To the front-line technician, the two most important ITIL processes are Incident and Service Request Management. These are the bread and butter of front-line work, and most tickets handled by a support desk will fall into one of these categories.
Blog
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D&D hits 40
In the end of January, Dungeons & Dragons had its fortieth anniversary. This seminal RPG has become the basis for much of what we think of as tabletop RPGs, and many of the tropes and cliches associated with them come from Dungeons & Dragons. I was originally introduced to D&D when I spent a year abroad, and have loved gaming ever since. Currently in its (much criticized) fourth version, Wizards of the Coast are working on the fifth edition of D&D.
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Critical incidents: the aftermath
For many technicians, a critical incident will trigger something akin to an adrenaline response. With experience, this will give you focus and clarity of thought as the incident unfolds. However, the response can only be sustained for a limited amount of time, and once it is over, you will likely experience some tangible aftereffects.
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Understanding Incidents: Urgency, Impact and Priority
It is part of the nature of IT service and support that you will, from time to time, be called upon to handle a high priority, high urgency incident. In most production systems these are mercifully rare, but it is still important that you understand how to identify them.
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Changing the default template in Microsoft Word
A while back, I had a user ask me how he could change the default template in Word. I realized that it had been so long since I had done anything of the sort myself, that I needed to look it up. Finding that this was something I had not documented, I decided to do so. The information below relates specifically to Word 2010 on Windows 7, but it should work for later versions, too.
As I have written previously, the default template used by Word is dictated by a file called Normal.dotm, located atC:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates. In order to modify it, simply do as follows: (more…) -
Creative Commons 4.0 is here
In an announcement in late November of last year, Creative Commons announced the release of version 4 of Creative Commons licencing. Arriving after a development period of two years, version four is billed as “the most global, legally robust licenses produced by CC to date.”
It should come as no surprise that I support the work done by the Creative Commons. I have updated the licenses covering this site, and I challenge you to update yours too, or to seriously consider applying a CC License to your work. -
Has Norsk Tipping been hacked, or is there a simpler explanation?
Last week, I was contacted by a man called Jonathan, asking me whether I would be interested in writing a post, linking to a client of his. Though this is not something I do, my interest was piqued by something in his wording, and I wrote back, asking for some details. The details came shortly, giving me a link to an article published at the site CasinoMagasinet.com at a date not specified in the article (a little digging showed it to have been published on November 19th, 2013). The article, entitled “NORSK TIPPING SENDER KUNDER TIL UTENLANDSKE SPILLESELSKAP!”, which translates to “Norsk Tipping are sending their customers to offshore betting companies. I made a print to PDF of the article (in Norwegian), which you can find here.
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What’s in your bag?
I am lucky enough to travel as much as suits me, but not much more. However, I have developed a list of things I bring with me whenever I go travelling. There are two lists; the core list and the extended list. Here goes: (more…)