Work Life: PDF Missing Links on Mac OS

My boss came to me with a weird issue: Her PDF document was missing hyperlinks.

The document had been created in Word for Mac then saved as a PDF. We can easily recreate the problem. Just create a Word doc on Mac, add some hyperlinks, save as a PDF, open the PDF and tah-dah: no links.

After a bunch of research, we actually found a solution that did not involve jumping through a bunch of hoops, though it does involve a couple hoops.

OPEN THE DOCUMENT IN GOOGLE DRIVE, EXPORT AS PDF.

There it is. Easy peasy.

Hope this helps someone out there!

Work Life: VOIP Pass-Through for Dumb Switches

Are you implementing VOIP phones in your office but have certain places where you've got a dumb switch in place providing connectivity to computers, printers, etc? No problem! Here's all you do:

1. Connect the network cable into the wall jack as you normally would.
2. Plug the cable from the wall jack into the NETWORK jack on the phone.
3. Plug a network cable into the COMPUTER jack on the phone.
4. Plug the other end of the COMPUTER cable into the dumb switch. This gives your PC, printers, etc connectivity to the network!

This setup allows you to still pull your POE from the wall jack to the phone while giving the devices connected to the switch the network access they need via the phone's network pass-through. 

I have tested this on various brands of phones and various brands of POE switching. So far, they have each been able to provide the connectivity to the network needed by the dumb-switch devices while enabling the power and connectivity needed of the VOIP phone.

Hope this helps!

"Computer" jack (on left) goes to Dumb Switch

Connection from phone's Computer jack plugs into switch.

Note: This post assumes you have whatever equipment you need in place for the actual phones themselves (ex: POE switches and/or power injectors, etc)

Crash Trucks Into Pianos!

10 Years Since My Dad Died

(I started this back in April 2017, but let life get in the way of finishing it. So, I am finishing it now, before another 10 years goes by.)

...10 years...

My Dad passed away on April 28, 2007. That seems so long ago and like yesterday all at the same time. One of the hardest things about him not being here comes from our mutual love of gaming. He and I would upgrade our computers at about the same time, just so we could play whatever the latest game we both enjoyed could run on them.

We had different tastes in games for the large part, but some games we enjoyed playing independently but would share stories, watch each other play, etc.

Dad loved modding. He would get the latest FIFA, NHL Hockey, or just about any other EA Sports game just so he could go online and find the real-world add-ons he could download and install. He especially loved making FIFA as realistic as he could. Back in the early 2000's, he even downloaded the Spanish voice over (more that 600MB over dial-up) just so he could play the game as though it were on Spanish television.

I think of my Dad almost constantly, though I don't express that probably as often as I might should. I don't know the "rules" when it comes to those kinds of things.

If Dad were alive today, he would definitely have a YouTube channel, showing off the latest add-ons, mods, and real-world effects for the games he loved to play. He would probably be putting out "let's play" videos for horror games, too. Man, he loved horror games. By far and away, his favorite was "Clive Barker's Undying." It's pretty tame by today's standards, but back in the day, it was creepy with a good story and jump scares we hadn't seen in games before - or at least not done as well.

Ten years. I know it's hard for some folks, especially when you're young, to fathom how quickly ten years goes by. And, I also know I am suddenly sounding like a very old man here. But, really. You wake up one day and one of your best friends is telling you about something he and you are going to do when he gets back from Iraq. The next minute, you are told he died overnight. The world stops. The world slowly starts again. You close your eyes for a moment and when you open them, it's ten years later.

There are so many times my very first thought about a new game is that I wish I could tell my father.

On a much brighter note, my son loves gaming as well. He and I share stories, play online together, and continue the traditions started between my father and me. My daughter has started gaming a little, too. She prefers the "shared keyboard" type games where we can hang out together, side-by-side, racing, building, destroying enemies.

Ten years really does go by quickly. I miss one of the greatest gaming buddies I ever had.

Work Life: Using SEER to give instant, easy previews on Windows (the way Mac OS X does!)

tl;dr - Use SEER for Windows for quick previews!

I use all kinds of devices in my day-to-day life. It gets frustrating when one Operating System (OS) provides a feature that I would like to see on others. For example, on Mac OS X, you can click on the thumbnail for a PDF, an image, a video, and a slew of other files then tap the SPACE BAR and get a quick pop-up preview of the selected file.

This comes in handy when you aren't sure what's in the file and just want to take a quick look without firing up the host program. On Windows, there is no quick preview.

Enter SEER (http://1218.io/)! This handy little program adds that SPACE BAR quick view to Windows! And, it is FREE!

Here are a couple of screenshots to show you what it looks like in action:

Selected file (left) and Preview

Select text directly from preview!