Blog

Thoughts and things I care to share

Enterprise Documentation

Ever had to write documentation for projects at work?  The process can be tedious and fun at the same time.  At least it is for me most of the time as the creative process lets you explore the best way to communicate a topic.

At the same time, its only as interesting as a person makes it, and the longer it takes the more boring it can become.  That’s were I’m at getting the final tweaks finished on my latest document on mobile device configuration for one of our shipping departments.

The nifty parts of technical writing can be finally getting some standardization into the documents.  You would be surprised at the differing levels of sophistication in the use of Microsoft Word!  Some people still try to use spaces and tabs to fill empty space in their documents and forms!  Ugh!

There are so many great features in Word that allow for the formatting that a person wants if they simply use the search feature in Help.  Seriously, the help files have all the steps on using these features, and few people actually look it up.  Instead they just hack it together and give up when it doesn’t work like they want it to.

So I’ve cleaned up several documents and forms for our Project Methodology, getting some standard formatting and features like file paths & versioning set up properly.  Oh, well.  On to more documentation!

links for 2007-02-19

Home Server & the Death of the Windows Drive Letters

HomeSRV.pngIt’s going to be very interesting to see how well the new Windows Home Server comes through for end users.  One very neat twist is the way Home Server is going to manage disk space.

No more drive letters for Home Server clients for one thing.  The new system will dynamically manage the drive space that is made available to the server and it’s clients.  That should make it very simple for end-users as they leverage the online storage and automated backup features of the new system.

Via: Bink.nuThe Death of the Windows Drive Letters

 

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More SMS work

Microsoft With the Daylight Savings Time 2007 updates and a number of other projects, I’ve got a lot of SMS (that’s Systems Management Server) work to get through this week.  There is some file permissions on our image, the monthly security patches, the DST updates, and a few others like Adobe 8 that need to go through testing.

While I like the aspect of having a management tool to do all the work, sometimes, SMS is a beast that needs to be beaten into submission.

Push Email with Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Mobile 6.0

Ah, now this’ll be a great feature for all WM6 based devices.  The ability of a free Hotmail account to push mail directly to your device is a great feature.  Now if they can retro-fit that back into WM5, I think everyone would be happy.  After all, WM5 has had the ability to perform this service with Exchange email systems since it shipped.

At least your next WM phone will have the capability!

Via: Being a new PM at MicrosoftPush Email with Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Mobile 6.0

Back in the office…

So I’m back in the office after being out with the flu for several days.  It’s business as usual, getting back to the tasks of enterprise projects and the associated mindsets.

This week is mainly to be getting caught up and surging ahead – at least that is my perspective this Monday morning.  I’ve got a lot of items to do, most being documentation, training and hand-off to additional staff.  Other items are to get some testing done, a project charter written, project scope put together and a few other incidentals that always arise.

Back in the saddle again…

Welcome to RickMahn.com – One year later!

Yep, it’s been a full year since I launched this blog, finding WordPress, getting my domain set up and diving headlong into the blogosphere.  I’ve not been blogging just for a year – this effort was a culmination of three previous blogs.  I had previously used MSN Spaces, Blogger, and WordPress.com – all are still online.

When I found I could host my own WordPress software on a hosting service and customize my own site – that was the shit.  So here I am a year later, still working on finding the “line” if you will.  Sometimes I’m not sure if people want to hear what I have to say, but at the same time, I’m glad to have the platform available to vent on.  I had been planning on some kind of post about my first anniversary here, but I’ll just leave it as something simple.

Just glad to have peaked today to make sure it was the actual date!

Link to Welcome to RickMahn.com!

Office Pro 2007

So I got Office Pro a few weeks ago and found that I will need to pick up the other Office components as well.  Pro comes with Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and a few other incidentals.  I don’t count Access as a real app since I’ve seen a lot of shitty programming done with it.

Over the last year, I’ve become very fond of OneNote and will need to pick that app up as well as Visio, and probably Project.  They are all too useful not to have them updated along with the rest.

Yes, I’ve been advocating an all-online office for several months, but I still need to have the MS Office suite to do business.  By the way, the save to PDF add-on rocks.

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Quotes


Be strong.

Be of good courage.

God bless America.

Long live the republic.

Sootch00

Lessons cost money. Good one's cost lots.

Tony Beets

Hard times make strong men.

Strong men make good times.

Good times make weak men.

Weak men make hard times.

Unknown

You're only worth what you're willing to work for.

Wranglerstar

You can watch things happen, you can make things happen, or you can wonder what happened.

Capt. Phil Harris

People say I have an issue with control... I say, as long as I have it, there is no issue.

Unknown

Mistakes are just success training.

DarwinOnTheTrail

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Unknown

No man is a complete failure. He can always be used as a bad example.

Unknown

You're either the mouse or the lion. Time to find out which one.

Sue Aikens

Failure is always an option.

Adam Savage

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