Christmas Countdown

I liked this countdown image so I'm leaving it up on the site.

More effective Google searching

I found this site was extremely helpful in using Google.com more better.  http://www.googleguide.com/

Have fun practicing your google-fu.

Web Browser keyboard shortcuts

OK, I'm lazy and really don't like reaching for the mouse constantly. Here are the web pages to Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts.

Mozilla Firefox - http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts

Microsoft Internet Explorer - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306832

Try them out and you'll find them making it esaier.  Most of them are standard in both browsers.

Now off to check on the Chili and pull the homemade bread out of the machine.  Woo Hoo!

Fine tuning WindowsXP

My profession as an IT (Information Technology) type has it's pro's and con's. The con is that I'm like the car mechanic always working on other folks computers outside of work and mine at home are in really bad shape. I have about 10 computer systems with various operating systems (O/S) from Windows, different flavors of Unix/Linux and even a SUN Microsystems Blade100 workstation. My main workstation for a number of years was running RedHat Linux until the hard drive crashed hard on me in Fall '05. I received a HP laptop for Christmas so I wasn't in much of a hurry to rebuild and haven't really done much with my network lately.

I have tried to perfect my knowledge of managing my Windows systems but it's all about time. I've found some nice freeware utilities that I will list later. I have also found a utility that is built-in to the Windows O/S. Let's discuss this a little.

Go to the "Start" button and select 'Run'. Now type msconfig and hit 'Enter' and popup window will appear. WARNING: This is not for the squeemish or those of you that don't know what your doing as you could severely cripple your PC!!! You'll see several tabs now, the ones you want to look at are 'Startup' and 'Services'.

Freeware/Shareware Utilities:

• Now I have found a couple of tools that are relatively easy to use. The first one is " Glary Utilities". This one will clean up the Windows registry, internet temp files, fix broken shortcuts, remove spy-ware, etc... It will speed up your PC noticeably.

• The other tool is one I like but it can be somewhat of the a resource hog. It is Secunia PSI. This one will keep some of your install software up-to-date for you automatically.

• Another good tool is ccleaner which is similar to Glary Utilities. Here's the link to the features.

Note: Take the time to read the help files in each of these and get familiar with what they do before you use them.

Spyware utlities:

Microsoft Windows Defender (Free) – I haven't used this one at all to be honest with you. Click here for more info.

Lavasoft Ad-Aware (Free) – This one works really well and we used to use it at work for a number of years. Click here for more info.

Webroot Spy Sweeper (Not Free) – We use this one at work now. It can be a nuisance but it works. I don't recommend this one for the not so computer savvy.

Symantec and McAfee have their own version of Anti-malware/spyware utilities that you have to pay for but I let you do some of your own research about them.

Happy New Year! Feliz A ñ o Nuevo! Frohes neues Jahr!

Google Voice

Read this article about Google Voice. I just received my Google Voice Tel.# and this has some really cool options. For one all calls made from this number in the US are FREE and I can call Germany at $0.02/minute which is a whole lot cheaper than what Verizon is charging me.

I can manage this number from a google.com website and initiate calls from this site. I type in the number I want to call and it calls both that number as well as dialing my number I specify to connect both parties up.

iTunes 9

APPLE just pushed this new version out tonight. It seems to be a vast improvement over version 8. Doesn't seem to use up the CPU as badly on this old XP box I'm using. I will admit that I turned off the simultaneous downloads in the old version too. I can play the radio and download one podcast at a time without the GUI hanging up on me.

It looks like they've added a Home Sharing feature that might be a greatly needed feature. Since it's late I won't force myself to play with it to figure it out. Nor do I want to write about it either at this late hour. I need to go into work somewhat coherent.

To use the home sharing go to the menu-bar, Help. After the iTunes Help window pops up select the Index tab then type sharing. I actually somewhat impressed with the Help in iTunes as it is clear and concise. You have to have an iTunes Store account to use some of the sharing features with multiple PCs' on your home network. For instance if I just want to listen to he music on another PC it's not a problem as you just search for shared music on your network. If you wanted to import music though you would have to log-in into your iTunes store account on every PC. Note that you can also password protect the share.

Rolling Thunder 2009