Carbon Offset

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon about 'going green'. Generally speaking, I think that is a good thing. We need to conserve our resources, water, energy etc.

However, this idea of 'paying a carbon offset' is a bunch of hooey! All it amounts to is someone has figured out a way to make money from 'going green'. You send them money to assuage your guilty conscience about using so much energy. They put the money to use and then sell what they do to people with more money than sense. There may be some of these folks who are really trying, but if you put ‘carbon offset’ into a Google search field, you will get almost two million hits. Figure it out.

Supposedly if you drive your car to work every day, go on a road trip or fly to your favorite vacation spot; you can 'pay' a carbon offset to make up for the pollution your car or airplane ride puts into the air. Nuts! I don't care how much you pay, the pollution is still there. You can pay all you want, no one has yet figured out a way to get paying money will remove the carbon that modern life has filled our atmosphere. True, there are projects that are trying to find ways to clean up the junk, but you can do your part by using some common sense.

Go green by turning off appliances when they are not being used. This includes lights and TVs. Replace your light bulbs with energy saving florescent bulbs. They do cost more, but last a lot longer and don't burn nearly as much energy. The old incandescent bulbs give off heat. If you live in any area that is hot and you have air conditioning, that heat just makes your cooling unit work that much harder.

There are so many ways to conserve energy. I won’t list them here, but nearly every utility company has a website with tons of ways to save energy listed.

Some of the projects that are supported by the ‘carbon offset’ sites include planting trees and shrubs. This is a good thing; planting trees and shrubs is always good. I think there is a society that has been practicing this for a very long time, The National Arbor Day Foundation.

They will send you free trees to plant. Just read this article The Carbon Neutral Myth! It is pretty large pdf file, but worth reading.

Martha

The TV

I think I want my money back! The TV is not showing anything good anymore! An article in the paper described some of the new fall lineup for TV and now I know what is meant by a 'vast wasteland'.

What happened to the good shows? I guess those little jerks in TV writer-land think all of the mature people in the world don't watch TV anymore and guess what? We don't!

Is it really entertaining to watch a so-called comedy show that consists of no plot, sexual innuendos and put-downs? Not for me; and my family and friends all agree.

And what about all those Reality shows? Tell me, do you really like to watch people eat worms or try to get the other people thrown off the island or where ever they happen to be? Is this what people really find entertaining?

I recall reading sometime ago that once a writer hits the 30 year old mark; they are considered 'too old' in Hollywood. Well if that's the case maybe that explains all of the drivel being displayed on TV these days.

If it weren't for the Science, Learning, Discovery and National Geographic channels, I wouldn't have anything to watch! Except of course, my favorite sport, FOOTBALL!  (Guess I'll keep my TV for now)

Martha

Do the Paperwork

Today in my newspaper there is an article titled "Do the Paperwork and Get Your Rebate Money".

The article goes on to tell folks 'How to get your rebate'. Follow all the instructions, make copies, yadda yadda yadda. It also tells you what to do if you never receive the rebate. (Better mark this one for a follow-up!)

I have much better advice! Just don't buy anything that has a rebate! Just look what you will gain by following this advice. A huge time saving consisting of the following items. Unless you need it today, sooner or later someone will put it on sale without a rebate.

No trying to read the tiny print telling you what to send.
No cutting out all the tiny UPC codes, locating serial numbers, etc.
No having to make sure you beat the deadlines for sending all the required stuff.
No making copies and filing them away because you will undoubtedly need them later.
No checking the mail in vain looking for a rebate check.
No making calls (if you can find a phone number) to find out what happened to your rebate.
No getting denied your rebate because of a 'mistake' in what you sent. (One rebate center tried to tell me I mailed it too late. I mailed it the day I bought it! Eventually I did get the $$, but only after many calls and threats!)
No writing letters of complaint to the Attorney General of your state or anyone else you can think to write, because you didn't get what was promised.

Rebates have to be the best consumer rip-off ever conceived. They are legal (shouldn't be) ways to make consumers think they are getting a good deal and the sad thing is the fact that consumers have to jump through too many hoops to (maybe) get what was promised.

Whatever happened to just putting something on sale?  If people would just boycott those rebate promises, pretty soon they would go away and save consumers a lot of grief!

I'm still reading the paper. Where else would I get such good material to write about?

Martha

The Dress Code Re-visited

I am appalled! It's no wonder school kids think it's OK to go out dressed like they are going to a ragbag party! Their moms go out wearing their pajamas!

A front page spread in a section of today's paper showed how moms can leave the house in their sleepy-time clothes looking stylish! The title of the article was 'The Slipper Club'.

Please tell me moms don't really do this! Since all of the pictures of the 'cutesy' dressed moms in their jammies gave information on where to buy all of the so-called outfits, I thought maybe the merchants in the article were behind all of this drivel. But I am afraid that wasn't the case.

The article started with the reason why moms don't dress before they leave the house to take the kids (I hope the kids are dressed!) to school.  The poor mommies don't have time to dress!

Now if this isn't the worst reason why moms don't dress in the morning, I have yet to hear it. Don't have time? Then get up just five minutes earlier. I am not suggesting they have to put on makeup, panty hose (I bet they don't wear panty hose anywhere!) or dress like they are going to the opera, but how long does it take to put on jeans and a blouse?

Most children learn from their parents more than any other way. What they learn, good or bad, depends on what examples are set before them.  Not taking the time to dress properly before leaving the house certainly is not the way to set an example for kids.  I wonder how a mom would feel if she was involved in traffic accident and the police talked to her in her jammies? I would hope she would be so embarrassed she would never leave the house again unless she was properly dressed.

Perhaps the schools should also publish a list of what moms should wear while delivering their kids to school.  Maybe then the kids wouldn't need to be told they can't wear pajamas to school. This was one of the items on the list of 'not allowed'.

I really have to stop reading the paper!

Martha

The School Dress Code

I'm afraid! I think this is a sign of the times, and it 'ain't' good!

This week in the Sunday paper there was a big article about going back to school and the article included the School Dress Code.

There was a list of what is acceptable and another list of what is unacceptable. By the time I had read that list; I was fuming! Good grief, what are parents thinking of? If I had a school age child, he/she wouldn't even own some of the things on the unacceptable list!

Schools shouldn't have to be responsible for what kids are wearing to school! This is what parents should be doing! Parents should make sure their daughters don't look like they are going out to work on street corners. They should make sure their sons wear pants with belts so the bare parts of their lower anatomy aren't showing.

I can't imagine what parents who try to do the right things must be going through these days. There seem to be a lot of kids whose parents give in, don't care or otherwise are not involved with how their off-spring appear in public. I can just imagine the fights and arguments that parents who don't give in, who do care and are totally involved with how their off-spring appear in public, have with sons and daughters.

I looked at some of the store circulars in the Sunday paper as well. Oh my heavens! If I had a daughter I wouldn't want her to see that crap that passes for fashion! Those teen-age models look like trollups!

Again, parents are responsible for the stores sell. If parents wouldn't buy that tacky, revealing and otherwise awful stuff, the stores would not have it for sale.

I think I must have been born 40 years too soon and I also think I may have to quit reading the paper, my blood pressure may not take it.

Martha

Computer Brands

I just hate it when someone starts bad-mouthing a program I use and like. I hate it even more when they start telling me how ‘bad’ my computer manufacturer is.

Recently I was involved in a rather ’spirited’ argument about PCs and Macs. This is an argument that no one is likely to win.

There are a lot of reasons why I don’t have an Apple computer, the first and main reason is price. In order to use a Mac, for what I do on a computer, I would have to pay a lot more money for the programs I use. I would also have to learn how to use the programs as the programs I use are not available for a Mac. Apple programs rend to be a lot pricier than programs for a PC.

The argument that an Apple computer is a lot safer than a PC is quite good, but I have never had a security breach, virus, worm or trojan on any of my computers since 1994. I did have one virus then, and learned my lesson about security on computers. I got the virus from a floppy disk, who knows how it got there. I guess if I was into going to questionable web sites, opened strange attachments, etc., I might have had more problems.

I like HP computers. The reason I like them is I have had four of them and none of them ever caused any problems. They are affordable and I can go to just about any place that sells computers and buy one. I can look at it, test the keyboard, view the display and decide on which model I want.

I hear people say they are ‘No good’, a piece of c**p, etc. Well, if they are that bad, how come they are the number one or two (depending on the current market) sellers of computers? If they were as bad as some folks say they would soon be out of business!

I have some friends that have Dell computers. They are good computers, perform well and I have only had to fix problems for them a few times. The problems were user related, not hardware related. But I don’t like the look and feel of the keyboards. This is a personal thing with me and the reason I won’t buy a Dell.

I have a new HP laptop ordered and it has a 17 inch screen. Dell also has a laptop with a 17 inch screen. But the keyboard on that laptop looks exactly the same as the keyboard on the 15 inch screen and does not have a keypad. Folks, I have to have my keypad! I could get a separate keypad, but with the HP laptop I won’t have to because it has one.

I ordered this laptop with Microsoft Vista Ultimate installed. I have also been in another rather spirited argument about how Vista is ‘bad’. The people arguing have been using beta versions of Vista and I guess they don’t like it, mostly because of what is known as DRM (Digital Rights Management). I have been using my new laptop with Vista Ultimate for about six months and so far I like it! It has a pretty ‘face’ and I do like my eye candy! However, that’s not the only reason I like it. The verdict is still out as to whether I will like it later.

I still like Windows XP and I will not upgrade to Vista on my computer with XP installed. It has always been my experience that upgrades are just not as good as clean installs and are prone to more problems.

Martha

Lemons

Have you ever heard of a ‘lemon’? Not the kind you eat, but a product. It could be a car, a kitchen appliance or in the case of this article, a computer. A lemon in this aspect is a particular item in a line of mostly very good products, but this item has many problems that just can’t seem to be fixed. One problem after another occurs.

There are not as many ‘lemons’ these days, as quality control is much better than in the past. However, there are still the few ‘lemons’ that manage to get sold to a frustrated consumer.

Most people don’t buy a computer every year. When they buy a computer, they usually are influenced by what friends who already own a model of the computer they are thinking about, ads they may see on TV, etc.

If someone has had a bad experience with a particular computer, they will tell the prospective computer buyer, “Don’t get a XXXX computer!”

This may or may not be good advice. There are a lot of reasons why a computer may cause problems, just like there are a lot of reasons why a car, or an appliance might cause problems. It could even be, a lemon!

Unfortunately, a lot of ‘lemons’ are not the fault of the manufacturer, but are caused by the owner of the ‘lemon’. A computer, just like any other appliance requires maintenance. The problem is, computers require more maintenance on a regular basis than just about any other appliance. Depending on how a computer owner uses the computer, this maintenance may be required as often as daily.

A computer is much more susceptible to power fluctuations than most other appliances. A power surge that won’t affect other appliances can cause damage to a computer. A very strong surge protector should be used with every computer item that is plugged into an electrical outlet. An even better option is to use what is known as a ‘UPS’ or Uninterruptible Power Source. This can not only prevent damage to a computer, but can also give users a chance to save their work in the event of a power failure. (Just because you use a laptop doesn’t mean you are safe, if you have the laptop plugged into an electrical outlet your laptop is a risk of a power surge.)

A surprising number of computer users do not use security programs. An unprotected computer can be infected with virus, worms, trojans and spyware. This can cause data loss, an immense slow down of processing power and general all round havoc.

Martha

Side Tracked

Yesterday I really intended to post on my new blog (here) but I got major side tracked! I nearly always read my email before I do any writing. Yesterday one of the emails I read led me to another blog; I clicked on a link there that took me to my favorite web page validation service and decided to check a page on my web site. OMG, what happened to my site? At least a fifth of the pages had ERRORS! Some of them had a LOT of errors! So I spent most of the day fixing code errors. Some were minor, but those can be hard to track down! I think that sneaky Front Page has been adding stuff to those pages; they validated when they were created!

I decided to stop using FrontPage for my site; from now on it will be strictly Expression Web!

Martha 

There Are Blogs

I wonder just how many blogs there are on the Internet? I suspect the number may be in the millions by now. I think just about everyone who uses the Internet has probably thought about making a blog and there are so many places are available to put one with almost no effort. So even if just a small fraction of Internet users have a made a blog, well the number of blogs just about bloggles, I mean boggles, my mind!

I made another blog on blogger.com, but I really don't post there very often. I plan to do better with this one!

I find the older I get, the more I rant about everyday stuff, like fashion (it's awful), the drug companies and a slew of other stuff. So I will vent here.

So here is to my happy blogging!

Martha

A Follow up Mystery on Poor 'jackass'!

Something funny going on here! The domain name 'wallasasa.com' was "Created On: 24-Jul-2007 00:00:00" according to Whois.

Now is this a coincidence? Created on the same day as my original post about jackass@wallasasa.com? Did someone decide to get a domain name that seems to already be out there? Did poor jackass@wallasasa.com just make up the email address so he/she could spam websites? The mystery deepens!

The biggest question for me is why would anyone want a domain name associated with a spammer? Did poor jackass decide to make his email address legitimate at last? Why would he as it would finally lead a trail back to his infinite spamming?

Ah, who knows what wallasasa.com will eventually become? Or will it be just another domain parked somewhere in cyberspace? Burning questions not but it does make me wonder!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

And an FYI, wallasasa.com is apparently supposed to be a site for finding other sites that contain records. And unless you really like pop-ups and pop-unders, avoid this site, to find what you want, use Google instead!

Poor 'jackass'!

Who is this poor fellow "jackass@wallasasa.com"?

I first noticed him when he (she?) starting spamming the feedback form on my website, Martha's Web. Being curious about so many user names with all the same email address, I Googled the email address. Wow, over 12,000 hits!

I think he must be very lonely! Maybe he is a druggie trying to kick the habit! He uses user names like 'Drug abuse rehab', 'Substance abuse treatment program' or 'Alcohol and drug abuse treatment center'. Maybe he wants to move! He also uses user names like 'mover houston', 'dallas movers' or 'moving company houston'. maybe he doesn't like where he lives and wants to come to Texas.

Poor 'jackass'! He has way too much time on his hands! He seems to be very fond of website guest books and contact forms. And he isn't discriminating, either. He puts his email address on forms everywhere, regardless of language!

So far I have identified Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Czech, Arabic, Hindu and some other languages I am not sure about. He likes English sites as well, U.S., Canada, British, etc.

He really isn't very original in his user names after all. Since I looked at the various 'hits' on Google, I see he is adopting domain names for his user names.

While he is rather annoying, spam filters are catching his Feedback entries for me. It's just too bad this poor 'jackass' has nothing better to do than harass website owners. Just think, if he had been doing something constructive in the time he wasted 'spamming' web forms, he could have become rich or famous, not 'infamous'!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

'Zoom' in Outlook 2007

I am using Outlook 2007. When replying to a message in HTML format, I somehow managed to get into a 'Zoom' mode of only 10%. This made the message totally unreadable of course and I could not see what I was typing. I tried forwarding the message, same thing. I tried another message in text format, same thing.

Since I don't recall ever seeing 'Zoom' in previous versions of Outlook, I had no idea what was going on. A search of Microsoft's Outlook 2007 site was a search in vain. Since I didn't know I was in 'Zoom' 10%, I had no inkling that I should be searching on 'Zoom'.

I am persistent and started looking through every one of the countless menus that are now in Outlook 2007, depending on what you are doing. Menus in new messages, replying or forwarding seem to have 'growed like Topsy'! (As far as that goes, all menus in Office 2007 seem to be a lot more and until I got a tad familiar with the way they are done, very hard to navigate.)

Just about the time I thought the update for Outlook 2007 that I had installed earlier had somehow broken Outlook, I discovered 'Zoom'. I guess it could come in handy, but I sure would like to know how I managed to get 'Zoom' with 10% in the first place, as I certainly didn't knowingly set that in place!

I just wish there was a 'Zoom' for some of the menus and buttons, especially those teeny arrows at the top for previous and next messages.

And FYI, that earlier update I installed was to make Outlook 2007 stop being so sluggish, and by golly it worked!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Vista is Growing on Me

I have a new notebook that came with Vista Ultimate installed. In the first few days of owning this notebook, I seriously considered wiping the drive and installing Windows XP Pro. Vista wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do! Vista wouldn't let me open some files or folders!

Humph, this is MY computer and no operating system is going to stop me from opening, looking and/or editing a folder or file if I need to edit it. It isn't as though I was going to go willy nilly changing things that shouldn't be changed.

However, I am persistent and finally figured out how to get to where I wanted and 'take ownership' of those files and folders.

I am beginning to like Vista a lot. I don't use a huge number of programs and so far, every program I think I have to have installed is working just fine. The exception is the firewall I want, Zone Alarm, and ZoneLabs has a working beta for Vista. I don't do betas much, they have caused me to do a comple reinstall of Windows in the past. So I am relying on Vista's firewall and the firewall in my router.

I have tested several virus scanners that work in Vista. I finally went with Nod32. I should have gone with Nod32 years ago. Such a light footprint, not intrusive and does the job. Better than most according to the sites that do security reviews!

A lot of folks don't like the UAC (User Access Control) in Vista. Some of the folks that don't like UAC are also those folks that complain about the lack of security in Windows. I am learning to live with UAC, although there is a way to turn it off, I want the security.

One of the things that Microsoft finally got right in Vista is Search. I am always filing things where I shouldn't, especially if I am in a hurry. Sometimes I give files titles that I don't remember days later. But with Vista search, all I have to do is put a word or phrase in the search field and Vista finds it. I love it! Windows XP is still a great OS, but Search in XP leaves a lot to be desired.

Vista is also pretty! I love my 'eye candy' and see no reason not to have it. I will admit there are still a lot of things in Vista that I still need to get used to, but i am getting there.


Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

If it Has a Rebate, Don't Buy it!

Hoodwink, bamboozle or what ever you want to call it, manufacturers and retailers are sometimes guilty of this:
'Concealing one's true motives from especially by elaborately feigning good intentions so as to gain an end.'

This is the practice of offering a rebate or gift card for x amount of $ if the consumer purchases a certain product. What happens:

1. The consumer sees an ad offering a product at what seems to be a really good price and fails to notice the fine print stating the price is after mail in rebate.

2. The consumer goes ahead and buys the product thinking (very naively) the money/gift card will be a nice bonus when it arrives. Hopefully they will receive it eventually.

3. The consumer takes the product home. If the customer reads the fine print about what is necessary to receive the rebate and dutifully fills out the form/forms correctly, finds the proof of purchase on the product, copies and mails all of the required information, they MAY receive the promised check/gift card in anywhere from five to twelve weeks.

4. A lot of times the consumer makes a mistake on the forms or uses the wrong form.
(This happened to me once, the retailer gave me the wrong rebate slip and dummy me failed to notice it. Rebate denied!)

5. Other times consumers just forget about it as it takes time to collect copy and mail all of the required information. This is exactly what the manufacturers and retailers are hoping will happen. They have already enticed the consumer to buy and they have the consumer's money. They really don't want to have to give some of it back.

In the past I have had some very good experiences with rebates. The best was for Microsoft. I purchased a tax program that offered a rebate on Microsoft Money if I purchase both together, as well as a rebate for the tax program. I got the rebate from Microsoft in less than a month and the rebate for Taxcut came shortly hereafter.

But there have been some bad experiences with rebates as well. Two of these I have already documented on my blog, Home Depot and Symantec. The Symantec fiasco made me very unhappy, as a result I will never ever buy another product from Symantec. The Home Depot gift card was a really fun experience! Took a lot of phone calls and four months to get that all taken care of, but at least I did finally get the promised cards.

Now I am waiting on another rebate check, this time from Samsung. In July I purchase a Samsung computer monitor from Circuit city. I did not purchase it because it had rebates offered (two), but because it was the monitor I wanted. Since the rebates were offered, I completed and copied the requested forms and mailed them the very same day. One was for Circuit City ($30) and one was for Samsung ($50). After all, that is $80 and I would be a fool not to send for the money!

In less than six weeks I received the rebate from Circuit City. I kept checking with Samsung's rebate site and the site had no record of receiving the rebate request. I called the phone number on the site and received information it could take twelve weeks.

OK, I waited. Finally the information was there, but they were denying the rebate! The reason? They said it was postmarked after the offer date range! Now I know sometimes items are postmarked the day after they are mailed, but I mailed that rebate on July 18 and they said it was postmarked on Sept 22. No way!

I called the center again and spoke to a guy with a very strong accent who told me I would be receiving a card in the mail with instructions on how to get this resolved and get my rebate. He said the card was mailed on October 3rd. He assured me once I received the card and called again, it would all be taken care of.

The mail came today, October 17, and still no card. So I called again and this time I spoke to a girl who also had an accent. She looked up my record and I explained the entry for the postmark was an error. She put me on hold for a minute and then came back and asked me to hold again. In a minute she came back and told me I would receive the $50 rebate check in four weeks. I thanked her and hung up. (While I was on hold, I looked up the address for the Attorney General of the State ofTexas. If I don't receive the check, I will use the address!)

I had previously decided never to buy a product just because it had a rebate/gift card offer. I have modified my decision to this,I will never buy a product IF it has a rebate offer! Never! The whole concept of rebates/gift cards is just a method to entice consumers and in some instances, try to hoodwink, bamboozle or otherwise cheat! I firmly believe that Home Depot and Samsung had no intention to actually send the promised rebates/gift cards unless I followed up and kept following up. I hope I am wrong, but circumstances have led me to believe this.

I am aware that manufacturers and retailers may be outsourcing the rebate offers to consumers and are not aware of the aggravation this is causing. Generally though, a resource center employed by a business only follows guidelines that are provided to them by that business. It would be in their best interests to check to see how these centers are handling requests.

If a business is offering a rebate, it is bad enough that a consumer has to go through all of the process of getting together all the requested material, filling out the forms, copying everything and then putting postage on it and taking it to mail. It should not be necessary for a consumer to have to call and call, wait and wait before obtaining what has been promised at the point of sale.

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Update: I finally received the rebate from Samsung, on November 24. It took over 4 months! If I hadn't challenged Samsung about the postmark, I would never have received it. This whole process only confirms my belief that rebate options are an open invitation to fraud that many companies are perpetrating on unsuspecting customers.

Why no 'Other'?

I use the Internet a lot. I mean a LOT! I wonder what I did before the Internet was available! I shop, compare services, check companies for quality ratings (I use AngiesList), I use email including Yahoo Groups and I have two personal websites and a website for a charity and one for a Yahoo group.

If it is possible to contact any business or service using email, I much prefer that to using the telephone. One reason for that is the endless tripe you have to hear before you get to the right department (if you are lucky) and awful hold music that most businesses seem to think will keep you entertained while you are on indefinite hold. Some of the 'menus' you are subjected to makes me wonder what idiot came up with the whole concept in the first place? (I rather suspect some of them, in spite of the extremely annoying "Your call is important to us" message, hope you will give up and hangup in frustration so they won't have to address your issue. Have you ever noticed that none of the menu options are what you need? Why don't they have an option for 'Other'?

Email is usually much simpler. You can type what you want and press send and that is that. That is IF you can find an email address! So many sites just don't provide a contact email any more and if they do, you get a scripted response that does not seem as though anyone really read what you sent. This is pretty frustrating as well. Sometimes after lots of searching you can find a sitemap and see 'Contact' listed. Don't get your hopes up just yet. It could be a form to fill out, that's no problem, well maybe it is.

I am using a pretty nifty little utility know as 'SiteAdvisor'. It is extremely popular with folks in the know as it identifies sites that have questionable content that could possibly expose your computer to malware. I really like this service, provided free, at least for now, to users by McAfee a very well know and popular provider of virus scanners, firewalls and other security products.
The problem is, today all at once I am getting a warning everytime I go to a site I know is ok. The warning is as follows:
"You have attempted to establish a connection with "dss2.siteadvisor.com". however the security certificate presented belongs to "dss1.siteadvisor.com". It is possible, though unlikely, that someone may be trying to intercept your communication with this web site.

If you suspect the certificate shown does not belong to "dss2.siteadvissor.com", please cancel the connection and notify the site administrator."

I would dearly love to notify the site administrator! I have searched this site for contact information to no avail. The only contact form I have found wants me to input what the question is about, it lists all of the programs McAfee sells, but I guess since it isn't selling SiteAdvisor they don't plan to support it in any way.
The SiteAdvisor site wants me to 'signup' before it will let me contact anyone. On the feedback page I am given five options and I have to choose one.

1.Submit a site for testing
Select this option and get a field to input an url for a site.
2.Leave user comments about a site
Select this option and you have to signup to be a reviewer before anything else can happen.
3.Leave comments as a site owner
Select this option and get: Once you become verified as a site owner you can post a comment on your site's report page.
4.General McAfee product support
Select this and get redirected to McAfee's Technical support for their commercial products. If you click on the tecnical support links, there is no option for SiteAdvisor!
5.Contact our business team
Guess what, you get an email address for someone there! I already know this would be an exercise in frustration!

Why no option for Other? My guess is they don't want to be bothered. I suspect this is the same reason you don't get an option for Other on those endless, pratling phone menus!

I am still using SiteAdvisor and hoping the stressful warning will soon disappear.

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Practicing What I Preach

July 19

Don't do as I do, do as I say!

Sometimes I learn the hard way not to take shortcuts and yesterday I had it brought home to me.

I 'know' to turn off all running programs including virus scanners when installing a program. I also 'know' it is much better to uninstall an old program and then install an upgrade.

However, just because I know better, doesn't mean I did it that way yesterday! SpySweeper, my very most favorite spyware scanner, has a new program upgrade. I downloaded the upgrade and proceded to install it.

Not finished with real dummy stuff, the same day I had gone to the Windows Update site and updated Windows. (I think I should have waited!)

All of a sudden, my system seemed to be dragging. Some programs would open, but not run. In order to close them, I had to do a hard boot. No Task Manager would come up. I could open some programs that worked ok, but one of my games caused a blue screen when I exited. What the heck is going on? Maybe System Restore would work. So I did a restore from the day before the troubles all started.

Things seemed to be working ok, so back to Windows update and updated again. No more problems, the updates seem to be ok.

So what was causing the problems I had earlier? Memory failing? Harddisk problems?

After a frustrating entire afternoon of trying to troubleshoot the problems, the 'Great Light' dawned. There was a problem with the new SpySweeper install. Since I had done the System Restore, I needed to upgrade it again. Then I figured out I needed to do what I have always said to do, uninstall and then reinstall, never upgrade over a previous version. I looked for the license code and couldn't find it. I ALWAYS put the license code in a text file in the download folder for a paid program, but not this time! I had to go to Webroot's site and request the license code be sent to me. (Sigh!)

As soon as I got the code, I uninstalled SpySweeper and rebooted the computer. Then I stopped the virus scanner and installed the new version of SpySweeper.

The computer was like new again, running oh so fast. Programs opened, ran as advertised and closed with no problems.

Lesson learned. Even though some upgrades say you don't need to uninstall to upgrade, my advise is this: Unless the program upgrade specifically says "Do Not Uninstall the old version", uninstall the old version! Be sure to disable your virus scanner as well. When they say to close all running programs at the beginning of an install, they mean it and don't forget the virus scanner!

(And make sure you know where your license codes are for downloaded programs!)

Oh, yes, the reason I couldn't find the license code for SpySweeper in the download folder, I originally installed it from a CD I bought at Fry's. The license code is on the CD envelope. Duh!

Martha

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Martha's Place

Cheap Gas is Gone Forver

We need to get over it. Europe has been paying these high prices for a long time, however, their prices have been high due to taxes. The problems are too many people (countries) chasing too few barrels of crude. That may be a very simplified version of the problem, but it is only going to get worse as more and more of the developing countries' appetites increase for energy.

Then there is the 'greed' factor. As long as people are willing to pay for energy the prices will not go down. This will cause the divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' to grow wider. The obscene profits by the major oil companies shows just what the greed factor is about. They have us all just where they want us. We are too dependant on our gas gulping cars and ever more electronic goodies that need more and more energy. It isn't just the oil companies, it is the oil-rich countries as well.

There is also the undisputable fact that there is only so much oil on this planet and sooner or later it is going to be (gasp) gone. Finished! Caput! No more! We need to be furiously looking for alternative energy sources and economical ways to make them available to everyone, including the 'have nots'. If the major oil companies would invest just a fraction of those obscene profits into research, it might happen, but I'm not sure they will. But when the oil is gone, the profits be gone as well.

I know it is popular to blame the President, Congress or whoever is in charge for the high price of fuel. The last time I checked, they have no control over what the price of crude may be at any time. True, some of the policies set by government probably have an impact on prices, but I really don't think it is the government's fault that gas is so high priced. I don't think it is their fault that we had so many hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, etc., either!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Mr. or Mrs. Know-it-all

At some time or other, almost everyone has had a Mr or Mrs Know-it-all in their life. It could be a family member or a co-worker or maybe just a casual acquaintance. However or whenever, this person can be very obnoxious and irritating to most folks.

I had a family member that was a 'know-it-all'. If you found a bargain, she found a better one. If you had a good experience, she had a one just like it, only better. If you had a bad day, she had a worse one. If you just learned something, she couldn't believe you didn't know that! The rest of the family tolerated her, well, because she was 'Family'! For me she is now no longer a member of my family, but that's another story.

Occasionally, a 'know-it-all' will be on an email list or group. Eventually, the 'know-it-all' cause so many complaints that the list or group either dies or the 'know-it-all' is removed. That's too bad, because this one probably needs to be
accepted and could provide assistance and knowledge if it was presented in a manner other than 'know-it-all'.

Sometimes we encounter a 'know-it-all' that really doesn't know it all or anything at all, just pretends to 'know'. Unfortunately this can lead to problems if this individual makes people believe what he/she says. This can lead to more problems for those who believe everything the 'know-it-all' says.

Why do people become 'know-it-alls'? Probably because they are insecure individuals desperate for attention. They probably mean well, they just don't know how to get the attention they want any other way. They may think because they have 'an answer' for everything, folks will admire them and give them the attention they seek, while in reality they are having the opposite effect.

Martha

Martha's Web

Martha's Place

Another Software Spasm

(This is a followup to a post I made last August, Software Spasms.)

I like to play games but in no way am I a 'Gamer'. I like the simple games like MahJong or Spider Solitaire. Every once in a while I will try a new game and usually I just delete it after two or three sessions. But a while back I found a puzzle type game that I really liked and I bought it. When a sequel was released, I downloaded the sequel and bought it as well.

This was on Saturday, April 8, 2006.
So I installed it, clicked the icon to open it and waited. And waited. It didn't open. I checked in Task Manager and there it was, running, but it wouldn't open. Hmm, this has a familiar ring! I tried uninstalling it and reinstalling, no go. I re-downloaded it and tried again. Still it wouldn't open.

Frustration set in and I decided to contact support and I sent them an email. After three days I heard from them. They more or less told me to do what I had already done, but I wanted to tell them I did everything they suggested and on the off chance there was a new download, I again re-downloaded the game and reinstalled it.

Did it open? No, but Task Manger showed it was running. Sigh! Remembering my previous problem with a 'software spasm', I stopped my spyware program from running in the backgound. No go, the game still wouldn't open. So I tried something else. I stopped my anti-virus program, and now the game opened. It worked just fine.

So if I want to play the game, I 'pause' my antivirus, just long enough for the game to open. Once the game is running, the anti-virus can run in the background and there are no problems.

Who can say what is going on? I wonder how many people are trying to install programs that won't work because of a conflict with another program? More than likely they are blaming the wrong thing for their software that doesn't work!

Ethics on the WWW ?

There is a lot of 'free' stuff on the World Wide Web. Just about everyone likes free stuff, who wouldn't? But sometimes the 'free' stuff really isn't free, in order to get the free stuff you have to make a compromise of some sort, like agree to view ads, or let someone follow your web surfing. (This is how a lot of spyware gets planted on computers!)

What some people may not realize or stop to think about, software offered for 'free' is still the result of someone's labor. Really free software is usually offered because there really are folks, who for whatever reason, are offering software they wrote because of their own need. Once it was written they have decided to share with others the fruits of their labor.

Sometimes these folks decide to keep making improvements to their product and eventually the programs become very substantial and are no longer free, but become 'shareware'. A very well known graphics program started out this way and a lot of others as well. After all, it takes work to write, test and rewrite software. Really good software program writers deserve to receive compensation for their work.

So when unscrupulous thugs try to take advantage of someone else's hard work and offer 'cracks' for software, the people who go for it are in fact, thieves as well. Most of these same people who use 'crack' software probably would never dream of shoplifting or breaking in to someone's business and home to steal merchandise, but they are in effect stealing someone else's hard work.

There are also some 'work-arounds' offered for services. One that comes to mind is a program that offers to allow a user to get around the requirement that Yahoo email must be a paid for (premium) service in order to allow downloaded emails of their popular email service to a user's computer. Again, this is in effect stealing!

Why an otherwise honest person decides to take advantage of a 'crack' and steal is simply beyond me. I can only surmise that these folks just don't stop to think or maybe it's because they just decide they want it, so get it and phooey on ethics!

Martha
Martha's Web