tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37992492012-02-14T00:48:20.086-05:00Thoughts on technology and the world... Computers, Internet, Consulting, Security and more. Tips, Reviews and general thoughts.Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.comBlogger2901100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-84516482656883578282012-02-14T00:48:00.000-05:002012-02-14T00:48:20.093-05:00

I had a bit of a time migrating a joomla 1.5 site to 2.5 and also upgrading Fabrik so all of the forms worked. The following finally worked for me. Your mileage may vary. WARNING the migration from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6 is tricky and risky. BEWARE Backup your existing site using akeeba or a similar application. Consider upgrading to the latest PHP, Msql and PHPMyADmin.  FTP your existing site to

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-41575904758548779472012-02-13T13:26:00.000-05:002012-02-13T13:26:16.665-05:00

We are migrating a site from Joomla 1.5.25 to Joomla 2.5. When I went to run the jupgrade extension, it seemed to just hang. There was an box with about 6 boxes under it with captions such as "Checking" and "Downloading". I checked everything and it seemed to be configured properly. I tried the upgrade using Firefox instead of Chrome and it worked! That was an extremely easy solution.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-36198010880766017052012-02-11T19:53:00.000-05:002012-02-11T19:53:31.722-05:00

Apparently, the hacker group anonymous was able to hack into dozens of email accounts belonging to Syrian officials... because they used a password of '12345'. I guess they were too busy shooting their own people to try to think up a real password. http://failblog.org/2012/02/10/epic-fail-fail-nation-probably-bad-news-lolnbs/

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-16856049724608477232012-02-11T00:39:00.000-05:002012-02-11T00:39:23.357-05:00

We were using the JCEditor in place of Joomla's TinyMCE editor. It works well for most tasks but did not work well with bulleted lists. One of the main problems was that you can't see the bullets in the editing screen. We added the CKEditor to our installation. While that editor seems to have somewhat less in the way of functions, it handles bulleted lists much better. You can find it at http:

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-71722369083330722422012-02-10T08:16:00.003-05:002012-02-10T08:17:26.690-05:00

This will send you back to nostalgia-land. It is a collection of old US car Brochures. http://www.lov2xlr8.no/broch1.html

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-29240319585484018742012-02-06T21:53:00.000-05:002012-02-06T21:53:07.211-05:00

I recently purchased a car dock for my son. He and I both have Droid-X's. He is using his phone as a GPS Navigator while in the car. We noticed a disturbing trend with both phones in that the car dock does not seem to charge the phone. It will keep the current charge but will not increase the battery level. I've confirmed this with the Battery Mixer app. I've hunted around for some possible

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-29160479743172485752012-01-17T21:40:00.003-05:002012-01-17T21:55:55.683-05:00

If you have a business, you should be sure that you have a listing in google places. Business owners can create update their listings for free. This is a no brainer for storefronts and other brick and mortar businesses. Home based businesses need to exercise some caution. My company, CGM Systems, Inc is a home based business. I created a google places listing but listed "No Walk Ins, By

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-19192891187560421202012-01-17T07:18:00.000-05:002012-01-17T07:18:00.902-05:00

Wikipedia is staging a blackout on Wednesday Jan 18 in protest of the STOP piracy act. The stop piracy act is an insane move by the coke snorting, heroin using hollywood degenerates to grab every penny then can, legitimately or otherwise. The STOP act is a bi-partisan cluster fark. THose who received large amounts of money from the entertainment industry supported this unconstitutional bill.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-80972601130715923192012-01-09T01:31:00.000-05:002012-01-09T01:31:06.689-05:00

Here is an incredible google trick.. you can search by image. Suppose you see an image on a blog and wonder what the pic is?  Here is one way you might find out. (this is also useful for dating sites where you can, in many cases, spot a fake profile pic) Go to the picture you want to search. Right click on it and scroll down to "Save Image As".. click it and save to your pictures folder. Go to

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-53395508715588271632011-10-29T02:01:00.000-04:002011-10-29T02:01:57.388-04:00

We are in the process of migrating our sites from MS Frontpage (uggggghhh) to Joomla 1.7. Many of these sites run Google Adsense. We found a powerful, easy to use, module called J - Google AdSense. It makes adding google adsense code to your site extremely easy. HOWEVER - I noticed that there is a field in the setup called Pub-ID. If you mouse over that, the message is that without a publisher

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-69490354753345159192011-10-24T22:09:00.000-04:002011-10-24T22:09:37.033-04:00

I migrated a site from joomla 1.5 to 1.7. I've been having some problems with updating some plug ins. I was getting a warning that the temp folder wasn't set. I got into the PHP.INI file and , at around line 500, found the problem.  THe upload tmp directive was commented out. I uncommented it and the warning was gone. I'm still not where i want to be with the functioning but this was one issue

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-21561520787366037472011-10-23T23:14:00.000-04:002011-10-23T23:14:19.434-04:00

We are in the process of converting a number of our MS Frontpage bases sites to Joomla based sites. Most of the FP sites had pages with HTM extensions. We turned on most of the SEO functions for Joomla 1.7. The resulting URLs have an HTML extension. Over the years, search engines have indexed the pages. If we simply switch form Frontpage to Joomla, there will be a period of time when the URL in

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-86313851635111893682011-10-04T10:55:00.001-04:002011-10-04T10:57:18.139-04:00

The "Occupy Wall Street" Anarchist morons are planning to attack Wall Street with a denial of service attack on October 10th. "NYSE shall be erased from the internet". This is a serious threat.  Banking, stocks and other transactions could be affected. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz0swK0mpMk The impacts are Inability to transact business on the internet Inability to access money.  Loss

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-37788032441025510052011-09-25T22:17:00.000-04:002011-09-25T22:17:26.592-04:00

I have a client who just purchased a new machine.  I'm migrating his apps and data over the weekend in order to deliver it Monday morning. One small problem was that he had no idea what he was using for a password for his email. The password was entered in Outlook Express so he never had to use it. I tried a couple of free recovery tool but both of them crashed. The old machine is running

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-15272728737834786292011-09-22T16:03:00.003-04:002011-09-22T19:10:33.842-04:00

I called Verizon today to see if I could get a cheaper plan for the house phone that did not have fios on it. When I called, I got a message that there was an alleged copyright infringement. Well, I found out I can't get anything less than about $50 a month with caller ID. I tried to find out what was going on with the copyright infringement thing. SO FAR I HAVE WASTED TWO PRECIOUS HOURS OF MY

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-23083437314571005482011-09-20T16:14:00.001-04:002011-09-25T22:20:52.087-04:00

We had a client whose webcam would no longer work on her HP Vista Laptop. There were messages about 'a failure to render' and that Directx was not correctly installed. We got repeated errors while trying to reinstall Directx. We also checked the video in Device Manager and Windows claimed that the drivers were up to date. We ran Windows Update and found that Vista had not yet been updated to

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-72295262878267762982011-09-11T00:38:00.000-04:002011-09-11T00:38:03.742-04:00

Many people will have invaluable information stored in Outlook. ... Calendars, Contacts, emails, notes and more.  They often have no backups of this file, especially in the case of home or home office users. They don't realize how vulnerable they are till the experience a lost or corrupted PST file. I back up my PST files by simply doing a File export. This is a manual process but, once you

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-11622113121561274002011-08-17T15:14:00.000-04:002011-08-17T15:14:01.803-04:00

Our sites are now built in Joomla using Fabrik for form management. A client wanted the email required icon  to have a red star similar to the 'is not empty' icon when using validations. The icons for the icon images live in /media/com_fabrik/images  .   The two files are required.png and emal.gif. required is a red star and email is a small envelope. We fired up photoshop and downloaded the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-41945829215738757782011-08-11T02:44:00.000-04:002011-08-11T02:44:03.285-04:00

If you have a non bootable vista machine it is a good idea to back up the files on the drives before trying any type of major repair such as a Hive replacement or repair install. One method to do this is to use a Knoppix boot CD. Knoppix is a Linux based OS that will run from a CD. The steps are straightforward but somewhat involved. Go to the Knoppix site http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-35102414903828717062011-08-01T20:54:00.001-04:002011-08-01T20:55:48.407-04:00

You can enhance the functionality of Google Maps with some extra tools from Google labs. You can get to the labs with http://maps.google.com/?showlabs=1  then enable the tools you want Several tools that would be great for boaters are The Distance Measurement Tool - If you enable this, you will get a scale in the lower left of your Google maps that allows you to get a rough idea of distances.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-63297265052740958652011-07-29T01:06:00.002-04:002011-07-29T01:43:10.085-04:00

We bought a used waverunner which we got REAL cheap.. Chris and I were bringing it down from Toms River to LBI. The lights weren't working and it was getting dark. I found a Walmart and purchased a 4 prong 4' connector kit. I also purchased 2 wires with alligator clips. I got out to the car and realized I didn't have a knife or any other blade, nor did I have electrical tape. I started heading

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-12295691060227687682011-07-27T18:39:00.000-04:002011-07-27T18:39:28.624-04:00

I have an account with Wachovia where I use Quicken to pay bills. Wachovia is transitioning to Wells Fargo. I went in today and did an update through Quicken. I found out that about a half dozen of my bills were CANCELLED.. Apparently Wells Fargo has been sending out information about the pending change. The problem is that it looks like all the other junk mail. I called Wells Fargo service.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-9562008183226169222011-07-25T12:58:00.000-04:002011-07-25T12:58:06.395-04:00

Microsoft has announced that they are ending support for Windows XP on 4 8 2014. This means that updates will no longer be available. That will leave you vulnerable to malware and exploits. In addition, you may find that you will have problems with drivers for hardware. Microsoft extended the end of support for Windows 98 but don't count on that happening again. Business and home users should

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-7611633867901546222011-07-14T00:19:00.000-04:002011-07-14T00:19:20.935-04:00

I came across a machine that seemed to be freezing when the user clicked on the TO or CC buttons to access the address book. Outlook 2003 was set up with an exchange account. I started troubleshooting and ran through the detect and repair, resetting the mail profiles, a repair install and a complete uninstall and reinstall. Outlook still continued to hang. The user's account would work fine on

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-90907084486834206652011-07-05T21:20:00.003-04:002011-07-05T21:23:38.252-04:00

A idiotic  bill proposed by an idiotic senator WOULD MAKE IT A FELONY TO POST ANY VIDEO THAT CONTAINS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND IS VIEWED BY MORE THAN TEN PEOPLE. Yep, Hollywood and the entertainment industry has to make sure that their drug addled, egocentric, silicone padded useless pieces of human debris get every penny they can. Post a youtube video of your kid singing "Happy Birthday" and

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-87182294032278018232011-06-13T16:09:00.000-04:002011-06-13T16:09:36.130-04:00

I needed to make some menu items only available to administrators in the frontend of a Joomla 1.5x site. This would be relatively easy in Joomla 1.6 since the user control has a finer grain. However, it isn't that easy in 1.5x. I found a Joomla extension called Set Special Level.   This extension is simple to use. Download the extension Install it through the extension manager in your site. 

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-12939724017106927392011-06-01T11:37:00.000-04:002011-06-01T11:37:09.698-04:00

We had been using a Sprint PCS aircard for a while. We upgraded to Verizon 3g Droids. I can get the Verizon Mobile hotspot for 20 bucks a month.  I signed up for that and it seems to be working great. I called Sprint to cancel my aircard. When I talked with the rep, I was told 'There will be no further billing". This month I got a bill for about $65. When I called, I was told that since I

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-76515120801402897272011-05-09T22:01:00.000-04:002011-05-09T22:01:39.046-04:00

Here is a site that will help you configure connections between your PC and TV for video and audio. http://www.plugpctotv.com/

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-78045613140030035462011-03-12T16:25:00.000-05:002011-03-12T16:25:21.336-05:00

Verizon has locked out the ability to tether or fire up your wireless hotspot capabilities unless you purchase an additional data package. However, there are ways to get around that without rooting your phone. This article shows how to do this with both a tethering cable and bluetooth.  . 1. Install PDANet software. You need to install the software from the Market and you need to install the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-61328642471887172102011-02-09T23:43:00.000-05:002011-02-09T23:43:46.329-05:00

I was trying to add Fabrik 2.x to a new Joomla 1.6 installation. It was giving me file compression errors. I checked the Fabrik site and it turns out that installations of Joomla 1.6 will require Fabrik 3.x which is due to come out shortly. As of 2/9/10, Fabrik 3.x is not in alpha yet.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-35307319768349763672010-12-29T21:15:00.001-05:002010-12-29T21:15:30.216-05:00

I found a great wifi analyzer at http://a.farproc.com/wifi-analyzer This free app will show ask all broadcasting wifi points and their strength. It is easy to use and gives a lot of useful information.Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-16263519716131633822010-12-29T16:18:00.000-05:002010-12-29T16:18:27.018-05:00

I was not happy with the native mail client for the d droid. I found the k9 mail client which does a much better job. What I really like is g2 that the expunge feature will delete messages from your server. It was not clear with the native email client. O utalso see seems to do a better job with attachments.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-14597998443246116722010-12-20T10:42:00.000-05:002010-12-21T12:01:45.378-05:00

I just purchased a droid x phone And found it would not connect to outlook easily out of the box. this was extremely frustrating I know much cost me to return the unit. After some searching I found a product called companionlink. Companionlink will al you to connect your droid to outlook and synchronize your calendar tasks and contacts. the application is relatively inexpensive at about 10

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-27298699013513667432010-12-18T00:22:00.000-05:002010-12-18T00:22:34.742-05:00

Ruh Roh... I just came across an article in ITnews that claims that the UN wants to set up a body to exercise control over the internet. When I hear something like this, I find myself agreeing with John "the Mustache" Bolton about the UN.. First of all, I don't want an organization where it's "peacekeepers' were trading food for sex.... with 10 year old kids.. Nor do I want control of the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-74727235784806891032010-12-18T00:10:00.000-05:002010-12-18T00:10:15.650-05:00

I just purchased an HP laserjet pro 1102w wireless laser printer.  The pros are that it comes with a 700 page starter cartridge, it's wireless and it has an 'easy' network install. HOWEVER... listen up you HP folks... Tell your moron 'programmers' that WHEN I ASK TO PRINT ONE PAGE, I  WANT ONE FREAKING PAGE.. NOT A FREAKING ENDLESS PRINT JOB.. I set the printer up for wireless printing and did

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-7960710214415667872010-12-15T10:09:00.000-05:002010-12-15T10:09:34.445-05:00

As part of trying to make my home office more efficient, I purchased some Bush and Souder Computer desks. I was very happy with both products. One problem I was running into during assembly was getting the special screws for the cams to screw in straight and not cause the laminate to flake.  I made a simple tool from a piece of 1x2 scrap. I simply drilled a hole slightly larger than the screw. I

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-34747491007686575232010-12-01T02:46:00.004-05:002010-12-01T13:00:52.925-05:00

I haven't used the USPS.Com Click and ship for a while. I have a system that allows me to assign a unique password to each online site I use. However, the USPS idiot programmers decided that they would require at least one letter to be uppercase and one to be lower case. Somehow the password algo I use is not providing the correct password to access the site. Then I figured I would just reset the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-76599619974859426022010-11-18T07:28:00.000-05:002010-11-18T07:28:24.095-05:00

I came across a windows XP laptop where I could not remove the malware. I tried a number of different tricks but it kept coming back. The symptoms were I could not connect to the windows update page at windowsupdate.microsoft.com.   Attempting to visit certain websites would result in an ad page instead of the intended website.  A win32 services error dialog would pop up occasionally.  My

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-31234701353139004032010-10-11T23:11:00.000-04:002010-10-11T23:11:22.428-04:00

I came across an interesting app. You simply put in the address where you were born (or any other address) and it will show a video with google streets and google earth data integrated into it. The caveat is that the address you submit needs to be one that has google earth/streets data. http://thewildernessdowntown.com/ The page warns that it is processor intensive and it is. It starts a

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-18767141415241960642010-10-08T09:37:00.000-04:002010-10-08T09:37:04.486-04:00

This is what happens when a Nanny state mentality is allowed to fester. The Bloomberg article explains that Obama appointee, Ray Lahood wants to ban ALL phone use in cars including hands free calls. This is the height of absurdity. I can see the case for banning handheld phone. However, banning hands free is absolute idiocy, nonsense, absurdity, ignorance and stupidity when people are not

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-3447030157288240782010-10-05T08:13:00.000-04:002010-10-05T08:13:16.101-04:00

CBS has an article about "Toasted Skin Syndrome" caused by heat from laptops against bare skin. Here are a couple of random thoughts. If your laptop is running that hot, you risk damaging it. Check the CPU usage in Task Manager to see if you are running near 100 percent. If so, see if you can identify the problem.  A cooling pad would help. However, if you have hair in your lap area, that

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-71156716758468255862010-10-04T12:42:00.001-04:002010-10-04T12:44:03.666-04:00

I came across an interesting video about inkjet printers. The essence is that the printer wastes ink to keep the nozzles clean. The waste ink goes into a container that will eventually fill up. It appears that the container is not readily accessible. I haven't verified this but it does raise a couple of issues. Ink jets might not be the best choice if you are doing a lot of printing. A

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-34607415107169236262010-10-04T10:48:00.000-04:002010-10-04T10:48:34.536-04:00

I used 411.com, anywho.com and similar services for a number of years. You simply typed in a phone number into the reverse phone search and it would provide the listing information if the number was listed. This was handy for those odd calls on the caller id that didn't have a name attached. I went to lookup a number today and found that all of the reverse phone search services I tried are now

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-14315463643847199052010-09-25T21:41:00.000-04:002010-09-25T21:41:17.344-04:00

We wanted to include a feed of headlines from one of our blogs in one of our joomla sites. We found the Simple RSS Feed Reader by Joomlaworks. It was simple to install and configure. Install the module Open the Simple RSS Feed Reader Module Give the position a name such as myfeed Enter the RSS feed or feeds to include (The exact URL will be determined by the site you that you want the feed

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-26683704107649095172010-09-21T10:45:00.000-04:002010-09-21T10:45:34.414-04:00

I found this interesting. A British couple checked into a British hotel. Apparently they weren't happy with their accommodations. It was little things like not being able to get into their room during the day due to recarpeting that upset them. They posted a negative review in Tripadvisor. ( a popular site where people post reviews of hotels and restaurants) On the second day of their three day

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-20489095714847073702010-09-10T21:30:00.001-04:002010-09-10T21:30:11.057-04:00

We had a home office client whose DSL went down. They needed immediate connectivity. The solution was to purchase a Virgin Mobile wireless modem and airtime. The modem was about $80. The plans currently offered are a 10 day, limited bandwith plan for about 10 and a one month, unlimited data plan for about $40. The client needed about a week of connectivity and sends and receives large files so

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-59478771845656676102010-09-10T21:29:00.000-04:002010-09-10T21:29:56.126-04:00

We had a home office client whose DSL went down. They needed immediate connectivity. The solution was to purchase a Virgin Mobile wireless modem and airtime. The modem was about $80. The plans currently offered are a 10 day, limited bandwith plan for about 10 and a one month, unlimited data plan for about $40. The client needed about a week of connectivity and sends and receives large files so

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-84596285559078477562010-09-02T12:51:00.000-04:002010-09-02T12:51:52.041-04:00

I was trying to use anchors in a link with the JCE Editor. When I linked to the content page, I did not see any anchors listed in the dropdown box. The solution I found was to point to the page I wanted to link to, then add #anchorname to the end of the URL listed. That appears to link to the proper anchor in the page

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-55988825316741585222010-08-23T14:00:00.000-04:002010-08-23T14:00:02.493-04:00

The Washington Examiner has an article about the City of Philadelphia requiring bloggers to have a $300 business license. This is absolutely insane. Supposedly the city is so cash strapped that it is imposing onerous and expensive business licensing requirements on someone who is making a couple of bucks a year with a blog running adsense. The insanity of this is that Philadelphia is totally

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-2780790290150222742010-08-15T08:32:00.001-04:002010-08-15T09:42:11.059-04:00

A chicago cop is suing for overtime for the amount of time he spends on his smartphone. Original story here. This does raise some interesting questions for hourly employees. For salaried employees, this is a bit different. In most cases, I would think that hourly workers should be compensated for their time. If they are expected to answer emails and perform other online tasks with their

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-85394413975059229772010-08-05T23:51:00.000-04:002010-08-05T23:51:05.703-04:00

I was working with a client who has an Okidata C5500n printer. They had it directly connected via USB to one of the machines. The printer was shared from there. That particular machine has been a bit unstable so I wanted to use the network connectivity. I tried setting it up on a Vista and a Windows 7 machine without success. I ran out of time. My initial impression is that setting up the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-67187402304846439832010-08-05T23:30:00.000-04:002010-08-05T23:30:20.520-04:00

We have a client who was experiencing problems with his Quickbooks 2010 crashing. At first glance, it seemed it might be due to the wireless connection. Quickbooks crashed while we were there. The client was simply trying to enter a funds transfer. There were about 15 lines in the Event Viewer. A quick check of the error message led to the possibility that the Company file needed to be rebuilt.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-81069916275477490372010-07-24T23:00:00.001-04:002010-07-24T23:00:07.734-04:00

The fiction of Star Trek has finally met up with reality. Remember the food replicator? All you had to do was tell the ship's computer what you wanted and the meal would appear in a few moments. Three-D printing has been with us for a while. Most of the uses have been small scale production, modelling , prototyping and mold making. Now there is a printer thanks to some very bright folks at MIT

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-79736103208751112372010-07-24T21:34:00.000-04:002010-07-24T21:34:08.806-04:00

 As our population of windows laptops ages, we are seeing an increasing number that are failing to boot with blue screens. In many cases, the data is still intact. The issue is either a hardware failure or that Windows became corrupted. An external USB enclosure can make the retrieval of your data a whole lot easier. The first thing is that you need to determine which style of enclosure you

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-19851282171857543332010-07-17T10:58:00.001-04:002010-07-17T10:59:27.583-04:00

The free JCE editor for Joomla adds some great functionality. One of the things it allows you to do is to easily link to content in your site. Once you have the JCE editor installed, the process is simple Make sure you set the editor to JCE in the Global Configuration When you edit the article, highlight the text to use as a link Click the link button. You will see options for linking either

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-37401705438488217242010-07-15T11:51:00.000-04:002010-07-15T11:51:29.856-04:00

One of the Russian spies recently arrested worked at Microsoft and another had a company that wrote decision making software. One of the problems is that detecting easter eggs in software is difficult. It would be possible for someone with the right access to leave backdoors in microsoft products that would allow data to be compromised by Russian intelligence. This impacts both national

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-23209304165680200132010-07-14T23:46:00.000-04:002010-07-14T23:46:39.269-04:00

We just installed an HWREN 1 Hi-Gain Wireless 300N Range Extender for a client. The client needed to extend the range of his wireless system and the layout of the house did not lend itself to a wired solution. The installation involved connecting the the device to the router and running the installation CD. However, after several attempts, it was not connecting. I noticed that the list of

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-47564047391716919912010-07-05T19:56:00.001-04:002010-07-05T19:56:17.480-04:00

There are times when your wifi range jsut isn't adequate. You find that your getting a weak signal and can't easily move the Wireless access point (WAP) or your computer. One solution is a wifi repeater that will capture the signal and then rebroadcast it. All you need is a power outlet. Suppose you want to use your laptop out by the pool. You could put a repeater midway between your WAP and

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-25580456887223630452010-07-02T10:06:00.000-04:002010-07-02T10:06:52.360-04:00

I tend to over-analyze things and sometime look too much at the pessimistic side of things (resulting in a lot of rice after y2k along with a lifetime supply of other stuff). Of course, Y2K proved to be pretty much of  a non event. Anyway, the unemployment numbers look really bleak. After a bit I started to think that might not have the impact I originally thought it did. I had not thought

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-16646018224972317642010-06-16T19:37:00.000-04:002010-06-16T19:37:43.625-04:00

I don't really who is in power, a socialist democrat or a conservative republican. There is a bill sponsered by Sen Lieberman that would give Obama a 'kill switch' for the internet. The bill is entitled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act.  Given the actions of this administration and the heavy handed tactics, this is a truly frightening bill. As much as I trust Sarah Palin, I would not

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-42493239454329763012010-06-09T21:40:00.000-04:002010-06-09T21:40:48.926-04:00

Google recently ended FTP hosting for blogs. We went throught the conversion process with no problem. One of the side effects of the change was that the blogs were now at http://blog.oursite.com/  instead of www.oursite.com/blog. The first step was to set up a new site in webmaster tools for the blog. That involved simply creating a new site in WMT of http://blog.oursite.com/ . The

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-63457933758370725942010-06-02T15:12:00.001-04:002010-06-02T15:13:41.142-04:00

Nothing says "ruined phone" like a good dousing with salt water. We were watching the festivities at our local boat ramp. Most of the people going out in their boats had cell phones... in their shirt or pants pocket. One good wave over the bow and you end up with an expensive paperweight. There are any number of good waterproof pouches available to help protect your phone and camera  Now that

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-85878000546201302032010-06-02T01:26:00.000-04:002010-06-02T01:26:39.714-04:00

If you want to show a fabrik form inside a Joomla Article, you can do that by the following Download the Fabrik Plugin, currently Fabrik Plugin 2.0.rc5 Make sure the plugin is enabled. It will be labeled Fabrik Make a note of the syntax. If your form is #2, then you can insert the form with {fabrik view=form id=2} Note - Fabrik is a Joomla extension that allows you to easily create forms.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-88608480804767993562010-06-01T17:25:00.000-04:002010-06-01T17:25:57.986-04:00

My outgoing mail suddently stopped working today. I had forgotten about a verizon email stating that I had to change my outgoing smtp port from 25 to 587. This is in a supposed effort to slow down spam from infected machines. We use our own domain for mail. The process is pretty straightforward but it did involve a few steps Change the outgoing server from mydomain.com to

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-7285242604168885042010-05-29T23:55:00.002-04:002010-05-30T00:03:22.698-04:00

We have been using the JCE editor with Joomla. Even though it offers more capability than the TinyMCE editor that comes with Joomla, we still had difficulty working with tables.An interim solution is to simply copy to the table to MS Word, format it, and then copy it back to the Joomla article. It can be a ltttle tricky to select the table using the JCE Editor in Joomla. Instead of a blank line,

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-63064011128558732062010-05-23T00:51:00.002-04:002010-05-23T01:09:31.271-04:00

Google has released a secure search in beta (test mode). This will, to some degree, hide your search terms and results from third parties on your network. This will help hide your searches from your boss at work, other visitors at a hotel or at school.Keep in mind that this is in a test mode at this time. Also, once you click on one of the search results it is quite probable that the URL and

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-70196292524477111462010-05-16T18:57:00.003-04:002010-05-16T19:00:30.747-04:00

We are working with a new site and uploaded the Joomlatwork free SEF patch for 1.5.17. Depsite a couple of tries, we were not seeing the SEO tab in the configuration manager.It turned out that we had Filezilla set to 'overwrite if newer'. Some of the 1.5.17 Joomla files were newer than the SEF patch files resulting in an incomplete upload of the patch.Once we changed the settings to "Overwrite"

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-84705359664180063162010-05-16T01:03:00.002-04:002010-05-16T01:07:37.089-04:00

We were getting the following error on our netbook using our Sprint Cellular Wireless card425 Possible PASV port theft, cannot open data connection.Failed to retrieve directory listingIt appears that simply switching from Passive to active mode allows us to access our servers properly via FTP

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-7843214922883833592010-05-16T00:27:00.002-04:002010-05-16T00:36:13.281-04:00

We were installing Joomla 1.5.17. After the first install, we could not log into the admin panel because the input fields were missing. We re-uploaded Joomla and tried agaain. This time the Menu creation pages were missing in the backend.A couple of more tries including re-downloading Joomla and Re-uploading it yielded similar results.I took a second look at Filezilla. I found that about 100

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-65928733462720047812010-05-12T06:53:00.006-04:002010-05-12T07:00:26.268-04:00

Most office copiers today have an integral hard drive. If your copier is returned or sold and the hard drive is not cleared then you are at serious risk of exposing personal and sensitive data.The video below show just how easy it is to find sensitive information on copiers that have been resold. If you have a business that uses these copiers, you need to be aware of the risk and ensure that the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-42717711637157775102010-05-12T00:53:00.003-04:002010-05-12T01:00:16.333-04:00

We use Artisteer to create templates for our Joomla projects. It does a great job overall.We were trying to create a top menu and it was rendering as text, not as a graphical menu.I finally dug throught the documentation and found that the trick is to set the position of the top menu to user3.With that simple change, the top menu now renders as a graphical menu.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-38502301125821160282010-05-01T14:47:00.002-04:002010-05-01T14:53:38.620-04:00

There is a trojan that tricks people into entering their data. Meanwhile it grabs your browsing history. After it gets the info, it publishes your personal information and browsing history to the web. It then notifies you that you have to pay to have it removed.However, they don't just use your credit card information, they sell it which means a stolen credit card and possible identity theft.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-29648433263830766502010-04-25T09:15:00.004-04:002010-04-25T09:35:04.223-04:00

This is probably an obvious development, but it is a bit disturbing. It appears that the Google vans doing the street view in Germany are also collecting wifi information including SSID and MAC Addresses. The SSID is the name you are giving your WIFI system. That is moderately disturbing. The MAC address is a lot more disturbing. The MAC address is a unique address given to a network interface (

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-76484981773196168852010-04-24T23:47:00.003-04:002010-04-24T23:56:00.202-04:00

We are in the process of converting our sites from Frontpage to Joomla. We add sitemaps in google and yahoo for our sites. Finding a decent low cost or free sitemap generator has always been a bit of a problem.I searched the Joomla extensions for 'sitemap' and found more than a few that looked promising. The first extension I tried seemed to be a bit too complex as far as configuration. I tried

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-9643489299695181422010-04-19T22:20:00.002-04:002010-04-19T22:35:36.154-04:00

56,000Fifty Six ThousandThat is how many pictures the Lower Merion School District snapped of students (A couple of weeks ago, they were only claiming '400 or so')... That is the trouble with our educational system, the people running it have math skills so lacking they thing that 56000 = 400.There is a Fox News article about this.A Philly.com article seems to show that the administration was

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-49580907776371332002010-04-19T21:58:00.005-04:002010-04-19T22:19:59.613-04:00

There is a Washington Times article about hackers compromising the Google password system. Apparently hackers, possibly from China, gained access to the code for Google's password system. Google has reacted to this and is taking steps to increase security.Since the hackers got access to the source code there is a possibility that they can exploit the system even in spite of any additional

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-37538550707949852102010-04-16T19:04:00.004-04:002010-04-16T19:38:17.059-04:00

If you haven't heard about this, it should send some shivers down the old spine. What happened was that the Lower Merion School district purchased laptops for students. They also purchased software that was supposedly to be used to retrieve lost or stolen laptops by turning the computer's camera on.The allegations against the Lower Merion School district is that they had turned the webcams on and

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-19813808855295379832010-04-14T02:11:00.003-04:002010-04-14T02:24:03.410-04:00

One of our clients got locked out of their Windows 2000 system. They somehow forgot the password.The password recovery bootdisk from Pogostick is a great tool for these situations. As with any powerful tool, there are are some risks. Also, if the user opted for encrypting their files, you will not be able to recover them with this tool.However, if you are simply trying to restore access and the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-1823849384664334932010-04-08T08:39:00.001-04:002010-04-08T08:51:25.369-04:00

I am still unable to use the backup features of Norton 360 Premier.I contacted Norton's online support. It took over 20 minutes to get a tech on chat. I agreed to allow the tech to take control but asked that he not close any windows as I was in the middle of a lot of work. Well the first thing he did was to start closing windows.The reason I called was because I was unable to delete an online

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-32482637957767407382010-04-07T11:04:00.003-04:002010-04-07T11:11:34.588-04:00

I have a couple of questions as to exactly how the backup works on Norton 360. I've looked at the documentation but the answers aren't clear. I have the premier edition which gives me about 25 GB of storage.Some things are not clear. For example, how does the automatic backup actually work? It appears to be an idle time scan. However, it isn't clear if it needs to do an entire backup or if it can

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-85067739400298600842010-04-07T00:20:00.002-04:002010-04-07T00:29:03.184-04:00

I hadn't paid much attention to the details of my blogs for a while. One thing that was bothering me was that I had not backed them up. Some of the blogs were via FTP and others were hosted at blogger. (NOTE - Blogger is ending FTP support as of May 1 2010)When I previously backed up my blogs, there was no option available on blogger for backups. I had to download a third party application. Today

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-37657730710892462712010-04-06T01:17:00.002-04:002010-04-06T01:23:58.630-04:00

I was downloading the Joomlaatwork free SEF patch for Joomla 1.5.15 stable. The Windows extract was telling me that the archive was empty. Joomlaatwork's admin on their support forum suggested using 7zip or Winrar.I downloaded Winrar and it extracted something called patch_1515_stable. This was not the usual folder and file structure I saw with previous versions of the patch. I looked at the file

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-77502053297105535942010-03-31T12:52:00.002-04:002010-03-31T12:56:57.231-04:00

We tried our first Norton 360 backup the other day. The backup size was about 33 gb and we had a 25 gb limit.The real problem came when we tried to delete the backup. Unfortunately the documentation could be a lot more clear. It looked like we should be able to open up My Computer, navigate to the Norton Drive and delete it from there. However, when we right clicked and clicked Delete, Windows

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-90291188221052220152010-03-30T07:09:00.002-04:002010-03-30T07:14:39.625-04:00

We are trying out Norton 360 premium for it's backup capabilities. So far, we've found the interface to be a little unweildy.We created a backup set for 20 MB and ran it manually. At the end of the run, we got an error message that 21,000 files were backed up but that there was an error. We submbitted through the email version of the one click reporting.The dissapointing thing was that we wanted

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-11426334266526439062010-03-29T23:49:00.002-04:002010-03-29T23:54:35.860-04:00

If you are running Microsoft XP with SP2 or lower or Vista without at least SP1, you will no longer be able to receive security updates after April 13 2010.Microsoft End of Support InformationIf you are running XP or Vista versions that are affected then you should consider updating to at least XP SP3 or Vista SP1.The inability to receive security updates will open your systems to attack.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-595433568696404622010-03-21T11:14:00.000-04:002010-03-21T11:17:34.378-04:00

We took the northeast regional from Philadelphia ti Washinton DC. Coach class had 2 110v receptacles for each pair of seats.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-76969434333918351632010-03-18T08:16:00.003-04:002010-03-18T08:23:20.612-04:00

Apparently some car dealers install packages that allow them to remotely disable your car, honk the horn or do other mischief. A disgruntled employee hacked into the web based system that allows them to remotely disable a car's ignition or cause the horn to continue honking.http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/hacker-bricks-cars/This is a bit disturbing at best. I'm in no way a fan of trial

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-80885638822305885382010-03-14T00:40:00.002-05:002010-03-14T00:54:19.886-05:00

I would love to get the idiots that design the password and password reset system in a room for just five minutes..I hadn't used my USPS.com account for a while. When I was using it, the password was remembered so I wasn't typing it in. I usually use an algorithm for my passwords.Well, I wanted to DO ONE SIMPLE THING.. Just one stinking thing... order some Stinking supplies from the stinking post

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-59798131794485365972010-03-11T20:18:00.000-05:002010-03-11T20:28:09.951-05:00

If you use USB hard drives in rotation for backups you can run into a problem in that hard drive. letter assignments are not sticky.In one case I ran into an additional problem in that the existing configuration mapped a network drive as D. When you added a USBdrive, it took the first available drive letter which happened to be D. This caused conflicts. A solution was to use USBDLM (USBDrive

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-66670981624442639402010-03-09T10:28:00.002-05:002010-03-09T10:33:07.349-05:00

My Norton Internet Security has been bugging me to renew. I wasn't worried because my past experience was that it would continue to run after the end of the subscription which gave me a couple of days leeway.However, when I booted one of my machines today I noticed that Norton simply stops working when the subscription expires. In other words, you apparently lose all of your protection.The

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-91583971666966783552010-03-01T09:28:00.004-05:002010-03-01T09:47:47.507-05:00

A new app for phones should make you a bit paranoid about your security and safety. Essentially, it will recognize faces from pics of total strangers. The app then searches social networking sites such as Facebook and looks for matches. For details see the Sun Article . The site for the developers of Recognizr is at hereCurrently the software is a prototype and people need to opt in for it to be

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-45055672395905450552010-02-28T23:33:00.003-05:002010-02-28T23:36:00.442-05:00

This is interesting. A caller to a radio tech show called in to complain that the wireless access she was grabbing from a neighbor disappeared.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-2159889846343130772010-01-19T19:01:00.002-05:002010-01-19T20:15:08.513-05:00

My previous post mentioned that I was having assorted problems including the loss of the Voice Command function on my Samsung Saga running Windows Mobile 1.5.After I had fixed the Voice Command issue, I noticed that my messaging key (in the lower right of the keypad) was not bringing up messaging. I also found that I could not start the messaging app at all. If I pulled the storage card (when the

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-40272389784127996972010-01-19T18:53:00.003-05:002010-01-19T18:59:48.062-05:00

The voice command for dialing suddenly stopped working on my samsung saga giving an error of "voice command has encountered a problem. restart voice command and try again". I tried several reboots including taking the battery out. The problem persisted.This is extremely aggravating in that I was no longer able to use my phone in a hands free mode while driving. I did some checking and someone had

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-57808240833957327332009-09-09T11:24:00.002-04:002009-09-09T12:15:34.871-04:00

I have a minor gripe with the design of the USB ports on the Dell Inspiron Miini. I realize that netbooks are amall but I would be happier if the USB ports were not so close together

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-36743986560355979812009-09-02T20:22:00.003-04:002009-09-02T20:28:46.520-04:00

I purchased a copy of Quickbooks 2009. Intuit has changed the activation process. After you register the software, it comes up and tells you you have to call in for the activation code.So, I called the 800 number. It's a good thing I didn't try to do this at night or on a weekend as they are not 24x7. When I called in I had to listed to some pre-recorded advertising for various quickbooks add

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-42309757214383274042009-08-28T18:16:00.002-04:002009-08-28T18:21:56.474-04:00

I was in the middle of a family emergency when I realized just how bad the reception and connectivity was on my Samsung Saga. I missed and dropped two calls from doctors due to poor reception. The problem was that the docs were in the hospital and I had no way to get back to them. When I was in the hospital I was usually without signal. The irony was that my wife's 29 dollar phone would get

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-73568260298338905662009-08-28T18:13:00.003-04:002009-08-28T18:16:00.831-04:00

Cnet has an article outlining a bill that would allow Obama to sieze control of private networks and the internet. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.htmlThis is particularly frightening given the history of this administration taking control of other private sector entities such as the Auto industry.

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-48661069750925480282009-07-29T22:15:00.003-04:002009-07-29T22:22:54.384-04:00

I ran into a problem with my Samsung Saga running Windows Mobile 6.1. I was in a location where I was using wireless and the wireless provider had blocked the email ports. I thought "No problem, I'll just send this when I get outside". I was still getting the error that "The message(s) cannot be sent..."I played around with my email provider to no avail. I found the only way to fix the problem

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3799249.post-60008504342380836702009-07-19T12:37:00.002-04:002009-07-19T12:42:26.771-04:00

This is extremely creepy. I've known about this for a while but erroneously supposed that only the Government was able to spy on you using your cell phone.The creepy part is that someone can listen in to your conversations even when the phone is not being used. The safest way to have a secure discussion when you are meeting with someone is to remove your cellphone battery (or use a homemade

Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640319258873281684noreply@blogger.com0