Tag Archives: technology - Page 8

It Has Come To Pass

Posted by on March 23, 2014 No comments

So, something I’ve been expecting has finally happened and now I don’t really know what to do about it.

Back in April of last year, I made the decision to use unique passwords for every web site and at the same time, use a unique email address for every web site.  This wasn’t difficult to do, I just made a catch-all email address on my mail server, then started using unique emails on every website.  For example, amazon.com@mydomain.com would indicate to me that the email was from my amazon account registration.

And yesterday, I get a piece of spam from paypal.com@mydomain.com.  How many people have I shared this email with?  Exactly nine.  I don’t make a bunch of purchases via paypal.  So now, I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know exactly who sold off my email address or if they didn’t even sell my email, but their computer was hacked and their address book stolen.  Maybe they use a 3rd party cloud-based POS system and that was hacked.  The bottom line is, I don’t know. 

I’m going to work on the assumption that they were hacked.  Someone got into their EBay account (like they did for me) and mined their recent customer list.  This makes sense because I can’t imagine any of the people I dealt with having a large enough customer list to monetize it for any decent value.

I would love to email each of them and tell them what’s happened.  Someone out there has compromised my personal information.  They wouldn’t be able to do a whole lot of damage, but they probably have a full profile of me: name, address, phone, email.  That sucks.

So now, I have to set up a blacklist on my server for paypal.com@… and create a new email, like paypal.com2@…  That sucks, too.

Moving Pictures

Posted by on March 3, 2014 No comments

If there’s one application that I can identify as one of the longest-lived applications I ever used on any computer, it would have to be ACDSee.  This photo viewer, then photo manager, has been installed on every computer I’ve ever had.

Like all software exposed to time, the program started to get too big and tried to do too much.  I tried out different versions, sometimes dropping back to really old versions to avoid the bloat.  Then one day, I had a change of heart and I purchased the newest version.  What a sucker move that was.

So now I had the newest version, with all of its new, sparkly, excessive features.  I also had a nice, shiny new computer, so they played pretty well together.  Then slowly, it didn’t.  The software started getting slow.  It started nagging me to upgrade.  It maintained a link with an online account set up with their website.  It never got any more updates, because the world had moved on to higher version numbers.

Things started to get really out of hand when ACDSee started taking upwards of 15 seconds to open a single image and over a minute to enumerate a couple hundred files on a network drive.  So, in the spirit of my other biggest and bloatedest posts, ACDSee is getting the boot.

So what is its replacement?  I’ve tried a program called Phototheca and it was really nice, but it requires you to work with a local photo store.  It would be great if all your photos were on the local drive, but that’s not my situation.  Then I tried Faststone Image Viewer and I stopped looking.  I’m extremely happy with this application.  It’s almost exactly like the old ACDSee versions – it’s fast and lightweight, but unlike those old versions, it’s made for modern CPUs and OS’s.  What took ACDSee many, many seconds to open, Faststone opened immediately.  The only issue I have with it is the way it handles zoom-clicking in the viewer.  But I’ll adapt.

Oh, it’s also freeware.  It has no online integration, no licensing, no hidden installers during setup, nothing extra.  It’s just good, clean, fast software.  And it’s free.  I always find it odd that nothing is allowed to stop.  It has to keep growing until it collapses under its own weight.  So, goodbye ACDSee, you’ve been replaced with a new version of your older self.

Further Adventures In LinuxLand

Posted by on February 11, 2014 No comments

Well, as I previously noted, I didn’t give up on putting the incredible Linux on that older laptop.  I spent a bunch of time searching online for info and found someone who installed a  version of Mint on the same model laptop as I had.  So now I have a viable candidate.

It took me a couple attempts to discover that the laptop doesn’t support USB booting, so CD-R it has to be.  I install the new Mint version and on reboot, it doesn’t boot.  No GRUB recovery bullshit, just “Error 18,” which, amazingly, is a greater bunch of bullshit.

In researching the highly-specific error #18 of the boot up process, I find a discussion that answered all the boot problems I’d had up to this point.  The hard drive partition was too big.  Yup.  Linux, the most advanced OS ever, the OS that runs massive server farms, massive web servers, massive file servers, massive everything… has an issue with the 250GB drive in my laptop.  The answer is to make two partitions, one small one for /boot and the other for / (the root? I have no idea).  So, another install with some manual partitioning steps and holy shit!  I have a booting, running, complete Linux laptop.

This is hardly my first foray into Linux, so I somewhat understand a few of the quirks.  I mean, I am somewhat prepared to be disappointed.  However, this install had some new wonders in store for me.  First up, connect to the network and get on the Internet.  Wireless connects without any issue, although the prompts for a password for some keychain were unexpected.

Firefox is installed by default, so I kick it off to get online.  The first thing I notice is that things are actually pretty slow.  This is consistent with my previous attempts to enjoy Linux for its lightweight, incredibly speedy performance (that never materialized).  Because the Linux version is pretty much in line with the age of the laptop, I have an abhorrent version of Firefox – 3.03.  This could be why things seem so slow.  I launch the Mint software repository to get a new version of Firefox or at least a different browser.  It fails to load.  Ok, I go to Google and download the latest Chrome.  It won’t install because of some invalid dependency.  Ok.  I go to Mozilla and download the latest version of Firefox there.  It downloads an archive file.  Huh.

Let me step aside here and point out the two competing mindsets with software development.  One side is Microsoft’s, where backwards compatibility is paramount.  For this choice, you can use nearly every version of Windows on nearly every piece of hardware out there.  The obvious downside is that the code is more bloated than it needs to be and contains code that is obsolete or vulnerable to hacking.  On the other side is Linux, which includes Apple and Android.  Here, you have a specific version made for specific hardware.  Once the next version of hardware comes along, you’re left behind.  You get the benefit of having the best code of the day working on your current device, but you are forced to upgrade hardware to get the latest software.  Right now, as I install Linux on this old laptop, I am relegated to the past, with an unrefined UI and outdated tools.

Now, back to the present, I have this Firefox archive file that I don’t know what to do with.  I try the obvious action of extracting the files to the desktop and look inside the folder contents.  I can’t tell what I’m supposed to run.  There’s no setup, no install, no run-this-to-make-go anywhere.  So I click on a few things and nothing happens.  There’s also no installation instructions in the file.  So, I give up on that.

As I’m struggling with this, an issue that happened a few times during my install attempts bit me again.  I know from experience that Linux has some odd fascination with multiple desktops.  Somehow – I still don’t know how – I triggered a “change desktop” command through the touchpad.  All the shit I was working on is gone and I can find no way to get it to come back.  There is no icon anywhere to change desktops.  FUCK THIS.  THIS is why Linux is reserved for geeks and nerds and will never be mainstream.  I consider myself to be a geek, but this lack of usability offends even me.  I looked through the sparse help information provided and couldn’t find any answers there.  Eventually, I found some way to make windows from all desktops appear in the task bar, so I could switch to them regardless of where they were hiding.  By that time, I was pretty much done for the night.

However, now that I’ve discovered the key to making Linux boot on this laptop, I think I’m going to try out a version called Joli Cloud, which looks kind of like a tablet OS, with a greatly simplified UI.  Stay tuned for more anger.

Beating Myself Up

Posted by on February 8, 2014 No comments

Ok, so I must be masochistic.  I came into a old laptop that was being disposed and I thought I’d try to install Windows 8.1 on it.  Guess what?  It worked!  However, just the OS itself pushed the hardware to the point where the CPU fan was running non-stop.  So I gave up on that idea.

Then, buoyed by success, I went to the other extreme.  I brought out the big bag of idiocy that is Linux.  I’ve tried Mint before and I liked it.  So I burned a disc of the latest Mint.  The laptop froze during boot.  Hmm.  I do believe I’ve seen that before…  So I burned a disc of an older Mint.  Laptop boots, finds sound and network, we’re good to go.

I do the installation, and in the process, I wipe out all disk partitions and start from scratch.  Install proceeds well and I reboot.  As soon as I hit the button to restart, I started mocking the system, saying “Now we’re going to go to a black text screen that spews out a bunch of statuses.  See, this is why normal people don’t use Linux.  No one wants to see that shit.”

Well, I must have offended it, because on bootup, I get a black screen that says:

GRUB loading.
Welcome to GRUB!

error: out of disk.
Entering rescue mode…
grub rescue>

Seriously, what the fuck?  I’m approaching this install as if I can give this laptop away as a basic Internet device.  GRUB?  “out of disk”?  What the fuck does that mean?  I then had the following conversation with GRUB:

grub rescue> help
Unknown command ‘help’
grub rescue> ?
Unknown command ‘?’
grub rescue> mount
Unknown command ‘mount’
grub rescue> diag
Unknown command ‘diag’
grub rescue> go
Unknown command ‘go’
grub rescue> exit
Unknown command ‘exit’
grub rescue> quit
Unknown command ‘quit’

You know what?  I fucking HATE Linux.  I did some searches on that error and I read all kinds of crap.  But mostly, no one knew how to fix it.  Someone made a wild suggestion that not only might the hard drive be bad, but the motherboard may be as well.  That’s insane.

But you know what else?  I’m going to keep fighting this issue for probably the rest of the day.  And if I succeed, all it will do is tell me what level you have to be at to make the supposed best OS in the world “just work”.

My New Child

Posted by on February 6, 2014 No comments

Yup, I have a kid.  I hate children, too.  Let me explain how this happened.

I do the finances for a non-profit organization.  It’s brand new and doesn’t have a ton of structure yet, so pretty much do-what-you-want.  So as part of my duties, I decided I’m going to start emailing members when their membership dues are due.

I have an email account for the org’s domain, but the email server doesn’t have any contact management.  No problem, I’ll create a Windows Live account for that email and use the People function to store the addresses.  Works fine, since Windows Live Mail uses People as the contacts.

So I start the process to create the Live account.  During creation, I am prompted for my date of birth.  I’m not going to use mine, duh.  I could make one up, but this should be something that anyone in the org can remember in case they need to reset a password or something after I’ve passed the reins.  So I use the date the org was formed: 10/1/2013.  I click Save.

Now, to my surprise, I am told that a minor cannot use the Live services without parental consent.  Damn it.  This account now belongs to a 4-month old.  So, without thinking much, I logged in as myself to authorize.  Congratulations to me, I’m a parent now.

It would be easy for anyone to create two accounts and authorize one from the other, so there has to be a way to prove that the “parent” account is really an adult.  How is this done?  By charging your credit card, of course!  A minor can’t possess a credit card, so that’s foolproof.  Or something.  Cost to have a kid: $.50.  Some of that gets donated to charity, which I suppose is great.

So I figure I totally own this little shit now.  After all, I paid for it.

Doing It Way Wrong

Posted by on November 20, 2013 No comments

http://www.ibtimes.com/kleargearcom-woman-hit-3500-fine-bad-credit-score-after-writing-negative-review-online-retailer

This story caught my attention, so I had to do a little looking into it.  I’m no uber-sleuth, but I can put some things together. I can put together enough to make some conclusions.

My first thought when going to KG’s site was, oh, they’re ripping off ThinkGeek.  Then I saw the copyright date of 2001, and thought, maybe they were first.  Turns out they’re not, ThinkGeek’s copyright goes back to 1999.  But in the course of figuring that out, I found that KG’s internet domain was first registered in 2004.  I’m not sure you can copyright a domain name before it’s even registered.  Scam flag #1.

Looking at the next level: the address.  A reputable company will display its address prominently to provide credibility.  However, the address is a Michigan address and there is no corporate record in Michigan for their company – no DBA record either.  Looking further, the address is simply a mail drop, not a physical location.  Scam flag #2.

So where is this company?  The BBB website says that KG’s legal department had an address in San Antonio, TX.  No corporate records found in Texas for them either.  A quick search in LinkedIn shows three members, the CEO and the CMO of KG (Rob Key) and a freelance writer who contracted with KG.  The CEO and CMO are both in Michigan.  Hmmm.  Rob Key also might have an address in San Antonio, TX according to internet searches.

So let’s just assume that’s a dead end.  The biggest red flag is their help page, which basically spells out how you’re going to do business with them.  in short, it’s the most unfriendly terms possible.  There isn’t any way to check the status of your order.  I couldn’t even find a login to check your profile.  When you have so many other options out there, why would you even buy from this site?

I’ve seen this business approach before.  It was in my Finally Fast review.  Companies like this need to die a quick death because they are doing no one any service.  The unfortunate thing is that the owners live on and create a brand new entity just like the last one.

Out With The New And In With The Old

Posted by on November 7, 2013 No comments

I guess it wasn’t meant to be.  I am back using “the tank”  – my old keyboard.  I gave the new slimline KeyTronic keyboards a fighting chance.  but I’ve ruined three already – not a good sign at all.  The first one, something happened under one of the keys, so I pried off the key caps to fix it and wound up breaking the spring on one of the keys,resulting in the key being stuck down.  I RMA’d that keyboard and I think I had to pay shipping.  Its replacement, I spilled a very little bit of Coke on it, and the Delete key started sticking.  There was no way I was going to pry off the keycap to clean it!  So I lived with the sticking delete key for quite a while (and I use it a lot).  The keyboard I took to work has actually failed from use.  The left Control key sticks randomly.  With all the key commands I use every day: Ctrl-X/C/V – cut/copy/paste, Ctrl-E – Execute query, Ctrl-S – Save, Ctrl-A – Select All, Ctrl-Z – Undo, it just couldn’t handle the stress.

I’m taking the other tank to work and will start using it there again, too.  I have some new co-workers, so I suppose they’re going to be ridiculing me for my ancient technology.  Laugh if you want, but it is damn good technology.  They don’t make ‘em like they used to.  When I started typing this post on the old keyboard, I was surprised at how much better the action felt than the thin, low-profile style.  It’s much more forgiving.

I still have one of the slimline keyboards.  It’s still new in the box and I’m unsure what I even want to do with it.  I think it’s going to be donated to a junk sale.

Windows 8 Users, You Need To Do This.

Posted by on September 27, 2013 No comments

Windows 8 has been around for quite a while and there are still people that are pissed off, frustrated, and confused about it.  It’s all about the Start screen.  People don’t know what it’s about or how to use it.  My initial message to people was, “Get over it.  It’s the Start Menu, just in a different display format.”  Then when they still didn’t get it, it became, “Stop worrying about it, just start typing and search for the program you want.”  Now I have a new message: “Don’t be afraid.”

Here’s my Start screen at work.  It is not intimidating; it is not confusing; it is everything that I need to do my job and nothing more.  You can have this in three easy steps.

Start Screen

Now, when I say, don’t be afraid, I mean it.  What you need to do is right-click the hell out of your icons and remove them from your Start screen.  What you want is only the programs you use on a daily basis.  You might be saddened to see how little you use your computer when you seem to have so much software installed on it.  Once you have done that, you will immediately feel less overwhelmed.  DO NOT BE AFRAID.  All of your icons and shortcuts are still searchable, findable, and re-add-able in the All Apps screen.  Trust me, when you have your Start screen finished, you’re going to be freaked out when you see everything behind the scenes.  And that was the old Start menu.

Now for step two, creating groups.  You see that I have five groups of icons, we’ll cover the naming of those groups in step three.  For right now, merge everything into one group, then start dragging icons out of the main group, when you see a highlighted column appear, you will be creating a new group when you drop the icon.  Think in terms of categories.  Don’t worry if your groups are out of order, we can rearrange whole groups in step three.  Originally my first two groups were combined, but there didn’t feel like there was enough whitespace, so I broke some icons out.  it changed my four-column group into 2 two-column groups, and it gave me a new “category”.

Now for the final step three.  Once you have your new, limited icons set up, move to the lower right of the screen where you see the “-“ minus/zoom out icon.  The Start screen will zoom out and you can work on your layout at the group level.  Right-click each group and choose Name Group, then give it a meaningful category name.  While your group is selected, you can drag it into a different position.  Click a blank area of the screen to zoom back in.

Now, take a deep breath and look at what you’ve created.  It’s a launchpad for your work.  Never mind all that hype about live tiles.  Maybe someday it will be worthwhile to hit the start button to get caught up on bunches of little details, then jump back out.  This is more about arranging your desk.

The very first thing you do when you install a new application is take all those new stupid icons off the Start screen.  That is, unless you want to keep the application’s primary shortcut – if it’s something you are going to use very frequently.  If you won’t, get rid of it and find it later via search.

Triple Gunnars

Posted by on August 23, 2013 No comments

Ok, so now I have three pairs of Gunnar glasses.  I figure I have enough experience with them now to make a compare and contrast review if you are considering any of these models.

My first pair was the Groove model.  When I got it, I was somewhat disappointed by the rubber arms  – I was thinking they were metal from what I saw in the pictures.  The Groove has good-sized lenses and a decent wraparound design.  However, the Groove’s nosepads are not articulating.  If they don’t fit right, you need to bend them into a comfortable position.  I actually gave up on the Groove for an extended period because I could not get the nosepads to stop digging into my nose.  That is what led me to my second purchase.  But while waiting for shipment of my second pair, I was able to find a position that fit and felt excellent, and they became my standard work glasses.

The next set I purchased were the E11vens.  My primary reason for buying them was the hard plastic, fixed bridge.  I figured that would be better than the nosepads that were burrowing into my skin on the Groove.  When I got the E11vens, I was disappointed by the cheap black plastic.  Plastic doesn’t have to be cheap-sounding, but this is.  Very tinny and light sounding.  However, despite that,  the E11vens are lighter than the Groove and the bridge is comfortable.   Also, this model excels in an area that the others don’t.  It’s wraparound design is totally up on your face, like goggles.  Because of this, if you get dry eyes, these will keep the moisture in your eyes and you will praise them at the end of the day.  The other positive about the E11vens is they have the largest lenses of the models I own.  This means you can look all around without needing to move your head as much.  While I was using the Grooves at work and the E11vens at home, Woot had yet another Gunnar sale.  This time, they had a model I’d been watching and hoping for.

I purchased the Emissary model last week and just got them today.  The full name is Attache Emissary, to give you an idea of the image they are trying to convey.  And when I opened the box and pulled the glasses out, I was stunned.  They were beautiful.  Where I was disappointed with the materials used in the other two, I was highly impressed with the sturdy feel of the metal frames and their hinged arms.  The glasses felt feather-light, but they probably weigh about as much as the E11vens.  It’s probably just a perceptual trick because the Emissary frames are so thin and the E11vens are so bulky.   The lenses were tiny, unlike the other two.  The Emissary looked very similar to the Ray Ban prescription glasses I wear.  So from a stylistic perspective, there is no comparison.  If you want style, this is the one to have.  But that style comes at a price.  The lenses are very small, so you need to move your head more to keep the your vision through them.  Because they are small, they don’t have any of the wrap-around benefits like the E11vens, so your eyes may dry out quicker.

Looking at the Gunnar online store, The Groove isn’t available anymore, nor is the E11ven, and the color of Emissary I bought isn’t available.  That’s all fine.  Woot is a clearinghouse for older and discontinued stuff, and the glasses work just as well as the new models.  The model I have my eye on now is the Epoch, which is similar to the Emissary, but with thicker frame lines.  Go for four?  Why not?  I used to have a massive collection of sunglasses in my younger days.  I guess this is the adult computer geek version of that hobby.

Garbage Backup

Posted by on July 4, 2013 No comments

As I get older and my data grows along with me, I am slowly getting better at managing it all.  I’ve blogged before about losing data and it’s never pleasant when that happens.  But, I’m doing pretty good now, and I have one more step to go.  Right now I have weekly backups to an external drive.  The next step is to have a monthly backup stored offsite in a safety deposit box.  But anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

I have a 1TB external drive for my backups, which occur weekly.  They are differential backups, only backing up the changes.  That should allow me to get a lot more use out of the drive instead of doing full or incremental backups, and it also gives me change history.  But I want to get even more out of that drive.  Right now I’m down to about 30GB free.

One thing that Windows backup does is backup your user profile folder.  This includes your temp folders, yes, and your temporary internet files folder.  You probably see where I’m going already, so I’ll just explain what I ‘m doing to trim down the amount of useless data I’m backing up.

Windows has a Disk Cleanup utility and that utility has the capability to be automated, which is what I’m doing.  I run the utility just before the backup so that my hard drives are as clean as possible.  You can do this in a couple steps.

First, open a command prompt and enter cleanmgr.exe /sageset 1

This will open the disk cleanup utility and will prompt for what types of files you want to clean.  For me, I just chose everything, but you may want to be more selective.  Temp files and Temporary Internet Files are options.

image

When you click ok, the options are saved as profile #1 (that’s what the 1 is for; you can choose another number if you want different profiles).

When you want to run this cleanup profile, just open a command prompt and run cleanmgr.exe /sagerun 1

You can also put that in a shortcut or put it in the Task Scheduler.

image

Enjoy your smaller backups and your extra drive space!