• How Can I Get Microsoft Office for Free?

    I get this question a lot. People assume either Microsoft Office comes with their computer or that it’s free. It’s not free, but there are some pretty good options out there that are free or that allow you to pay over time. I have a question for you… Do you or we have a disk…

  • Normalization, Unions, Joins, and Locking in Microsoft SQL

    What is a normalized database? Database normalization is the process of organizing the fields and tables of a relational database to minimize redundancy. Normalization usually involves dividing large tables into smaller (and less redundant) tables and defining relationships between them. What is a SQL union/join? Unions combine rows. Joins combine columns. UNION combines the results…

  • How to Join a Fuze Meeting

    This video explains how to join a Fuze Meeting from the invite to the download to the installation.

  • Creating Custom Views in Microsoft SQL

    In part 3 I continue building on the table structure I learned about in part 2 of my training on How to Use Microsoft SQL by learning about creating custom views. Creating the Tables To learn how to setup a custom view in Microsoft SQL, we setup a second table so that we could join…

  • SQL Identity Specification and Data Types

    Continuing the process of learning SQL, last time I wrote about SQL primary keys. Today I learned to disallow “null” from primary keys to prevent having blank data and to set “Identify Specification” and “Not for Replication”. Identify Specification Setting the primary key’s Identify Specification to “no” means manually having to create the primary key…

  • Microsoft SQL Primary Keys

    I’m in the process of learning SQL and in so doing have started learning Microsoft SQL using Microsoft’s SQL Management Studio. It’s a free program that’s used to open, manage, and edit Microsoft SQL databases stored on a server running Microsoft SQL (quick note: SQL is a database language used to store data in tables…

  • The Top 5 Best USB Backup Power Sources for Your Mobile Devices

    Having an iPhone, Android smart phone, ebook reader like a Kindle, or other type of mobile devices can make you more efficient, more in tune with your friends and family, and keep you up to date.  But what happens when you are running low on power for your device and you aren’t able to charge…

  • What is Autotask?

    Some people call it a “hosted business automation solution”, a “complete business management solution”, a “complete business management platform”, or a “hosted business management software to streamline and optimize business processes” – but all of that sounds like a bunch of words strung together that don’t really mean anything. So what exactly is Autotask? When…

  • The White Album Problem

    In Men in Black (1997), Kay is showing Jay some new alien technology and says, “This is gonna replace CD’s soon; guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again.” At the time of this writing I’m 33 years old, but in my lifetime I’ve seen the progression in music from vinyl records, 8-tracks, and…