My computer is slowing to a crawl once again

My computer is slowing down to a crawl once again and it is because Windows update is running every five minutes.  Or maybe I should title this 'Microsoft is trying to kill Windows XP' and how to fight back.  The first thing to do is to turn off auto updates and free up about 400 to 500 MEGS of memory.  What, are these people so crazy as to think that a monthly update requires 1/2 a gig of memory almost all of the time????

First to an alternate control delete to see if windows update is the problem. In the picture above it and its associated service host are taking 400 megs of memory.  Then do a start run services.msc and turn off automatic updates.

Camping at Allegany State Park

We just got back from camping at Allegany State Park.  The blue roof on the main building was just underlayment for a slate roof.


I spotted a beautiful lady on the covered bridge.  Actually I tried to take a picture of both of us using the cameras timer but I could not get there fast enough.....

We got up early and took several pictures as the sun was just rising. 

The deer sometimes like to hang out in the middle of the road.

This is two fawns hanging out in the road.

Here is a fawn along the side of the road.

Sunset, with a canoe paddling along the center right side.

A deer stops to look at me.

Can you spot the deer in this picture?  There are four of them.  They can really blend in at times.

The stone tower.  Its really not very tall.

The view from the top of the stone tower.

Our little cabin for the weekend.

The Dude

I have come across a new tool for computer / network repair called 'the dude'.  I just used it to figure out why a server was not available to everybody.  When I clicked on the server under 'the dude' it noted that there was no DNS name for the server!  So I went to the server and changed some of its DNS settings, then restarted it, and then it worked fine.  This was after about 4 hours of fighting with the server because just 2 computers could not log into it.  One of those computers was mine!  It worked fine the way it was for everyone else?

2000 Volt Washer Launcher/Can Crusher

My old 8 capacitor power supply is back in action!  This time it has 10 capacitors, and delivers 2000 volts at 1600 amps from 1,600 uF of capacitors in a series/parallel combination.  The old 5 watt resistor was replaced with a 50 watt resistor!  It still smoked when it was powered on, likely from the grease from my fingers.

The video is already up on YouTube.  It is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i87EuYIQO9c

I tried crushing three soda cans at once, a free launch that went way out of site, and upset the neighbors, you can hear them saying "What was that?" and then I crushed one soda can.  Not included in the video is another free launch where I lost the washer.  It was found later over 100 feet away on the far side of the house.

This is the schematic diagram.  There is an error, the capacitors are only 4700 uF!  The 'fire' resistor is 1K, and the meter resistor is 2.5 meg ohms, that value varies with the meter that is used.  There is also a 10 amp fuse on the power coming in, it is built into the power jack.  The coil is a flat coil of 14 gauge enameled wire covered in a lot of glue.

Lots of famous dead people

According to the latest onslaught of spam/virus there are a lot of famous dead people.  The things these people will do to get you to open up a virus these days in amazing.  There is no low they will not stoop to!

HP 1502 LCD Repair.

Someone asked me to fix a HP1502 LCD Monitor for them. When it was plugged in the power would only flash on for a second. After opening it up I could see that all the capacitors in the power supply were blown. There were two black 1000 uF at 16 volt capacitors that I removed before this picture was taken. There were 6 purple 470 uF at 16 volt capacitors that also needed replacement. However even after all of that was done, it did not fix it the monitor until I removed the fried zener diode that is located just below the burnt spot on the power supply board near the connector between the two boards. You can use a 12.6 volt zener to replace it but it works without any zener diode. The zener diode was most likely used as a surge suppressor and since the capacitors were not working that allowed non stop surges above the zener's rated voltage until the zener finally fried.

Viewsonic VG175 Revisited again.

One of the Viewsonic VG-175's LCD's that I had repaired years ago came back again for another repair. I suppose the only permanent repair would be to replace all of the capacitors but that is not an easy thing to do. This time it looked like a loss of horizontal sync and the culprit was C55 a 47 uF capacitor at 25 volts, or at least that is what I used to replace it. It is the light blue capacitor standing straight up near the middle of the picture of the circuit board.

Note that C19 was previously replaced it causes the picture to turn into dashes all over the screen. It is the dark blue capacitor kind of laying down near the center of the picture.

The Google search algorithm changes again

Google has done it again, twice in one year, they have revised their search algorithm. In May 2010 they did something to try to make their search results more current and 'up to date'. The end results from what that did was to raise spam web sites to the top and flush long standing real companies web sites down the toilet. That change got the nick name "May Day". The latest revision took place around the middle of August 2010 and it raises the real companies back up from the junk heap by returning many results for any company that you look for. Just check out the results for one web site as seen in the picture below.

Prophecy given over me on August 7, 2010

I was at Sword and the Spirit church in Buffalo NY, for a special prophetic conference, a prophet named Leon was speaking.  After the message he gave this word over me.

The Bible says that there was angels ascending and descending.  When the pastor said that tonight about angels, revelation of heaven coming to earth, God said that you are going to be a revelation bearer.  God said that He put a scribe anointing upon you and I put a teaching anointing within you.  God said that I am going to bring you to a place of fulfillment in this season of your life.  And God said that I am lighting your fire even with a new passion says the Lord.  And God said that I have got new pathways and new doorways I am going to begin to open for you.  God said you will be one that will be able to do as God is infusing and He is empowering you.  Amen. 

Those messengers of heaven, I can see revelation coming to you brother its like eyes are open and ears are open God says you are going to begin to hear new sounds of heaven and new revelation of heaven.  God is going to give you, you are one that needs that order 1,2,3,4 and God says I am going to give it you just that way.  Except He is going to move the three behind the four, God says I am going to do that because I am going to put you in a place where you always have to trust Me says the Lord, where your faith will always have to be activated says the Lord.

God says that Son I am going to fulfill the desires and the cries of your heart says the Lord.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization Help. It is not rocket science, just think of why you search and what you search for on the Internet. Here are some keys I have discovered to getting recognized by the search engines.

1. Good Content. Write it yourself and have something there that is relevant and worth saying. Make sure your site has keywords included in the page titles, and bold the keywords in the text. One of the best subjects is problems you are having with a service or program. What did you do when you had the problem? YOU Googled it!

2. Good Links. Submit your articles to and get linked to by other sites like HackedGadgets, Wired, and others depending upon your content.

3. Get real Traffic. Add the ability to Tweet, FaceBook etc. your site and put some links on their sites yourself. Post real comments on related blogs with a link to you or your web site.  A great add on to do this is 'add to any'.

4. Submit your site to the search engines. Do this regularly.

5. Include and mark up your Pictures. Make sure all of your pictures have alt tags, a short description under the picture, etc.  The picture shows how to do this in WordPress.

6. Install the Alexa toolbar and visit your site on a regular basis.

Bitdefender 2010 Problems

There are several Bitdefender 2010 and Microsoft Outlook problems

In early 2010 we switched from using Kaspersky Anti-Virus because it was hanging up computers for ever even with a clean install of Windows. After some research and some 30 day trial runs we decided on Bitdefender. However Bitdefender and Microsoft Outlook do not get along very well. There are three problems that we have noted so far;

1. Timeouts while sending and receiving email. The solution is to set the timeout in Outlook to 4 minutes or more for each mail account.

2. Messages stuck in the ‘outbox’. Use ‘alt’ ‘control’ and ‘delete’ to make sure there is not another copy of outlook running. The solution is to restart outlook, open the message and send it again. Also you can also turn off Bitdefender anti-spam and this might cure the problem.

3. Lost messages. Some messages disappear after they are received never to be seen again. So far this has been proven false every time someone made the claim.  Usually they had stopped receiving email all together.

Don't forget to change the time when Bitdefender scans for virus’s to only once a week.

If your computer only has 1 gig of Ram, even if just running Windows XP, upgrade it to 2 gigs. Once we installed Bitdefender the computers consistently went over 1 gig of memory. In fact my system likes to sometimes go over 2 gigs! That is when running IE8, FireFox, Outlook, Publisher, Word, and AIM. BTW - IE8 is a huge memory hog, I have seen it use 750 megs of Ram!

Something else we are looking at is a problem with FireFox not starting. I do not yet know if this is a Bitdefender problem. The solution is to use ‘alt’ ‘control’ and ‘delete’ to see how many copies of FireFox are running, (Sort the list alphabetically) then shut them all down. Then restart FireFox, so far this has worked every time.

Verizon Problems

Well after all the $30 a month straight talk cell phone problems I tried to get service from Verizon.  I thought a land line would be nice and for $50 they promised to include unlimited calling and high speed Internet.  So far my bills have been $75 and $89 and the Internet speed is .03 Mb/s, slower than dial up!

I printed out the screens, and waited.  After a week or two I called and they said the order was lost so they started another order.  But I was told the $50 deal was no longer available.

Note this is not my phone number!  Anyway I called again and twisted their arm to give me the deal they promised in the first place.  But they would not include the wireless router like they promised in the picture above.

Anyways after several more hours on the phone I finally got connected.  The speed was really slow so after some more hours on the phone we discovered that their splitter was the problem.  However the higher speed did not even last a day!

Pictures of the Randolph NY tornado damage

Here are some pictures of the Randolph NY tornado damage.  The worst tree damage was on the hill above the town.

 There was lots of damage around the cemetery.

Here is a house on the hill above the town.

There was lots of other damage in town, roofs damaged and a porch missing.  We also saw where the car dealership lost most of its siding and roof.  My camera's memory was full so I could not take any more pictures!