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.

Computing.Net – PCL XL error

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:

• Board of Directors
  The Board of Directors application template provides a single location for an external group of members to store and locate common documents such as quarterly reviews, shareholder meeting notes and annual strategy documents. The template also tracks tasks, issues and calendar items so board members have a single location to view information relevant to them.
• Clinical Trial Initiation and Management
  The Clinical Trial Initiation and Management application template helps teams manage the process of tracking clinical trial protocols, objective setting, subject selection and budget activities. The site provides useful Office Word 2007 templates as well as the capability to create, track and assign tasks and issues related to a particular clinical trial.
• Discussion Database
  The Discussion Database application template provides a location where team members can create and reply to discussion topics. Discussions are organized by categories, which are created by a site manager, and can be linked to Office Outlook 2007 via an RSS feed.
• Integrated Marketing Campaign Tracking
  The Integrated Marketing Campaign Tracking application template helps marketing managers track the implementation and success of outbound marketing activities. The template allows a manager to create marketing activities and track the results of those activities, such as responses generated and sales completed. The template contains multiple methods of analyzing the success of the campaigns including automated calculations and Office Excel 2007 templates for more detailed analyses.
• Team Work Site
  The Team Work Site application template provides a place where project teams can upload background documents, track scheduled calendar events and submit action items that result from team meetings. The site also tracks the creation and purpose of ‘sub-teams’ as well as enables discussion of topics created by members of the team.
• Timecard Management
  The Timecard Management application template helps teams track hours spent working on various projects. The site enables team members to ‘punch in’ on a particular project and ‘punch out’ when they cease work. The system automatically generates the time worked by project, and can show managers who is working on a particular project, total hours versus budgeted time and the details of who worked on a each project entered into the site.
• Room and Equipment Reservations
  The Room and Equipment Reservations application template helps teams manage the utilization of shared meeting rooms and equipment. The application template enables team members to identify times when specific rooms and/or equipment are available and place a reservation for a specified time.
• Lending Library
  The Lending Library application template helps people manage the physical assets in an organization’s library. The application template tracks general properties about the physical assets and which user has currently checked out the asset. It also provides a librarian dashboard to help identify currently available and overdue assets. Automated email notifications can be sent to borrowers who have an overdue item.

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 Basecamp folks have debuted their new CRM-lite application, called High-Rise.

GoPlan is a new project mangement application which works on a similar model to Basecamp.