Author: ryelpango

Categories
Finance

Technology Expert with Zero Financial Knowledge

Money
$Money, $money, $money!

I consider myself a technology specialist. When it comes to gadgets, I go the extra mile to find out how components work together. Technology, hardware, software, programming syntax, servers, computers, etc., all make sense to me. The concept resonates very well with my inner being, which allows me to continuously develop as a technology expert.

Technology to me is like finance to Matt Sapaula. I know the basics of finance, simple arithmetic right? I need to make more money to cover my expenses. Simple enough concept, but in the real world, the rules change a lot.

Like me, a lot of us take care of our finances on a day to day basis. This is all well and good if we can sustain regular income week in, week out. Unfortunately, we’re not bulletproof. When we go down, sometimes our income goes down as well, depending on our circumstances. This concerned me a lot so I started Google’ing ways on how to “stretch” my money. Google’s organic search results introduced me to Matt Sapaula. This man is definitely a money smart guy. His blogs opened my eyes to vulnerabilities relating to how I manage my finances.

Unfortunately for me, Matt’s in the US while I’m in Australia. If I want face to face financial advise, it’s going to have to be someone local, but as a starting point, his blogs are certainly worth reading.

Categories
Business Services Document Storage

Physical Document Storage

Filing cabinet
Filing cabinet taking up precious office space
Filing cabinet
Filing cabinet taking up precious office space

The digital age is well and truly here. With the price of computer hardware (and software) spiralling downwards, it makes sense for most corporations to go completely “paperless” when it comes to disseminating documents across the globe. Unfortunately, due to various legal obligations, companies cannot go completely digital. Some documents cannot be stored in digitized format alone. These documents need to be stored for up to 7 seven years (sometimes more) in its original paper format. Although the price of digital storage is cheap, physical storage space is on the rise.

With this trend in mind, it makes more sense to store these documents off-site. Outsourcing the management of physical documents can be seen as a risky proposition by most corporations. How can one be sure that their confidential corporate information is in safe hands? Can the required document be made available in a timely enough fashion upon demand? Are the documents handled based on your region’s mandatory regulations?

These are questions that must be asked before even considering contracting out your document management services. Once a company has carefully conducted their risk assessment, they have to now determine whether the model is cost effective. This is not always apparent because freeing office space from paper files usually dedicates the space to revenue-producing operations. Ensure that your service provider provides you with a cost analysis report which takes this into consideration.

Fortunately, there are numerous organizations out there that provide document storage services with the following attributes as standard:

  • Physical Document Storage
  • Data Protection
  • Digital Solutions
  • Cost Effective (cost analysis report provided)
  • Regulations and Compliance
  • Life Cycle Document Management
Categories
Mathematics Tutoring

Online Maths Tutoring

Calculator
Calculator
Calculator
Calculator

Mathematics has always been a trying subject. It pushes a lot of students to insanity due to its degree of difficulty and complexity. Luckily for students that are challenged by geometry, trigonometry or algebra, there are a myriad of online tutoring services out there. Of course there is still the traditional option of hiring a personal tutor to navigate and educate you through the intricacies of mathematics. This option can be expensive though, and it proves to be unattainable for most.

Although some online services are well intended, there’s a large gap in accessibility due to limitation in the student to instructor interface. There are services out there that provide state of the art web interface, which closes the gap between student and instructor, allowing seamless interaction via a dynamic online “whiteboard”. If you need help with algebra, geometry or trigonometry, then online tutoring services are on the rise.

Categories
Parenting WiFi

Parenting via WiFi

If you think technology has no place in parenting, then I bet you’ll rethink after reading this article. Technology has become the mainstream vehicle for communication, entertainment, education and workflow these days that it’s becoming more difficult to deny our children access to it. It’s easy to keep technology away from the young ones but once they hit their teenage years, it becomes more difficult. Teenagers like to negotiate and/or argue their way out of doing their jobs. If you’re like me, and don’t like to talk very much, then you’ll like this parenting advice.

If you want your teenager to do something, communicate to them via WiFi. Here’s how you do it:

  1. You want the birdcage cleaned and the bird put to bed and your teenager won’t get off his/her butt to do it and you already asked once to do it. Most parents would ask again (and again) to no avail. Some parents will begin to raise their voice and get angry and it might eventually get done. Some parents avoid conflict and it never gets done.
  2. You’re different though. You’re one of those tech-savvy parents that only ask once to get things done. If it doesn’t get done immediately then you rename the WiFi name (geek term “SSID”) to “Clean Bird Cage & Bird to Bed” and change the password (geek term “Security Key”) as well. If you don’t know how to do this then learn it, it’s not that hard. You paid for it, make it work for you.wifi
  3. Once the task is done, sure enough, your teenager will ask for the WiFi back, so you revert the WiFi back to its original settings.too_fly_for_a_WiFi

Easy as baking a pie.

Categories
ApEx Oracle

LOV query is invalid in Oracle ApEx 4.1 when using subquery

LOV query invalid workaround
LOV query invalid workaround

So you create a List of Values in Oracle Application Express 4.1 using a simple in-line query similar to the one below:


SELECT d, r FROM
(
SELECT 1 d, 1 r
from dual
UNION ALL
select 2 d, 2 r
from dual
UNION ALL
select 3 d, 3 r
from dual
)

You get the following error:

1 error has occurred
LOV query is invalid, a display and a return value are needed, the column names need to be different. If your query contains an in-line query, the first FROM clause in the SQL statement must not belong to the in-line query.

LOV query invalid
LOV query invalid

You copy the query, paste it in SQL Commands in SQL Workshop, and it ran successfully. You try to create the LOV one more time, but you get the same error again. By this time your brain is working overtime thinking of a thousand different workarounds. There are a hundred strands of hair on your desk resulting from your frustration.

Lucky for you, you stumbled upon this site because the solution is simple.

Put a space after the first “FROM” keyword in your query.

LOV query invalid workaround
LOV query invalid workaround
Categories
Excel 2007 Microsoft Office

There was a problem sending the command to the program: Excel 2007 Error

There was a problem sending the command to the program
There was a problem sending the command to the program

If you’re getting the following error message when opening an Excel 2007 file in Windows 7 (only when there’s no Excel window currently open in your system), then do the following in order to fix it.

There was a problem sending the command to the program
There was a problem sending the command to the program
  • Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options.
  • Click Advanced, and then click to clear the “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)” check box in the General area.
Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)
Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)
  • Click OK.
  • If the “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)” check box is already unticked then tick it then Click OK.
  • Close Excel
  • Reopen Excel
  • Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options.
  • Click Advanced, and then click to clear the “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)” check box in the General area.
  • Click OK.
  • Go to Start -> Run -> regedt32.exe

run_regedt32

  • Go to “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open” and export and save the “ddeexec” key.

backup_ddexec

  • Go to “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open” and delete the “ddeexec” key.

delete_ddexec

  • Reboot your machine.