OK, there is a serious absence in your priority list. . .where is the coffee! I have to have no less than 1 cup of coffee while I sit on the coach and wake up, followed by a second to keep me going while I get ready. Of course I am also getting three kids ready and off to school on time as well. THat requires massive amounts of java int he morning. :) T

When it comes to server usage it is a hope for the best, but plan for the worst kind of thing. If you don't assume the worst will happen. . .it will happen! I mean seriously, how many IT horror stories are there were a bean counter thinks he knows more about IT than the IT guy, then he does something stupid and it all crashes down. We have one server that, other than a few small nothing programs is pretty much just to run this one program. Not because it is a resource hog, but just because it doesn't play well with others and tends to crash some important systems when not on its own. It's not all about resources.

And not at all influenced by the Navy's chauvanistic attitudes about women. They weren't at all afraid of trapping men in a submarine with some really pissed off women. . .no where to run and all that. :omg: :laugh:

As someone who has only taken a few programming classes, and learned everything else on my own my opinion may be a bit skewed. :omg: I prefer the comments above the code for two reasons. First I have learned a lot from studying other peoples code and having the comments above the code helps me follow along and figure out what they are doing and then how they are doing it. Second in my own code it helps me to go back later and kind of follow the logic of what I am trying to do so I can go back later to see if I missed something. Kinda of a "Do this, like this, then do that, like this . . ." This probably isn't as important for most of you but as someone who doesn't code for a living, but has to code to make their living it can be such a big help. ;) T

I am both the geek, and the girl. Having been married 17 years I haven't dated lately. :) The question becomes does he love me for my brain, or my body? :laugh: Trudy H

OK are you having fun? There's no fun in technology! ;)

The only thing worse is having to do that with your mom or sister. Actaully my mom is fairly adept at following instructions from a support person. Many years of being the girl in the office who they voluntold to call on technical issues. My sister however, hates computers and is only too happy to shove it in my lap for me to "just fix it." The last time I had to walk her through something over the phone I was doing my "Click start, now click run it is towards the bottom of the righ hand column of the start menu, do you see the text box?" when she starts giggling. When I asked her what was so funny she started laughing and excalimed "Your using your IT voice on me!" That afternoon I signed up for a free log-me-on account. :rolleyes: :sigh:

lol Whenever I have to ask a user to open the command prompt I always ask them "Do you see a black box?" They always know what I mean, but asking if they see a black window, or a window with a black background they often get confused. Another way to describe it is to ask if they see the blinking line. CP/M was my first operating system as a kid, on a kaypro II with dual builtin floppies and 64k memory. We were high tech man!:cool: In my mind it will always be the dos prompt even if I don't call it that out loud.

Honestly for everything that it does it is worth the money we spent. As I said in my post earlier we use a combo of printed how to material and Captivate videos for training. What I didn't say is that by using captivate it can take like snap shots of your screen as part of the making of the video, then afterwards you can easily print out the snap shots as slides for the how to without having to creat it seperately. It is especailly usefull if you take the time to add conversation ballons and such to the Captivate video. Less time, better look, proffessional quality! :-D But then I am not telling you anything you don't already know. :)

We tend to do a combo in our office, or I should say I do a combo since as the only female in the IT department I get to do all the training videos. ;) We use use Adobe Captivate to creat flash movies of the computer screen so we can guide the user through the process in actions, while letting the user hear the instructions at the same time. We also include a PDF version of the step-by-step instructions. Some users prefer to read the instruction or to have the instructions right there next to them as they go through the process. Other users claim it take to much time to read through the instructions and try to figure out what they are supposed to do. While a third group will watch the video, then print the instructions and use them to guide them through the process so they don't have to worry about forgeting a step. Ironically, it is this third group of users that seems to have the most success. In my opion getting the information through sight, sound, and reading seems to get the information more firmly in their mind. This group very rarely needs additional help from IT. The down side of all this is that I get to do all the training videos and how tos for more then just IT. :sigh: T

I just wanted to thank everyone for their ideas, my 12 year old has been asking me to teach him some programming. I wasn't sure where to start. My oldest daughter taught herself HTML using free HTML tutorials she found on Google. She wanted a cooler home page on neopets of all things. . .go figure! :wtf: From there she just branched out to using web design programs when she convinced me to let her have her own web page. I didn't have to do anything. But my son wants to program, and I am more an IT person who does a bit of programming than a programmer by trade, so I was stumped. Thanks!

Sounds like I am in the caffinated minority. :cool: I drink 1-2 cups in the morning before I leave for work, then usually 1-2 cups in the morning at the office, and another 1-2 cups after lunch. Although there are days I only drink 1-2 all day. However, I also have extremly low blood pressure and drinking the coffee elevates my BP to the lower end of normal. I have tried medication but it has more unpleasant side effects and is not nearly as effective as the coffee, nor as pleasurable. I also drink sweet iced tea with lunch if they have it, and at home in the evenings. I come from a mid-west farm family so I was raised on tea instead of cool-aid. I have found, however, that my need for coffee is directly related to my BP. When my BP is up I have very little desire to drink coffee, and I don't seem to suffer any withdrawl effects when I don't drink as much. When my BP is real low, you almost can't brew it fast enough. :sigh: