Patrons cannot enter PIN

People have told me they see this a lot and so do I: patrons cannot enter their PIN when signing on to the computer. When I encounter this problem, I try 1) hit the clear button, 2) check that the keyboard connection is good, 3) try a new USB port for the keyboard, and 4) reboot. May actually need to get a new keyboard. Usually, one of the first 4 options works.

PC Res

Recently while working upstairs I've had two people on different days complain that they got kicked off the computer. One person was mad because whoever was next to him was on longer and didn't get kicked off. The other person was confused why it kicked him off when it was not busy and there was no one waiting. Does anyone else have this happen to them? I just tell them it's all computer generated. Each person said that there was something wrong with the system for this to happen.

Spanish Language Accent Marks, Etc. in Word

If you need to type a Spanish accent mark, tilda, etc in Word, here's a link to all the secret codes: http://www.spanishnewyork.com/spanish-characters.html

For other languages, try searching for: languageneeded characters word

Teach your parents (or patrons) some tech!

When I was at Southglenn for an open lab last week, someone mentioned this fabulous website: http://www.teachparentstech.org/. It's a fun way to send your parents (or anyone else who might need some help) a "tech care package." It features very basic information, but could be a great resource to direct patrons to, or to send to someone in your own life!

How to Eject a Disk from a Patron computer

We have discovered that the “Eject CD” icon on the Desktop computers that are running Windows software doesn’t work (this doesn’t apply to the computers running the Apple software.)

Following are instructions how to eject a CD or DVD from the D: drive on these computers.

Click on the Start button (lower left hand corner of the desktop)

Click on Computer

Click on Devices with Removable Storage

Right click on the disc icon that says—DVD RW Drive (D:) Audio CD

Click on the word Eject. Viola! out pops your disc.

Smoke Signals -- Tech Talk test

I can think of two possible reasons why you might have not been able to print the boarding passes.

The first being that a pop-up window was being blocked from opening. Quite often you have to click on the yellow bar that will appear under the menu bar and click on temporarily allow pop-ups, in order for the print command to work.

If the boarding pass was formatted as a pdf file you have to click on the print button inside the pdf window, very frequently you can't print using the "print button" under "File" when trying to print a pdf image. --- Karen H.