Where did Norton Anti Virus Auto Protect icon go?

As I was surfing around doing this and that last night around 11:30 pm I noticed that my Norton Anti Virus Auto Protect icon was missing out of my system tray. Now that I think about it I dont think I remember seeing it for quite some time. This prompted me to open up Norton Anti Virus , check the settings and run Live Update. What to my wandering eyes appeared but some RED check marks in the Status pane telling me of potential problems. Not only was Auto Protect turned off but I could not turn it on. I also could not turn on the e-mail protection. This caused considerable alarm which in turn caused me to spend almost 2 hours scanning all my drives and then uninstalling and reinstalling Norton Anti Virus. At 2:15 am Norton is installed and the virus database updated and all the correct options are running as selected with no problems. I can now lay me down to sleep knowing that my computer is protected from the miscreants out in cyberworlds unknown.

Remember to run Live Update often and scan your drive. Also be sure to have your Anti Virus software scan all incoming and outgoing e-mail messages.

Nite Nite

Kristina over right shoulder and Justin over left shoulder. Webcam picture taken last night.  

Picture taken of Katy and I tonight with the webcam... 

Why Sony?s Clie couldn?t make it in America - Engadget - www.engadget.com

I use an HP Pocket PC with Microsoft Mobile 2003 OS. I LOVE this Pocket PC but it is not the only one on the market. Sony Clie is very nice but sadly enough Sony users will no longer be able to purchase an updated model. Click on the link and read the story...

Why Sony?s Clie couldn?t make it in America - Engadget - www.engadget.com

One song at a time.....

I posted this message to a Health and Wellness Accountability group on Battle Plan Ministries and thought I would share it with you.

Hello Godly men!!

The last time I reported it was the 17th which was last Thursday. I got on the TM (torture machine) on Saturday the 19th and then this Wed which was the 23rd. I got on tonight for 22 minutes. I recently started a Friday night bowling league that will last 10 weeks so that will be my exercise for that night. I am trying to get on the TM every other day for atleast 20 to 25 minutes. So far I have stuck with that schedule but I must say that it is not easy.

I know that the goal for most of us is to loose pounds and inches and our satisfaction comes from watching the needle or digits on our bathroom scales go lower. I too get some satisfaction from this but I also get the satisfaction of knowing that I have set a goal to lose weight and to feel better. I have set the standard several notches higher than I have in the past and I feel good knowing that I am atleast trying and having a certain level of success. My pants are starting to fit looser around the gut and just the other day I had to chase down a customer who had already made it to the parking lot. I guess you could say that the "jog" from the service department where I work and the parking lot is about 250 FT. I surprised myself by actually breaking into a jog and making it to the parking lot before the lady left. What was surprising is that no one had to perform CPR or call 911 and I was not out of breath nor did I break into a sweat. I had to be proud of that because it shows me that there are small and large benefits to making an extra effort in this area of my life. No, I have not arrived and I do have a ways to go. The important thing is not that I have reached my long term goal which is to lose 100 lbs. but rather that I am meeting my short term goals every day which are to eat less, get enough sleep and exercise a minimum of 20 to 25 minutes aerobically every other day.

Lets bring this into perspective for those of you that are struggling with the exercise part.
I weigh approximately 335 lbs and am 6 foot tall. So, with that in mind please do not think that it is easy for me to climb on the torture machine and run along for 25 minutes. To the contrary folks. I have found that the first 8 to 10 minutes (on the lowest setting) is not that much of a challenge while I am working up to the 120 beats per minute goal for the workout. The last 10 to 15 minutes are what is tough when my leg muscles are begging for oxygen and for me to stop. When it gets to that part of the workout it would be SO EASY to quit. Instead of quitting I listen to up beat Christian contemporary music and I worry about getting through the current song that is playing. Most songs take between 2:30 and 4 min. to play. So halfway through my workout and to the very end when I start to slow down and cool off I literally have to take it one song at a time. I quote Phillipians 4:13 alot too. hahahahah I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

I am also increasing my intake of water and decreasing my intake of soda pop. I drink approximately 3 to 4 20 ounce bottles of water per day. Imagine the extra exercise I get during the day running to the potty. LOL...

I know that brother Bill and Dave have posted recently but what about the rest of you guys?
How can we encourage you to get off that couch or chair or bed and start burning some calories each day by working out??

Evil Squirrel

A friend of mine sent me this in e-mail and I thought it was worth sharing on my blog. LOL.

Author: Daniel Meyer

I never dreamed slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous! Little did I suspect ..I was on Brice Street - a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me.
It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it -- it was that close. I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact. Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of themselves!
Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing my oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his little beady eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt! I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, "Bonzai!" or maybe, "Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!" The leap was nothing short of spectacular ... as he shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and impacted me squarely in the chest. Instantly, he set upon me. If I did not know better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along for the attack. Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans this was a bit of a cause for concern. This furry little tornado was doing some damage! Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome
cruiser, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet residential street, and in the fight of his life with a squirrel. And losing...
I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil rodent off to the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw. That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there. It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH! Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact, he landed squarely on my back and resumed his rather antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed
to take my left glove with him!
The situation was not improved. Not improved at all. His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled, to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one result. Torque. This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very, very good at it.
The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement. The squirrel screamed in anger. The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in .. well .. I just plain screamed.
Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly squirrel-torn-t-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, and roaring at maybe 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel on his back. The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder. With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike. This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle.. my brain was just simply overloaded.
I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser. About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my full-face helmet with me. As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite sure my screaming changed intensity. It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Dragon maxed out (since I was not bothering with shifting at the moment), so her front end started to drop. Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very raggedly torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel's tail sticking out of the mostly closed full-face
helmet. By now the screams are probably getting a little hoarse. Finally I got the upper hand ... I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked ... sort-of. Spectacularly sort-of .so to speak.
Picture a new scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork. Suddenly a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn T-shirt flapping in the breeze, and wearing only one leather glove, moving at probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by, and with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your police car. I heard screams.
They weren't mine...
I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street. I would have returned to 'fess up (and to get my glove back). I really would have. Really...
Except for two things.
First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his back, doing a crab walk into somebody's front yard, quickly moving away from the car.
The cop who had been in the driver's seat was standing in the street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car.
So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to "let the professionals handle it" anyway. That was one thing. The other? Well, I could clearly see shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery from the back seat. But I could also swear I saw the squirrel in the back window, shaking his little fist at me. That is one dangerous squirrel. And now he has a patrol car. A somewhat shredded patrol car ... but it was all his.
I took a deep breath, turned on my turn-signal, made a gentle right turn off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood. I decided it was best to just buy myself a new pair of gloves...and a whole lot of Band-Aids.

Rejected SO SAD.....

My day started out at 9 am as I drove downtown to park in the Charleston County Parking Garage. I showed up at the Federal Court House at 9:50 am for Jury Selection. The courtroom was packed and they picked jurors for 5 cases, three civil and two criminal. The first three cases involved theft of service from a major cable company and because of my computer/electronics experience I was not to be picked. The two criminal cases involved weapons charges through ATF and other assorted federal agencies. The prosecution picked me as a juror twice but for some strange reason the defense excused me as a juror. Hummmm.... Actually, I can not afford to miss one single day of work at my regular jobs so that was good I was not picked. Hopefully I wont be bothered now for a year or two to do this all over again.

I started my work day at 1 pm and worked until 11:15 pm when the zombie squad finally showed up to babysit an empty building and parking garage. Hey, better them than me...

Well, that is about it for now, time to stuff my face and hit the sack folks. Nite Nite...

Peer to Peer File sharing networks

Beware lest you begin to download what you think is a valid piece of software from Kazaa or any other P2P (peer to peer) file sharing network. Here is how it works. Peer to Peer networks such as Kazaa allows you to register on their service and then network yourself with others with similar interests to download all sorts of software. This software ranges from music files (mp3's etc) , software titles (usually pirated or hacked), movies (usually pirated or hacked) etc. I know that this is not an all inclusive list but it seems that movies , computer software and music are at the top of the list. What happens is you are downloading what you think is a movie when in all actuality you might get an advertisement for goods and services and if you are really unlucky you might be the winner of a nasty worm, trojan horse or virus of some sort that will be more than happy to email itself out to everyone in your windows address book (.wab file) not to mention possibly destroying data and infecting your registry so that it can respawn itself every time you reboot your computer. Doing this with your computer and your data is like walking through a minefield without taking the time to look for the mines. If you step in the wrong spot you will get your toes blown off. The last time I checked most of us like our toes (or computer data) and it is painful to lose them.

Here are some simple rules for computing safely not only for yourself and your data but also to be a responsible netizen.

A. Do not use hacked software
B. Always have your anti virus software updated on a regular basis
C. Most anti virus software has Live Update that works automatically in the background, you set it and forget it
D. Backup your data on a REGULAR basis.
E. Have multiple backup media for redundancy (IE separate hard disk and CDR or cdrw or external usb hard drive)
F. Always configure your anti virus software to monitor both outgoing and incoming email
G. When forwarding e-mail please do not forward every e-mail address from the multiple forwards that you received
H. Most folks dont like attachments when they are not expecting them so try not to send forwarded email as an attachment.
I. Stay FAR away from P2P file sharing networks.
J. If you have a broandband connection that stays on all the time PLEASE purchase a switch/router/firewall to provide an extra level of protection between you and the outside Internet. Do not be fooled into thinking that the built in software firewall that comes with XP will be the end all solution to all of your security needs.
K. If your computer came with a System Recovery CD be SURE to lock that baby in a safe place. This CD will restore your computer back to its factory defaults and contains all the drivers for the hardware on your system.
L. Atleast once per month run Windows Update and allow the Microsoft site scan your computer and tell you what critical updates are available. ALWAYS read what the update is and if it is listed as critical and it FIXES a security issue on the Operating System be SURE to do it without fail.


Ok, that is not an all inclusive list but it contains some very basic common sense things that sometimes folks just forget or take for granted. Now, lets assume that you are the unlucky soul that gets caught with your cyberpants down around your ankles. You just made a boo boo and all of a sudden your computer is rebooting itself or you notice that your outbox on your email client is busy and you did not intend to send out an email to everyone in your address book.

The FIRST thing you should do is to reach behind your computer and remove the modem line (telephone wire) or your ethernet cable (that runs to your DSL or Cable modem). Why is that you ask? This will disconnect your computer from the LAN (local area network) internally and the Internet (Wide area network) externally. That means that your computer is infected but will not be able to pass the infection on to other people (computers) on your local network or external computer users on the Internet (like ME)....

The SECOND thing you should do is turn your computer OFF and go find the Anti Virus Rescue disks that you created when you first installed your anti virus software. If you have not done that PLEASE go do that right after you read this. It WILL save your bacon in the future. Here is something that you might not know. Not only do you need to do regular backups to different media you also need to recreate your Anti Virus rescue disks so that you can keep them up to date with the latest virus definitions. If you installed McAfee or Norton Anti Virus 2 years ago but have not updated your rescue disks then the chances of your rescue disks being able to DETECT a new virus is slim to none.

Some of you are rolling your eyes right about now thinking "good grief do I REALLY need to do all of this stuff all the time??" I bought this thing to surf the web and check email and the sales man told me that it would just work right out of the box. No one told me about all of this.... The answer is YES. Imagine if you bought a new car and drove it and drove it and never did any type of maintenance to it or changed the oil or put new tires or brake shoes on it. How long would your car last ? I can garuntee you it would not last anywhere near as long as it will if you take good care of it. Over the years hardware and software manufacturers have made progress with regards to making computer products that are VERY user friendly and very automated. However, ongoing maintenance has to be done or you will eventually run into problems.

When I first started writing this article I was going to just warn you about Peer to Peer networks and the inherent dangers of using them. Once I started there then I started to remember some of the common sense things listed above that can help protect all of us. This article is not intended to be a complete computer survival guide and there are so many other things that can be discussed in detail. This goes without saying but I think I need to say it anyway. If you do not know what you are doing and everything I am saying above seems to sound like greek find a family member or someone that you know that is computer savy and have them explain things to you in a way you will understand and help you to protect yourself better. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Well, anyway, you know what I am saying here. It is better to be proactive than reactive. When you get to the point that you are having to react to a disaster there will usually be some smoke and flames that will result in either data loss or some type of damage to your computer. That is the last thing either of us want or need. Am I right??

Nice to have a day off

Mondays are my day to rest. Let me rephrase that. Mondays is the day that I dont put on my gorrilla suit (security uniform) nor do I have to put up with retail customers. All in all that is a GOOD thing. Because I only have one day off I find myself doing all of my errands and chores and to do list in ONE DAY.

This morning at 2 am I finally went to sleep and woke up at around 6:45 am. I layed around in the recliner for a few moments and then decided to turn on the coffee pot and start my day by checking the e-mail inbox. I climbed onto the Torture Machine for 25 minutes and then Katy and I went to visit our friend Patty as we hip hopped over to IHOP for breakfast. Before I left this morning I located a freeware program "WiFiFoFum" for the PocketPC that will allow me to war drive. In other words I can drive down the street and use my PocketPC and the wireless card to sniff out WiFi connections. I was amazed at how many WiFi connections that I was able to find. Nevertheless I was not able to make a good enough connection to an WAP so I could surf the Internet via the web browser or log on to MSN IM. My friend Patty thinks that I need to read the read.me file that came with the software but sadly enough none was included. Anyway, the bottom line is this. I am still trying to figure out HOW to make an actual WiFi connection that will allow me to surf the web or check my e-mail. I think that between my house and Patty's I ran across 30 signals.

I just had a phone call from a dear friend who is having computer problems so my entire train of thought is out the window. LOL. Don't ya hate it when that happens. Oh well, time to go help her get her computer glued back together. I can always come back to this.