Found several entries about this error, which always seems to crop up when I’m under deadline. I think I’ll try seeing if there is an updated driver first.
The quick and dirty way solution to this problem is to print the docuement to a PDF file first using Adobe Acrobat. Then print a hard copy from the Acrobat file.
Welcome to Tech for Non-Profits, the unplugged version of Microdesign Consulting. Part lab-notebook, part brain-extension, it is a repository for new and half-baked ideas that we run across as we provide software and database development, network support, and R&D for a growing list of clients in education, health care and non-profit organizations.
Regular features include Tech Friday, which may include code(!), our (mostly) annotated VoIP resource guide, Stuff That Works for hardware and software items that have passed the Five Minute Test, and Chron This Week, which is synopsis of technology articles of interest in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Topics on grantwritng and fundraising appear as we seem to have one or more grant application in progress most of the time.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. They are moderated, so will show up shortly after you add them.
I was wondering if Charlie Kyd had fallen off my radar somehow, but just received his latest Excel for Business Newsletter full of ideas for using Excel as a financial mangement tool. Of interest this time is a link to another article he wrote in BPM Magazine, about using Excel to generate reports and dashboards from OLAP cubes. What’s an OLAP cube?
OLAP is the name for a type of database technology that stores information in cubes, rather than in lists. A company might keep its general ledger accounting data in a simple OLAP cube that includes three dimensions: account, division, and month. At the intersection of any particular account, division, and month you would find one number. Most cubes have more than three dimensions, and they typically contain a wide variety of business data, not merely G/L data. Users with access to an OLAP cube of corporate information can define any consolidation hierarchy for the cube’s dimensions. For example, in the “month” dimension, every month could roll up into quarters, which could roll up into years. Or months could roll up into year-to-date numbers. The individual data points (the cube’s “leaf members”) and the consolidated numbers would be equivalent sources of data. So users generating a report could choose data from a leaf member like Mar-2007 just as easily as they could choose from a consolidated member like Mar-2007-YTD.
The newsletter is great stuff, not least because anyone who has Microsoft Office has Excel.
Libraries as social service agencies.
Found at TomDispatch.com
Excerpt:
The belief that we are responsible for each other’s social, economic, and political well-being, that we will care for our weakest members compassionately, should be the keystone in the moral architecture of a democratic culture. We will not stand by while our fellow citizens are deprived of their fellowship and citizenship — which is why we ended racial segregation and practices like poll taxes that kept disenfranchised Americans powerless. We will not let children starve. We do not consign orphans to the streets like they do in Brazil or let children be sold into prostitution as they do in Thailand. We are proud of our struggles to meet people’s basic needs and to encourage inclusion. Why, then, are the mentally ill still such an exception to those fundamental standards?
America is proud of its hyper-individualism, our liberation from the bonds of tribe and the social constraints of traditional societies. We glorify the accomplishments of inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, pioneers, and artists. But while some individuals thrive and the cutting edge of our technology is wondrous, the plight of the chronically homeless tells me that our communities are also fragmented and disintegrating. We may have gained the world and lost each other.
Microsoft has posted a series of templates for Sharepoint sites. Some of these would be suitable for nonprofits. Even if you aren’t into Sharepoint, the templates may give you ideas of what to look for as you develop workflow and and collaboration capabilities for your organization.
If you want to try the templates, there is a 30-day Sharepoint free trail at Sharepointhosting.com. If you are not a Microsoft shop, or if you don’t want to host your Sharepoint site, you can use Sharepointhosting as a service starting at $30.00/month for a gigabyte of storage.
Some of the interesting templates:
More of these are located here.
The latest post from Erik Rucker’s blog suggests that the runtime is going to be several months later than their original projection of March.
The Aspiration 2007 Non-Profit Development Summit was held in February. Their wiki with conference notes is available online.
Rich Tehrani, has written a terrific commentary on the folly of a Verizon (old-line re-integration of the Baby Bells) suit against Vonage (innovative VoIP alternative).
Excerpts:
If you haven’t heard, a court decided Vonage needs to pay Verizon $58 million in past damages for patent infringement in the following areas:
* Technology used to bridge Internet calls to the traditional phone systems
* Features such as call-waiting and voice-mail
* Wireless Internet phone calls[T]he question worth posing however is how is the consumer benefiting from this lawsuit?
My concern is with the government and the various agencies who are supposed to be protecting me, my family and friends from monopolistic practices such as this.
When I learn about large companies using the legal and regulatory systems, to flush their competitors down the toilet I have to stop and remember what country I am living in.
I am a US citizen. I was born in the US and I am proud of it. I want consumers to have the best of everything. Lower prices, better quality – the best of everything.
VoIP has afforded consumers many benefits. FCC Chairman Michael Powell realized this and used Vonage as a poster child for competition that was pro consumer.
Unfortunately the massive amount of telco consolidation leaves a few large service providers with war chests full of cash and patents they will use to wipe out any and all competition in the market.
The system is so broken it is tough to imagine it can be called a system. How could the FCC feel good about this sort of decision? How could it ever be argued that a huge patent portfolio wielded like nuclear weapons can benefit consumers?
Merger after merger gets approved and no one puts an end to it.
If you had to design a communications infrastructure, the U.S. model is upside down and ass-backwards. Even the Iraqis resisted our cell-phone system.
1. I checked yesterday to see if DSL was available in my neck of the woods. It isn’t, and we have a single choice, Comcast cable, which provides internet connectivity for $57.00 a month. I feel lucky about this, there are still many pockets in surrounding towns which have nothing more than dial-up internet access. Several of these towns have agreed to look into providing municipal fiber networks.
2. In Germany last summer, I was able to buy an unlocked Nokia cell phone and choose from a half-dozen providers of cell phone service. Each of these had a confusing array of plans to be sure, many of them weren’t directly comparable, but even during the course of a three-week stay I switched providers once, and lowered my per-minute charges back to the states, and within Europe by almost 90%. So there is indeed some competition. The hardware isn’t “locked” to a single provider. Imagine if you bought a Ford Explorer, and you were only able to drive it on Ford’s roads, and if you wanted to tranfer passengers to Chevy’s roads, you’d have to pay a premium. Europe has a single mobile standard, GSM. We have three competing technical standards, which are not directly interoperable.
Read the full commentary here.
Almeza offers an unattended installer which will install Windows and applications without user intervention. 30-day free trial at their web site.
Pensuites are open source and free software utility bundles that can be downloaded and installed on to a USB drive.
Found both of these in CRNTech magazine. They have a web site full of animations and ads which, nothwithstanding those issues usually has some good tech tidbits and white papers for systems managers.
tfnp 