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When using Microsoft Excel in a business environment, there are five essential items that every user should be aware of. One of the most basic features that is essential to effective spreadsheet usage is cell referencing. This is the ability for one cell to use the value of another cell …

Camino 1.6.3 has been out in the wild for a few days. The latest version of Camino includes version 1.8.1.16 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine. This release of Gecko includes several critical security updates and stability fixes. If you haven't taken the time to …

Lotus 1-2-3, now a part of Lotus SmartSuite, is a direct competitor with Microsoft Excel. Although it's really only a minor competitor today, Lotus 1-2-3 was once one of the most important pieces of software in personal computing (Darrow, 2002). The latest major version of Lotus SmartSuite was released in …

A few days ago, while reloading DNS on a server, I noticed an issue in the log:

Jul 31 11:29:50 admin named[6098]: the working directory is not writable

First, let's talk about how this error was caught. When doing various tasks, I often tail the log to …

I had to write a proposal for a Family Reunion Account Workbook that would be implemented in Microsoft Excel. Those involved in the project are certainly aware of what all this "Phase 4" business is all about. Enjoy.

I envision the Family Reunion Account Workbook as having two worksheets. The …

Database transactions are really no mystery. For the uninitiated, the idea is that we want to make changes to the database inside of a transaction that can be committed or thrown away. Why is this a good thing? Without transactions, changes to the database have to be manually undone if …

This was written about a fictional character, Aunt Sally, who wants to organize information regarding her stuffed animal collection into a database.

Aunt Sally sure has a lot of things in mind for her stuffed animal spreadsheet. The first task she needs to accomplish is sorting the data to her …

In Microsoft Excel, functions and formulas work closely together. Formulas are simply mathematical operations that may or may not include the contents of cells in the spreadsheet. Functions are very similar in that they are pre-defined formulas which take their input from the parameters passed in to them. Like formulas …

ProBlogger Darren Rowse recently posted a question about putting dates on blog posts. A lot of folks were interested in the idea of removing dates from older blog posts, but don't know where to start. This is a useful PHP excercise, so I decided to implement it on my personal …

This is about my fictional Aunt Sally who wonders if she can use Microsoft Excel to organize and track her large collection of stuff animals.

Microsoft Excel would be a great way for Sally to track her stuffed animal collection. With over 800 stuffed animals, finding information about a particular …

By default, service set identifiers (SSIDs) configured on a Cisco integrated services router are not broadcast. This means that if you want to configure a client to use the wireless network, you'll have to manually enter the SSID in the client configuration. This isn't a bad thing, but it is …

This has probably been one of the most requested features for Google Docs: the ability to upload PDFs.

This is really the only feature that has been missing for my Great Google Docs Conversion of 2008. The addition of this new feature means that I can clear out even more …

If you've been following the Firefox 3 news, you are no doubt aware that today (June 17, 2008) is the official release date for Firefox 3. Unfortunately, when Mozilla made the download available at 1 PM Eastern, the flood of traffic made the Mozilla servers virtually unreachable.

The initial rush …

Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr. just gave a great cable tag definition on the NANOG mailing list.

The tags should have a short (two or three word) description, the authority for the patch (person's name or position, order number, or trouble ticket number) and where the [other]{.underline} end of the …

After a recent trip, I've misplaced the wall charger for my Motorola Q. It's likely that the silly thing is just in a bag somewhere in the house, but my wife thinks it may be at her office. None of that really matters — the silly thing is missing!

Although I …