Software Tips

Software Tips: Tech-Notes

Breaking it down, Barney style!

QR Code Contact Card

22 March 2022

Are you still passing out business cards? Why?
Wouldn't you rather be a contact directly on your customers/acquaintance/coworkers phone than be a card that, "well, gee I know I put that somewhere in this wallet, maybe my desk drawer, gah I hope I didn't throw that card out"?

Make it easy on the person you're dealing with and save yourself the hassle of getting a fresh deck of 100 business card. Upgrade to a QR code that'll allow them to scan you directly into their contact list quickly and let this tutorial be your guide.

Adobe Forms: Distributing forms and Consolidating the Responses

09 February 2013

A little while ago, I was tasked to create a class T shirt for a class that I am in. We (as a class) didn't have much established in way of espirt de corps, so sort of had to make something up. Now I didn't want to be the sole arbiter on the design, so I came up with a couple basic designs and ideas and wanted to let the class choose out of them and have their own input.

The way I decided the best way to get their input was by using Adobe Professional to create a survey form with the various options for a T Shirt and use Range/Approval voting to figure out which design was the one we would go with. Because I was using Range/approval voting, I needed to import the responses into Excel to average the votes. Long story. In any case, I didn't want to go through each response and put the responses into a spreadsheet manually, and I was in luck because Adobe Professional could do all that work for me. Check out the video to see how.

Click here for the basics of using Adobe Livecycle to create a form

Expandable Multi-Shapes in Visio with Hesco Barriers

06 January 2013

Hesco barriers are steel baskets with fabric in them that we fill with dirt overseas to create thick, protective walls. They are a very common feature on any site, and it would be nice to have a shape that distinctly looks like a Hesco barrier on the camps site diagram. Today I'm going to show you how to make that. Because its an individual cell that is usually never alone, I'm going to make a continuous shape or a multiple shape to accomplish this task.

What that means is that as I expand the individual Hesco, it becomes two side by side, then three, four, etc. eventually to make a full length Hesco wall. If you ever worked with Visio floor plans, you may recall a shape called Multi-Urinal or Multi-sink that has this ability. In abstract, what we are going to do is create a bunch of identical shapes, uniquely ID each one of them, and use formulas to determine their placement. We will also use a formula to hide/ unhide each shape in the group depending on how wide the group is expanded out to.

Microsoft Excel Basics

22 November 2012

I first started out in IT as a platoon RTO. Part of the job involved doing the PSG admin work; rosters, statistics, maintaining the weapons MAL, etc. The vast majority of the work was done using Excel, which, at the time, I knew next to nothing about. Work that now takes me a couple minutes would take me about an hour because I didn't know anything about functions. This video contains all the stuff that I know now that I wish I knew back then.

It will cover formatting a spread sheet, several functions (which I unwittingly refer to as "equations") and touches on pivot tables and charts.

How to setup Outlook for AKO's POP3 server:

12 November 2012

How to setup Outlook for AKO's POP3 server: Incoming Server: pop.us.army.mil Port: 995 (SSL)
Outgoing Server: mailrouter.us.army.mil Port 465 (SSL)

*You can still use smtp.us.army.mil as an outgoing server, BUT, it will keep popping up with that "Certificate cannot be verified" everytime you send. Reason being, the certificate is related to the "mailrouter" server on it, not smtp. Watch in Youtube