Evergreen Chapter, AITP
Tech Notes

Back Issues of 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 volumes are available.... Click here for Information

Tech Notes is a collection of tips and tricks developed and/or tested by members of AITP and the Information Technology industry. It was published four times a year (at the end of each quarter) by the Evergreen Chapter, AITP and an index of the year's issues is published the following January. Tech Notes was provided to the members of the Evergreen Chapter as a benefit of membership. We also made masters of each issue available to other AITP chapters such that they too can provide this material as a benefit of membership to their members.

With the end of the seventh year of publication (2001), the Board of Directors of the Evergreen Chapter voted to suspend publication of Tech Notes.

The following are some of the shorter examples from the 1995 and first two 1996 issues:

How to Cheat at Minesweeper

First, go to the Control Panel and Color and pick or make a scheme with a black background -- like "Black Leather Jacket."

Now start Minesweeper but don't "click" on anything yet.

Type xyzzy and press enter. You won't see anything happen while you do this.

Now press and release the Shift key. And if everything was done correctly, you are ready.

Roll the mouse around the playing board while watching the very upper left corner of the screen. Against the black background, you should see a tiny dot any time the cursor is over a cell without a mine. The dot disappears when you cross a cell with a mine.

Filler... In more ways than one

Windows users, it is important that you fully exit Windows, not just Word or Excel, before shutting your PC off.

Each time you shut off your PC before Windows has completed its shutdown process, you leave behind temporary files that Windows and the applications have been using to keep track of your activities. During the shutdown process, these files get deleted and the space is released for future use.

If you shut down your machine without exiting Windows, these temporary files are left behind. They eat up your disk space. Eventually, the amount of spaced locked up in these waste files will begin to slow your machine. When you finally run out of space for new temporary files, your Windows applications won't run.

Use File Manager to look for ~*.TMP files and delete these.

To keep your hard disk clean, exit Windows before shutting your machine off.

C:STU FF.TXT

It doesn't happen as often today as it did back in the "good old days," but it is still possible to end up with a space or some other "invalid" character in a filename.

DOS, on it's own, would not have permitted this to occur, but programmers have a way of getting around all safeguards.

So you've got one with an illegal name, how do your fix it?

First, Do a DIR and take a look at the name. Determine where and how many invalid characters are in the name.

Then use the DOS RENAME utility (rename old-name new-name) putting in the wildcard "?" in all positions where an invalid character exists in the old filename.

So, if you have a filename STU FF.TXT where you think that there's a space or some non-printing character between the U and the first F, type: rename stu?ff.txt stuuff.txt and press enter.

This will restore the file to an accessible name where you can delete, copy, rename, etc. it as you please.

Hacker Stuff

Here's one for NetWare Administrators to put into the back of their minds. It's an undocumented feature of NetWare.

When NetWare installs, you can count on two UserIDs being created (Version 4.1 creates a third) -- Guest and Supervisor. If you were a hacker, which would you rather attack? Okay, trick question... Supervisor, naturally.

NetWare's anti-hacker defenses included Intruder Detection and Lockout. So you want to implement the Detection Threshold / Lockout after Detection, locking any attempts out after say 4 bad attempts for say 30 minutes. Good idea.

But wait. What happens when the hacker disables the Supervisor's ID and you need to get in? Tough luck? Nope.

Head for the System Console and issue the command: ENABLE LOGIN

Novell doesn't tell you, but each time you enable logins, you reset the Supervisor's ID.

Nice, huh? Another good reason to maintain physical security around your system's console. Right.

Tied to a Grid?

Every once in a while, a user will come up with something real weird. One such is an installation of Windows 3.x on which you can't easily adjust the size of the Program Manager window. Rather than be continuously sizable, like an ordinary window, it is either not adjustable or changes size in big set chunks... like it's tied to a grid you can't see.

It is. Look in your WIN./INI file under the paragraph [Desktop] (it's near the front of that file). You will find a value called: GridGranularity=.

Its a pretty good bet that the number to the right of the equals sign is not a zero. Change that to zero, and the adjustability of Program Manager will return.

Visual Basic Help -- Line Continuations

If you use nice descriptive variable names, your lines of code can get long. VB has no problem with that, but your printer might. Printers wrap long lines of code which looks nasty and some characters at the wrap-point might get lost.

The "Learn Visual Basic in 16 Hours" books don't tell you, but the underscore ("_") character is the line-continues flag. So at the right end of a line on which you need a break, put an underscore, press enter for a new line and keep typing.