Ebay online petition against Internet Sales Tax

If you are an ebay member, you might want to consider their Mainstreet community. It is an advocacy group for ebay members.

Right now, the congresscritters are thinking about subjecting online sales to sales tax. Small online businesses will have to collect, report and remit sales taxes for over 7500 jurisdictions.

If you are a mainstreet member, ebay will send a letter to your congresscritters on your behalf.

It is worth getting involved. Congress will be desperate to find ways to fund the trillion dollar debacle they call the 'stimulus package' along with the other 3 trillion being spend in the first 100 days of this administration. They say their plan is to 'tax the rich' However, even if they confiscated all of the wealth of the so called rich it wouldn't begin to make a dent in this spending spree.

So, you can take a look at Ebay Mainstreet here. If you already have an ebay account, the signup is simple.

Found a sitemap generator

Thanks to one of the replies at webmasterworld.com, I found a list of more sitemap generators.

One of the online generators seems to be working well. You can find it at http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp It is an onlne app that runs on Java.

It's currently free. It will export files to a google/yahoo compatible XML format.

I have had a couple of times where things have hung up where I had to kill Java and all open explorer windows. The problem could be at my end.

Anyway, it's worth a look if you are trying to find a decent sitemap generator that will run under Vista regardless of you .net version.

Trying to find a sitemap generator for Vista with .net 3.5 sp1

I'm going a little crazy. I needed to install a sitemap generator to create google and Yahoo xml sitemaps on my vista machine running home premium and .net 3.5 sp1.

I'm not just looking for shareware but would be willing to go 50 to 100 bucks or to.

The problem is that every app I have tried to install keeps telling me it needs .net 1.1.4432. When I try to install it, the install fails. I keep ending up with .net 3.5 sp1

So, it appears that the sitemap app folks have not caught up with the latest .net running on vista and that things are not backward compatible.

For now, I can go back to an old XP machine to build the sitemaps but I'm looking for a solution for my Vista Laptop.

I would appreciate any thoughts on this one.

Antivirus 360

We've had a couple of calls in the last week or so to clean up home PCs infected with Antivirus 360. Apparently this is picked up as a drive by download while web browsing.

AV 360 impersonates the Windows Boot Splash screen which makes users think that they are rebooting. It sticks a message on there about 'registering av 360'.

This software gives you dire warnings that your machine is thoroughly infected and the only way to save it is to purchase the full version of their product.

We've been able to remove AV 360 by a combination of

1. Using the add and remove programs
2. Manually deleting the Program files\av 360 folder (using safe mode if necessary)
3. Using either MSconfig or Spybot to remove the AV 360 startup
4. cleaning up with an AV and/or spybot scan
5. If you go to www.google.com and you see an ad for AV 360 after you have cleaned things up, go to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Reset and reset the configuration back to the defaults. Restart your browser and the AV 360 message should be gone from Google.

Some Hints

• AV 360 seems to be user specific. If you have trouble killing it, try killing it from either safe mode or an uninfected user. If there are no uninfected admin users, simply create one.
• AV 360 may reset your AV and firewall notifications under windows. Be sure to set them back.

Adobe 9 Reader and Acrobat Vulnerability

There is a vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9 that could compromise your system. The full story is here.

A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 and earlier versions. This vulnerability would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this issue is being exploited.


A patch is supposed to be available March 11 2009. That leaves a lot of time for users to be hacked. Make sure your system is fully patched and your antivirus is up to date. Be careful opening any attachments.

Congress considering making you keep Wifi Logs for 2 years

Compared to the so-called "Stimulus Bill" this is a minor piece of idiocy, but idiocy nonetheless.

According to this Cnet Article, congress is considering a bill to mandate that everyone with a wifi point keep records of all access for 2 years. They are trying to pass this off as "Fo the Children"

First of all, it is hard to determine exactly how this will protect children.

The nasty part of this is the requirement to have 2 years of logs. I currently have Verizon Fios in my home. The Actiontech routers they use are referred to me as Actionless. I've had 2 of them replaced and am fighting verizon now as the third is in it's death throes. The problem is that when you replace the router or do a factory reset, the logs evaporate. So, follow the tech's advice and do a factory reset and you are breaking the law.

That sweeps in not just public Wi-Fi access points, but password-protected ones too, and applies to individuals, small businesses, large corporations, libraries, schools, universities, and even government agencies. Voice over IP services may be covered too.

So, you will have to keep access records for two years for your home and business.

Also, what's to stop the records from being used as a fishing expedition.. Hey, Chris looked up "How to beat the IRS" or "How to hide your Guns" or regularly visits an anti obama site. Guess what, now chris is on THE LIST.

Consider that, if law enforcement is really trying to track someone, they have a number of other tools to do so.. ie warrants at the ISP level or a warrant for a wiretap.

The next paragraph set me off a little

Until Gonzales' remarks in 2006, the Bush administration had generally opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" about them. But after the European Parliament approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and VoIP providers, top administration officials began talking about the practice more favorably.

IOW, Europe is doing it, so let's do it too. Gee, Europe is a socialist, big brother, privacy invading mess. Look at England where the "Councils" stick there nose into just about every bloody aspect of your life including how many sheets of toilet paper you use. Yeah, let's be just like the Euroweenies, Forget that constitution thing.


Both the Democrats and Republicans are pushing this idiocy.

BTW Senator Cornyn who is authoring this bill is also on the Border Security Committee. Hey Senator.. great job you are doing there.. 12 million plus illegal aliens.. Kudos...

Here is where you can contact the senator to voice your opinion about this bill

http://cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home

Ecollege Online Learing Platform

I am an adjunct professor using the ecollege learning platform. The version my school is using is greatly in need of revision. The thread handling is atrocious from my point of view.

Right now, I am in a location where I'm getting max 128k download speeds on my aircard. The problem with the platform is that it refreshed the page every time you open a page, mark an item read, respond to something etc. The result it that it is painful going through an active thread.

The other gripe I have is that I don't see any way within the platform to make notes as I reply to students. The net result is that I often have to do double or triple the work to review things again when doing the grading.

Anyway, just getting frustrated here.

Using blogger with verizon and an Lg Envy.

I found that I can get a decent mobile enabled interface using verizon wireless and my lg envy. The plus side is that I can truly mobile blog. The doenside is that I am using a mini keyboard and there might be a security risk. I'll keep you posted

SprintPCS broadband at the Homestead in Hot Spings, Va

We stayed a couple of days at the Homestead in Hot Springs Virginia. I prefer to use my SpringPCS aircard instead of the hotel wireless for a number of reasons.

My laptop is running Vista and I'm using the Sierra 594U aircard with the Sprint Mobile Broadband 3.05.004 (I think there might be a newer version of the software which I should try)

Anyway, here are the results for a couple of locations at the Homestead

• The garden wing, second floor room, near the elevators. - I was getting 3 to 4 bars but the phl.speakeasy.net speed test reported about 150k up and 150k down. Response was sluggish
• The Garden Wing sitting area - I was getting 5 bars but response was slow and the speedtest reported about 140 up and down.
• The lodge at the ski area. I was getting a solid 5 bars inside and outside (There is an outlet near one of the tables closest to the window overlooking the hotel). Correction to my earlier post. I'm checked the speeds again and the results at the ski lodge were about the same as the hotel, ie 150k not 700k as I had stated earlier. It did seem a bit faster though.

So, in summary, if you can't get a decent sprintpcs connection in the hotel, you might want to try taking the shuttle to the ski area. The Hotel is more in the valley and the ski resort is another couple of hundred feet up the hill. I think the local cellular tower is somewhere behind Sam Snead's Tavern (I saw the big fake 'pine tree' there. That is not at the top of the mountains so that might be part of the issue. Keep in mind that The Homestead is a huge hotel so your connection quality will vary a lot from room to room and wing to wing.

Also, keep in mind that The Homestead offers free wireless at about 300k speeds and 20 dollars for 2 days for 2MB speeds.

UPDATE - 2/16/09 - I checked with SprintPCS's customer service. As I spoke with them I realized that I had been looking at the VOICE coverage, not the DATA coverage. The Data map indicated that I was not in a broadband area but in a Sprint Network area. IOW, 150K or so was what I should expect. On the other hand, this isn't bad coverage considering the mountainous nature of the terrain in the area. SO, if you are checking coverage for data, make sure you are looking at the data map and not the voice map

Sprint Sierra Aircard on the road - Literally

We were on the road today for a seven hour drive.

I had checked the sprintpcs coverage map and it looked like we would have decent coverage. I had loaded the software on my son's laptop and decided to let him try it.

I plugged in the inverter so he wouldn't run out of battery power. (Be careful with that because it means you have 110vAC in your car.

We had it running for about four hours straight with excellent results. In addition to simple browsing, he was watching Youtube videos on the way down in addition to downloading the latest Java. Overall, it was pretty impressive.

One thing to watch out for is to make sure you not using too much bandwidth.

Be Careful what you post

There is a story about a couple who were accused of sexual crimes. They were found not guilty. However, a lot of people were posting in Topix about it.

The couple is now suing almost 200 of the posters for defamation. The court has ordered Topix to release identifying information about the posters.

This is a sticky issue. On one hand, the internet should not be a place where people can blindly attack others. However, there is also the issue of privacy and free speech.

I suppose it would be best to always weasel word any postings with stuff like "IF the allegations are true" or talk in generalities not mentioning the individual. You do not want to say stuff like "Yeah they look sleezy and I'll bet their dogs are even nervous around them".

If you are a business owner, you probably wnat to make absolutely sure that your employees aren't posting to forums or social sites using your systems or a company email account.

Why don't people backup

I was out to a client I hadn't heard from for about 2 years or so. Their laptop had been dying over the last couple of months. The screen would go white among other things. Finally it wouldn't boot and they called.

I tried doing a registry restore, but the Sam File was locked up as being corrupted. So, I went to the next step and loaded BartPE and started moving files over to a Mybook drive. OK. the only problem is that it periodically goes into a white screen which locks the machine up so you have to figure out what actually transferred and restart th copying process.

I doubt that a repair install will work because of the possibility of the machine dying midway through the install. That would leave things worse than they are.

I'm going to finish the backups and then try one of the Linux boot Cds. If it will recognize the C drive then they will at least have internet access and, with open office, the ability to edit some of their documents (some are in the horrid docx format)

If that doesn't work, they at least have a copy of most of their data.

Another client had a massive flood in their office from a burst pipe. Unfortunately their laptop was on the floor and got trashed. Again, the backups were not up to speed.

Vista home and automatic restart after downloading updates

Vista home has a very annoying tendency to try to reboot after doing an automatic windows update.

Great idea.. let's make sure the updates get installed. ... HOWEVER, tonight I was working on copying files from a client's dead .. well dying.. laptop. There were tons of family pics so I started copying that over. About 10 minutes later I get the "Click here or windows is gonna reboot" dialog. I set it for four hours but I have a nagging feeling that the system would reboot before the copy was done. I don't feel like setting the alarm for four hours to make sure I'm back to babysit.

I did find that it is possible to change the behavior with gpedit.msc. Just go to START, and in the search box, type in gpedit.msc. That will bring up the global policy editor where you can change the behavior after updates are downloaded form a forced reboot to a nagging screen. HOWEVER, that only works if you are on Vista Business. Home users get the royal microsoft $haft..

If you have Visa business, you can

• Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update.
• Double click “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installation”.
• Select ENABLED and click OK

So, if you are a Home user, what do you do?? I found a tool at This site that will stop the auto restart process. Use it at your own risk. I did some checking and scanned it and it appears to be OK but you never know. It appeared to stop the automatic update process. I think you might be able to do the same thing by going into services and manually stopping the auto update service.

In the meantime, in order to prevent this idiocy in the future, I went into Windows Update in the Control Panel and set it to download and notify me but to not install the updates. That way, I won't end up losing a desktop full of work in process because some dilbert like engineer at Microsft thought it would be cool to force a reboot.

Targus heat defense for laptopts

i wasn't using my targus chill mat while using the laptop on my lap in the recliner. Somthing about having two fans near my privates made me a little nervous. Seriously thought, it wasn't very comfortable. The bad thing is that my HP laptop does run hot. That is bad for the machine and it does get a little uncomfortable.

I came across the Targus Heat Defense. It is esentially a flexible mat filled with crystals. The laptop's heat is absorbed by the crystals which then turn into a gel. When you let the mat cool down, the gel returns to a crystal state.

When I tested it I was pretty impressed. Id really does seem to keep the laptop cool. It is also a lot more comfortable than either the laptop alone or the laptop with a chill mat.

Now, if they can make it with a faraday cage or a bit of a lead foil on the bottom I would really appreciate that. I'm not comfortable about having the wireless working while the machine is on my lap. Doesn't the wireless work on the same frequency as microwaves. I'm a little paranoid about a cooked hot dog if you know what I mean.

Getting a snowblower working again

I know this is a little off topic, but what the heck, it's my blog.

My snowblower stopped running and wouldn't start during the last snowstorm. Fortunately, I had my plow. It would run when you shot starting fluid into the carb which indicates a possible clogged carb jet or water in the tank.

I put it aside and worked on it today. Again, it would run on starting fluid but not on the carb. I put some gas line cleaner in the tank and shot about a quarter of a can of carb cleaner into it. It would run on the carb cleaner.

I was about to give up when I got a brain fart. It is the smallest gas toro (about 15 years old). I thought that if I flipped it over, it might dislodge the clog. (WARNING GAS WILL SPILL A LITTLE .. IT WILL SPILL A LOT IF THE GAS CAP ISN"T SECURE)... Anway, I flipped it rightside up and guess what.. it runs like a charm now.

Motorola Bluetooth earpieces

I had a bluetooth H375. It was ok but the fit was never comfortable. The earpiece is, I think, way too fragile. It broke.

I contacted customer support and they wanted me to send it back for replacement. OK, but then I'm out of a bluetooth for a week or so.

I went to the store and purchased a higher end model. I don't remember the exact model but it was about 80 bucks. OK. First of all, I had to attack the packaging with a pair of poultry shears. For a moment or so I thought I would have to use the tin snips I had just purchased.

Once I got it opened, I found that the charger was not a USB plug. You need to use the Motorola charger. That is a pain because I sometimes find myself out of power while on the road and I also don't want to have to lug another charger when travelling. I took it back to the store.

I looked at all the other models and the USB versions all seem to have the earpiece that appears to have all the strength of a piece of dry spagetti or they are non usb. If you want to have a spare charger, you need to spend 14 bucks for a car charger and/or about 20 bucks for a travel charger.

Right now I am using my H375 by jamming it in my ear like Lt. Uhura on Star Trek. My right ear canal is about 3 centimeters bigger than my left.

Paypal and Quickbooks

We are using Quickbooks 2007. We recently started to sell more items on ebay with the goal of possibly doing some consignment sales.

The problem is that there isn't an easy way to get your data from paypal into quickbooks. We seem to have a couple of choices.

1. Just do a summary each month and do a journal entry into quickbooks
2. Enter the paypal data manually
3. Create or purchase an app to automatically sync Quickbooks and Paypal.

We found an app that will do the syncronization. We haven't tested it yet but it does look like it should work and the current price is only $69 or so.

You can find it at http://www.bigredconsulting.com/aboutebaylink.htm

If you are doing paypal, don't forget to include the fees in your income or corporate tax returns.