June 10, 2007 by phillip.

What’s new is my concept of (website link intentionally withheld).
A week ago I neglected writing posts because I was at a funeral in Texas and stayed the week in a small city outside Houston. As is the case in my local family I have the same situation with my family all over. Computer guys are an anomaly. I really like it even though it does cause problems at times (i.e. my post “I don’t have a spare anything“). I found myself going from house to house looking at people’s computers and doing electrical work. Seeing as how most of the city seems to be related to me I did do a lot of meeting people as well as solving problems with my dad as tour guide extraordinaire.

A problem that I’ve been seeing over and over again is the eMachine. I used to think that a computer is a computer. It didn’t really as long as you got the basic parts right but I’ve got to say that I’ve definitely proved myself wrong. I was working on a cousin’s computer in Texas and it just had the weirdest problems. I found, with no surprise, that it was once again an eMachine. No sooner had I gotten home than two other people called me with problems and their computers were eMachines as well. The usual problem seemed to be a need to replace the motherboard. This is a fairly innocuous part of a computer even though it shouldn’t be overlooked in a really fast and reliable computer when you’re building one for yourself.

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May 28, 2007 by phillip.

I thought about all the people in New Orleans after Katrina that lost all their information. Well, here’s what you can do for yourself today. If you’ve got a scanner and a CD or DVD writer you should scan in all your important document and photos if you like. Then copy them to a folder on your computer. Here’s where the magic starts.

Truecrypt (www.truecrypt.org) is a program that will make all the information unreadable even to the best hacker. Read the instructions and create a truecrypt file the size of your CD or DVD . Once you give that file a password you can copy it to the disk and you’re all set.

You can give the disk to your family, friends, or even put it in a safe deposit box. Without the password. NO ONE can open that disk.

P.S.: It works on Windows and Linux but I don’t know of a solution for the Mac yet. I’ll keep you posted if you’re interested.

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May 25, 2007 by phillip.

I’m not a Microsoft basher but I’m giving you a tip that everyone should know that will save you so many problems. STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER!

Mozilla Firefox is a free web browser that will keep out a lot of the crap that flows around the Internet and will eventually slow down your computer. If you’re using the Internet (which you are right now) then you have no excuse. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Of course don’t forget to use an anti-virus, adware removal tool, and update often… or use Linux or a Mac computer. That conversations for another day though.

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