The IT tools I promised sooo long ago...

So, it's been a bit since I have had a chance to post to the ol' blog. I apologize to the non-geek crowd, as this week I'm going to talk a bit about my day to day job here at ToolBarn.com.

Originally, this blog was going to be a bit of a mixture of power tool news, observations from the IT department of a Internet Retailer Top 500 company and just personal observations. I haven't posted anything in that second column, so today I will rectify that situation. I will still talk about tools a bit, but today it is tools for doing my job.


We utilize Google Calendar for scheduling our conference room and training room in our facility, and currently I print out a daily schedule to place on the door for people to know if it is safe to head in there for a quick 5-minute discussion, or what not. Google Calendar works great, but there is one hint I have for people working with it. When you print a day's schedule, if there is a meeting in the morning, but no afternoon meeting that day, Google tries to be "helpful" and skews the day to center around that meeting. This ends up shifting the printed hours to 4am to 3pm, for example. Obviously this looks a little silly, as we are not expecting impromptu meetings at 4am. Until the Google Calendar team gives us an option of a set printing schedule, my solution is to add a 1 minute meeting with no title later in the day to counteract the skew. Works like a charm... but I'd still like an option to set what hours print.


Another thing I get to do frequently is troubleshoot a problem PC. A while ago, we bought a power supply tester, thinking that it would be nice to quickly see if the problem was related to a bad power supply. Well, I have now replaced my second power supply which tested fine. All the lights go on as they should, but the tester doesn't test any load beyond what it takes to light up 9 LED's. So much for saving time. Brian suggested a switch to test for a rated draw, but I think just testing for 50 or 75 watt draw would be enough to catch most of the offending power supplies. In the mean time, I have a very high-tech paperweight.


Today's final tool will be OpenOffice.Org's office suite. Version 2+ of the suite has brought it to the point that I have not needed to open Microsoft Office in 6 months. And with the recent round of Zero Day exploits that Microsoft seems to have no quick responses to, OpenOffice.org looks much, much business friendlier than Microsoft's suggestion of not opening Word documents "even from trusted sources." The only things keeping me from rolling out OpenOffice.org version 2 exclusively are the people using Outlook for scheduling and the few people using shared workbooks in Excel. I know Sun has contributed some people to work on the calendaring support in ThunderBird and last I looked on the to do list at OO.o they were promising shared workbooks in the next major version. If you are tired of paying high Microsoft prices and then enduring Genuine Advantage check / redesign / re-check, perhaps you, too should consider OpenOffice.org 2.0. A handy hint if you are thinking about it: Go to Tools, Options, Load/Save - General and set the Default file format for Text Document and Spreadsheet to their Microsoft counterparts. It makes sharing your documents nearly seamless.

Easier Ways to Work with Ceiling Tile

As most people know if they have read my blog before, I love seeing new items that fill a need. Fortunately, our company is dynamic enough that often when I make a suggestion for a new product that I see at a store or in a manufacturer catalog, within a week or so, it is in our warehouse waiting for customers to find it. The last time this happened, I had just seen a few Stanley Maxlife 369 tripod lights on clearance at one of my local department stores. Now we carry two other varieties of this light and it is one of our best selling lights... proof that some places just don't know how to sell good products (I'm sure we're missing the boat on one or two ourselves). Anyway, back to ceiling tile and another, seemingly less exciting, product that I also recently discovered which are now en route to our warehouse.

The Irwin 93543 and Irwin 93545 ceiling tile drivers are actually bits designed to drive eye hooks. As you probably know, eye hooks are basically a screw or bolt with the shaft turning into a hook or eyelet at the end. So, the ceiling tile drivers are a simple slotted bit, with the slots long enough to drive the eye hook straight. A simple solution to what could be a tedious problem. I also like it more than the powder actuated track systems I have seen... it is simpler and far less expensive.

In addition to the eye hook drivers, we have added another nice product for ceiling tile installers or electricians. This one is the Greenlee Quick Cutter Recessed Lighting hole saw. Basically, this is an adjustable hole saw that cuts between 2-1/2" and 7" holes for recessed or can lighting. It works in either ceiling tiles or drywall and like the ceiling tile drivers it just goes right into your 3/8" or bigger chuck on a corded drill or cordless drill.

If you install drop ceilings for a living, then you might even want to check out a rotary laser or some of the many rotary cutting tools we carry. If you just are looking to do a room or two in your basement, then Quick Cutter and the ceiling tile drivers might be enough to save you a lot of aggravation . I think the eyehook drivers could be useful in a lot of other areas, and hopefully my hunch is right.

If any of you have any good ideas for projects involving eye hooks or tips for people installing ceiling tile, feel free to add a comment!