Moving Day

Well the day is here. We are moving into our new home on Saturday. So I am going to talk about oh heck I don't know. :-) All my networking gear is packed up so I am now back on a wired network until after we move in. Was with the cable installer when he hooked up my cable and internet yesterday. I will say one thing, he knew what he was doing and was knowledgeable as far as networking goes. One of the first thing he said when he found out I was going wireless was to make sure I secured the router. When I told him I was using a password and it was 29 characters long, he was dumbfounded. He said he had never met anyone that actually knew what to do about securing their wireless network. Think I will be changing the password again though when I set it all back up. Thinking about a 40 character password now. Well got to run for now, see ya next time.

Peace, Love, & God bless!!

Greg "Spanky" Munson

Just Another Day in Paradise

Good evening y'all and I hope your day has been a good one. This past week has been a busy one for me. A client had a computer that was infected with a web-director. Now for all you non-geeks out there, that is a program that some classify as a virus, malware, spy-ware, or trojan horse. Me? I call it a pain my rumpus. I started working on it last Wednesday or Thursday I can not remember. I finally got it cleaned out yesterday, BUT it had done enough damage to the registry that the internet was pretty useless. Only thing to do was to try and save the files needed and wipe the hard drive clean. Well, I ended up spending the majority of my work day today working on the computer. Replaced the hard drive, upgraded the memory to 2GB, and cleaned out the dust bunnies. Started to format the drive to install the operating system, and guess what I found out? The drive was already formatted and ready for use in this particular computer!!! That just saved me about an extra 2 hours of work. Still spent 5 hours getting everything installed, updated and configured. Plus the lunch served at work was actually edible this time (which is something to say about prison food).
Well let me leave you now with this piece of advice. Remember to back up your data, music, pictures, & videos. If your computer ever gets one of these types, you may not be as lucky as this person was. Once again.......

Peace, Love, and God Bless.....


Greg

Venting Time

Okay, time for me to sound off on what's on my mind. Lately in the news there has been talk about a mosque being built on or near ground zero in NYC. In my opinion that is BOLLOCKS. We had over 3000 NYC police, fire, and civilians killed-murdered-maimed due the act of terrorists. Now these infidels want to build a temple to their god allah?? Well evidently the fools in the White House must be in bed with the terrorist infidels because they have actually said that it should be built. EXCUSE ME????? The White House just endorsed the terrorist movement. Should have seen that one coming right?? If Adolf Hitler's followers wanted to erect a church, temple, or monument for their people, EVERYONE world wide would be up in arms against it! So what makes Hitler different from Bin Laden? One word, complacency. America has become complacent to anything against the Christian way. We have compromised our way into being the target of all these small countries(Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc..).
Now with all this in the mix, what do we have thrown in? Why, Mexico of course! Everyday we have hundreds of illegals coming into America and draining all of America's resources. Do not get me wrong, I am not against people coming to America to better themselves and their families. People have been doing it ever since the late 1400's. I only ask that you do it the right way (by that I mean LEGALLY). Come in legally, start the paperwork, go through the process, and earn your citizenship. Notice I said EARN not get, to become a citizen you must earn that right. Our parents had to do so should you. You are by no means better than us. When our ancestors left England for America, we paid the price by being killed by the American Indian, diseases, and other items. Now I am not saying the American Indian is bad, because they are not. The early immigrants to America came in and figured everything was theirs. They gave no regard to the American Indians and they paid the price. The Indians fought back and killed a lot of the immigrants. Eventually a truce(compromise) was made and ever since then the American Indian has been getting the shaft with no lube at all. Back to present day, it looks like history is going to repeat itself once again. The Mexicans are coming in illegally and some of America is fighting back. Only problem is the morons in Washington DC are going to make the "compromise" and America is going to get the shaft. So just remember everything I have said, cause in November when election time comes, remember who has been screwing you over.
Well that is all for now, as always

Peace, Love, and God Bless.

Greg aka Spanky

Funny people

Okay picture this y'all. I'm sitting there at my desk in my office, and the phone rings. Well, I pick it up and the person on the other end says help I can't get the computer to work. Okay, I am thinking worse case scenarios right about now. You kind of have to when you work in a prison everyday. So, I go Okay tell me what exactly it is or in this case is not doing. Well the person says I have a black screen (huh oh!!) and the mouse will not light up. Bells & alarms are starting to go off big time ;-). So then I ask the one question, I probably should not be asking. What was the last thing you were doing before this happened? The person goes, "Oh I didn't do anything, Jan turned the computer off".
[Looking at the ceiling wondering what did I do for this??? :o) ]

I tell the person everything will be okay, and to look at the front of the computer tower. Asked them to look where the power button is and to tell me the color of the power button. Is it green or amber? They reply back with there is no color, it is turned off (no duh!!) I said okay I need you to push the power button in one time and release it quickly. The person does this and all of the sudden I hear a squeal and they say you fixed it!!!!! Not really, they pushed the power button to turn it on. I just sat there and told them what to do. So does this tell you what kind of day I had today?? I was laughing so hard after I hung the phone up, that I forgot all about logging the work for my bosses. Opps!!!! LOL

Take care y'all, Peace, Love, and God bless.

Favorite Things

Okay, so I am sitting here thinking of what to say to y'all. I finally (after about 30 seconds) came up with favorite things. So I will just let you know some of my favs.

First off would have to be my wife (love ya Sherry) & son (Timothey Michael). I say this not just because I am married to her either or because he is my boy. Because to be brutally honest sometimes they can get on my nerve like fingernails on a chalkboard or metal fork across a dinner plate. They are my favorite thing is because no matter what I've done, am currently doing, or may possibly do in the future, they still love me!!! We have been married just over 19 years, but have been together since high school prom in 1986. So in other words, we have been through a lot together and apart. The main fact that they love me no matter what is why they made the number 1 slot. Now I must say that God actually has the #1 slot, but most people who know me already know this, that is why He is not listed.

#2 would have to be internet radio. Anytime I can (at home) I listen to KEGI 100.5 "The Eagle" out of Jonesboro, AR. Now I know I live in Jonesboro, but you just cannot get better classic rock music in my opinion.

#3 would have movies. I LOVE movies. I like old classic movies like "Cheaper By The Dozen" made in 1953 (not the Steve Martin one), old John Wayne movies, like "Hell Fighters", "Cowboys", and "McClintock", love comedy and action movies. Most dramas or "chick flicks" I do not care for, but there are a few notable ones out there. No Titanic is NOT one of the few notables either. I can not stand that movie.

#4 would have to be people who actually do what they say they are going to do. Now I know I am not the best at keeping their word. Which is why this one made the bottom of the list. It is a favorite thing though. Someone tells you they will do something and they actually follow through with it. Notice that most politicians will NOT fall into this category!?!?! :-)

Well that is it for now, back to listening to KEGI on the laptop and playing on FaceBook! LOL

Peace, Love, and God Bless!!

Greg

Homes

Well, the family and I went and looked at two homes today. Both had pros and cons as is with most homes. The first one was a basic first time buyer style home. Little over 1000 sq. feet, but in our school district and within our price range. Both homes by the way are 3 bed & 2 bath homes. There was another home 4 houses down that was the exact "cookie cutter" style as this one and it was $3k less. Didn't look at it though since the pics I had seen showed it to be an exact copy of the one we were shown. The first home had a fenced in backyard, but an enormously huge ditch on just the other side of the fence. The second home was more in the country, different school district, and had little over an acre of property to go with it. The plus for this one was the 2 car garage (enclosed) and the large workshop behind the house. The con to this house was the floor in the kitchen. I don't know if there was a water leak or the foundation settling that caused the floor to buckle like it did. Well that is it for now. As always, Peace, Love, & God bless.

Greg

Back the fool up!!!

OK OK, I know it has been a few days since I last posted, I'm sorry, been busy working and looking at possible homes to buy. As a computer tech I get asked all the time how can someone keep from losing their favorite photos, important files, from being lost to the digital hell that is known as BSOD, or God forbid the hard-drive physically crashes!!
Well, what I usually tell them is BACK IT UP!!!!!!! There are several ways you can save your photos, music, videos, & files from being destroyed by an accident. Let me first say this...I am guilty myself of not backing my stuff up like I tell people they should. I'm human, and so I make mistakes. With that said, let's get back to business. Several types of "media" are used for backing up. They are discs (DVD & CD), jump or flash drives, portable/external hard-drives, and on-line backup web sites.
First a little history. Back when hard drives were small and before flash drives became popular, the norm for backing up or saving files was the "floppy" disk. This was a small 3.5 inch square disc that only held 1.44 MB of data. Yea, you read right, 1.44MB. That is about a third of the normal size of a MP3!! Thank goodness for advancements in technology!
So back to the media.....
Discs (DVD & CD) are cheap to buy and unless you spring for the re-writeables (which I do not recommend) you can only use them once. If you mess it up, then the only thing they are good for are coasters for your drinking glass. So you need to use your judgment if you go this route. They are good to use and they will last for a long time, if properly taken care of. Basically if you have ever made a music cd for your car then you just backed up some music. See it is not that hard to do.
The next option is the flash or jump drive. This a highly portable storage device, that uses solid state technology (no moving parts) to save the data on. The smallest I've seen on the market recently, is 2GB. To put it into perspective, that is roughly 1800 floppy disks. Personally, I own a 16GB flash drive, but that is because, 1. it was on sale and 2. because I was using 2-3 smaller ones all the time. The one major drawback to a flash drive is that it is not a viable device for permanent storage. Now if you have a large file you need to transport from one pc to another without using the internet then this is your baby.
Okay, next up is the external/portable hard drives. These are just like the hard drive in your computer. Only difference is, is that these are not inside you computer. Other than that they are no different. Probably the smallest one is 80GB and the largest available lately is around 1 TB. TB you ask? No not tuberculosis, TB as in Tera-Byte, or 1000 GB. 1TB is equal to about 1 million floppy disks. Try putting those in your briefcase....HA HA good luck! External hard drives have one flaw that I have noticed. They have moving parts that are susceptible to magnetic waves, just like in your computers hard drive. Other than that I see nothing wrong with them. Most of them are powered through the USB connection, while some are designed to be more of a permanent drive attached to your computer.
Now for the last option. Online backing up is a viable option in that you can access the information from any computer attached to the internet. Personally I do not like them, for the one reason of security. If I can not set the security level myself to level I want, with the password I prefer, then forget it. Some people I know swear by them, but I do not like them. Just a personal opinion only.
Well until next time... peace, love, and God bless!!!!!


Greg

passwords

Sorry I missed yesterday, was little tired from work. Why is it, when you have nothing to do at work you are more tired at the end of the day than if you actually did a lot of work? Going to look at some houses today with the Realtor. I really like working with the Eric Burch team at Crye-Lieke real estate. They seem to go out of their way to make you feel comfortable and help you find what you are looking for. Okay I promised computer tips and tricks in my blogs, so here goes.

Passwords:

What do the following all have in common?

P13x!4h3@d
plex1f0rhed
p7eX!4head


They are all the basic same password just changing up some of the characters.
The password in original form is plexiforhead. With a little creativity your plain easily broken password can become something unique. Best things about passwords is that YOU can design them. Well that is my tip for the day, I will catch y'all later.

The car

Well, the family and I went out to supper last night then went driving around town for a little bit. While driving around, we heard a thump and then something sounded like it banging around underneath. Pulled over and was checking behind the front tires and noticed something large and plastic hanging down from one of the struts. Took the car to a mechanic this morning after calling the boss and let her know what happened. Turned out the sway bar (actually a part connecting to it), had broken off. Luckily, it only cost $70 for parts and labor to fix. Had a check engine light also but that code got cleared after I replaced the gas cap. The code was for an emission leak. If the light comes back on, I'll have them check it again, but they said it should be okay for now. So, the car is fixed, and I will be going back to work in the morning. I think I got lucky, found a mechanic that won't charge you an arm and a leg to fix your car. Well, until next time, peace love and God bless.

Good Afternoon!!

Well, good afternoon everyone. This is of course my first blog ever. I will do my best to come on here everyday and post something. I will be talking about anything and everything from my dreams, aspirations, burrs that get under my saddle, and basic computer help for the beginner and average user/idiot! LOL
Let me first start off by saying if you do not like my postings, thoughts, ideas, or anything else I write on here, I got one thing to say. TOUGH!!!!!! Last I checked this blog is mine, and I still live in America where I have freedom of speech and press. So if you do not like it, then leave and do not let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. :-D
That said, let me give you all one small piece of advice. Lock your computers at work and home when not in use!!! It is very easy to do. Press "CTRL", "ALT", & "DELETE" at the same time then "LEFT click on the "LOCK COMPUTER" button. Now this of course ONLY works if your computer is password protected. Passwords will be covered another day. Thanks for reading me and hope to hear from you on your comments and emails.

Greg "Spanky" Munson