Parachutes and Safety-nets

Upgrayed Pt. 2

2007-11-07T13:16:00.000-06:00

So. Now I know what I want:

CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Power Supply (cause any motherboard/CPU I upgrade to will need more power than my old solution was using. make sure you take that into account when youre purchasing upgrades. Power is plenty important and can be the source of many a problem.)

Now I need to shop around. I am blessed enough to live in a city that caters to the industry. In addition to more Comp USA's, Best Buys's, and Computer City's than I can easily count- Theres 3 Fry's stores that serve this city alone. Thats just overkill, but I certainly dont mind it. For instant gratification in your BYOC (Build your own computer) venture, Fry's is a good place to start. Spend time with the sales reps learn about the pieces youre buying, check specs against multiple products and make a selection, in one of the best stores for that kind of consumer goodness. I am also of the good fortune to have worked in a small store that does computer assembly and parts sales and So I know people who i can ask for opinions and can trust to get quality parts. Sometimes I'll pay a little more, but i know im buying something i wont be returning the next day. (which.. happens more often than i like to admit).
So I shopped. I dont want to spend too much, cause im not independently wealthy and my money tree has been confiscated by the government. I set a conservative ceiling of 200 dollars. So. I tell the guys I know (or you would tell the sales guy) what you want and how much you want to spend. Be specific. If you dont want to swing wild from your estimate, dont give them much room to sell you. Know what things you want and what things you dont and while you should be firm, do listen to their suggestions. If they suggest that the 19 dollar power supply wont work, find out why the 200 dollar one will, then find one somewhere in the middle that does the same thing. Another alternative is to have your parts shipped in. You can find really good deals (ill tell you where in another post) if you dont mind thinking ahead and having your things shipped to you. Though, getting your shipped parts in a timely fashion can pretty much obliterate any savings you got on the parts themselves unless you get some free shipping. Which some places offer.

I did both. I contacted my good friends locally, Had them order some parts to their store, assemble and test them then I added the components I found at their store to my order. I paid a little over my estimate, but I got quality parts, tested, and I trust who I was buying from- and thats certainly worth the cost of shipping.

So. In a couple days I'll have the pieces I need to actually complete this upgrade and get to the real work. Stay Tuned to find out what horrible mistake ive already made!!!

WinRARRRRR!

2007-11-05T09:16:00.000-06:00

So as you might have heard I'm building a new media storage place. And that means Ive got to move everything from one place to the other (and consolidating at the same time). But what if you have gobs and gobs of music and don't want to wait 14 years for your file to file copy to go through, you should really think on compressing the data before you send it.

Enter the WinRAR
Theres a few good compression utilities you can use, PKUNZIP and WinZip are among what must be tons, but WinRAR is what *I* use, and so thats what I'm talking about. I was able to set it up so that I compressed all the music I owned and moved it to the place i wanted it sent and when it gets there I can have WinRAR unpack it all just like where it came from- it's a very sturdy little piece of program. Moving, Backing up, sharing, most people use some kind of utility when doing one or all of those activities and for my money (free, incidentally) WinRAR wins.

Upgrayed Pt. 1

2007-11-03T12:23:00.000-05:00

When we left our intrepid hero..

I was kneeling sobbing, amidst piles of wires and case fragments. "It's dead, Jabs", Ben called casually from the couch sipping on grape Gatorade watching the latest Weeds episode. I'm kneeling here, sleeves rolled up with the wires and hard drives of my middle child laying around me and he's making Star Trek jokes. Assassination queue: +1. But he's right. I'm not getting this computer back together again and honestly, I don't want to. Too many of the components are too difficult to replace be it for price or availability, and I could use more oomph. Time to upgrade. But to what?

I've been here before. Time to shop, money to spend, and oceans of choices. I'm a firm believer in "The right tool for the right job". I don't get a 10-ton press when all i need is a tack hammer. Same thing for computers. I don't get the Quad Core Mega Awesome ULTRABLASTER CPU with 128 Terrabytes of hotRAM, if I'm not going to be singlehandedly completing the Colonization of Mars. It'd be nice to have all that power, but I built multiple machines for a reason. I tinker with a lot of projects and I like having a few different complete systems to share the load around. (also, when i totally blow it with one of my hair-brained schemes, I'm not totally screwed) So, what will i buy for this machine? First, Whats it goign to be doing? For a lot of people, its either Work, Home, or Super Face Melting Gaming Experience but for me, I need to expand on those topics. I do keep a modest computer for keeping up with emails and bills and news and such and I am a geek so I did build as much of a face melter as I could afford, but for work.. I cant have one single machine for "work". Between media storage and distribution , network tinkering, graphics and web page fiddling, etc.. theres a lot of concerns to keep in mind. For me, This new machine will be a new media distribution point. A new place to feed music, and video to my network. Which is good. Ive been meaning to upgrade the one I'm using and in doing so, I can build a dedicated network sniffer with the old media center. It's win/win , I'm bringing new purpose to an old box by building a new one.

Second, I do a salvage operation. What can I keep, What should I toss. DVD is a solid format not only for movies and stuff but for lots of data and has backward compatibility with CDs. If the DVD player works and you don't need to upgrade to a burner (and I don't) thats a no brainer. Keep it. The hard drives are kind of the same way, as long as their size is something you can deal with then keep them. I'm going to add storage to this computer, so ill be buying a hard drive, but really, I wont need much more than I've got. Which is good. I don't print my own money, so i try not to shovel it away when i don't have to. The CPU and Motherboard of this machine will have to go. For one they're bad, but also, the parts are older than i can replace reliably. If I decided to keep the motherboard and just do the processor, finding one would be a pain, id more than likely need to ship it to me. Same for the Ram that would go on the motherboard if i decided to keep *it*. All of that will need to be redone. I wont need much in the way of graphics, and quite honestly for what ill be doing I can probably find a motherboard with a graphics card , sound card, and network card built in. Thats a whole flock of birds with one stone and a bunch of crazy ricochets. So. Where to buy all this cra- er, equipment?

Stay tuned!

Welcome to NaBloPoMo?

2007-11-01T13:21:00.000-05:00

Today kicks off NaBloPoMo! which, as I understand it is the month that everybody who has a blog posts something to that blog every single day to make up for the oceans of dead air that would otherwise await readers who stumble across it. And so. To jump right on the bandwagon:

This month!!!

Upgrayed! - Follow the trials of me trying to get a tiny machine off the ground on the cheap. Practicing what I preach! (Don't tell anybody)

Online Shopping for the holidays! - Where to shop, How to shop, Who not to give your credit card numbers to. Namely me.

My computer can do that?! - Email, Myspace, Websurfing, shopping... you say theres a word processor in here too? What else can my computer do? Plenty! I'll give you a heads up about some other uses.

The Inbetween Days- Bet you thought I sat hunched over the keyboard day and night thinking up things to type into my blog. Well, I do. But these are some things I think about doing if I ever decided to get up.

... And prolly much much more! Cause.. November has a whole lot of days.

Conspiracies Exposed!

2007-10-25T09:31:00.000-05:00

Ok not really. It's been a long time coming, but this isnt it. THIS post is about Microsoft. First tho, some things about my favorite topic: Me.

Its no secret having read some of my earlier blogs that Im no stranger to the windows family. My dad worked at IBM, I was trained on the Microsoft platform and products, DOS, then Windows- so, I reference them often. Which says nothing about what I think of them as a company or their political stance or any of that. Al that means, is that I run their software and It gets the job done at least to my meager standards. Since that time, my OS library has increased and ive explored other platforms, been trained on other systems and learned much much more about the field I've chosen and in some cases, yes I have found better solutions away from the Microsoft umbrella. Still tho, I keep a windows machine in current and in good working order. Just in case.

I came across an article about the windows search agent being forced to desktops during a Microsoft update regardless of whether or not you turned that featured off. The effect is that the windows desktop agent gets downloaded and run and starts cataloging (indexing) the contents of your C: after a windows update. Unfortunate, especially if you elected 'no'. What Im concerned about is the frequency that people said this was another instance of Microsoft flexing its all powerful muscles and not caring about the customers it continually punches in the head and gut. I have a hard time following that line of conspiracy theorism. (Yes. I made that up right on the spot.)

Microsoft is a company. Companies like money and they get most of it from us. Consumers. No matter how saturated the playing field is with their product I dont think any company that has private sector sales can afford to piss off their client base. Maybe some of them, but certainly not all of them and definitely not consistently. It might seem like sometimes all of a particular group of people dont like a specific change, but 1) it probably wasnt done intentionally, 2) if it was, it was probably for another reason that doesnt involve tweaking our collective noses and 3) the group that was offended is probably not the general public who wouldnt notice most of what goes on 'under the hood' anyway.

Some companies do have it out for you. I dont know that Microsoft is one of those. But from a purely down to earth stand point consider the following. No customers, for whatever reason means no money. And while bill gates alone has more money than God, he's not cranking out software by himself. If he's not afraid of us for that reason, he should be.

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Now playing: Horace Silver - Song For My Father
http://foxytunes.com/artist/horace+silver/track/song+for+my+father

Housecleaning

2007-09-20T15:34:00.000-05:00

Your computer, depending on use will every now and again require some general maintenance and care. Changing the oil, kicking the tires- that kind of thing. Since I'll be getting alot of this done on my systems this weekend, I thought Id blog about the process.

My usage varies. As serious as I want to claim that I am, I did build a computer to do my gaming on. I like to tell myself I did it because I wanted to keep my gaming files away from the machine most prone to viruses, and I certainly didnt want performance compromised on my file and web servers- so thats my story and I'm sticking to it. So, right to it.

Im thinking most computers will fall into this category. I send/receive emails, do downloads, do more downloads, and save files for sharing and such like that. Thats alot of online time with systems I cant control and dont always trust. So, in addition to the malware scans and the firewall I also take some time every week to defrag the drives the computer stores data on. Fragmentation occurs when the system cant or wont allocate enough contiguous space to store a complete file all together, but instead puts parts of it in gaps between other files (you get gaps in the first place because they used to hold a file that the system has subsequently deleted). Big files and big numbers of files help you get fragmentation faster and the drive slows down trying to sort through all the data to find you what you need (want). Defragmentation attempts to alleviate these problems.

The process of creating new files, and changing old ones , is sometimes called 'churn' and is, like fragmentation happens at main directory and subdirectory level. When you defrag your system, the program uses empty space on the drive to shuffle the data around to put files back where they should be. Files that should be next to eachother, get back together in a very memory intensive dance that cannot be performed on a system that has no freespace.
*some* files cannot be moved. System files, the swap file and other files labeled 'read only' wont be moved- but everything else is fair game. This can cause a problem say, if you copy a CD onto your harddrive. Files on a CD retain their 'read only' status when they hit your hardrive and you may end up with a big load of britney spears that you cant move for no good reason.
Also, while I'm thinking about it- a big misconception about defrag is that it stops your computer from acting wiggy. (Wiggy is a technical term) Not So! Your filesystem is designed to work around fragmented filespace. It works slower, but it works. What happens is, to run a defrag you must first run a chkdsk [chkdsk is a filesystem checkup utility]. Since it ends up being run first and usually fixes any problems it finds, people find their systems running all dandy after the defrag and assume that was the fix. Close. But no family friendly candy cigarettes.
Every system needs it every now and again, for me that one computer needs it more often. Not always because I notice it running slower or because i hear weird noises*. But because I know I shuffle bits on that computer like nobody's business. And If i want to keep performance up and my title as general nerd- I gotta put in the work.

If youre reading this youll prolly only need to do this at most every couple weeks, but you know what you do on your computer. Use your good judgment.

Ciao

* You know what it sounds like when your harddrive is doing what its supposed to. If you hear anything that even remotely sounds like your garbage disposal, hard shuddering clicks, polka music, or the like from your harddisk when you notice problems? Thats bad. Have it checked out. Soon.

Remember Two Things (DMB fans will understand)

2007-09-14T11:36:00.001-05:00

These two things I think are just ducky and I thought you guys might like to read about them.

Thing One: Philly. Home of the Liberty Bell, the Cheese steak sammich and now, the very first city i know about under the warm snuggly blanket of wi-fi. Yes, The entire city (or at least 135 square miles of it) are going wireless. That is, anybody under that massive blanket will not only be incredibly hot- they will have internet access. All public areas, Most private areas not inside a microwave oven or a building - all wifi. And mostly for free.(although you do have to register with Earthlink) In some places the wireless thats already set up has a stronger signal and im sure theres bound to be some other problems but this is a HUGE step towards 'internet for everybody' and while thats going to be a challenge, I thin kits a worthy one.

and Thing Two: Two colleges on either coast are working out a system for disaster recovery between the two of them. Fantasticness! Disaster recovery is a big thing with me. What to do when your hard drive goes off the reservation and all your data goes to p00p. Most people have copies on another driver (but what if theres a fire) and some companies use off site storage or even third parties that are specifically setup to offer that kind of service - but can cost incredible amounts of money. By working together these two schools have kept their cost relatively low and the distance.. What can you say they're on opposite ends of the country.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_WTF?!

2007-09-08T08:59:00.000-05:00

First off, Let me apologize for leaving you dangling this past week. The internet is wide and vast and full and work has been busybusybusy. Honestly, my little fingers couldna take th' strain. So I had them replaced. And with these new tireless digits of blogging power I bring you:

The Registry

Rather, Microsoft brought you the registry way back with windows 3.11. The registry is a directory that stores information about pretty much everything installed on running on configured on your computer and even the users who use it (and the preferences there of). Just about everything is represented in some way shape or form in the registry. Almost every change involving the operation of your computer is logged in there. This glorious structure was brought about as an improvement on the way .ini files were kept all over the place. Now, instead of being stored wherever that information is all locked up (not so tight) in one location. And therein lies the benefit *and* the problem.

Editing your registry!
And why you shouldn't touch it with an 8 bit probe If you don't know what you're doing.

For being such a centralized hub of the innerworkings of your computer, the registry isnt locked up very tight. Administrators on your computers have it frighteningly easy when they want to get to and 'repair' your settings. Why is that bad? Honestly, how many of you make a distinction between your personal account and the administrator on your home computer? Go ahead and count hands, I'll wait. Let alone people who pop by for a visit and think they can tidy up your startup sequence with a little tweak here, a little tweak there. 'Hey, did you know I can change your splash graphic? Lemme just open your registry here...' The simple fact of the matter is - and this is important- You can screw things up really, really bad in your registry. Very few problems in tech support require you to format your computer. A lot of times, thats the easy/hard way out and technicians who want you out of their hair will suggest it, but 8 times out of 10 theres a long way that works just as well.

Messing up your registry is not like that.

You can go from 'great computer, savior of my bank account and the glue that binds my entire family together' to 'most expensive paperweight im likely to have thrown at me by my screeching soon to be ex-wife' in a short, short amount of time. It's repairing your daughters dental work with a chisel and a 10 pound sledgehammer. It's parking your Aston Martin with a bulldozer. (These, by the way, are not exagerations. Ask the nearest accessible screeching ex-wife you can find.)

But If you're feeling brave...

If you really want to give it a shot please re-read the previous paragraph aloud to your lawer and with your family present. Then, after signing the required forms, think about what changes you actually NEED to make. Keep in mind that most people only wander in the dangerous cave of forbidding doom that is the registry when something is wrong, and they've run out of other options to fix it. Find a hardhat and some tools you're comfortable working with, make a backup, get religious.

Tools you say?

Yes. Tools. Theres a few different ways to edit your registry. You can tinker manually using the software included with your Windows OS. You can crank up Regedit.exe (or Regedit32 if you're so inclined) and start a whackin. Theres also a few programs that makes edits to the registry through a shell, it offers a selection of preprogrammed niceness and lets you make additions to or subtractions from your registry with the relative safety of knowing something else is doing the typing. 'Registry Mechanic' and 'Hijack This!' come to mind. You can edit it from the command line if you feel really brave. reg.exe can be downloaded for every windows OS including XP and Vista, but it's included with those too. You programmers who might be reading for giggles will be happy to know "the registry can be edited through the APIs of the Advanced Windows 32 Base API Library (advapi32.dll)." Now, Im not a programmer so I leave all that well enough alone.

A few things before I close. Youll notice I didnt go into the structure of the registry, link to any programs to help you edit the registry, and I certainly did NOT recommend you make any changes whatsoever. Theres a reason. I have enough on my plate without having to worry about being assaulted by an angry teenager with a frapuccino because 'daddy' read my blog and turned their computer into a flowerpot. That being said, If you want to know a little about how your computer is setup and what makes it do the things it does, then peek around. Do some reading, learn some things.

Coming Soon:

Managing User Accounts!
A Vista review!
More pictures of cuddly animals!

Computussin

2007-08-25T11:16:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post I talked about making your computer safe on the internet. I talked about Anti-virus software, Spy/Adware, Firewalls and patches. You know you can get patches for your OS from it's manufacturer ( Windows from Microsoft, Jaguar from Macintosh, *nix from.. whoever made your particular flavor or whoever wrote an update for it. Love that OpenSource mindset).

But there's software everywhere! How do you know what you need? Well I'll tell you. In these next paragraphs ill tell you THE best anti-virus software, Spy/Adware, and firewall software ever written that will protect you from everything ever invented and bring your paper in every morning while it makes fresh squeezed OJ and slightly buttered toast! Ok not really. But I'll give you a few good places to start and some software that will give you a basis of comparison to make educated choices should you want to pick another. You'll have to make your own toast.

Anti-virus
I very humbly recommend using more than one piece of anti-virus software. Opinions vary, but I have my reasons. Virus code particularly new virus code can change itself to avoid detection. You tell your AV (anti-virus) software to watch out for people without hats, viruses can learn from that and put on a hat. It's much harder for virus software to keep up with 2 rule sets from two consistently updated anti-viruses programs than it is to keep up with one. The virus after all, hopefully, isn't getting regular updates. Also it's so important to update your anti-virus software for the easy reason that people who write viruses just have too much time on their hands and theres so many. New stuff is always coming out. The good news is people who write AV software know that and are often as hard at work to update the virus definitions for their software. Keeping it updated is often an automatic procedure and it only helps. A pretty good place to start your virus fighting enterprise is Avast. Avast is a fully functional Vista capable piece of anti virus software and is free to boot. (well, a version of it is anyway) Another good freebie is AVG. AVG has been going strong for a good while and A lot of people I know use this exclusively, it just kind of hums away in the background doing its job. auto updates, you can schedule them to run in the middle of the night, system wide scans- its pretty self reliant. Both these have pay upgrades, and If you want the extra bling they're well worth it but to get started you could do much worse than either or both of these. Also, don't forget that your ISP will probably have a deal with some anti-virus software attached and it's probably a pay version that comes with a nice long subscription. Cant hurt to give it look.

Adware and Spyware
Adware designed to choke your connection and show you ads whether you want them or not and spyware designed to do just that; to take control of or to intercept your interaction with your PC and the net without your consent and sometimes without your knowledge. Adware is whats going on when you're just sitting there and all the sudden an ad pops on the screen. You close it only to get 6 more and you close them only to have the process repeated 5 minutes later. Spyware is when your internet explorer's home page has been changed and you don't know why. When sites that used to go one place are redirected somewhere else? thats spyware too. It can even collect personal information about the sites you visit and your activity on them. Spooky. And all bad. Here are some ways to fight it.
Ad-aware and Spybot S&D are two heavy hitters to deal with these intrusions. They've been doing it for a good long while and even among the big league pay as you go these still hold their own. Again, after you set them up they can pretty much run on their own. I dont recommend running the scans right in the middle of your WoW gaming, but whatever floats your boat.

Firewall
There's 'fire' in the name it MUST be important. Well, it is. Firewalls form kind of the last line of defense for your network or computer. They're the bouncer for your club, the Muscle for your family business, your big cousin Vinny for your lemonade stand. Once th riffraff gets in, It keeps the riffraff from getting out again with anything important (and.. in the process lets you know riffraff has gotten in, in case you didn't know). In computer terms what it does is monitor your connection for programs that are trying to access it, and only letting the programs out that you want out. "Whoa whoa whoa sailor! I just got all this other software to keep crap out of my computer and now i need this for stopping the bad stuff in my computer??" you say? Yup. Even being as careful as you can be sometimes isn't enough. Bad things will happen. Part of the information you hopefully take from Parachutes and Safety-nets is what to do when bad things happen to you, and to minimize the damage that can be done. Say, you get a virus and you don't know (because.. who would intentionally download a virus?). And this particular viruses job is to flood the internet with spam mail about tuna fish and peanut butter and spread the word about the Nigerian relief fund they should send money to. It happens more often than you think. Vinny, ever vigilant, has been told that only a few programs should be sending email, and this virus isn't one of them- so when the virus opens the door to start sending its filthy spam it gets clotheslined and generally humiliated while Vinny alerts you to its presence. 'Excuse me, cousin user, should this be contacting everybody you know and a lot of people you don't?' Now, Vinny isn't a mind reader, and just like Vinny, your firewall isn't going to automatically know whats good traffic and whats bad traffic. Sure it'll know that historically some ports are used by bad software, but every user is different, and you'll have to teach it what you yourself use and what you don't. But once you've crossed that hurdle you've got a fairly sturdy solid individual watching the door, and usually thats enough of a deterrent to send bible salesmen and Avon ladies looking to advertise for free from your computer on their merry way. What's a good firewall? There's plenty. In fact you'll even find that some hardware, Routers especially and some OSs (windows XP SP2 on up included) have firewalls built in. Not to mention all the software firewalls. Some people get antsy about using more than one firewall and to be honest I have seen it cause problems, but if you want to do the job with software and you don't want to use your OS's (or it doesn't come with one) then why not Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm has been in the business a while too and they do a pretty good job if it's configured correctly. Your firewall, by the nature of its job, could very well make it look like its cut off your internet connection completely- but probably not.

All this software comes with marvelous documentation and it all does a pretty good job- so if theres a problem it's more likely that the answer can be found in the documentation than that i intentionally led you astray.It comes with all kinds of monitors so you can see exactly whats going on, and you should know that before you call your ISP asking them why you don't have service.
I promise *grin*.

Advanced User Observations #1

2007-08-29T11:36:00.000-05:00

So, some people who's opinions i value pretty highly saw that i'd started a blog and thought they would offer their constructive criticisms and what nots. They were appalled at some of the things I was telling you. "Anti-virus all the time? Hogwash!" "Firewalls at the PC level?! Flabbergasms!" And other such nonsensical words.

And they're right. sort of.

They're perspective is from the user who knows whats out there, where the threats come from, and what an infected PC looks and performs like. They recognize performance knocks of %4 and know precisely where and how to fix the problem- but I'm not writing for them. I'm writing for you. You mother of two working 60 hours a week in a job that never sees the inner workings of your talking box. For you 30 year old plumbing professional that could care less what timing your RAM chips use. You 14 yr old Bratz buying child of 'The Hills' who knows when the computer is on, when it's off, and when its not giving you what you want.

For instance. My own setup wouldn't work for many of you. The only machine I consistently watch out for is the one constantly connected to the internet doing downloads and surfing and hurting spammers feelings, but on that one i scan maybe 5 times every 3 days and its all automated. The other machines? Every week. At best.I never hear from those machines unless theres a problem or unless I'm doing patches to something. Firewalls? I monitor traffic in and out at two points along my network but certainly not at every machine. But then, My apartment looks and feels like a cave and I haven't seen the sun in 8 years.

For those of you who enjoy the interaction with other human beings and don't want to get bogged down in the muck as long as it takes to 'sense' when your computers might be running a tad off the mark thats great. The world needs bright smiley faces running the joint and calling the tech support cave when and if theres a problem. Because I so enjoy our conversations.

They raised a good point though. I should at least give a glimpse at how some other people do their builds to illustrate whats important to different people at different levels about the things I've been talking about. And so: the Advanced User Observations.

After I explained to them it was more an issue of audience selection than my regression to the old ways, we went back to our respective caves and farmed Kara for OP l00ts while pwning n000bs until the wee hours of the morning when I dropped into a nice static sleep after counting sheep. 1... 10... 11... 100...
zzz..

********

2007-08-27T22:42:00.000-05:00

Password security through complexity.

One girl I know has a pattern. She picks a key and from that key on the keyboard she has a predetermined pattern and thats her password. Some people use personal info, some people use names and dates that are important to them some people use the names of pets and dead presidents and some people use 'God'.

"A password is considered 'strong' when it contains more than seven characters and includes at least one uppercase alpha, at least one lowercase alpha, and at least one numeric or symbol character." -Security Administrator Street Smarts pg 82

You want your password to be 'strong' because 'weak' ones have a lot of opposition out there. Brute force attacks, dictionary attacks, common sense, social engineering and easy passwords are just ripe for the cracking. Pets names, celebrities, birthdays, SSNs, all in jeopardy. And to that end, Some tips:

1. Try to use something familiar (personal) but complicated, even altered with numeric and special characters.

2. If you can help it don't use one password for everything.

3. If you suspect your account has been compromised, don't wait for proof, change your password immediately.

4. Make habit of changing your password (or altering it you lazy few) every now and again.

5. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever give out your password. If you think about it, the only people who might ask you for your password are people who probably shouldn't have it anyway.

6. Give me your password.

7. That was a test.

New Trojan! Not Condom!

2007-08-23T10:53:00.000-05:00

Account information spam is a term that has recently been turning up. Dubbed 'the latest spammer trick', it is definitely something to look out for. This is pretty much a multi pronged attack. Using a phishing technique to get you to a website that is infected by a virus and thus infect yourself. It works even if you realize that the site youve gotten to is bogus.

Be VERY VERY careful that you're sending your info to the correct place. If you have any reason to doubt the legitimacy of a website or email, call somebody and find out. Trust me, If your bank needs your information (if for some reason the wicked witch has come and wiped out all their customer information databases and their backups and the backups they keep offline in a vault in Toledo) then they'll let you know. Someone will call you, someone will mail you. A really informative article can be found here. If you're interested. Or don''t trust me. For some reason. I don't mind.

Hi. I'm a PC.

2007-08-23T00:51:00.000-05:00

Your new PC is like a new pet. A pet that you plug into the wall and can play games on and visit Myspace. A pet that can cost -alot- of money. And so, like a new pet it has to be cared for and shown love or it will get sick and take a crap in your shoes.

Your PC runs an operating system. Windows, Linux, Unix, and all the big cats that are Macintosh: all OS's. And typically you buy your computer a good deal after an operating system has been released. In that time, people smarter than me have been staying up late at night with their little hats on (they all wear hats) finding little tweaks and problems in these OS's and after enough are found (or when a really big problem is found) a patch is released. Patches for OS's do lots of things. They fix security holes, they make things that seemed easy a little easier, they fix mistakes. Most of the mistakes they fix are tiny little things you wouldn't even know about. Some of them are not. And your computer needs to be patched so that viruses that exploit those mistakes can not hurt your new pet. Every manufacturer of Operating Systems has a place where you can get patches online, almost always from that company's website. This is a very *very* good idea.

It's pretty widely accepted that computer viruses are a bad thing. At the very least they make your computer do things you don't want it doing. Protect yourself. Anti-virus software comes in tons of flavors and just as many prices 9 in later blogs I'll tell you about a few of them). Since most viruses now a days are spread across the internet, many internet service providers have taken to offering subscriptions to certain virus software with their service. This is also a very good idea. But your virus software is next to useless if you don't keep it up to date. Viruses have all kinds of little tricks to hide from software or even to fool it into thinking it isn't there. Anti-virus software makers know this, and when they figure out the tricks they teach their software how to catch it. Hence the updates. Keep current.

Viruses aren't the only software that does the little wicked in your computer. Malware (a group term for adware, spyware and a few other nasties) is also a serious threat to your privacy and your computers performance among other things. Here again, since almost all malware is circulated online, most ISP's offer software to help you deal with it, and you should certainly take them up on the offer.

And one last thing. Firewall. It's can be a little complicated because it can do so many things- but for the purposes of new computer setup, we'll settle for installed and on. For now. A firewall's job is to monitor your computers connection to the world and give you some say in what gets in and what gets out. It can be annoying (Vista is notorious for this) but if configured correctly and after it's learned the system its running on, the good gets better. If you have a question about some software your firewall isn't sure about, look it up. and If you cant find an answer that satisfies you, deny the request. Thats a quick and dirty good rule of thumb. If you don't know ask, if you cant find out say no. Some people argue that your firewall is worthless if you aren't reading its logs. Firewalls keep records of what it lets in and out of your system and when and they can be a worthwhile read when you need to know. But for the most part if you keep all these suggestions in mind you should be okay.

Once again. Your PC is vulnerable out of the box. Patch it. Secure it from nasties. Firewall it. Protect your investment.