The Next Window

I've just updated <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=750&amp;entry_id=151" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">TerrysComputerTips.com</a>, my computer tips, articles and free newsletter site, with a <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=751&amp;entry_id=151" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/ms-office/hands-on-excel.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/ms-office/hands-on-excel.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Hands-On Excel</a> tutorial for Excel beginners.<br />
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The tutorial starts with an intro that discusses what Excel is and why you might want to use it. The next six parts create a spreadsheet with stock prices across time, shares of stock, and values, including graphing the results.<br />
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While the tutorial focuses on Excel, it would also work very well for the free, open-source <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=752&amp;entry_id=151" title="http://www.openoffice.org" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.openoffice.org';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">OpenOffice.org</a> office suite.<br />
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<center>Original article posted to <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=753&amp;entry_id=151" title="http://www.thenextwindow.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.thenextwindow.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">www.TheNextWindow.com</a></center><br />

What do you do when your hard drive fails? I mean, after you finish the vocabulary test…<br />
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If it is your personal machine, hopefully, you have a recent backup. Worst case, you reinstall from the original disks and lose all your data.<br />
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But, what if the data was your checkbook? Or worse, your business' checkbook? Or the book you've been writing? Or your unbilled work-in-progress for a client?<br />
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Read more in my <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=740&amp;entry_id=150" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/data-recovery.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/data-recovery.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Data Recovery</a> page at <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=741&amp;entry_id=150" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Terry's Computer Tips</a>.<br />
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I've been busy updating pages at a several of my web sites. The impact of my site being mentioned in Fred Langa's LangaList newsletter has motivated me to make a bunch o changes.<br />
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These pages are new or updated so far this week at <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=742&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">TerrysComputerTips.com</a>:<br />
<table><tr><td><br />
<a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=743&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/data-recovery.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/data-recovery.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Data Recovery</a> &mdash; You hope you never need it…<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=744&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/spam-filter.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/spam-filter.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Spam Filter</a> &mdash; Keeping out Spam<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=744&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/spam-filter.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/spam-filter.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Spam Filter 2</a> &mdash; Keeping out Spam, part 2<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=746&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/wireless-networking.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/wireless-networking.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Wireless Networking</a> &mdash; Setting Up Your Wireless Network<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=747&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/wireless-security.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/wireless-security.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Wireless Security</a> &mdash; Securing Your Wireless Network<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=748&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/anti-virus-programs.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/anti-virus-programs.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Anti-Virus Programs</a> &amp; Online Scanners<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=749&amp;entry_id=149" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/computer-tips.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/computer-tips.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Computer Tips</a> &mdash; the section "home page"<br />
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<b>WOW!</b><br />
Fred Langa's <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=699&amp;entry_id=147" title="http://www.langa.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.langa.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">LangaList and LangaList Plus!</a> newsletters mentioned my <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=700&amp;entry_id=147" title="http://www.terryscomputertips.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.terryscomputertips.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Terry's Computer Tips website</a> in last Sunday afternoon's issue.<br />
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My visitor count for Sunday was about <em>5 times normal</em>. My visitor count for Monday was about <em>12 times normal</em>.<br />
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Many of these visitors signed up for my free <i>Terry's Computer Tips </i> weekly newsletter while they were there — they also visited my advertisers, too.<br />
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THANK YOU FRED!<br />
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All this was the result of Fred's reciprocal link program — I put a link on my site, he puts a link on his site and he mentions my site in his "Loaded the Code" article. This section is simply a listing of about 10 sites, without descriptions, that added links to Langa's site recently.<br />
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<center>Original article posted to <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=701&amp;entry_id=147" title="http://www.thenextwindow.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.thenextwindow.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">www.TheNextWindow.com</a></center><br />

As Rita was arriving, the television stations were swamped with Rita information. The local stations and cable news stations focused on Rita.<br />
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Now, the morning after, as we sit here without power except for radios and battery-powered TV stations — what do we have? FOOTBALL!<br />
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Cable was down including cable Internet. If this was like Hurricane Katrina, those people who jumped on cable phone were regretting it. When the cable goes down, there is nothing. Obviously the cable company's repeater stations have batteries that last several hours, but they have been unable maintain the service for longer times.<br />
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What is worse is that, of Baton Rouge's three primary stations, one is UHF. Of course, all the small TV's now come cable-only. They can pick up bad pictures on channels 2-13 if cable is down, because channels 2-13 are identical frequencies for broadcast and cable. All the rest don't match up. That took the NBC affiliate out of contention immediately for most people.<br />
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I can understand WAFB's choice — they are showing two SEC teams so there is a lot of local interest. (They are showing the Alabama / Arkansas game.) Of more importance to those of us still without power — they ran a news banner at the bottom of the screen with hurricane Rita updates from across south Louisiana<br />
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Not so WBRZ, the local ABC affiliate. These fools ran Iowa at Ohio State. Why in the hell was that even broadcast in Baton Rouge, let alone during the aftermath of the hurricane when over 80,000 Baton Rouge homes were without power. No news banner. Nothing but football. These turkeys must be clueless.<br />
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On the local talk radio at WJBO (1150AM, www.wjbo.com), callers were chastizing both VHF stations for running football.<br />
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Our Power came back on, again, about 2:30 for me. Then, it went into flicker &amp; brownout mode for a couple hours. Still no cable tv. Still no cable Internet. It took another hour for cable to return.<br />
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<center>Original article posted to <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=698&amp;entry_id=146" title="http://www.thenextwindow.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.thenextwindow.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">www.TheNextWindow.com</a></center><br />

Southwest Louisiana from the Texas border to New Orleans took the brunt of Hurricane Rita. <br />
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New Orleans, which had just started to let residents back in, suffered renewed flooding in the low-income 9th Ward, which was where the main levee break had occurred after Hurricane Katrina. With Hurricane Rita, the waters overtopped the temporary repairs and washed much of them away as they rushed into the areas that had just been pumped dry.<br />
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In an early view of Baton Rouge after Hurricane Rita, we had different scale of impacts but similar impacts from Rita compared to Katrina.<br />
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Widespread power outages, but more intermittent this time. Wind gusts apparently knocked out some circuits. In my area, power was on, then off, then on, then flickered off-on-off, returned about 1am for 5 minutes, then back off until 8:30am — back on until 8:55 and off until about 9:45. A few attempts to power on again. Then off. Weith Hurricane Katrina, it was off, period.<br />
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Wind: Baton Rouge was much closer to Katrina, so we had much more wind — both in the amount of wind and the strengh of the wind. Before, the winds were from the west and north. With Rita, they are from the East and South, so the impacts are different. Thank goodness we had no appreciable rain between katrina and Rita.<br />
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At 10am, we're having a very few gusts of wind, but mostly light breezes. Rain has stopped for a while. Baton Rouge got only about 1 inch of rain from Katrina. We're about 3 to 4 inches now from Rita — this time we were on the "wet side" (the east side) of the hurricane.<br />
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I can't wait for the power to return. The last few attempts were for 1 or 2 seconnds. Not only are we still having wind gusts, but as the day gets warmer, house air-conditioning systems are triggering as the power comes on. This puts a huge, instantaneous load on the circuit. I thing this overload is what is tripping the systems now.<br />
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[time passes]<br />
12:40 — Power finally returned, maybe for good this time. Using my portable power system (combined battery + inverter to get 120v AC), I saw on our little TV that DEMCO, our power company, had 21,000 people without power in Baton Rouge and that Entergy had 61,000 without power in Baton Rouge. These are almost the same numbers as those reported during Hurricane Katrina 3 weeks ago.<br />
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The rains continued…<br />
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Power went out again shortly after 1pm. It returned again about 2:30, with a number of subsequent blips and brownouts. As frustrating as this has been, I am thankful that I already have power. And, don't have the flooding and wind losses of people south and west of Baton Rouge.<br />
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<center>Original article posted to <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=696&amp;entry_id=145" title="http://www.thenextwindow.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.thenextwindow.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">www.TheNextWindow.com</a></center><br />

Due to the Tropical Storm Warnings for Baton Rouge from Hurricane Rita, we have wrapped up our volunteer project a couple days early. Yesterday, Thursday 9/22, was the last day of the Cajun Clickers Katrina Pet Rescue Project.

Cajun Clickers Computer Club volunteers have been volunteering for the State of Louisiana's Office of Animal Health Services (part fo the Louisiana Department. of Agriculture. & Forestry), and through them, assisting the Louisiana SPCA (www.la-spca.org) and the Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org ).

Cajun Clickers volunteers inputted data from Tuesday September 6th through Thursday, September 22nd in the Clickers Computer Lab. We entered data into spreadsheets to log pets to be rescued, reports of lost pets, offers to volunteer, offers to foster and offers to donate goods. We added over 7,000 records to the tracking spreadsheet. We got two batches of data per day, input the data, consolidated the spreadsheets and sent updated spreadsheets to the State and the LA-SPCA and HSUS rescue coordinators each night.

Many thanks to the many Cajun Clickers Computer Club members who volunteered for this huge effort.

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Volunteers from the Cajun Clickers Computer Club continue our volunteer Katrina Pet Rescue Project work for the State's Office of Animal Health Services.

We're inputting information from emails and phone call notes into a massive spreadsheet that the State, the Louisiana SPCA and the Humane Society of the US are using to coordinate the actual rescues. (we do not take phone calls about pets at Clickers).

We're working again today (Thursday) and, I expect, Friday &amp; Saturday. We start at 12:00 noon and keep going until we finish.

The last couple days, we finished at our Clickers facilities before 4pm, which has been really nice — how long it takes depends on how many volunteers we get! I take the individual spreadsheets home and continue with the consolidation work from home — with a fresh cup of my home-roasted coffee.

How did we get started? If you haven't heard, Louisiana's Assistant State Veterinarian is a Clickers member and called us for help. WE RESPONDED!

WAFB Channel 9 gave us an opportunity to talk about our volunteers' efforts on our Cajun Clickers Katrina Pet Rescue Project this morning on their “Sunday 9 News This Morning” show. Cajun Clickers members are volunteers working for the State's Office of Animal Health Services and providing “pets to be rescued” data to the Louisiana SPCA and HSUS. Lori Main and I represented the Cajun Clickers Computer Club as we were interrviewed by Scott Oswalt on the live show.

That makes two recent news reports about our project. WAFB also interviewed me and filmed in our computer lab on Thursday as Cajun Clickers volunteers were working on our project.

Friday's short piece was combined with a news report about the shelters for rescued animals and was broadcast during Friday's 10pm news and in the “Local News” repeat shows that WAFB does on cable channel 9 on Friday night and Saturday. (Channel 9 is their broadcast channel, but their broadcast is found on Channel 7 on our cable system — channel 9 cable is a WAFB continually-running local news repeat).

The Cajun Clickers Computer Club's facilities include two large lecture rooms with instructor computers and projection systems; a computer lab with 15 student computers, instructor computer and a projection system for the instructor's coputer, a “community computer” area where members can use computers for personal use, and several offices and work areas.

See us in these news reports:

• Friday, 9/16/05 10pm news — Interview excerpt and film of Cajun Clickers at work on our Katrina Pet Rescue Project for the State's Office of Animal Health Services
  dialup, 764KB   broadband, 4.8MB
• Sunday 9/18/05 7am Sunday 9 News This Morning — Interview of Terry Stockdale and Lori Main about the Cajun Clickers Computer Club's Katrina Pet Rescue Project for the State's Office of Animal Health Services (4 minutes)
  dialup, 2.8MB    broadband, 17.5MB

Many thanks to WAFB Channel 9 for the interviews and filming and for the opportunity to show the recorded videos via the Cajun Clickers Computer Club's web site and via my blog. Also, many thanks to the Cajun Clickers Digital Video Special Interest Group for recording, editing and preparing the files for the websites.