Supernetting

2022 Topical Outline:

Take a moment to try and forecast some of the topics that will be discussed in the upcoming year :

1. January,  Windows 11.
2. February, Wi-Fi Installation and Repair for Residents.
3. March, Laptop Computer Repair.
4. April, New Computer Sales & Setup.
5. May, Linux Operating Systems
6. June, Security Practices.
7. July, Virus!
8. August, Desktop Computer Upgrade.
9. September, Ethernet Wiring.
10. October, Sustainable Energy.
11. November, 3D Printing.
12. December, Redefining Intellectual Property.

Today I wanted to share some communication on system speed and performance. If you are in a Windows environment and use the msinfo32  command in the command line terminal – you can get a comprehensive listing of your machines components.

The big three are: 1. Processor, 2. Memory, and 3. Operating System. However, as gaming have evolved and pushed the capability of computers, the number items is the 4. Graphics Card.

I am using:

1. Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-7100U CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2400 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

2.  8.00 GB DDR of Physical Memory.

// Note msinfo32 does not supply memory-type information. You must download CPU-Z to determine the type of memory your system is using.

3. OS Name | Microsoft Windows 10 Home  Version 10.0.19043 Build 19043

4. Intel(R) HD Graphics 620

// Note: The graphical information in not found in the System Summary, but is under the Components tree.

I often run into bottlenecks with this amount of memory, as just from start-up the O.S. requires about 4.00 GB to handle all of it’s processes – but the procedure for upgrading laptops is some degree more difficult than for a desktop computer with a large chasis.

Other bottlenecks in system performance include the motherboard, particularly the internal BUS structure. For instance, and according to Trenton systems, “PCIe 1.0 slots have a transfer rate of 2.5 GT/s, while PCIe 6.0 has a data transfer rate of 64 GT/s !  ”

Creating A Custom Desktop in Windows 10

Hello! Today’s blog post is going to illustrate how you can edit desktop icon in the Windows 10 Home Environment using a desktop. Make sure it is a desktop, I’m not certain how well this would transfer over to a smartphone or tablet, though feel free to email me if you need help.

So, if you’re interested in learned how to create a customize desktop like the one below, just follow these 10 easy steps or if you’re better at following along, check out the video below! Once you finish if you don’t like any of the built in Windows Icons, you can visit this link for thousands of free icons to customize your desktop!

1. Minimize all your applications using Window + D.
2. Create, a directory-folder on your desktop, by first right-clicking a blank area.
3. Scroll down, in the panel tray to the ‘new’ tab, follow the arrow >. Then, mouse up, to ‘folder’.

// The system will place a new blank folder onto your desktop. Now we need to customize it!

4. Right-click, the folder you created in steps (1-3).
5. Scroll down, again we’re in the panel tray – to the tab that say ‘properties’.

// The system will open a new window for you called ‘New Folder Properties’.

6. Move, over to the ‘Customize’ tab.
7. Look, for a section called ‘Folder Icons’.
8. Press, the ‘Change Icon…’ button.
9. Pick your favorite icon and you’ll end up with something other than a boring yellow folder!

DialPad Business Dialing Software.

Well, with the initial 14 day subscription, coming to an end and little more than 15 calls with 1 strong marketing lead – the question of moving into a monthly agreement with the software provider must be made. While the monthly cost is not tremendous, at only $20.00 per user the question of return on investment is crucial, particularly where KTS Mobile has a strong desire to support software developers in my hyper-local economy.

One of the most valuable features is the Vi call summary – which give past call transcription and insights (yet, maximizing the feature requires a good voice call environment so that the translation is accurate). Dialpad’s Voice Intelligence technology helps you capture your conversations with call transcription, voicemail transcription, and actions. Additionally, the use is given a dedicated business line to add to the perceived professionalism of the company. As an aside, the support team was helpful in resolving some of the initial set up problems, though it took a few agents to finally get everything settled.

In comparison, and in contrast to these two great features – allow me to mention the negatives. The primary, and most frustrating part was the day-long initial import of the contacts. Without a premium Office 365 or G-Suite account, there is no easy way to import .csv contacts. Another major financial consideration is that, while DialPad supports some CRM programs, it is itself not one, and so add on an additional expense to that at first nominal $20.00 increases to $60 or more, once you  purchase an O365  or G-Suite account, and the CRM software, Salesforce or HubSpot , both specified as able to be integrated.

Tech Dictionary: THE URL

Technical discussion of the URL seems to have little value to the everyday google user and grasping around the concepts which brought about this monolith of computer science are not much better than a black box. So, the quest.ion is – how can a better understanding of URLs improve the serviceability of KTS.

For me, beginning to understand the URL starts abstractly in the application layer of both the OSI Model and Instruction Set Architecture, but most clearly in the empty search bar – and a domain name.

What appears much like the command prompt, waits for an input (in the most common form as an IPV4 address, or as a fully qualified domain name) and execution command. Seen by me, as MOSTLY human readable text, but then a separation starts to occur, as defined by the creators of the internet, and can be understood more fully in RFC 1738. My primary interests are in scheme, host, port and path

1. The Scheme helps to define the resource being access, and to identify what sort of protocol is being used, one of most essential protocols to users would be HTTP, or HTTPS which provides a layer of security over a network.
2. The Host – Consist of the fully qualified domain name, overseen by IANA.
3. The Port – Define how information over a network is routed.
4. The Path – Further defines the location of the hosted resource.

The simplicity with which I am even now inputting characters into a readable and real-time document is supported by a complex system, though essentially, my graphics card is communicating with my devices internal memory (RAM), bus architecture, and processor.

Computer science, and attempting to understand Instruction set architectures from Application to compiler / assembler, to operating systems; data-path & control, to memory, I/0 circuits, circuit design, and transistors – it become overwhelming, and easy to get lost in the technicality of it all, but the URL helps network users find information resources on the internet.

Lions, Tigers, and Malware – Oh! My.

Windows 10 Home comes with a built in Anti-Virus software called Windows Security. It does a good job of categorizing security concerns
into 7 unique categories:
1. Virus and Threat Protection, where you can place your folder systems into a protected state. This Anti-Virus software
also have a threat scanner. It even recently picked up the installer for The NiceHash Crypto Miner. (I’ll be covering that program at a later point!)
2. Account Protection, to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your desktop through: facial recognition, fingerprinting, pins, a
physical security key, passwords, and picture passwords! Talk about defense in depth.
3. Firewall and Network Protection, allows a brief over-view of the current state of the machines built in firewalls. Where
inbound connections that are NOT allowed are blocked, and outbound connections that ARE allowed pass.
4. Application and browser control, helps to provide safe browsing, and many different exploits. (The browsing protection appears to be limited to Edge users.)
5. Device security, with – core isolation, the TPM module, and secure boot features.
6. Device performance and health, to give a brief overview of the machines – storage, battery, application, and Windows service performance.
7. Family options, in order to protect against explicit websites (see our other solution – link), establish screen time habits,
generate an activity report, and control buying.

In comparison, and perhaps unnecessarily, Avast Anti-Virus– offers….a powerful virus scanner to find malware that slips in, as well as
to check for unsafe configurations, and passwords. The Anti-virus detects and block viruses, malware, spyware, ransomware, and phishing.
A Wi-Fi inspector to detect others on your network. One additional free feature is the “online security” browser extension.
Other than the Wi-Fi inspector, the free software doesn’t appear to add any additional features – and additionally, I’m blaming an Avast update
that got pushed back in 2020 for causing my laptop to crash. After that update to the program, I lost lots of data that I had been gathering for several years…. though maybe not forever. While it is not possible at this point of my technical knowledge to prove this, but it was the last software I interfaced with PRIOR to the crash – maybe they can help me recover the data to prove otherwise?

One strong positive for is the blog and community form, that – and the “threat search” portion of the blog particularly are,
in my estimation superior to the huge and often time confusing array of documents on the Microsoft website.

Overall, without paying, both lack many live support options! We also may attempt to review some of the source code in the future to determine what’s really happening on the net!

Getting ‘Back to the drawing board’ exists as a proverbial English idiom for failure, but more than that it’s carries the idea of hope, of new ideas, new creation – in the capital world, it means taking that which is old, and making it better, faster, cheaper.

Gathering a clear picture of the order of this old board, starts with a few notes on computing history, as an answer to how our world got here. Then with a question, “Who is in the business of creating computing machines, their components, building blocks, elements, and factors?”

In my time, computers have made an indelible impact in the halls of my mind. From the early virus infections of Windows 2000 to the terminally slow connection to DSL modems – fighting digitally for bandwidth. The red, yellow, and white inputs of some system generating tremendous playable audio and video; the brightest blue LED controller! All an enigmas black box created so delicately, working so perfectly that often the mind would be lost in the experience. Yet, there were points when this machine or that component would show flaws: a non-working disc, the loss of innocence in shadowy world, and a puzzle too hard for a novel mind to solve.

The first computer, if we might call it that, is as remote to a modern machine as it is distant in time, but it is there – in the abacus, a counting machine from 300 BC that we might find the root, the link of all future computers. That is all to say – that a computer counts and provides humans a means – to quantify. Until I get another breakthrough… check out this online abacus.

Using Excel: How to Convert Data into Tables and Back!

Microsoft Excel, as part of the larger Microsoft Office suit is an excel business tool. In my work, I have found it effective for developing budgets, time, and labor estimations, and even some script-kiddie programming!  But today the topic is a simple how-to?

1. Open Excel.

// If you’re using a Windows 10 OS Press [ Windows + R], this will open the Windows Run feature as possibly say you time! Once open type excel.exe to create a new instance.

2. Press [Ctrl + S] to Title and Save the document, and then select a location on your laptop.

// Titling the document can be as simple or as complex as you’d like to make it but ensure that it reflects the data types included. For example, ‘1 Month Financial Budget’.

3. Next, we title our headers. The documents will always open to field A1 and have a green box around it is indicating the ACTIVE field. Here we’re going to name this Budget Categories.
4. Our next header will be place in B1 named Estimated Monthly Cost.
5. With our headers completed we need to flesh out the footers with more strings, what sort of things do you spend money on broadly speaking? Food, Rent or Mortgage, Transportation, Utilities? It’s important to get the biggest expenses down first, for most people this is going to be just what I mentioned.

// Remember, if this is your first-time budgeting, estimations are a big part of the process – and that to make them accurate attention to detail, and even some external data sources, are necessary. With that let look at some statistics to get an idea for one volatile price-points, Food. Well Kept Wallet was my source document for the food estimate, of $405.30. I placed that in category B2.    Next, we need some data on Rent OR Mortgage, for someone with a Mortgage this value should be easily gotten. In my circumstance, Louisville Rent Café’ has generated an estimate of $1,034 per month, this is in B3!  That’s a lot of labor! Social studies aside, let’s enter the data.  Transportation, once locked in, is another large and static expense for most people – and if only I could have stopped myself in my mid 20s! This value varies from household to household, but AAA’s data suggest the price to be roughly $713 per month, that’s in B4! For a labor perspective, no wonder people are protesting about the cost-of-living! The last category we’re going to look at is Utilities, which in my mind are a combination of Electric, and Internet – some rental agreements will cover others such as garbage and water. Numbeo estimates this value to be $199.00, finally that’s in B5.

Once we have placed this semi-unformatted data down, we are going to add units of measurement as a nice table. For a table of this size, the sorting features of the table won’t be much help, but this is a beginner-level article!

6. To place the data and its headers into a nice grouping, left click and select all the relevant cells.
7. View the Styles Ribbon at the top of the document, and Select ‘Format as Tables’, select any design and then select OK.

// The last thing is to format the data in the ‘Estimated Monthly Cost’ column into currency.

8. Again, select all relevant data with left click. This will be B2:B5.
9. Right-click and select format cells. This will bring up a window titled ‘Format Cells’
10. Select Currency and Select OK. The default is to show a two-point decimal for cents.

That’s it, you’ve successfully estimated and formatted the type and cost for a month of some bills! You may find that Tiller Money  is a good alternative, if you prefer to use pre-formatted masks – but there are some pros and cons with that system that I will discuss later.

The final quick thing to discuss is how to unformat this simple data.

1. Right click any cell in the range
2. Select Table in the drop-down
3. Select Convert to Range
4. Done!

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to discuss further technologist concepts shoot me an email!

Dealing with data, and visualizing that information is an important business skills. Today, I’m going to run you through the steps to turn an 2×8 range of data into a pie-chart.

Creating pie-chart reports in excel

0. Understand the purpose of this data. For me time, and money management are the biggest uses of excel – and since I cannot possibly remember
everything I did last week, I can use these visualization as a summary of where my time went.
1. Get data, excel wont work without lots of variable data. This could be as simple as the 8 numbers I’m using, or as complex as one several thousand
line data-set I found at Data.gov.  In this case, we’re going to use the simple summary of how much time I spent on a task.
2. Name the data, in programming this has been described as one of the most difficult tasks, but as they always use to tell me in the military –
K.I.S.S. – keep it simple. My first row will display the header category, and all the sub-categories under it.
3. Add a second column header name weekly time total, and insert the data.
4. Insert the value into each category, I  spend 10 minutes in cat 1, 5 minutes in cat 2, etc.
5. Once you have named and put value to you data-range we simply select the 2×8 range and mouse to the insert ribbon at the top.
6. With you range selected click the Pie-chart within the charts banner. Select your favorite illustration and done.
7. Enjoy your simple data visual with a cup of DeathWish Coffe!