ear buds

Dawn's source for cheap earbuds, the kind we sell at the reference desk, is http://www.playaway.com/. I now have an account there.  What is especially nice is that they will invoice you instead of requiring credit card payment at point of sale.  Oh, that and the 20% discount for library accounts- that's nice, too.

FireFox vs. IE

Tara came to me with an interesting problem.  A patron wanted to copy an image (in this case, a photo from her Face Book page) and paste it into a document. Most of us would simply right-click on the image, and then copy and paste.  But the right-click function is disabled under group policy on the public computers, so she looked around for another way to perform this simple task.  There is no way to do it as a "TRpublic" user...IF you are using Internet Explorer.  However, Tara and I did the experiment.  You can select an image, copy it, and then paste it into a document, when using FireFox!  This is a useful discovery because the only other way to accomplish this task is to log in as a staff member, which is much more cumbersome.

Chesconet Outages on Monday 7/19

The following message comes from Larry Konig at Chesconet:

All Chesconet sites are currently up.


On Monday afternoon, from 2:53PM until 5:04PM, all Chesconet customers experienced intermittent outages in Internet connectivity. The cause of the outages was determined to be excessive processor utilization on one of Chesconet's Internet border routers. This caused the router to repeatedly drop and reestablish peerings with two of our upstream service providers (Cogent and MAGPI), disrupting Internet service for all customers. Configuration changes were made which significantly reduced the CPU load on the affected router, and stable Internet access resumed at approximately 5:05PM.

NOTICE:
On Wednesday morning, July 21, MAGPI will be performing router maintenance starting at 6:00AM. During their two-hour maintenance window, Chesconet will not have Internet2 access. All customer traffic destined for Internet2-connected sites will instead use Chesconet's commodity Internet service with Cogent and Level3.

WHO'S ON CALL:
Kevin Corrigan is on call this week (Monday, July 19 through Sunday, July 25). If you experience network problems, please feel free to contact him at 302-293-6518 or send him a text message at kcorriga@nemours.org.

If you experience a network problem, please check the Chesconet Information Line at 484-237-5160. It has a recorded message with information on the status of the network, including updates on any issues we may be working on. Please do not leave voice mail messages on this line, as it is not monitored for incoming messages.

Thermal Printers

And so, a big Thank You to Laurie- she correctly figured out that the problem with the thermal printers was actually that they had sent us the wrong paper.  Also, this was a solution that Tech Support Guy never even mentioned...

Thermal printers - what is up?

See  below re: our thermal printers making faint prints.  Since both printers at the circ desk began to do the same thing at approximately the same time, I am beginning to suspect that it might be a problem with the paper.  I cleaned both machines and that made no change in the quality of the printing. 

BTW, the manual to which the tech support guy refers is a pretty sketchy document at best.  It talks about cleaning the print head, but there's no illustration about where it is.  It is right at the top of the opening, so no big deal, but it does indicate that the documentation is lacking.

From: Star Micronics Support [support@starmicronics.com]



Sent: 6/22/2010 5:26 PM


To: pblitt@ccls.org


Subject: RE: Technical Support - Star Micronics [ ref:00D8dXi6.5008B8JB0:ref ]






Hi Pam,






This is most likely a hardware issue. Power on while holding feed an see how that prints. If it looks the same then the only thing to do is try cleaning the print head and roller. I attached the user manual to show how to lean. If that doesn't help it will need repair. Let me know your location and when the printer was purchased to see about warranty.






--------------- Original Message ---------------


From: [pblitt@ccls.org]


Sent: 6/22/2010 3:02 PM


To: support@starmicronics.com


Subject: Technical Support - Star Micronics






Company Name: Tredyffrin Public LibraryContact Name: Pam BlittersdorfPhone: 6106887092Product: TSP700Customer E-mail: pblitt@ccls.orgOperating System: XPInterface: ParallelIssue: printer makes pale copies. Product name: TSP700IIProduct Serial no.: 100160801294Problem: makes pale prints

Disabling PC speakers through BIOS

A solution to noise pollution from Mary Ann Burne:

When powering on the PC, boot up to the BIOS (on our HP systems, keep tapping the F10 key while powering up)


Select English>Advanced>Device Options>Internal Speakers, then right arrow key to disable. F10 to save changes & exit.

Ricoh printer driver resolution

John and Bill from Ricoh, as well as Tony from Computer Services, are here this morning analyzing our printer driver problem. It seems that the group policy is not the culprit, rather it was a conflict with something in the Windows OS.  I'm shocked, shocked to find that Windows could cause this kind of trouble.  Stay tuned for more details.

Circ desk monitor..

The monitor at the second circ desk station was taken out of service because it was emitting "a funny smell."  It was replaced with the last spare monitor from the IT closet.  Time to buy some back-up equipment.

New email account

This isn't a trouble report, just a note on process.  If you want to set up a new staff email account, you don't send a HelpStar request.  There is actually a separate link on the CCLS intranet which has the form for you to complete.  Or go directly to this link:  http://www.ccls.org/assets/forms/register.htm

Phone message time stamping

Telephones are displaying the correct time, but time-stamping on phone messages is off by an hour.  I called Phone America to correct this.

Installs/Updates

We need to install these updates on all staff computers:

• IE 8 (software folder on Ydrive)
• Roxio (Y drive folder)
• Itunes (update on Y drive if already installed on local machine)
• Java (control panel)
• Google Earth (under Help menu, if already installed)
• Firefox (under Help menu if already installed)
• After installs, go to Start/Accessories/System Tools/Scheduled Tasks.  Delete Scheduled Tasks.

Ricoh scanning problem

The scanner function isn't working on either public copier.  The machines will not savefiles to a flash drive.  I've called for service; confirmation #'s are 8258584 and 8258600.  I also need to call 866-239-8494 to set up an account with Ricoh Direct Online.

Internet speed

Since several staff members and patrons reported a noticable slowdown in internet speed (and I experienced this myself), I submitted a helpstar.  Tony Wagner called about it this morning, but of course we could not reproduce the problem during the phone call.  Now, however, there's an independent means of testing web speed.  Just go to this website: http://speedtest.net/

Meanwhile, I had Susan empty her browser history and temp files, in the hope that this little measure will help with her web speed.

What it means when there's a spooler problem

Shawn reported a printing problem in the Childrens dept. this afternoon.  She had first jiggled all the cables attached to the printer and made an effort to resolve the problem herself.  However, there was a error message about the print spooler that appeared on the screen.  (A print spooler is software that temporarily stores print jobs on the computer hard disk or in memory until the printer is ready to print them.)

In this case, the problem was the network cable running from the printer had been unfastened at the other end.  So, although Shawn had checked the cables connected to the printer,  it would have been hard for her to spot the actual problem at the little network hub in the middle of the computer tables.

So, a print spooler error is usually a network connection error in our computing environment.  It really helps to report these problems as soon as you can.  When we got the printer reconnected, it spewed out print jobs going back for several days!  Patrons don't always report printing problems.  But if they do, please let me know.

Resetting the Ricohs

Printer 1 went down at 4:30 on Saturday-frozen machine, all red lights and an error message that read: “Functional Problems Detected; Press restart after current process; Repeat settings after machine has reset”. It proceeded through a series of screens as it reset and then froze again completely. I could do nothing to get it working-so I called for service and Ricoh told me to turn the machine off using the orange button on the lower left of the machine. This did work but it took the printer function longer to come back up-an extra few minutes.


Printer 2 got the same error message first thing on Sunday. I didn’t bother to call this time-the orange button worked.

Wanted to let you both know in case same problem (and the error message) reappears Monday.



Valerie