nom nom nom nom. Big blocks of color coming at you....it's crazy like...wow man...what a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas strip crazy! You are flying sky high with the bats and stingrays. Life is groovy. You then launch Outlook 2013 and WHAM...there you are...slammed down to the ground...back in Frankenweenie land ready to raise some dead animals or something.

 I'm Laughing it up and feel somewhat better.  I need to get away and get a nice RibEye steak or some Chinese Buffet :-).

10 IT Skills that Today's High School Kids Have - Do You?

Such a true point of view of today's kids.  I knew so much about technology in high school that even many college seniors did not know.  That was a 4-6 year gap.  I've been out of high school almost 10 years myself. 


As IT Professionals, we've seen technology change very rapidly over the past 10 years. We've managed to keep pace and learn new skills on the job or through training courses. What might surprise you are the skills that high school kids possess today. Here is a look at some skills that many high school kid have - do you?

Read on...

Make sure you have the correct support #

I had a client call me today. They had no internet after a storm came through their area. After some troubleshooting, I noticed that their cable modem was not showing that it had a signal. I proceeded to look up the phone number for the ISP and after making my way through dozens of menu options I was put on hold for the next available representative. After about 40 minutes on hold and another 10 trying to find the correct account, i found out that I had contacted the wrong phone number for support. I was calling for a business connection and I had contacted residential support. My next call to the business department landed me a support rep in less than five minutes.

What did i learn from this? Always look for business level support phone numbers before contacting an ISP.

VSA Container Restores Using Commvault

I spent a good portion of my morning working with Commvault Technical Support on restoring VMware Virtual Machines. Our Commvault server and media agent is licensed for VSA backups using our vCenter Server as the proxy. We are using Simpana 9 with Service Pack 2a.

Our overall problem was that when performing a container, I was getting the following error:

Unable to open the disk(s) for Virtual Machine [VMNAME]. Please ensure that the proxy is able to communicate with the ESX host and resolve the ESX host address. Also verify that the disks types configured to the virtual machine are supported.

This was a quick fix by Commvault. Commvault includes in own version of the VWware VDDK in its base directory. By uninstalling the version of VDDK that had been installed manually, Commvault now looks in its base directory for its version of the VDDK and our restores was successful.