Not a lot happening on the office PC front, apart from a few mishaps with my trusty Toshiba laptop.
John was not too pleased, when on my return from my latest trip I had succeeded in breaking the modem latch (the second time it had been damaged in as many months).
It has a very thoughtfully designed built in modem port, which consists of a plastic door that swings out and allows a standard modem cable to be attached. In the event of the slightest bit of pressure being applied, the door snaps off, saving the internal modem from damage - a very thoughtful feature according to the repair person. (The fact that the Modem Latch as it is known, was on backorder, and the Laptop Service center already had 100 of them on order, in no way indicated it was a poor design.)
Due to the back order problem it couldn't be fixed in time for John's next trip. It's not very convenient having to hold the modem cable just right and not move while retrieving your email, and this may have contributed to John treating the Laptop to a glass of ginger ale. (While this did nothing for the laptop, it did go a long way to making me feel better about my treatment of the machine.) Two product demonstrations later, (with no keyboard. How did he do that?) John returned with one extremely worse for wear laptop. Luckily keyboards weren't on backorder and the modem latch had arrived, so my laptop is fully functional, once again. [You clumsy pair will soon fix that - Ed]
"The laptop has given up drinking, and I feel we should all respect that."
I was about to build myself a new PC for home and had a fairly reasonable idea about what I wanted; Fast. Somewhere around 1 GHz should do for now, but alas, speed and a budget do not mix. At around $1000 for a 1GHz CPU, I was definitely out of the running. After searching around the web and reading a few articles, I decided it was worth taking a risk and over clocking a cheaper CPU to achieve some reasonable performance. I purchased an Intel Celeron 2 Processor, 600mhz for $240. Not quite what I had in mind, but the possibility of extra speed and performance for free was too good to resist. The Celeron 2, a cut down Pentium 3, runs on a 66MHz system bus and has a locked multiplier of (in this case) 9 to give it its rated speed of 600MHz. The theory is, that by changing the system bus to 100mhz, you will have a 900MHz processor, with increased performance over a standard Celeron 2, not only due to the CPU frequency increase but also the bus speed increase.
It worked, flawlessly and without a problem. The machine booted first time and has run 24/7 for nearly a month at 900MHz. A quick batch of tests show the CPU capable of 2400mips, and coupled with 256Mb of ram, 32mb video card and a 7200rpm UDMA 100 Hard Drive, it almost has Windows booting in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee.
(There is no such thing as fast enough)
I have offered to build the new office machines but strangely no one seems too keen. Oh well. ["Offered" be damned - I have to barricade my office door to keep this maniac out - Ed]
OK, I give up (almost). For years we've been getting manuals and spreadsheets from customers and suppliers alike in MS-Word and Excel format (except for one customer who insists on using Lotus SmartSuite). So I finally decided it was time to stop opening these things in WordPerfect Office (which did a wonderful job of converting them) and then saving them in MS format.
I've come to the conclusion that "Upgrading" from WordPerfect to Word is somewhat akin to "upgrading" from BIM-Edit to ICCF (or, for the non-mainframers out there, like upgrading from a Jaguar to roller skates). See "Thought for the day" later in the newsletter.
I'm a great fan of the MTV unplugged CDs. But can someone answer a question for me, please? In the case of singers like Tony Bennett, which part of them is usually plugged in and where do they put the power plug?
OK, you've got all your drawings done but you've now got a load of data to enter. Let's take a look at some shortcuts. (Full step by step instructions are in the manual but real men don't read manuals).
If you've populated your drawing with symbols from the Aperture symbol libraries then all the records we supply are already attached. They won't have all your data in them (serial numbers etc) but we'll come to that. But what if you want to attach your own records to everything - a Purchase Record, for example. You could double click on each object in your project and attach the Purchase Record but that will take forever. It's much easier to select everything you want to attach a Purchase Record to and then use "Modify Selected Objects"
to attach a record to them all. To select the objects you want, you can either (1) hold down the shift key while selecting the objects one at a time or (2) use "Add to Selection" from the select menu and then select the objects you want or (3) use "Select via database" or "Select via Attribute" to select all the objects in one go. With "Select via Database", you can tell Aperture to select objects with a certain value in a field (e.g. Vendor = "IBM") or you can select every object that has a certain record attached. Or you can select using a combination of criteria - select everything where Vendor= IBM and no "Lease Record" is attached. Select via Attribute lets you select, for example, everything on the Room Outline layer. Without wishing to labour the point, once you've selected a load of things, you can mod
ify your selection by removing objects, adding them or refining the selection using Select via (look in the bottom left hand corner of the Select via Database screen).
So, now we've got, say, 79 objects selected and want to attach Purchase Records to them all. Double click on one of them or pull down Data|Find/Edit Records. Then click on Edit Records|Modify Selected Objects. Now you can make a change to a field in all 79 records at once, attach a record to all 79 objects (use "Settings" to say if you want to attach the record before or after the current one), delete a record or replace the current record in each object with the same record from the first object.
What if you've got a load of data in another database or spreadsheet and you want to get it into Aperture? First of all, save your database or spreadsheet as a delimited TXT file. Then there are 3 possible cases:
Case 1 - you have objects in your drawings that correspond to the data in the database (it doesn't matter if you don't have a database record for each object or vice versa). To match the records in the TXT file with objects in the drawing, there must be a field in a record attached to each object that matches a field in the file. For example, each object in the drawing may have a Device Record with an Serial Number in it while the TXT file also has an asset number field in it.
To import the data, click on Data|Import. The "Choose Fields to Import" screen is displayed. We're going to import 2 fields into the Device records in this drawing - the Asset # and the Barcode #. We'll use the Serial # field to match the records in the input file with objects in the drawing - that's why the Serial # is marked as a "Find Field". When we click on Update/Attach, the records in the input file are matched against the objects in the drawing and for those that match, the Serial and Barcode numbers are updated. At the end of the import, 
we're told how many records have been updated and how many didn't match any object in the drawing (ie there was a serial number in the input file with no matching object in the drawing - this can be extremely useful as it means you can import the same file several times into different drawings and only the ma
tching records will be imported).
The Device Serial number report shows that we've now got asset and barcode details for most of our devices - any that are missing weren't present in the file that we imported so we're going to have to get them from somewhere else or enter them manually.
Aperture can create objects directly from an import file. All the objects it creates will be identical except for
the data attached to them. For example, if you are importing the data for 100 PCs, you can point Aperture at the file containing their data and point it at a PC that is already in the drawing and say "create a copy of that PC for each record in this file". The new PCs are dropped in a line into your drawing ready for you to move to their proper locations. They have all their database fields filled in as a copy of the original PC's and updated with the information from the import file.
"I don't want my PCs in a line, I want Aperture to put them in the right place." Good for you. All you need to do this is for each room in your floorplan to have a Region record associated with it containing a Room number (or other unique identifier for the room). Then, if your import file also has a room number field in it, you can mark that field as a "Find Field" for the import and each of your PCs will be imported into the right room. All you have to do then is to move them to the right place in the room.
So there you go - as you'll have got sick of hearing if you've ever been on one of John's Aperture courses, the whole aim of using Aperture is to look for the lazy way to do things and that's what we've done here. If you've got any questions about this or anything else to do with Aperture, give us a call or drop us an email. Unlike some companies I could name, we don't charge for support calls.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will still keep buying the Microsoft version.
Every year we publish a summery tip (readers in the northern hemisphere can ignore it). This year, it's how to make your own barbecue charcoal. First, you need a charcoal barbecue (beat that for stating the obvious). Then some chunks of wood (off a tree, not from a timber yard). Hardwood is best - tea tree is best of all. Pine will leave your chops tasting like varnish while mahoe and privet are poisonous (or smell like it). The chunks should be small enough to fit into your barbecue with the lid on - they don't have to be tiny. Lay the chunks round a fire of commercial charcoal and cook your nosh as usual. Once you've finished cooking, put the lid on and shut all the air vents so only a little air gets in. And voila, in an hour or two, real home made charcoal. Chuck a steak on the barbie for me.
And if, like me, you're an ex-patriate Pom who misses warm beer on a cool summer evening, I highly recommend Monteith's Original. (If anyone from Monteith's Brewery is reading this, I couldn't possibly accept several dozen cases in payment for this unashamed plug).
I've just got back from the US so that's going to be the subject of this month's whinge. (For the sake of our American readers, a whinge is something that Poms are genetically engineered to be particularly good at. Whingeing is complaining at length to an audience that doesn't want to listen about something that doesn't interest them and over which they have no control. Such as "You don't get this sunburnt in England in summer." It is meant more to annoy than to offend.)
I'm not going to whinge about the American election - I've done enough of that during the 7 year run-up to it. Nor about the hideous money that has no right to be worth as much as it is. I won't even whinge about tipping - that's where a cab driver drives you from A to B via a random selection of roads, sits in his cab while you unload your own bags and then expects to be paid 20% more than he asks for. (Customers please note - feel free to add 20% to your next invoice: cash preferred.) And I won't mention Bud.
My whinge is a subject much closer to my heart - public toilets (or lack thereof). I have come to the conclusion that Americans either have half gallon bladders or have found some way of transpiring liquid. I'm sure the road to hell is lined with signs saying "Next Rest Area - 124 miles". Now, in England...
Yes, the new millennium is finally about to arrive. So all those of you who thought the world was going to end and were relieved to get away with it last year, get back to your caves, quick. Everyone else - have a marvellous summer hols and eat and drink too much if you feel like it (subject to government health warnings).
Does anyone know where I can get Heinz Piccalilli in Australia or New Zealand? Please??
So, what's coming up next year? Well, we expect to be talking with a lot more people about getting your data centres, networks and office space under control better. The new Aperture Technology Documentation Module is ready to roll and our techies will be enhancing it even further to allow you to bill out computer room space, rack space and so on to your end-user departments. We also expect to be working with the developers at Aperture Technologies in adding facilities and information with an Australasian flavour.
On the VSE and Z390 front, we're going to see more people wanting to open up
their mainframe applications to web browsers. Not just CICS applications but
all the other online systems out there, too - imagine having a nice GUI panel
to click on instead of your boring old ISPF primary menu. Best of all, we expect
to be able to save many companies a few million dollars because they don't have
to switch platforms or rewrite mountains of code just to get a web front end.
In fact, we don't expect anyone to have to write a single line of application
code to put all their applications onto the web! Want to know more? Click here
....
.to find out how to put all your applications on the web.
What a nice thing to play with over the summer break and to amaze the boss with when he gets back to work. Should be worth a 20% raise if you ask me....