Wow, what a difference

Ok, here I am, almost a week after the Gastric bypass surgery, and I am still adjusting to everything. Normally I could sit down to a great big meal three times a day, and put away enough food for three.

Now, the thought of food doesn't enter my mind. I find myself having to eat because I have to, not because I am hungry. It's all I can do to hold down 2-3 oz of food before I am full.

Right now, I can only have liquids. Granted, it has moved up to soups, and sugar free puddings, and protein shakes, but it is a start.

Well, here's to my new life!

Spring Cleaning!

Updated your antivirus and antispyware software lately? It's time again. Plus, it wouldn't hurt to run a defrag on the hard drive as well also. Have you wiped the monitor and keyboard clean too?
Did you know the average computer keyboard is 100 times dirtier than a toliet? AGH! Time to clean that thing up. But how often should I do this?

Inside of a typical home pc.

So, here is a rough idea of how often to clean your computer.

* User who does not smoke and has no pets - Clean the computer every five months.
* User who does not smoke and has pets - Clean the computer every four months.
* User who smokes but has no pets - Clean the computer every three months.
* User who smokes and has pets - Clean the computer every two months.
* Business with clean office environment - Clean the computers every five months.
* Business with clean office environment; however, multiple users use each computer - Clean the computer every three months.
* Business that is a factory environment or allows smoking - Clean the computer every two months.
* School computers with young adult users - Clean the computer every three months.
* School computers with pre-teen users - Clean the computer every month. In some cases, this may need to be weekly or daily.”


To clean computer component by component follow next tips:

1. First - put power off – turn the cable from the outlet for safety reasons.

2. Monitor can be cleaned with moist (not wet), soft rag or you can buy a tool for cleaning the monitor (cleaner) and clean it with soft duster (do not add the tool for cleaning directly on the monitor).

3. The keypad is very hard to clean because there are plenty of places where dirt can be located. First, turn it upside down and shake it. After that blow up the dust between the keys with hair dryer (put it in the cold) or compressed air in cans (cost- $5 - $10). If you use a compressor be careful because the pressure is very large and can damage the keyboard. At the end - with moisten rag with alcohol pass between the keys. If you have a laptop be very careful, or you will break a key off.

4. Clean the mouse - the upper and lower sides clean with paper or cloth moisten with alcohol.

5. Clean the computer case in the yard or balcony because it has a larger quantity of dust. Disconnect all cables from the case. With screwdriver unscrew the screws and open the case (Only if you know what you are doing!). First (don’t forget) blow out the power supply with compressed air in cans, or some electric dust cleaner. Use the brush used for housing to clean non electronic parts of the case (valves on processor and graphic card, passive refrigerators etc.). Be aware – do not touch electronic components. If your computer case has a lot of dust blow it with compressor or absorb it with electronic dust cleaner.

More tips: Clean the computer case every 3-6 months, depending on where your computer is located. If your computer is on floor you'll need to clean more often than the one that is placed on a higher position (ex. on the table). To preserve keyboard clean, do not eat and drink on it and don’t work with dusty and dirty hands. Clean the keyboard as often as possible because when dirt once goes between the keys, you will not be able to remove the dust without a full segmentation.

The average life of a pc is 3-5 years. Doing this, you can extend the life of the computer well beyond that.

Twitter has a problem building

Twitter, while a great application, is about to have a big problem on its hands. Spam has invaded the Twitterverse, and it looks like it is about to become a big issue.
Several people have reported issues already about this, and have been pushing Twitter to adopt new methods.

Normally it starts when you start to see a lot of people that you dont know showing up as followers.

The spammer has a program called Twitterhawk, that scans for keywords from everyone it follows.

Now, lets say you are at the store, and you 'tweet' that you are having trouble finding shoes. Twitterhawk kicks into gear, and messages you via Twitter, sending you a website of their choosing, saying something along the lines of "I notice you are interested in shoes. There is a great website that you would be interested in here..http://blahblah.."

For more information on how Twitter is being abused by spammers, check out this link...

http://www.stoptwitterspam.com

To scan your account, go to TwerpScan here:
http://twerpscan.com/

Conflicker Virus

Ok, so, Conflicker wasn't as big of an impact as everyone thought. Still, it should have been a wakeup call to let you know it is time to update your antivirus program, if you haven't already.

Most antivirus programs already do some form of automatic update. Some the older versions don't. If yours is one of these, it may be time to upgrade.

If you do not want to pay for a new program, there are several free alternatives out there.

Avast! Antivirus for home
http://www.avast.com

AVG Antivirus
http://free.avg.com

Remember, an ounce of prevention.........

Where oh where has my facebook gone?

So, first facebook gets into a lot of hot water by updating their terms of service. And now, they have changed the layout completely. Some are happy with these changes, but other purists, do not.

If you are a purist, and want facebook to look the way it did beforehand, there is hope. (KINDA)
The only thing is that it requires addons to Firefox. So if you have no problem with that, then continue onward.

First off, you will need Firefox, which, if you don't have, you can get here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Now, you will need an addon for firefox called GreaseMonkey, which is here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

Restart the Firefox browser, and go here to get a script for greasemonkey:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/44271

Click on the install button, and then wait for it to install. Once that is done, restart the Firefox browser again, and try out Facebook.

The changes aren't massive, but it should bring back some of the look of the old Facebook that a lot of us are used to.

Classic TV, part 2

Well, it seems CBS has jumped into the notion that people are interested in older tv shows, and launched their channel to suit.

CBS Classics

You can find a variety of shows, such as the original Star Trek, Love Boat, Have Gun Will Travel, Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, and more.

Me? I'm loving the original episodes of Star Trek are now online.

Give it a try. Relive your childhood again with these older shows.

Frankenbrowser

Ever feel like tweaking some of the inner workings of Firefox? Now you too can play Dr. Frankenstein with these simple steps.

Step one: Type about:config in the address bar and hit enter

Step two: Make the following modifications to the file by typing in the values on the respective fields to get the desired result (feel free to experiment)

1. To enable/disable Single Click Select URL of address bar browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = True browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = False

2. To auto Complete URL while typing in the address Bar browser.urlbar.autoFill=True

3. To set the number of auto complete URL in the address bar browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = #
(# indicates the number of auto complete URLs shown. The default is 12)

4. To disabler Browser Toolbar Tipbrowser.chrome.toolbar_tips = False

5. To paste copied content by clicking the center button on the mousemiddlemouse.paste = True

6. To disable blinking textbrowser.blink_allowed = False

7. To create a single close button to for all Firefox Opened Tabs.browser.tabs.closeButtons = 3

8. To increase number of recently closed tabs.browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo=15

9. Right click view source in your editorview_source.editor.external=Trueview_source.editor.path= Path of Editor

10. To enable fast scrolling across tabstoolkit.scrollbox.scrollIncrement =75

11. To stop displaying website icon in address bar and on the tabsbrowser.chrome.site_icons = False

12. To enable spell check in text fieldslayout.spellcheckDefault = 2

13. To speed up the browser

network.http.max-connections 30 to 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server 15 to 32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 6 to 8
network.http.pipelining false to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 30 to 8
network.http.pipelining.ssl false to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true

14. To disable annoying browser behavior
Change the followowing values to 'false'dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar dom.disable_window_move_resizedom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar

15. To show more tabs on single windowbrowser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 75

16. To display search results in new tabbrowser.search.openintab=True.