Sorry mum

The truth hurts. I just hope my sons keep this in mind when their mum asks for help fixing her 3D printer twenty years from now.

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Password strength

Ironically, I'd already sent this to my SysAdmin who, only today, would not relax the password requirements and so forced me to choose a hard to remember password like the one in the comic.

I also wonder how they guessed both my passwords. Guess I'll have to change them both now...

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Evidence based estimating

Evidence Based Scheduling from Joel on Software

Using Evidence-Based Scheduling is pretty easy: it will take you a day or two at the beginning of every iteration to produce detailed estimates, and it’ll take a few seconds every day to record when you start working on a new task on a timesheet. The benefits, though, are huge: realistic schedules.

Realistic schedules are the key to creating good software. It forces you to do the best features first and allows you to make the right decisions about what to build.

Evernote and Outlook Notes

I've been sick and tired of the poor support for syncing Outlook between two computers on via  iPhone. One machine (my work laptop) is connected to Exchange, the other (the home desktop) is not.

While email syncs over the air thanks to Gmail, for the life of me, I can't get my Calendar or Contacts to sync.

Also, till now, I've not been able to get Outlook Notes to sync. So I'm going to try something diffferent. I'm going to use this tool  to export everything from Outlook and start using Evernote instead.

Update: it worked, sort of. Some notes did not import and formatting was lost, so I ended up cutting and pasting about half of the notes. But now, I've moved.

This is a good idea

Time to break out the bread ties

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Computer support

Note to self. Send this to family.

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Publish Post

Scam warning

A few weeks ago I got a phone call on my home line. This is a new line and only my parents and my wife  have the number. The guy on the other end of the phone had a very strong Indian accent and claimed to be from a tech company who had uncovered a security flaw in my computer - but not a virus.

It felt like a scam. So I told him that I work in IT and the computer are fine, before hanging up.

Then I saw this article in the SMH, which starts:

THAT nice man with an Indian accent ringing from Microsoft does not really want to fix your computer, he just wants you to give him access to your personal details.

Scams coming from unsolicited phone calls - especially ones offering to service computers - have jumped from 2036 to more than 14,000 in one year.

Ye be warned.

IT Projects

I saw an older version of this graphic ages, but it seems to have been updated.

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