Tax the skinny to feed the fat

Well its happened, San Francisco California has banned non-diet soda from vending machines!  Its enough that they tax the poor to feed the rich, now the efforts to tax the skinny to feed the fat have taken another step forward.

Think about this stupidity, who drinks non-diet soda?  Skinny people.  Who drinks diet soda and who eats diet food?  Fat people do.  So they want to eliminate non-diet food and drinks.  Basically you will HAVE to eat diet food and drink diet drinks!  These 'foods' are full of toxins and chemicals designed to make you fat!

When will these politicians wake up and get a sense of reality?  Do they exist only in a dream world that is totally controlled by chemical companies?  First they remove natural drugs and replace them with toxic chemicals and now they are doing the same thing to our foods, all in the name of more money for big drug companies!

Here is a link:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/27/san-francisco-bans-sodas-from-vending-machines.aspx

Some claim that the rich pay all of the taxes, if that is so then lets drop ALL taxes on people who are making less than $50,000 since 'they do not pay any taxes'.  The notion promoted by the IRS and others that 95% of the taxes are from the top 5% income bracket is full of BULL.  Here is clear proof taken from the same IRS web site.  Note that about 1/3 of taxes are from Social Security.  How much SS taxes do the top 5% pay?  OOPS! 

Just in case you missed that, the cap on the Social Security tax was about $100,000 the last time I checked.  That means that income over that amount is NOT TAXED!  So then we can conclude that 1/3 of the taxes are paid by people who are making less than $100,000!!!!

Allegany State Park Storms

This weekend we were at Allegany State Park during the storms.  I stopped at the south side of the lake and took pictures of the storm to the North.  That storm included a tornado that hit Randolph NY.

When we tried to leave the road to the Main Building was closed with trees across it as well as the road to the North to Salamanca.  We stopped and talked to a policeman who was using an Axe to try to clear one of the roads.

Here is a link to the news article on the storms.

http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/southern_tier/Communities-clean-up-after-tornadoes

Note the swirling pattern in one of the clouds.

Whats this with the blue roof on the main building?  It looked a lot better when it was brown.

Tesla Coil Gossary

Tesla Coil Glossary by Bob Davis

Tesla Coil – A collection of coils and wire designed to make great big sparks
• Spark Gap Tesla Coil – a Tesla coil that uses a spark gap to switch the power just like Tesla did.
• VTTC – Vacuum tube Tesla Coil – One that uses vacuum tube(s) as the switching device.
• SSTC – Solid State Tesla Coil – An oxymoron as these things were never designed to do that.
• IGBT – Another type of SSTC but usually a little more successful at working without self destruction.

Transformer - device used to convert the main power source to something that will produce big sparks.
• NST - Neon Sign Transformer - Normally used to light the beer signs in bar windows but also used to make big sparks.
• OBIT - Oil Burner Ignition Transformer - Normally used to start a fire in an oil fed furnace but can also produce big sparks.
• MOT - Microwave Oven Transformer - Normally used to cook your food but it can also cook you.
These normally do not produce long enough of a spark but they can be wired in series or used with a voltage doubler.

Capacitor – Device used to store a charge then release it to produce bigger sparks.
• Paper capacitor – Aluminum foil and paper arranged to make a capacitor.
• Door Knob Capacitor – Big capacitor that is shaped like a door knob, usually these can take a lot of volts.
• Home made capacitor – Old beer bottles or whatever used to make a home made capacitor.
• MMC – Many, Many Capacitors - arranged in series or series/parallel to make one big capacitor.

Spark gap – Favorite part – makes sparks what else? Sometimes self-destructs.
• Fixed Spark Gap – Two things that sparks fly in between – sometimes intentionally.
• Multiple Spark Gap – Several spark gaps arranged in series, usually air cooled too.
• RSG - Rotary Spark Gap – Motor driven rotating spark gap, runs cooler as power is only on for a ‘short’ time.

Coil – Sometimes just a pile of wire but it should be neatly wound in circles to look good.
• Primary coil – Flat or angled coil of large wire that creates the primary magnetic field.
• Secondary coil – Long coil of fine wire used to pick up the magnetic field from the primary, many, many turns but it looks neat of wound properly.
• Choke – A type of coil usually wound around a ferrite core and it is used to stop RF noise.

Top Load – Anything from an aluminum plate to a large torroid used to store the high voltage until it arcs over and makes big sparks.

My big Tesla Coil revisited

Recently I dug out my big Tesla Coil and decided to update it and make it better.  Some changes I hope to try are a bigger top load, try two capacitors in parallel and make an angled primary coil.

First of all here is the current schematic.  I realized that I had never made a schematic for it.

Here are some pictures of the guts. First we have the Neon Sign Transformer or NST.  It delivers 12KV at 30 ma.

Next we have the spark gap.  It consists of 5 pieces of 1/2 inch copper pipes spaced about 1/8 inch apart inside of a 4 inch PVC pipe with a fan blowing air down them to cool them and to quench the sparks.

Then we have a front view of all of the guts.  The safety gap is the closest item, the transformer connects across it.  Then on the right and left are the choke coils.  Between them is the .06 uF 30KV capacitor and in the back is the spark gap assembly.  Above that you see the primary coil made from #10 electrical wire.

Now for a picture of everything at once.  The secondary coil is wound on a piece of 4 inch PVC about 28 inches long.  The top load is some flexible 3 inch drier vent pipe glued to an aluminum pie plate.

The video is uploaded to YouTube.  The sparks are about 15 inches long.  It used to do nearly 2 foot sparks.  I am not sure why the sparks are smaller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwQZdZYdss

WordPress Super Cache or Really Static?

We have been trying to get our Word Press pages to load as fast as you would expect them to.  We eventually went to 'Really Static' to cache our web pages.  It knocked the socks off of every other WP cache program!  Then we upgraded to WP 3.0 and our site speed dropped back to what it was before we used a caching program. 

In the picture above the short lived dip below 1.5 seconds was when we used 'Really Static'.  Then the jump back up to 4 seconds per page was when we upgraded to WP 3.0.  Now here is a really interesting question, is this chart relevant?  For one thing WP Super Cache does not return cached pages to 'bots' and 'spiders'.  That 'feature' can be turned off by deleting all the entries under 'Rejected User Agents'.  According to one web site that change may double your performance while reducing server load.

Another feature to change in WP Super Cache from the default settings is to enable 'preload cache mode' and set the time to 1440 minutes.  That is to only load the cache every 24 hours.  That is fine for us because we do not allow comments, you would have to make an exception for comments if you allow comments. 

All together though it appears like WP 3.0 is REALLY SLOW!  We are trying to find a solution, but let me know if you know of one!

'Turn your Scars into Stars'

'Turn your Scars into Stars'. That is what a counselor named Gale taught me to say a few years ago. Well that is what happened to me earlier this year.

A few years ago I visited a chiropractor where I discovered that my left leg was 3/4 of an inch shorter than my right leg. This caused a arch in my lower back and constant back pain. The cure was to wear a shim in my left shoe to try to correct the difference in length.

Last year I was in West Africa with my brother and two others. While there we were walking down a dimly lit road and out of nowhere something resembling a head and shoulders headed right for me. It was a shadow figure being lit up from behind so we could see it. I stepped to the side to avoid a collision and fell into a nearby storm drain. My foot failed to find something in the drain to stand on in order to stop my fall, so I went all the way down scraping my arms up on the pavement as I fell. My foot was a mess, but we bandaged it up and kept on going. It could not hold my weight and turned black an blue.

Early this year I was in a church service where the guest speaker spoke of back pain being healed. I realized that my back was not hurting and then put my feet out in front of me to discover that my legs were now the same length! Somehow having my left foot mangled made my left leg longer?

Then in April of this year I was dragging a small shed that I was removing from my property out to the curb for the garbage collector. For some stupid reason instead of pulling it straight I was twisting my back to pull it sideways. Needless to say I hurt my back. After a couple of days of really bad pain I went to a new chiropractor. He checked my legs and there was a tiny difference so he adjusted my hips and back. I told him that my left leg had been 3/4 of an inch shorter and he told me that was impossible! I told him that Dr Redding in Lima has the X-rays to prove it. he simply did not believe me!

The accident in Africa that was meant to disable me has actually enabled me. I no longer need a shim in my left shoe. My legs are within 1/4 of an inch of being the same length. What was meant for bad actually helped me.

Salamanca NY Fire

There was a big fire in Salamanca NY a couple of months ago.  The fire was on a Friday and we saw it on Sunday, there was still some rising and firetrucks on the scene.  I forgot my camera but someone was going to email me some pictures.  Anyway we were back there a few weeks ago and I took a number of pictures.

This is a composite of four picture to try to show the area of devastation.  The building was 4 stories tall and about 1/2 a block in length.  It went from the silo on the left all the way to the last pile of bricks on the right.  There was one wall left of the building on the left after the fire but they likely knocked it down for safety reasons. 

If you click on the picture you can then see it full size.  You may have to enlarge your browser window too.

Here is the news link with a video of the fire:
http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/93163369.html

Bathroom Light Fixtures on EBay

There are cheap three light Bathroom Light Fixtures on EBay.  You get four of them for only about $22 including shipping!  They are missing the globes but I have some extra globes laying around.  I needed 2 of them for my bathrooms but used a third for the kitchen.  I took that one apart and removed the arms so the fixtures fastened onto the back plate.

Above is the old fixture and below is a picture of one of the new fixtures.  I was short a few light bulbs at the time that I took the photographs.

Another virus?

This computer developed a problem where it could not send or receive email via MS outlook.  I ran every anti-virus program I could find: MS MRT, BitDefender, MalWare Bytes, and SpyBot just to name a few of them.  I un-installed and reinstalled MS Office.  I nuked the PST file and created a new one.  All of this to no avail.  After two days of working on the computer I discovered an obscure setting in MS Outlook that was blocking all email.  It is found under Options, advanced options, add-in manager.  Something called 'Redemption Center Outlook Extension' was installed.  How reinstalling Office could not fix this I do not know.  That's the problem with reinstalling MS Software, it leaves a lot of junk behind that reappears when you reinstall it!

Gas Drilling in the Marcellus Shale

Well I went home to my moms in Northeastern Pennsylvania for the weekend and discovered two things.  First the 91 year old lady with two dead bodies in her house that has been in the news lately happens to live at the house that my grandma and grandpa Butts lived in.

Secondly, across the road from my moms is a new gas well that is being drilled.  They are working 24 hours a day 7 days a week drilling away.  There are also several gas drilling related companies that are springing up in the area.  This is what a typical well being drilled looks like.

How to get rich on the Internet

For years I have said that the fastest way to get rich on the Internet is to sell get rich quick schemes.  Here is how it works, first you sell a few things and make some money but then you put together a plan on how to sell tings and make money.  Then you sell the PLAN and in this down economy everybody is looking to find out how to make money on the Internet.  So that drives a lot of people to your site and that in turn helps sell your get rich quick plan and on and on the cycles continues.  Before long you are a millionaire.  It was not by selling tangible goods but by just selling a PLAN so your costs are almost nothing but your profit is close to 100%!  What a deal! 

By posting this to my blog it will cause thousands of people to find my blog and I will be rich, RICH, R-I-C-H!  Don't count on it.......

using Wireshark to monitor network traffic

I wish that I could say that I have used WireShark to find a virus infected computer, but so far I have not been able to find anything with it.  However I did discover this neat Network IO monitor.  It is under statistics, IO Graphs.  Whenever the network acts up I can see that the network traffic has peaked out.

One thing that might hold you back from using WireShark is the need to tap into the network.  The tap is really a lot easier than it sounds.  You just need an old network cable and a couple of network jacks.  Pull the orange and green pairs out of the network cable and connect them to the green pairs on the network jacks as in the picture below.  This cable then goes from your router to your main switch.  Or in a home network from your modem to your router.  That way you can monitor all  of the traffic from your computers going to the Internet.

Then start WireShark and select your network card.  You can then selectively monitor the incoming or the outgoing network traffic by what network jack you plug the network cable from the monitoring computer into.  If you leave the program running for more than a few hours the computer may crash as it tends to run out of memory.

July Fourth Ultra-Light flight

Over the Fourth of July I got to go on a flight on an ultralight aircraft over Arcade NY and some surrounding towns.  The aircraft fits nicely on a Ski-Do trailer with a few modifications.

We took off in Chaffee NY and then flew south to Arcade.  The biggest landmark from the air is the Wast Management dump, we flew directly over it on the way back to the airport.

I hope to upload a video to YouTube later to show some of the flight.  It was a blast, I really enjoyed it!

Here is a link to the video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R5H0iUXLOA

Here is a picture captured from the video.  It shows Arcade valley Estates on the left and the high school on the right.  The red box at the far right is the new football field.

Dodge Caravan Strut tower repair update

I just thought I would do a quick update on a previous repair solution.  The strut tower repair kits are available on eBay for $30!  Just do a search for: Dodge Caravan Strut Tower Cap Repair. 

How to boost your page ranking.

Boosting your page ranking can be really simple.  First install the Alexa toolbar under IE, Firefox and Chrome.  Then search for your web site and visit a lot of its pages.  Do the same on your home computer and your laptop.  It will not get you to the top 100 sites but it should get your site rated above 1,000,000 without a lot of work.  Alexa only rates sites based on what web sites are visited by people who have their toolbar installed.  I suspect that it is only a few million people.  So if you have three computers with three methods of accessing the Internet that looks like 9 'people' are searching for your web site!

This is a listing of sites to check daily then look up your web site to boost your ratings.  You can then bookmark them to make the process run faster.  This will make it look like lots of people are looking for information about your web site.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/
http://www.alexa.com/
http://www.aboutus.org/
http://www.cubestat.com/
http://whois.uitat.ro/
http://worth.im/
http://domainsearch101.com/
http://www.quarkbase.com/
http://www.esitestats.com/
http://www.onlinewebcheck.com/
http://websitevaluebot.com/
http://www.peekstats.com/
http://www.worthbot.com/
http://websitevaluecalculator.org/
http://statswebsites.com/
http://www.tatlia.com/
http://websha.com/
http://www.siteadvisor.cn/sites
http://builtwith.com/
http://georanks.com/
http://webrapport.net/
https://www.google.com/analytics
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

Another tip is to check google webmaster tools then search for keywords and make sure that the keywords are in your meta tags.  The words also need to be found on your web site so it does not look like you are just trying to spam google keywords.

Another tip that I have read about but I have not actually tried is to have three sites and link from one to another to the third site in a circle.  If you link to a site and straight back it looks like link spam, but if you link in a circle supposedly it looks like real web site links to google.  Like I said I have read about this but I have not tried it yet. 

Join a few blogs and put links in your account back to your web site.  Be careful not to post negative stuff, but post positive reinforcing things that will make people want to click on you to find out more about you and eventually more about your company.

Finally go to Google local, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local and claim your piece or real estate.  After you create an account they mail you a post card with the confirmation information so you can establish your presence at your actual physical address.  Then whenever someone looks for business in say Olean NY, they will find you there!

So that's it in a nutshell.  In summary;
1. Search for your web site.
2. Analyze your web site.
3. Blog about your company.
4. Link to your web site.
5. Locate your company on the map.

Attempting to get off Synthroid

After taking supplements for over a year, I was still struggling with the problem that synthroid was not working anymore.  First I added 'Thyroid activator' then 'iodoral' but it still was not cutting it.  Then I had a conversation with another former synthroid taker (I meet a lot of them - most just quit taking it).  She commented that she ached all over while on synthroid.  I suddenly realized that was exactly my problem so I needed to make another effort to get off the synthroid.

This time I turned to eBay.  Believe it or not there is raw thyroid (equivalent to armor thyroid) available on eBay at 50 mg and 200 mg doses depending on the company.  The 50 mg variety has 300 mg of Kelp and sells for around $16.  What a deal, we will see how it works....

FOLLOW UP - I am still taking synthroid.  I can't stop taking it without turning blue and shutting down....

Another Fake Anti-Virus

Here we go again - another fake anti-virus.  This one even opens up porno.something just to make matters worse.  This one has a weakness.  As soon as Windows starts hit the three finger salute - alt, control, delete, and bring up task manager.  Shut down all the trash and then install MalwareBytes Anti-Malware from a USB drive.  Run it and remove some junk.  Then update it and run it again and remove more junk.  Then Install BitDefender Free and update it.  It found about another 9 items including a rootkit.  Now the computer might be safe to use?????

You might get a warning message saying that everything that you try to run is infected, don't worry, let it run, it is just the virus trying to prevent you from running anything that might remove the virus!

2010 Rochester NY HamFest

The Rochester NY 2010 HamFest went by too fast.  It started with a rainy morning but when I got there everything was happening.  I googled the address and went to the wrong place.  It was a doctors office and someone there googled the correct address.  This is what my van looked like this year.

Among my findings this year were some huge 15uF 5000 volt capacitors and some big coils for $5 each.  Then there was a CD Duplicator for $30 and some CD R/W drives for $5. each

The food was great again this year, hamburgs and hot dogs for just $2 each with very short lines if any at all.

There were lots of vendors, perhaps not as many as last year because the day started with rain?

Memorial Day Pie

I have been into making pies for several years now.  Making pies came from one of my spiritual dads, Chester Gretz.  When I went to make this pie my wonderful wife suggested that I make it red white and blue for memorial day, so I did. 

Cordless Drill battery rebuilt again

Once again I have become totally frustrated with my cordless drill. The batteries do not last very long and do not have enough power.  So this time I bought 4 of these 1800ma 4.8 volt battery packs and connected them together to make a much more powerful battery pack.

Now in order to get 18 volts I had to remove one of the batteries from one of the battery packs.  This new battery pack is about 1/4 the weight of the old battery pack.  The last time I did this I used individual AA rechargable batteries and when a 1 inch paddle bit got stuck in a wall the wires in the battery pack melted.  So this time I used much bigger wires to connect up the batteries hoping it will hold up better.

This is what it looks like untill I put the top cover back on.  Note the temperature sensor sticking out the left side, that needs to be taped or glued onto one of the batteries.

New Construction

A couple of weeks ago I was privledged to participate in an unusual construction project.  I am not even sure what this type of construction is called, but the completed home will be able to withstand 100 MPH winds and 10 feet of snow, at least!  Note how all the beams have tongues that fit inside of grooves and then 8 sided wooden pegs are driven into them to lock them together.

Once the frames are together they are stood upright by a lot of guys lifting them.  Then beams are put in that lock the frames together.  This has got to be the most durable construction design.  I know it has been used to build large barns, but this is the first time I have seen it used in a house.

I have researched it and it is called 'post and beam', 'timber frame' or 'mortise and tenon' construction.

Fat Tax or Skinny Tax?

What do you think about the proposed 'Fat Tax'?


Personally it has me outraged! They are going to tax drinks containing "sugar" and to get the law passed they will drop all taxes on drinks with artifical sweeteners. This will try to force people to drink soda that contains deadly artifical sweeteners. Also consider this fact: Skinny people drink sugary sodas, fat people drink diet sodas. So the tax will actually be a tax on SKINNY PEOPLE! It is not a fat tax at all, unless they also tax toxic diet sodas! And what about all those candy bars that are not only full of sugar but they are also full of fat? What about doughnuts that are also full of fat and sugar??? Could these crazy politicians actually create a "Fat Tax"? Of course not, they just want to make Americans Fatter and Sicker, but that way they can get the backing of the people that are poisoning us.

BTW - I would be all for a "corn syrup" tax!!!

Word Press Cache programs

I have been experimenting with WordPress Caching programs. Over that last few months I have been trying out WordPress caching programs to see what works the best.

We started with 'WP Super Cache'. It delivered pages very fast, unless it was the first time the page had been accessed this hour, and then it was slow. But every once in a while the page load time would get really slow. I recorded an 18 second page load using YSlow under Firefox. It happens about every 100 page views, something goes terribly wrong and some pages may never load at all!

So next we tried DB Cache reloaded. They claim to be really fast, by loading the database into memory so it can be read much faster. The load on the server went way down, but the average page load was 2 seconds, about the same time as it was without any caching program.

So now we are trying 'WP-Cache'. With it installed the average page load time is about 1 second. Of course we need to leave it on line for a while to see how Alexa and Google will respond to it.

This picture shows our page load time over several months.  The sharp changes on the left 2/3 were recorded while using WP Super Cache.  The gradual changes on the right were while using DB Cache.

Straight Talk Cell Phone Problems

Are you thinking about a Straight Talk Cell Phone?

Well I fell for it. They promised a cell phone for only $40 and then either $30 a month for 1000 minutes or $45 a month for unlimited calling! What a deal! When I used a track phone years ago I paid over $100 for 1000 minutes, then used them up in as little as a month or two. This new deal sounds too good to be true, right? Yes, it is too good to be true. Their service simply does not work. The other day I spent over 90 minutes in a 10 minute queue waiting to talk to someone. They charged my credit card for the $33 a week ago and their web site says that I have 1000 minutes, but when I try to make a call it still says “There is not enough money on your account to place this call.” That’s after a frustrating week of trying. Should I give up and take it back to WallyMart?

Here is a decision maker for you. Call them at 1-877-430-2355, if you get a real person in less than an hour consider getting the phone. If after several calls exceeding 2 hours or more and you never get through, guess what? Don't get one of their phones!!!

It sounds to me like it is time for a class action law suit??

Today they called me several times, one call was over 18 minutes long, to no avail.  Turn the phone off, turn it on, dial *22890, try again.  Still it does not work.  Will I have to go through this every time I want to add minutes to the telephone?

Well it has been two weeks and still no phone?  THe good news is that it shows 3000 minutes on my non working phone.  I guess they added minutes to try to get it to work?

Its time to Ban JAVA !!!

I have said time and time again that Java should be banned! Well now Firefox has an available add-on that does exactly that. It is called ‘NoScript’. It has the option of allowing Java on a page if it is needed for that page to work. Look under ‘options’ in the bottom right corner of Firefox once NoScript is added.


To top that, according to Kaspersky, Virus News, April 2010 Malware Statistics, 14 out of 20 exploits on the web all target JAVA! If you are using a computer that does not block Java, get a gun and shoot yourself in the foot, it makes as much sense.

Also you might want to seriously consider replacing Adobe reader with ‘FoxIt reader’. They have added the ability to block things from running inside of your PDF files. Like whom else but a virus writer would want to do that anyway?

We need better weapons for the war on viruses!

We need a real breakthrough in the war on computer viruses. As I have said before that the anti-virus programs only catch about 1/2 of Virus's. Using two anti-virus programs may raise the detection level to 75%, but there is still a huge gap there. I am not talking about the problem where it takes a few hours from the time that the virus starts spreading to when the anti-virus programs are able to detect the virus. That in itself is a huge problem and the anti-virus programs are starting to combat that problem by also having a dictionary of allowed/safe programs. If one that is not listed tries to run it pops up and tells you about it and asks if you want to run the program. I am talking about actual long term infections. I have observed this for a few years now.

My first obvious case was a computer that was downloading porn on its own. When nothing could detect the problem I replaced the hard drive. When I copied their old desktop items to the new hard drive guess what? The porn download virus came with it. The anti-virus program did not detect a thing. Then there was the storm spam virus. I chased it to a computer and replaced the hard drive. The virus infected emails stopped but after 6 months none out of three anti-virus programs could detect the virus on the old hard drive. I offered to mail it to them if they wanted to analyze it. I got no response; I don't think they really care.

The only solution is still to replace the infected hard drive and be very careful as to what you copy off the old hard drive. Copy only their documents and pictures from the old drive. Anything else could be an undetectable virus.

What am I seeing these days? How about a computer that one day insists a file size is 0 bytes when it is really several KB? Or the next day it does not update the date of the file when you make changes to it? How about a computer that does all kinds of strange things on the network on strange ports all day long? In both cases 3 anti-virus programs find nothing at all! It is so frustrating!

We need a super weapon that can go the very core of the hard drive and analyze everything to see if it is a trusted program and flag it if it is not. Yes I know about ‘Hijack This’, I have an 11 page log on one of the problematic computers. It does not help. The virus writers know about HJT and I am sure they have a way around it.

I found a recent article that reflects some of my disappointments;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/13/winxp_anti_malware_tests/

I wonder if part of the problem is what happened during the election several years ago. All of the news Medias reported the wrong results because they were all using the same incorrect sources. Where do the anti-virus people get their viruses to detect? Do they all use the same sources? Do they only use email viruses? Something is really amiss here with so many viruses going totally undetected.

Then there is also the instability problem (Kaspersky IS 2010 crashing/locking up computers - see my other posts). There is also their effectiveness in removing the viruses – for Instance AVG saying the ‘virus vault is full, no more room for viruses’. Sometimes it is just easier to replace the hard drive and start over. Then copy their files off the old hard drive.

Signed – One Very Frustrated Virus Fighter.

Dell X300 hinges

Lately I have been fixing up a lot of Dell X300 laptops to send to Africa.  One of their problems is that the hinges go bad and the screen falls down flat.  As it turns out the fix for that is quick and easy.  Remove the hinges, tap the pin back in with a hammer or on a vice and it works.  The hardest part is getting them out of the laptop to fix them.  Somehow they slowly work their way out then there are no barbs to catch on and they go loose.  They can be fixed while in the laptop but that is dangerous as the wires are in the way.

Fake Office 2003 Cd's on EBay

First of all I have purchased MS Office 2003 on EBay before with no problems.  However recently there has been a big rash of FAKE MS Office 2003 CD's up for sale on EBay.  The CD's do not work, it looks like the coating was too thin as there are some spots near the center that let light through.  If you try to use the CD it will ask for the license number then lock up forever.  If you try to read or copy the CD it will lock up your computer forever, until you eject the CD.  Either way the CD's simply do not work. 

Also look closely at the center hub area, the pattern there is not quite correct for a real MS CD.  IF you angle the CD to a light the entire top surface looks dimpled all over like it did not adhere correctly.  The license numbers are not correct for Microsoft and do not work with a normal MS Office CD.  The license 'genuine' ribbon is obviously fake.

I went to microsoft.com and searched for information on the Fake Office 2003 CD's.  They reported that the fakes were just a sticker on a normal CD.  So I felt for the edge of the sticker and sure enough it is a sticker that makes a CD look like the MS Cd.  The sticker easily peals right off exposing a normal CD underneath.  This does not happen on a real MS CD!

BUYER BEWARE!