Friday, April 16, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Friday, April 09, 2010
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
I'm 63 and Im Tired by Robert A Hall
Puppies anyone?
I will have 3 puppies to give away in about 7 weeks. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Monday, March 22, 2010
Koobface Trojan circulating on Facebook
This weekend I received an innocent looking Facebook e-mail from a friend of mine who is also an I.T. professional. The e-mail within Facebook invited me to view a Youtube video. I have gotten several before from other people I trusted and so I thought it was safe to click on this link. Once I clicked on the link it took me to a fake Youtube website and prompted me to install an updated version of Flash Player to view the video. I clicked on this link and found out that the website was trying to install a trojan virus onto my computer via the fake Flash Player update. Norton Internet Security Suite blocked the install and thanks to it I am safe. I should know better than to click on links like that and I am fortunate that I am not spending hours on either cleaning the computer from a virus infection or wiping the drive and reinstalling all those applications again.
I did some research on Snopes and on Symantec Threat website and apparently there are several variations of this trojan circulating on Facebook and it has been since January of 2010 or maybe even longer than that. One of the programs that gets installed is a keylogger program that steals your information and sends it back to a host that is capturing the information to be used at a later date.
Be safe on the Internet and protect yourself with good Anti Virus and Anti Spyware software and make sure you do regular scans and regular updates for those applications. It will help to keep all of us safe and clean from infections and allow us to use our computers for both fun and work productivity.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Printer issue...
A friend sent this to me and I thought it was funny.
COMPUTER REPAIR
| Caller: Hello, my printer is not working. Customer Service: What is wrong with it? Caller: Mouse is jammed. Customer Service: Mouse is jammed? Printers don't have a mouse! Caller: Mmmmm?... Oh really?... I will send you a picture.
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Just do it!!
I realize that sounds like it is straight from the Nike commercial but that is my motto when it comes to more exercise. I fly a keyboard for a living and during the day I am mostly stuck in an office chair. My brain and eyes get a large work out while the rest of me turns into gelatin. That means that I must force myself to find the time to go for a walk and get out of this office chair. Now that the weather is getting much nicer and it is starting to warm up a bit I am making it a point to eat lunch and then put on my walking shoes and head down the bike path here at Kiawah.
I almost go run over twice today on the bike path by two different bikers. One of them was a biker that was having a hard time navigating the bike path even though I was all the way to the right of the path to give bikers plenty of room to go around. The other person we will call speed racer because they almost sucked my light sweater off my body as they zoomed around me doing who knows how many MPH. I think they must have been training for the olympics or something. The weather is gorgeous and the walk allowed me to decompress from a morning of programming our phone switch. Now to get on with the rest of my day and look forward to studying tonight. Yeah me!!
Monday, March 08, 2010
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Making adjustments
I finally made the call to Comcast the other day and told them to drop our digital subscriber package which included digital cable, high speed Internet and digital telephone. I have been putting this off for way too long. With the econony being where it is and the fact that gizmo is not gainfully employed still is forcing us to make some tough decisions. We have hopes that gizmo will get a job with the Census bureau in March since she has gone through the testing phase and passed. I am not sure how long that job will last but at least it will be some sort of extra income coming into the budget. In the mean time we have to make whatever adjustments that we can to make my pay check stretch as far as it can. I know that I am not alone in this journey because we are all in the same boat in one way or the other. We were able to keep basic cable and we had to keep our Internet access because we are all doing online school. We reduced our bill down by about 65% which is good.
The other budget killer which is as equally hard is eating out. I do not think that we eat out that much until I sit down and look at how much we do spend in that category in our budget. I do not care what anyone says, it is much cheaper to eat at home than eat out. Yes, it is more hassle to have to cook and clean up after one self but the fact is it is cheaper and can be healthier. We have been looking at our spending habits with regards to groceries and we were under the perception that buying food at Walmart was the cheapest place to get food. Thanks to my wife doing some research we discovered that Sav a Lot can save you a lot of money in the food budget. We still have to get some things at Walmart like paper products and personal hygiene stuff and meat but our food dollars seem to go much further. Another thing that can save you some food bucks is using coupons. Using cupons over the long haul can save you a TON of money if you are diligent in doing it. I know this because I had the opportunity to sit down with a friend of a friend at Ryans Steak House on Rivers avenue. When I listened to this lady talk to me about the process that she goes through to find the coupons and go to the different stores to save this and that I was amazed. Using coupons is a lot of work but like this lady showed me on her receipts you can save a lot of money over the long haul.
The other thing that is killing our budget is our housing expenses. I love living where we are and the fact that I am 15 minutes away from the office. The truth of the matter is there are cheaper places to live and before our lease is up in May we are going to be looking for a cheaper place to live that is halfway between Goose Creek and Kiawah. We will probably be looking for something in West Ashley. Not only is our goal to find a cheaper place to live but we also need to get our teens out of the Johns Island/James Island school districts. Charleston county schools here are very poor quality and thanks to that we have been forced to do home schooling again. Our teens desperately want to move back to Goose Creek to go back to those schools and be with their friends but I do not want to drive 2 hours per day back and forth to Kiawah so we are going to have to compromise.
Despite the struggles that we may be facing financially life is pretty good. We are all relatively healthy and we are not facing and life changing events at the moment. When we hear about the tragedy in Haiti we realize just how fortunate we really are. Our poorest people in America are filthy rich next to these folks. I can not fathom the desperation and hopelessness that those people must be experiencing. The loss of life and property is staggering to comprehend. I am hopeful that all of the money that has been raised and all of the help from all around the world will be put to good use. I hope that the people of Haiti are much better off once the dust settles and they are able to get back to life as normal as possible. It will take years of rebuilding and some changes will have to be made by the Haitian government to allow those changes to happen. It is good to see how the world is responding to their needs.
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