Once a Day, Whether You Like It or Not T

Once a Day, Whether You Like It or Not Today, I had the pleasure of showing Facebook to a room filled with 25+ people. They in turn enjoyed the presence of a young person (not me) who was able to answer a few questions that I could not immediately answer. This proves my theory that we really need young people who know computers to work with Generation Awesome and Baby Boomers, to tutor them on the use of social media. More on that later, as I’ll expand on my want for more people with so much diverse experience to become bloggers. For now, I’ll count today as a success. If only half the people in my class have a better understanding of how to get started with Facebook and the value of using this service, there are at least a dozen new Fb users with a new appreciation of this communications platform. Given that I cannot sleep with a mosquito in the room, I am running on fumes right now. So, off to bed, earlier than usual and I look forward to another day. Good night, dear readers. We’ll do better tomorrow. Brian Rouley http://ow.ly/ay6j6

Now, a plug for Squarespace, the CMS I a

Now, a plug for Squarespace, the CMS I am using to manage content on brianrouley.com. I’ve been searching around, using Wordpress, Concrete5, SimpleCMS and a couple of other things I cannot remember now, to test different CMS platforms I might use to manage my content. Because CoachellaValleyFun.com uses Squarespace to publish its website, I decided to have a look and then I signed up for the free trial. So far, I really like it. That opinion is based on experience with “the other guys”, but I have not finished my evaluation. And, I’ll probably find another one and test it, too. http://ow.ly/avxeu

Managing Email

Five thousand two hundred sixty-nine unread email messages is what I have in one of my accounts. My oldest account, which is at rouley dot-com, is the one I visit the least. Mostly, that is because I am overwhelmed by the volume of email I receive there and I just don't want to spend the time looking for the occasional gem among the fodder. So, a couple of times a week, or whenever I think of it, I log in and browse through the past few days of messages to see if anyone from my family or friends may have dropped in with something worthwhile. I'm almost always rewarded for my efforts, so you might think that would motivate me to do this more often. It does not.

Then, about once a quarter, I take a deep breath, clear some time on my schedule and commit to reducing the number of unread messages to something less than a hundred. I have no idea why I don't go for zero. Maybe, by comparison, "only a hundred" sounds pretty good. Go figure.

So here's the cool stuff. I use Gmail and it allows me to sort my inbox by "importance" and if I take the time to train Gmail on what is or is not important to me, it will properly sort my email to bring those "gems" to the top of my inbox. Then, all I have to do is delete the other stuff. So, while writing this article, I've been popping in and out of my Gmail account and selecting and deleting messages. In the space of about 20 minutes, I've deleted a whopping 200 messages. That was sarcasm, in case it didn't come across properly!

Let's try a different approach. I'm going back to my email and I'm going to move all of my "important" email into a folder, then see if I can make more progress more quickly. Well, that works pretty well. In the space of about 15 minutes, I've moved about 100 messages to my "keepers" folder and I have deleted another 500 messages from the fodder. Along the way, I am training Gmail on what it should consider important for me.

That's all I'm going to say for now. I'll have to produce a short video to illustrate the process. Eventually, my instructional videos will be organized, categorized and monetized, as I complete my newest website project to offer subscriptions to my one to one video teaching series.

Until then, I'll keep working on managing my email. Be careful who you befriend via email and watch yourself when those subscription forms ask for your address, or soon you'll have thousands of unread email messages in your inbox, just like me!

Turn of the Century Power User

Here's the twitter version of this article:

When buying a new computer, if you are not a "power user", buy a minimum of 4 GB of RAM. You can add RAM later, if necessary. Seriously! BR

While pondering how I would begin this article, I searched the term, "power user" and found little help with understanding this expression. Then, I searched "power user definition" and got a lot more help. Go ahead, try it. The title of this article came from my thinking about the term "power user" and whether or not that expression was used early in the twentieth century, when power distribution was relatively new.

I was trying to determine whether or not I am a power user. Short answer is, no, I don't think so. Backing up another step, I should tell you what I was really thinking is that although I recommend 4 GB of RAM as a bare minimum for new Windows 7 systems, here I am working on a system that I upgraded to 2 GB of RAM, then upgraded to Windows 7 and I am willing to suffer the pain of the inevitable message: "System Memory is Low." Based on that evidence and one definition of power user, I am not a power user. So, here we go.

If you are going to buy a computer today, 4 GB of RAM will likely be enough memory to allow you to run several applications simultaneously, without Windows complaining about running out of memory. It is interesting to note that many Windows XP systems with 512 MB of RAM (often times this RAM is shared by on-board video display adapters) are overdue for replacement. These computers were probably once pretty zippy, with speed and power to spare. Consider Microsoft's approach to releasing software that is not fully baked and missing a few ingredients, and you'll quickly see that with every "Windows Update" released, the RAM required by Windows' OS grows. That leaves less RAM available for the applications that are opened after Windows is up and running. In other words, Windows XP might have been happy with 256 MB of RAM, before all those updates and SP3, but now almost all of that 512 MB is used just to run the system. You could spend a couple  hundred bucks to upgrade the RAM, or put that money to better use, applying it to your new PC purchase.

Given that I am running low on RAM with 2 GB and only a few apps running, it makes sense to plan for the future (and by that I mean the growth of Windows 7 on your computer via updates) and get at least 4 GB at the outset.
You may want to add RAM in a couple of years, but it will likely be cheaper to
upgrade later, just search; "price of ram over time" to see what I mean.

We'll not go into processor speed just yet. We can, however, celebrate the end of the Celeron era. To that end, I'll say; if it says "Celeron" on the front of your computer, plan to hand it to a responsible recycler for scrap. Even someone who has no computer may be better off than someone with a slow processor!

Buy as much speed and power as you can afford with your next computer purchase. But do insist on at least 4 GB of RAM with whatever you buy.
That's all for now.  Five hundred seventy-eight words later, maybe you should have been happy with the Twitter version!

Oh, Dear!

While showing my Rouzell.com website to a new prospect, I clicked on the Blog link and enjoyed the embarrassing moment of, "Oh, Dear!" It has been some time since I posted anything new. You may be saying, "Thank you, Captain Obvious." And, I deserve that, too.

That is not what drew me back to post, though. What did is the realization that whenever I find something that works for me, I feel an obligation to share it with my people. That's you, if you are reading this!

The title of this entry came from my search results for a tool to remove duplicate items from Outlook (that's part of Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus - if you really must know). You'd think they would have an acronym for that by now. Anyhow, I found a tool called ODIR. In my mind, pronounced; "Oh Dear!" That acronym stands for - you might have guessed - Outlook Duplicate Items Remover.

I would take the time to go through the set up and operation of this utility, but their help file is adequate and should fill that need. One caveat is that they have not updated their instructions to account for the change from menus to the ribbon implemented in the 201o version of Outlook. So, I'll provide this one clue: Add-ins tab is where you'll find the new tool. From there, it's pretty easy to see what you can do.

If you need more help with any or all of this, click back over to Rouzell.com or the new MouseHelp.com for my contact information and call or write. I'll talk to you then, or see you soon, whichever is most appropriate to your need.

Brian Rouley

Cemetery Junction

The description on the Netflix sleeve nearly talked me out of seeing this gem. In the space of about the first 10 minutes, you may find yourself hopelessly drawn into a pretty dreary picture of life in a small town. The characters are instantly recognizable as people you've known or may know and as quickly you know change is imminent.

Much of the story is easy to predict, but the way it unfolds, although at times approaching tediosity (yes, it is a word, obsolete as it may be), keeps you hoping for a brighter outcome. You are not disappointed, even if one of the characters does in the end leave you wanting. References to Elton John and the somewhat scant music reflecting the time makes it a pretty entertaining package. The last scene accented by Led Zeppelin is extremely satisfying.

Lessons learned; people who write descriptions of movies for Netflix sleeves should do a bit more to invite curiosity. And, sometimes you have to hang in there when things are going slow and even if this story is predictable to a large degree, it does not lack value. Also, sometimes you have to turn on the subtitles for an English film. If we hadn’t done so, we would have missed a lot of this movie.

We don’t do the thumbs version of movie reviews in my house. We sometimes say, “Nobody saw this movie. Too bad for them.” This was one of those times. It would pay you well to seek out this film and given the feel good finish, you’ll know you gained something by the experience.

In the inimitable style of Porky the Pig; inimi, inimi, inimi - that's all folks!

BR

Zen of Carts, Horses, Exploration and Code

It would be easy to weasel out of posting original content here, so I won't do that. Instead, let me say that I've found the people who put stuff on the web to help you learn are extremely generous. As in, the folks at maxdesign, where you can find a tutorial on CSS. This site walked me through 22 lessons that made the basics of CSS pretty clear to me. The resulting code was quickly copied and FTP'd up to one of my hosted sites to produce my latest opus.

So, now, studying the 500+ pages of "The Missing Manual" on CSS will be a bit easier and far less boring. You have to love a great resource - but now I truly love online tutorials!

By the way, you might not understand the title of this post until you read "Exploring CSS for my websites" on mousehelp.org - Enjoy!

8 AM - time for breakfast. More, later.....

Here is my first post by email

Just go to Rouzell.wordpress.com to check it out.

We missed one crucial step – at the first page in the control panel – under Dashboard, click on My Blogs.

That is where you start the set up for email to blog and where your secret email address will be created by wordpress.

If this works, this email will be posted to my site.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-by-email/

Please work!@