JOBSEARCH: Have no fear being fired is not the worst that can happen
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
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Posted by reinkefj
TECH: What To Do When Your Computer Bogs Down — cry?
Tuesday, September 19, 2006http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker74.html
What To Do When Your Computer Bogs Down
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Editorial vice president of http://www.Mises.org
September 19, 2006
***Begin Quote***
Relentless development in software, hardware, and the online world means living life in Beta with all its attendant problems. Each machine is different, and yet the Windows-based machines I’ve worked on for the last four months have all had the same trouble, and require the same steps to resolve it. Some of the problems result from the very first days that the computer was fired up, but use (along with spyware, adware, malware, viruses, and enormous software muck) only makes them worse.
Here are the steps that have worked for many Windows machines in recent days.
***AND***
That’s it! Your machine should be vastly improved in every way.
(Please don’t write to tell me about the wonders of Mac [granted] or of the feasibility of end-user Linux systems [please!]. You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know, so I’ll just delete your email.)
***End Quote***
What you are describing is a phenom which I believe is generally called winrot. (I’ve blogged about it. https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/02/24/prepare-for-winrot/ on several occasions.)
The only real solution is to reinstall from scratch.
Some fanatics urge a quarterly reinstall. I usually try during the End Of Year holidays when stuff is slow. The week between Christmas and New Years is deadly slow.
It assumes, and presumes, that you:
(1) have good backups of all your data.
(Entertaining exercise. Hand the corporate user a new laptop. Take the old one. And, then you see just how good your backup and recovery strategy is. I have had the equivalent happen to me when a hard disk drive dies and the first time I lost four months of work. Now I am a fanatic about backup and recovery. My worktop has been replaced three times with no loss. My personal one probably would be OK, but not as good, nor as crisp and easy.)
(2) have all your program distribution media. (All those darn CDs!)
(3) have all your program serial numbers (All those darn 29.5 character random strings. Sometimes on the last page of manuals. Sometimes on folders. Sometimes on envelopes. Sometime on convenient easy to lose slips of paper.)
Arghhhh!!!
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Posted by reinkefj
TECH: Problems are opportunities, in disguise, to avoid bigger problems
Tuesday, September 19, 2006http://kentblumberg.typepad.com/kent_blumberg/2006/09/focus_onstrengt.html
Focus on…Strengths and Success
***Begin Quote***
Drucker wrote that we tend to get pushed into focusing on problems, and distracted from the positive opportunities that were there for the taking.
***End Quote***
Well, I don’t necessarily agree with him on that.
I like to use my “patented” Power of Negative Thinking, with apologies to Norman Vincent Peale. “Problems” deserve a special laser-like focus. At least four times in the last year, I have seen small problems that were really precursors to big problems. If there had been a true “autopsy” on that small problem, then it would have exposed the potential for a “big hairy one”. But, the small problem was dismissed, (over my objections), as a “fluke”, “isolate incident”, “network blip”, or “who cares because we’re done”. Now don’t misunderstand, not only did I not say “see told ya so”, but it not an academic inquiry into “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. It’s is about, at least in my IT world, stuff happens for a reason. And, that reason usually portends, when neglected, a big alligator arising from the swamp to take a big bite out of your butt when you least expect it and have the least ability to deal with it. Then, your left with the coulda, shoulda, and woulda, usually in front of people you’d rather not spend time in front of.
It’s nice to be positive, but, imho, you need to take care of the negatives. Or at least get far enough away from the swamp, so that when the alligators come home to roost, (yeah yeah it’s chickens!) they don’t roost, or feast, on you.
Problems are opportunities, in disguise, to avoid bigger problems.
At least they are in my world.
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Posted by reinkefj
TECH: ASTERIK – could be the home pbx that unlocks great value
Tuesday, September 19, 2006http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/091206-von-sam-houston.html?t5
Subject: Network World reports “University dumps Cisco VoIP for open-source Asterisk”
***
I’ve got the book.
(Wall Street types believe that they can … do brain surgery … with a book and a tool … while doing everything else … driving in traffic at 90mph … on themselves!)
And, have been toying with the idea of deploying it at home. If I rewire and home run all phones to the “pbx” in the garage, I have all the centrex like services AND, probably can figure out how to use voip to the voip-able, cell minutes on weekends, and pots when all else fail. It has GREAT promise!
For example, I pick up any phone in my house and Asterix can decide if my call to my friend in NC should go: by yim because he’s available; by voip; by free after hours cell phone minutes; or by pots line. (Least cost call routing in the pbxjargon!). And if he doesn’t answer, and I say “unimportant” it will ring his cell phone if it is in his free minutes. Or if I say “important”, it calls his cell anytime. And if I say “urgent”, it rings his cell every five minutes to deliver my recorded message. (Follow him by priority in pbx jargon). And if he calls me back, same scenario, except it’s “following me”. And, if I’ve gone to bed or don’t want the phone to ring, it can say “Wake him up?” and act on a response.
From my pov, you could “do voip” plus Asterix with say a consortium of internet people (talk about herding cats) and everyone supply a local jump off to the ptsn. Voila! Free phone service for everyone?
Example, I have a pots line and a broadband connect. My friend in NC has a pots line and a broadband connect. With Aterix at both ends, it should be “possible” for: someone to call my local NJ phone number, give codes to Asterix, My Asterix connects via the net to his Asterix, his Asterix dials a local number in NC (wouldn’t want to pay for a freeloaders toll calls), and (Voila! Poof! Shazam!) free long distance service.
Now granted there was a lot of things that have to go right, but now let’s go “corporate”.
The example is use Asterix for your remote office and you don’t need no business Centrex lines unless they are very very cheap. You probably have broad band to the remote locations already. You don’t need expensive CPE or PBX or Cisco IPBXs. Old hardware, free software, and WOW! you’re in competition with a phone company.
Looks like things are getting very interesting – soon – real soon – soon !
Hmmm, note to self, sell verizon stock.
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Posted by reinkefj
RANT: Hey Governor Corzine … … still wanna hear about state cars? … (continued) …
Tuesday, September 19, 2006You don’t? TOO BAD!
This morning 19 September at 0715 edst on Route 1 thru Pton … …
… … a yellow panel truck td01475 … …
… down route 1 at a leisurely 70 (Your serf speed limit is 55) …
… tailgating the poor peon in his way …
… never left the left lane (at least until I lost sight of him way way far ahead of me ; i can’t afford to pay of your highway robbers aka “speedin tix police” aka revenue raisers) …
(This is not a duplicate of my 01August report. The truck was there today again. Doing the same stuff that bothered me last time.)
Any way I am sure that he was hurrying to get to I assume trenton to protect and serve me.
Arghhh!
And, since I have your ear — yesterday on the way home a state van, with one person in it, SG25957, whizzzed past me, also tailgating the poor person (every one in Jerzee is impoverished by the high taxes, the high cost of living here in the people’s paradise of nujerzee, and corruption) in front of him, near 295 North exit 47A at 1715 local time. No doubt another dedicated state worker hurrying to protect and serve. I assume he was hurrying to return “our” car to the mother ship in Trenton, so he (it was a he I think; hard to tell at those speeds) could then begin his commute home. Yeah right!
Double Argh!!
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Posted by reinkefj
TECH: free app to magically discover the serial numbers for all of the Microsoft software
Monday, September 18, 2006http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/09/18/keyfinder-thing-find-those-microsoft-serials-and-cd-keys/
Keyfinder Thing: Find those Microsoft serials and CD keys
Posted Sep 18th 2006 3:45PM by Jordan Running
Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware
***Begin Quote***
It’s a free app for Windows that will magically discover the serial numbers for all of the Microsoft software you have installed with just a few clicks. Keyfinder Thing comes in two versions: Full and Lite. Both are free and both do basically the same thing, but the former has a few more features and requires the .NET 2.0 FX library which you may or may not have. The latest version of Keyfinder Thing is capable of digging up the keys for more than 90 titles.
***End Quote***
Very useful. If for no other reason than catching all those rotten codes in one place. Arghh! Probably right after WGA, and all the other various forms of “legitimate user frustration”, those darned serial numbers are the gigantic pia. while not as complete as that inventory utility I have run from time to time, this is good.
This is a keeper imho
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Posted by reinkefj
LIBERTY: Using gold and silver as civil disobedience.
Monday, September 18, 2006http://www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/39/5993/time.asp?wid=39&nid=5993
TIME FOR A LITTLE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Monday, September 18, 2006
***Begin Quote***
Wallace, Idaho – Perversely just in time for Silver Summit 2006, the United States Mint Thursday threw a wrench at Bernard von NotHaus’ Liberty Dollar program with secretion of a Sept. 14 press release, declaring: “Prosecutors with the Department of Justice have determined that the use of these gold and silver NORFED “Liberty Dollar” medallions as circulating money is a Federal crime.”
***AND***
Merchants participating in the Liberty Dollar program simply accept Liberty dollars in either coin (silver) or paper form in exchange for goods and services. The difference between Liberty paper dollars and the (now, apparently compulsory) fiat fednotes is that Liberty paper dollars are backed in full by physical silver, whereas fiat paper dollars are backed by, um, snicker, the full faith and credit of the United States government, which broke that same faith with its own subjects in 1964 when it took silver out of the money and later declined even to redeem its Silver Certificates in silver. Such was the lesson of our adolescence: This is a government that cannot be trusted or believed.
***End Quote***
And, I don’t like the idea of civil disobedience, because it implies that the gang in power has some right to demand obedience. They get obedience because they’ll kill you if you don’t obey. I’d prefer the phrase non-violent self-determination.
Interesting timing for the “illegal” declaration?
This story is note worthy in that its an economics and history lesson rolled up into one. I don’t know about you, but the “full faith and credit” guarantee isn’t worth a lot when you look at: (1) the Federal debt; (2) the Federal deficit; (3) the unfunded Social Security Insurance (which is NOT insurance; it’s a Ponzi scheme); (4) the unfunded Federal promises, guarantees, and “insurances”; and (5) the unfunded Federal pension obligations due to its retirees and to others thru the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. One has to wonder how much air can be blown into this balloon before it pops?
Perhaps, the NORFED folks are striking too close the root of this illusion. Who’s behind the curtain? The grim reaper called reality.
Now I think that NORFED should have not used the word “dollar”. You can’t take a word that is already owned by another in the mind.
I’d have made a new word — silver ounce => sil-nce — gold ounce => go-nce. Or, call a gold ounce, a Ludwid for Ludwig von Mises. A silver ounce, a Rothfarb.
Anything, but a dollar.
So, Americans should begin using Ludwigs and Rothfarbs in everyday commerce.
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Posted by reinkefj
TECH: “finger print lock” doesn’t
Monday, September 18, 2006
Ahh yes, security technology 0, hackers 1!
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Posted by reinkefj
TECH: microsoft bug in windoz and word?
Monday, September 18, 2006Interesting. Copy a fragment from a webpage. Paste it to word pad – note pad – or your favorite text editor. (I like EditPadPro http://www.editpadpro.com/) You know it is there. Fire up microsoft word. (Fire may be a bad choice of an action verb!) Try to paste. Nada. Back to that editor. Try to paste. It’s el gonno. (Tech term for “what cha talkin bout Willis?”) What cut? Who supposed to paste? And word and windoze all do a sargent shultz. (“I no nuthin. Nuthin! nuthin at all!) Redo the copy. Go to word. And magically it works. Interesting!?!
Doctor Watson, do you think that maybe microsoft took liberties in handoffs between windoze, word, and lookout? says Sherlock
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Posted by reinkefj
WRITING: TYVM … “thank you very much”
Monday, September 18, 2006Sarcasm!
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Posted by reinkefj
Reinke Faces Life 
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