Skype is Making Trouble for Excel

We've gotten a few tickets over the last week with users reporting that they can't copy and paste formulas in Excel 2010 anymore. After doing a bit of research, it seems there's a bug with the Skype Click to Call application that is causing this. Skype has yet to push out a fix for this, so the current solution is to uninstall Click to Call. It's actually separate from Skype, so you can just go to add/remove programs and uninstall it on it's own. 

None of my users had the problem in Word but I did see on a few forums that some folks were reporting the problem in Word as well. 

Kindred spirit

I read an awesome blog post on cracked.com today. If I wasn't already very happily taken, I'm pretty sure I'd ask this guy to marry me. 

"The only reason I'm not punching you in the neck right now is because I know this ignorance isn't your fault. Despite owning a computer and probably using one at work, much of your knowledge comes from Hollywood, and Hollywood hasn't got the slightest goddamn clue what they're talking about. In movies, everything from hacking the Pentagon to creating Kelly LeBrock can be done in one flurry of keystrokes."  - John Cheese, Cracked.com

Read more: 6 Reasons The Guy Who's Fixing Your Computer Hates You | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-guy-whos-fixing-your-computer-hates-you/#ixzz1VV6yndIx

Damn You Auto Correct!

It's been a while since I posted, so I figured I'd return with a bit of a laugh. As I've mentioned many times before, I'm a bit of a cell phone junkie. I remember when I got my first iPhone and experienced the joys of it turning my harmless misspellings into scandalous messages sent to the most unfortunate of parties. Some clever folks thought to make website that catalogs these gems. If it doesn't make you cry a little, you take yourself too seriously.

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

In the market for a new phone?

I am a total cell phone junkie. I look at new ones online daily. It's like geek porn to me. I've wanted a new one for a while, because I'm still on the original Motorola Droid but I'm currently holding out for the Droid Bionic. If you're a Verizon customer or thinking of switching to Verizon I suggest you do the same as it promises to be wicked fast and chock-full of techy goodness. Dual core, lovely large screen and front facing camera? Count me in!

What I wanted to show you guys today, is this new AmazonWireless website. I got an email from Amazon introducing this new site and I have to say I dig it. They've got all the deals from the four major carriers (At&t, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile.) It's a great site to go to if you're feeling a bit lost and want to compare phones and plans from different carriers on one site. It seems like it has the potential to be quite the time saver. When the Bionic finally decides to show it's face, I'll use this site to buy it and report back. Until then, if you're interested in checking it out, click the link below:

Curiosity Killed the Console

Several hours have just been spent putting a PS3 back together again, and it has prompted me to remind folks of a few things to think about when taking computers/electronics apart. My boyfriend, in his excitement to play Dragon Age II, got tired of waiting for me to clean the lens on his PlayStation 3 and decided to do it himself. He's never done anything like that before, and he's about as tech savvy as my grandma, so needless to say I wasn't surprised to find a baggy of "spare parts" and a very funny looking PS3 when he was done.

Before you go on an electronics disassembling adventure, take heed the following tips:

• Set aside several hours of time. You may think that you'll remember how that piece fits tomorrow, but given enough time and distraction people are prone to forget. Also, leaving something disassembled on a hard work surface is just begging for something to get lost. I personally have a cat that collects screws in the middle of the night. He steals them, plays with them, and drops them in his food or water dish. True story.
• Do your homework. Have manuals, links, and instructions on hand before you start. A quick Google search will most likely uncover a video of somebody doing exactly what you're doing. Watch it, take notes, and save it for later.
• Make sure you have all of the proper tools, cleanser, etc on hand. Stopping in the middle to go to the store is a drag.
  
• Keep a pen and paper on hand and document each step. Remember, it's a lot tougher to reverse engineer something to try and figure out where that missing screw goes than it is to write it down as you take it apart.
• Keep several containers (shot glasses or sandwich bags work well) to hold screws/parts from different parts of the machine in and label them. For example, drop the screws for the outside case in a sandwich bag and label it "outside case." If they are different sizes, note what size goes where.
• Don't be afraid to seek out help. If you're not exactly sure how something should come apart, look it up or call somebody. Muscling a fragile part will lead to much shame and embarrassment.

It took some time, but all is well with Mr. PS3. Dragons Age shall be played, and I believe I've earned a free pass on dishwashing for a couple of weeks for my efforts and his embarrassment. Time well spent, if you ask me!

Hard drive filling up? WinDirStat to the rescue!

It's hard to believe how much hard drive space we use up these days. If you're somebody who has a lot of video and or audio files, you can find your drive filling up fairly quickly. Cleaning up to make more room can be annoying and time consuming when done manually. WinDirStat is a cute, simple and free application that analyzes how much disk space files are taking up. Simply download it here and follow the simple installation instructions.

To run it, select a drive and let it scan. The scan is fun and has little pac man guys darting across the screen as they analyze your data. There really isn't much on this computer so the scan only took a few seconds

Look at that! Free AND shiny! You can drill down and see more details about what's taking up space in your files, by clicking on individual files.

Up and Down Wireless

Wireless can be fickle. One minute it's giving you all of its 802.11N love while you watch a Dexter marathon on Netflix, the next it's down filling you with the agonizing pains of Internet withdrawal. Then, moments later, it's back up with no apparent rhyme or reason. Let me give you a little rhyme for your reason.

Unless you live in the wilderness, it's extremely likely that your neighbors wireless network(s) extend into your wireless domain. Many consumer routers are set to broadcast on the same wireless channel (often channels 1, 6 and 11) which can lead to multiple networks duking it out for airtime in a relatively small space. The way I see it, you're left with two options. Make tiny matching foil hats for yourself, your laptop, and your router...OR you can change the channel. While the former is definitely more fashion forward, it's not very effective. I just wanted to see if I could get you to rush into the kitchen to grab some foil before reading the rest of this. Let's change the channel.

Signs (2002)

Now I'm banking on the fact that you understand how to make basic changes to your router. I'm going to assume that when you got it, you logged in to set up an SSID (your network name), set a security protocol and passkey, and hopefully changed the standard administrative password of the router itself. If you haven't done these things, you need to locate the make and model number of your router and Google it to locate the manual. Breaking into unsecured wireless network is about as easy as going to the fridge for a snack so it's important to do these things to keep people from leeching Internet access from you, or even worse, accessing your personal information.

Now let's take a look at what channels your neighbors are using. Download and install an application called NetStumbler. When you run it, you'll notice it removes you from your wireless network and uses your wireless card to scan local wireless networks. In order to return surfing, you'll need to close the application. NetStumbler couldn't be easier to use, especially for the information we're trying to access. Simply double click it and let it run for a minute and you'll see a neat little list of local networks and what channels they are on.

As you can see from our list here, some channels are quite packed. This is most likely because this was the default channel the router was set to and it was never changed. All you need to do to avoid this traffic jam is to set your network to one that is not being used, or at least, not being used very much. Just log back into your router, find the wireless channel settings, put yourself on a traffic free channel, and enjoy smooth wireless surfing.