At work, we assist students with registering their computers on the network, as well as their gaming consoles. If I happen to be the one to register the gaming device, I tend to check the hardware address by doing a OUI at http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml. Even though the page is in my Firefox bookmark toolbar, I looked for a way to make the process more efficient. The only thing left to do, short of memorizing the entire listing, was cut down or eliminate the time it took wait for the page to load and place focus on the input box. I could only think of one way: make a Mozilla-Search plugin.
I was reminded of a search plugin a former employee, Joe, had made to search our website’s wiki installation. I doubt few people currently use it right now, but there it is. A quick Google search later, some testing, and I had a IEEE OUI search plugin ready to go.
To install the plugins:
- Extract the .src and .gif (or .png) files to the plugin directory, which is typically found in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins
- Close Firefox
- Open Firefox
To use the search features, the following are the most useful searches:
- By hex value, e.g. 00-12-5a
- By base 16, e.g. 00125a
- By company, e.g. Microsoft
You can use this to search anything in the OUI listing, but those searches listed above give you the most important results.
In the past week at work, I was working on getting the dimensions of a room for a potential office move, as well as the dimensions of the current furniture in the office: cubicle walls, desktops, et cetera. Was I had the dimensions figured out, I had to do something with them. Thank you Wickliffe High School, for offering classes in drafting and AutoCAD. I installed the copy of AutoCAD we have for the office and started placing it all down on screen. Without using the program for at least a year or so (designing a feeding apparatus for Meghan’s pigeon arena), I was able to use the program. It’s amazing how the skills I learned in high school were skill there, waiting to be used. It’s a pleasant surprise to see that your mind is earning it’s keep after all.
It’s just like riding a bike; they say you never forget. Sure, you may be a bit unsure at first, but you’ll be good to go on the bike in a couple minutes. I seldom go bowling, typically getting to do so only about once every nine to twelve months. After the first couple throws, I’m back at the low end of the average I carried when I was bowling during middle school and high school. I know that if need be, I can fall back on the limited knowledge I have about CNC lathes to get a job or accomplish some basic task. Even learning your multiplication tables can save you time (and face with others) if you need to figure out some numbers quickly.
Learning something, be it a skill, craft, or bit of knowledge, can never truly hurt you in the long run. Learn what you can, while you can, because every little bit helps.
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