If you work crossword puzzles much, you've no doubt come across the title word above, "olio". It's a noun meaning miscellany, hodgepodge, patchwork…and my article this month.

Pesky Online Office Help
I have been fortunate enough to be using Office 2003, and for the most part, I like the mostly insignificant (from my usage perspective) changes from Office 2002 (XP). However, by default, all Office 2003 programs automatically search for "help" online. What this means is every time I click "Help" and enter a search term, the darned computer returns a bunch of online results. I found this extremely irritating since what I wanted to see was the help contained in the files on my local computer. For anyone who has suffered from this same irritant, here's the fix: Follow this path from the top tool bar in any Office program: Help > Customer Feedback Options > Online Content. Unclick the box that says "Show Content and Links from Microsoft Office Online". Restart the program just to be sure your changes take effect. The next time you're looking for help, your system will look first on your local drive. Making this change in one Office program will make it automatically in all the others, too. Beware, if the help you need is for Outlook. According to some of the online newsgroups, parts of Outlook's Help Files have not been upgraded since Office 97! Hmmm…maybe that's why Microsoft's default is to connect us to online help!

The Father of the Computer
This tidbit comes from one of the weekly newsletters I receive via e-mail. Have you ever heard of Alan Turing? He is considered the father of the modern computer. It was his idea (in 1945) of creating a machine to turn thought processes into binary numbers, specifically by having the machine read a series of ones and zeroes from a tape. This concept was one of the key turning points in the history of the computer. His experiments as a secret code breaker during World War II are credited with helping Britain win WW II are credited with helping the Allies remain one step ahead. Alan Turing died 50 years ago, on June 7, 1954. If you find this sort of history interesting, type his name into Google, and do your own research!

E-Voting
Are you tired of this election year yet? Congress enacted the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) after the November 2000 election (hanging chad!) The Commission has its work cut out for it since around 50 million people (28%) are expected to vote via "electronic voting machines" (computers!) this November. Needless to say, there is great concern over the possibility of buggy (intentional or unintentional) software in these computers. The EAC is trying to require the software vendors to supply the source code for their programs to help restore voters' confidence in the process. Naturally, the software vendors want to keep their code a secret. Hmmm….an interesting sub-plot! You can read more by following this link: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5229162.html