Scamp

I have a dog named Scamp. Maybe I should say Scamp has me, because he seems to be the boss!



My younger son brought this rambunctious Cocker Spaniel into our lives almost 14 years ago. He was about six weeks old at the time and was already a little scamp, which was why he was named Scamp.

This ornery little pooch wants someone to be with him all the time. During the day he sleeps in his doggy bed placed next to my computer desk. He raises his head and looks around at me and then goes right back to sleep. If, however, he raises his head looks around and doesn't see me, he jumps up and hunts until he finds me. My sons say he's on a 'Mommy hunt'.

This morning Scamp wanted more attention than usual. Early and I do mean early, this morning he woke everyone up whining and scratching at my son's bedroom door. Now if you have a dog and he starts this behavior; you will get up and see what this is about because he probably needs to go outside. So my son got up and let him out. Then he starts barking to come in and mom wakes up. We let him in and all go back to bed.

About 20 minutes later the whining, scratching and barking begins again. So this time I go outside with him. He runs around the patio and wants to go back in the house. It is now about 5:30 AM and I am thoroughly awake, so I turn on the coffeepot and my computer. Before long, Scamp is asleep like nothing is going on.

I am reminded that when my younger son was about six weeks old, he would wake up in the middle of the night and just wanted to be held.

Kids and dogs; love them both!

 

Martha

Bugs and Spiders, Oh My!

I don't like bugs. In fact it is pretty accurate to say I hate bugs. Roaches, ants and bugs in general; I hate them all.

Where I live there are a lot of (shudder) spiders! All sizes of spiders, big spiders, small spiders and even some teeny tiny spiders. I am not sure what kind they are, although I did kill a black widow in the garage a few weeks ago. I am pretty sure most of them are not really dangerous other than giving me the creeps. I even found a scorpion on the kitchen floor the other day!

This is a relatively new housing development; most of the houses in this are are less than three years old. I suppose we have moved into the wild habitat of these little but scary creatures. However, I still don't want to share living space with them. As long as they stay outdoors I won't bother them, but I do NOT want them in the house!

I once saw a really creepy movie about spiders. They invaded and took over everything! Spooky, but I knew it was just a movie.

Now it looks almost like that movie in a park here in Texas! The Internet is all a buzzing about this huge spider web in Lake Tawakoni State Park. It covers several trees, bushes and even the ground in places. It is so scary some people won't go near it. (I would be one of those people!) Web sites like USA Today and a lot more have stories about this huge spider web.

They do say just about anything can have a good side and this huge web is trapping thousands of mosquitoes! Sometimes folks can hear them screaming! (I don't like mosquitoes either!)

Big Spider Web


Martha

Customer Service

Whatever happened to 'real' customer service? If you are old enough you may remember there was a time when the meaning of customer service was that someone would help you if you had a problem.

Merchants would provide this service to customers with a problem, hence the title 'Customer Service'. Years ago, there was also another phrase, 'The customer is always right'. This meant even if the customer wasn't right, the merchant would try to 'make things
right'. Sometimes merchants would even follow up with phone calls or letters to make sure a customer was satisfied with the results of contacting the 'Customer Service' department.

That was then and then there is now.

My newspaper has a column named 'The Watchdog'. The folks behind this column try to help people with problems that should have been taken care of by a now so-called Customer Service' department.

Some of the most frustrating instances seem to involve seniors, who certainly don't need to be punished by the lack of customer service. Case in point, a lady who was billed over and over again for a bill she had already paid. Numerous copies of the cancelled check were provided to no avail. If she hadn't contacted the Watchdog who managed to get the problem resolved, who knows how long this would have continued?

When the Watchdog gets involved, these problems are generally quickly solved. I suspect merchants, companies, etc. don't want to find themselves maligned in print which is read by a great many people. They manage to all of a sudden find what caused the problem and immediately get it resolved.

What I want to know, why couldn't Customer Service resolve the issues? I suspect the reasons may be lack of interest; the representatives have no real power to fix problems, not enough training and the list goes on and on. The real reason is the companies, merchants, etc. don't really care about their customers. Oh they pay lip service as in the infamous line to customers on hold, 'Your call is important to us', yadda yadda yadda. I truly believe they just hope customers will go away and stop bothering them. This is especially true for utility companies as they know there is no other place to get water, phone service, etc.

More about Customer Service later!

Martha

Stuff

I used to have a house chock-a-block full of 'stuff'. Some of it was pretty good stuff, but most of it was really just junk. Mind you it was good junk! I thought I just had to keep it.

A lot of this 'good' junk was acquired shopping at garage sales, yard sales, junk stores and flea markets. At one time in my life I would go through withdrawal if I couldn't go to some kind of junk sale.

Then events happened in my life that made me realize I didn't really need all of this 'good' junk. It started about 21 years ago when I moved from one city to another. While packing up to move, I realized a lot of the so called treasures I had accumulated through 'junk' shopping was really just junk. So I had a massive garage sale of my own and sold a big portion of my junk treasures. I said to myself, "Self, never get this much junk again!"

Ah, how good intentions can go awry! The house we moved to wasn't as big as the last house and some more of my treasures again left through the event known as a yard sale. I promised myself if something new came through the front door, then something old would go out the back door. Didn't happen though.

Two years ago I moved again. This time it was a real nightmare! I couldn't believe how much stuff had been accumulated in those 19 years. I had several months to get ready as we were waiting on the new house to be built and completed. It was a good thing I had that much time as I wouldn't have made it otherwise. Even then it was a terrible time, deciding what to keep, what to get rid of and where to dispose of it all.

A good deal of it went to Good Will, more to the trash and a lot to the local Freecycle Yahoo Group.

Some went to friends and relatives and some to a charitable resale shop. I sold over a housand books. In the end, only really good 'stuff' got moved to the new house. However I have a sneaky suspicion some of what I think is 'good' stuff needs a recalulation and may need to go somewhere else to live.

Yesterday one of my neighbors had a garage sale and all at once the old yearning to prowl through someone else's stuff came over me. I watch the Antiques Road Show and still hope one day to find a real bargain on an extraordinary treasure! I looked through all of the offered goodies and admired some of them, although no valuable treasures jumped out at me. I was very good. I bought 3 books which will go to Half-Price Books once I read them.
Martha

A Flaming Mixer

I just know I need one of these, a flaming mixer! Now it doesn't really have flames; it just looks like flames!  You know, like the flames painted on 'hot' cars! I suppose I could get by with something else, but those flames just look so cool. Apparently you can buy stickers to put on your mixer, according to an article in the paper.

A lot of other folks are making their mixers look like something they aren't, like some of the folks in the *"Bling Your Mixer"* contest. I think I would rather have the flames though, they look pretty cool.

Now if only those 'blinged' mixers could mix on their own and make delectible goodies, I would be all for having one.  However, I think you still have to put the stuff in the bowl and turn on the mixer and then pour it into the appropriate recepticle to finish it up. Sigh! One of these days they will invent a kitchen robot that can be programmed to do all that kitchen stuff. Then I will get excited!

In the meantime I think I will pass on the stickers and just leave my mixer in the pantry. Out of sight and out of mind.

Martha

Enjoying it While it Lasts

I have a new email address. It really isn't new, because I have had it awhile, but didn't use it. I checked it today and there was nothing there except two emails that were very old. No spam, no new messages and the spam filter was turned off. Oh boy!

I am so tired of all the Phishing emails! A new phish is introduced at least one a month and there must be a cajillion zombie computers out there, sending all of the phishes on command from whoever is running that malware scheme! I am so tired of all those emails trying to sell me stuff; especially for parts of anatomy that I don't have!

I don't expect the clean in-box to last very long, but I will enjoy it while it lasts. Someone (or several someones), on one of my many email lists has one of those Zombie computers! The sad thing is, that someone has no idea what is a zombie computer and is just wondering why the computer is so slow.

I am working on a plan to keep this email clean for a while, but it probably won't work. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Anyway, I am enjoying it now!

Martha

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

Martha's Web
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

Stealing My Bandwidth Part II

Last time I said if the offenders stealing bandwidth did not remove the hotlinked image from their pages I would publish the thieving pages.

Due to circumstances beyond my control I have been unable to identify all of the bandwidth thieves (My site was down due to server problems and there are still problems with the statistics server) but I have identified 13 of the offenders, four of which have honored my request to remove the hotlink.

I am sure there are more, however they were not contacted with a request to remove the hotlink.

These were asked and chose to ignore the request.

http://www.myspace.com/doknock
http://myspace.com/shawnhag
http://www.myspace.com/samara_553
http://www.myspace.com/fairybug
http://www.myspace.com/synx
http://www.myspace.com/worldsgreatestdad
http://www.myspace.com/heyitscolleen
http://www.myspace.com/bowlingkev300
http://www.myspace.com/feliciahogan

Repeated requests to MySpace have been ignored as well. As soon as I find the time, I will identify the individual IP addresses and request my host to block them.

Isn't it fun on the Internet?

Martha

Martha's Web

Stealing My Bandwidth

The Internet is loaded with clever and/or pretty eye candy. This consists of joke files usually in the form of jpg or animated gif files or photos which are in various file types like jpg, png, etc.

A lot of owners of personal web sites like to use these files to liven up their pages or to convey a theme. Some of them make their own image files or use files created by talented folks. There are a number of these files that the creators have given open permission to copy (save) and use on personal web sites. Notice the word 'copy'. If a website owner 'copies' the file and pastes it to their own site, this will cause a 'hit' on the original owner's site every time the image is accessed on the 'copied' site. This is known as 'hotlinking' files. Most of the sites that provide these free files have a notice that users should save the files to their computers and not use the 'hotlinking' procedure.

Hotlinking can cause the original owner big bucks if their images are used on a lot of sites using the 'copy and paste' method of adding images. Every time a 'hit' on the copied image a bit of bandwidth is used on the original owner's site. If the image is fairly large, like a photo being used for a background, this can cause quite a lot of bandwidth for the original owner to foot the bill. Even if the image is small, if enough 'hits' (times accessed) are made, it can cause the bandwidth bill to get big!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people using free services for personal pages that really do not have a clue about real websites, hotlinking or bandwidth theft.Two of the biggest free service for pages described as online diaries and journals, rofiles, blogs, etc., are Xanga.com and MySpace.com.

Once the users for these pages discovered images on my website, the hits on my bandwidth went ballistic! Over 5000 hits for the month of December alone! This has caused me to work overtime trying to stop or disuade these users. Educating them would probably work best, for which I have enlisted the help of a friend who joined MySpace for just that purpose! (Thanks, Enon!)

Some of the users are trying to do the right thing, but a request from one just brought an email with obsenities!

I hope they will comply with my request to remove the hotlink from their pages, if not, I will publish the offenders' names and page addresses here on January 6.

Some terms in this article explained:

Bandwidth

Hotlinking

Until later,

Martha

Martha's Web

Hotlinking!

Everyone who has a website can relate to how frustrating it is to have other sites 'hotlinking' to images or other files on their website. I have tried various ways to stop this practice, but to no avail. I tried blocking the domains (culprits), but that also blocked some legitimate users as well. So had to unblock the offenders. Next I renamed the files and 'edited' (changed the files to something really ugly and put my website address on the files) the hotlinked files. That worked to a point, some of the offenders view their sites more often than others, but one persistant hotlinker just went back and linked to the new file name.

One remedy that worked, I removed the file altogether. Sort of drastic, but that worked. Sure got a lot of 404s after that, though.

Two of the worst offenders for hotlinking are MySpace.com and Xanga.com. Yesterday I had over 500 hits from MySpace, all from hotlinking.

Today I had a friend who is a member of MySpace.com, email four of the known hotlinkers and explain what hotlinking is and how to save images and upload them rather than hotlink. I doubt that will do much good as the people that use MySpace don't have a clue about websites. MySpace is rather notorious for this behavior. I did email them to let them know they have people hotlinking to my site, I got a very stupid reply from them.

Their reply:

Hi there!

We are currently experiencing errors with the I.M. (Instant Messenger), we apologize for the inconvenience. We are currently doing our best to make this service operate properly. Please bear with us, as we anticipate these changes to take place very soon.

Thanks!

MySpace.com

Notice I said I emailed them, I didn't IM them! Guess if they don't like the message they just send a 'dumb' response.

If anyone has a better answer, sure would like to know about it!


Martha

As a footnote here, if the offenders do not remove the hotlink from their pages by January 5, I am going to publish the links to their sites.

Martha's Web

Rebates and Gift Cards, Same Old, Same Old

The newest hook to get consumers to buy merchandise, gift cards! Buy a new fridge, get a gift card by mail. Buy a new computer, get a gift card by mail. I think I have heard this con, I mean come on, before only they were calling it rebates.

At least if he or she did receive the rebate, it was in the form of a check which a consumer could cash and either save it or spend it wherever he/she wanted to shop. With the gift cards, the consumer is required to spend the card where the original merchandise was purchased. That is, if the gift cards are ever received!

The rant is on! You can probably guess where this is going!

In October I purchased a new refrigerator (stainless steal, double doors with ice water, crushed ice, cubed ice available through the door and not cheap!). I also purchased a new washer and dryer. Gift cards totaling $200.00 were to be mine as soon as I dutifully filled out all of the paperwork and sent it in along with the required proofs of purchase. This I did the next day after the purchase and I still have all of my suggested copies. November came and went, no gift cards. On December 15th I decided to call the 800 number on my copy of the gift card receipt.

Yes they received it, for all three gift cards. One card for $150.00 mailed November 28, the phone rep stated. Two other cards, for $25.00 each were mailed on December 7. So the phone rep said. So why didn't I receive them? I could see maybe one go missing, but three? Uh huh, I don't think so. So now I must wait 45 days from the date the cards were mailed before I can get new cards, unless the original cards have been used.

Wait a minute! If they can tell the cards were used, then they must have a way to invalidate them if they are lost! I think I have been scammed royally! Anyway, I will wait until the 45 days have passed and see what happens.

Stay tuned, there may be a real bang up for someone, in the corporate headquarters of this big and I do mean big, merchandiser, not to mention a newsworthy tidbit for the local news. Names to be mentioned later!

Martha

Martha's Web

Update!

After four months and numerous phone calls, the missing gift cards finally arrived. I do believe they were never sent originally and if I had not been persistant, I would never have received them. Sigh!

Rebate, Freebate, but Not For You!

It's time for American consumers to rebel against that insidious marketing ploy known as a 'rebate'. You see the ads all the time for a really low price on an item you really want, or maybe even need. On second look, in very small print, the ad states 'After rebate'. You still have to pay the regular, sometimes-inflated price and send for the promised refund known as a rebate. The manufacturers assume that consumers don't mind spending a lot of time, effort and some postage to send for the promised rebate.

Sigh! So many rebates offered, so many never received!

In order for a consumer to receive the promised rebate, many things need to happen. A form for the rebate must be completed properly and then all of the proofs of purchase must be gathered together. They suggest everything should be copied 'for your records' before sending it to an address for that particular rebate. Of course, what this really means is the consumer needs the copies to remind them of the rebate they never received, but I digress! (This address is usually written so small that a magnifying glass needs to used to read it.) I know why they offer these rebates. They hope the buyer will give up in disgust over all of the requirements, especially when they have to cut a proof of purchase from a cardboard box that is at least an inch thick!, Well, that is an exaggeration, but it seems like it sometimes. Then of course the request must be received before the deadline. In fact many people do not send for the rebate, either they forget, lose some of the necessary requirements or just don't want to bother. That's why we keep seeing those ads for rebates on products. They are good for the merchant, good for the manufacturer, bad for the consumer who never gets the rebate!

If the consumer only has a P O Box for his/her address, sorry, Out of Luck! Can't use a P O Box, even though it is the correct and only address! (I guess this is to prevent someone from getting two rebates, but two products would need to be purchased to get the rebates, so....another consumer ripoff!)

In order for merchants to make consumers themselves look good, they often will provide a receipt just for the rebate. There is a warning here, if the receipt has written on it what the rebate is for, make sure it is for the same product purchased! This is experience talking here! Never mind if the print on the receipt is faint or hard to read, trust me, the folks at the Rebate center can read it. (I lost $5.00 on that ploy.)

Excuses, excuses!

Not responsible for requests not postmarked by the deadline! Wrong item purchased! (It wasn't, but my receipt said otherwise.) Not responsible for items lost by the Postal Service. (They do get blamed for a lot of things!)

I have purchased many items and sent for rebates that were duly received. Microsoft has the fastest response time here, less than three weeks. I was impressed! I sent for one rebate and received notification that my submission was approved and being processed, but never received the rebate. That was Office Max. Most of the time I have received the rebate eventually, sometimes long after I had forgotten about it. (I now keep a record in Excel, for who, when sent, amount and if ever received.)

Most of the time the rebate check comes like a postcard. It's no wonder some are never received. Or if they are received, easily un-noticed amid all of the junk mail and probably tossed.

I am still waiting for my Gift cards (the latest marketing ploy) that I have been assured are 'in the mail'. If I never receive them, I have been told I can get them sent again, providing no one has used them. What a ripoff! An immediate discount would have impressed me a lot more! I must admit the cards are for items I would have bought anyway, but since they were offered, why not send for them?

This isn't the first time I have written about rebates. I had a rebate experience with Symantec that was totally infuriating, so much so that I will never buy another of their products. You can read about that in ' I Am Going to Say 'Goodbye' to Symantec', in a previous post.

So I am rebelling against rebates. If I see a product that I want on sale with a rebate, I will keep looking. The hassle and frustration is too much for an old lady like me!

Software Spasms

Have you ever installed software that just wouldn't work? Or maybe it worked for awhile and then just quit working? I am going to tell you about my experience with Software A and Software B. (I won't name the software as they are both really good and I don't want to discourage anyone from using them.)

I installed Software A on my new laptop and it worked just fine. Then it quit working and nothing (and I do mean nothing*) would make it work. Totally frustrating!

For some reason my new laptop was acting flaky about a lot of things. Sometimes when it started up and password duly entered, it would just sit there and I would have to do a hard boot & restart it. There were other little gremlins in this computer and finally, I had enough! I backed up my data to an external drive and since I received a complete restore disk with this laptop (amazing!) I just popped in the CD and did the deed. In practically no time I had a pristine version of Windows XP SP2 on my notebook.

So I uninstalled the stuff I didn't want (Norton Antivirus and a few other things), updated Windows with all of the available critical updates, installed my virus scanner and firewall, and installed my must have programs, including Software A. Oh goody, now it worked! So I went on happily customizing Windows to work the way I want, installed some other must have programs and everything worked just fine, now more gremlins. Then a few days ago I went to open Software A and it wouldn't open. I tried all of the suggested fixes by software A's support and nada, it would not open. Phooey! Talk about frustrating!

Now today, Software B (which runs in the background all the time, as it should) had a problem because of an idiotic move by me (not going to explain that fiasco) and it crashed. So it isn't running in the background. Just on a hunch, I tried to open Software A. Guess what, it works! So I started testing. Open Software B, Software A won't open. Close Software B and Software A works just fine. Hmmm.

Reboot and try the testing again, same results. Software B running, Software A won't open. Software B closed, Software A works! Now I have to wonder, how many times have folks installed some software that just won't work and the problem is just a conflict with other software on their computer?

*re-registered the dlls and executible, ran the dianostics provide by Software A's support, un-installed, re-installed the program. Sigh, if only I had known how easy it was to solve the problem!

Until next time,
Martha

Martha's Web

Can I trust Spybot?

Since I first learned about spyware, AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy have been at the top of my 'must have' program list. One of the functions that I have performed religiously has been to update and run these little jewels on a regular basis.

Just imagine how I felt when I learned the following from a user on one of my Yahoo groups lists. Spybot may be giving in to presure from malware program owners! Don't believe it? Well, I don't know for sure either but why else would this be happening! I have heard rumors, but didn't believe them........

Open your Spybot program and click on the Mode button located next to 'File'. Click 'Advanced', and then click on 'Settings' on the left side menu. Click the 'Ignore Products' icon and scroll through the list of programs. There should be no check marks in the boxes beside the listed programs unless you have previously checked some of them, for what ever reason.

I checked Spybot on both my desktop box and my notebook and here are the results.

In the All Products section, I found check marks by:

MySearch (This is an IE toolbar and a homepage hijacker, according to doxdesk.com)

New.dot net (category, popups)

SideStep (Don't know much about this, but appears to be another toolbar) My question about this one is, why is it listed here with a check mark? And why check marks for the others?

The user that posted the message also found some other things checked, but this was all I found.

So what is going on with Spybot? I scrolled through and unchecked these boxes, updated Spybot, scrolled through again and found them checked again!

Can I trust Spybot? I still use it, but I am wary now!

Until next time,
Martha

Martha's Web

I Won a Million Dollars! (Not Really)

I got a message today, saying I won a million dollars! Whoo Hoo! Too bad it is a scam. I could use a million dollars! I rather suspect I am not the only one to receive this message and I fervently hope all of the recipients understand that this is the 'hook' for a big fat scam. Unfortunately, some of the folks that receive this message will fall for it and soon will be parted from some of their hard earned money.

Here is the message complete with headers. I found it interesting that Microsoft would use go.com to send out this message, LOL! Even more interesting, Bill Gates sponsored this lottery. What do you want to bet he doesn't know he sponsored it!

X-Apparently-To: changed to protect my email address@sbcglobal.net via 206.190.37.109; Wed, 18 May 2005 02:10:07 -0700
Authentication-Results: mta810.mail.scd.yahoo.com
from=go.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
X-Originating-IP: [199.181.134.41]
Return-Path:
Received: from 207.115.57.39 (EHLO ylpvm08.prodigy.net) (207.115.57.39)
by mta810.mail.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; Wed, 18 May 2005 02:10:07 -0700
X-Originating-IP: [199.181.134.41]
Received: from wmailmta04of.seamail.go.com (wmailmta04of.seamail.go.com [199.181.134.41])
by ylpvm08.prodigy.net (8.12.10 083104/8.12.10) with SMTP id j4I99wHx008849
for ; Wed, 18 May 2005 05:09:58 -0400
Received: (qmail 27686 invoked from network); 18 May 2005 09:04:45 -0000
Received: from wmailweba01.seamail.go.com (HELO wmailweba01) (10.192.72.91)
by wmailmta04o.seamail.go.com with SMTP; 18 May 2005 09:04:45 -0000
Message-ID: <2944243.1116407122295.javamail.microsoft_lotto013@wmailweba01>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 02:05:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: MICROSOFT LOTTERY
To: Microsoft_Lotto013@go.com
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE WON.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: GoMail 3.0.1

FROM THE DESK OF THE COORDINATOR [MICROSOFT GLOBAL EMAIL LOTTERY]
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT
MICROSOFT B.V. 44 Boeing Avenue, 9459 PE Schiphol-Rijk.

Sponsored and promoted by Bill Gates, Founder, Chairman, CEO of the World's Largest software(Microsoft):

http://www.templetons.com/brad/gmap.gif
========================================================================================

Ref. Number: 132/756/40027
Batch Number: 538901527-BC722
RE: WINNING NOTIFICATION/FINAL NOTICE.
To claim your prize contact Barrister Roy Hans (RoyalChambers@sify.com)

ATTN.

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the Our Global Email Lottery program held on the 4th May, 2005.
Your e-mail address attached to ticket number 37511465899-6410 with serial number 4872-510 drew lucky numbers

7-14-88-23-3545 which consequently won in the 1st category, you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of US$

1,000,000.00 (One Million United States Dollars).

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Due to mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until your claims has

been processed and your money Remitted to you. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and

unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants.

All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from over 20,000 company and 30,000,000 individual

email addresses and names from all over the world. This promotional program takes place every three years. We hope with part

of your winning you will take part in our next USD 50 million international lottery.

To file for your claim, please contact our fiducial agent/attorney:
=======================================
BARRISTER. ROY HANS (ROYAL ADVOCATEN KANTOR)
Amsterdam-Netherlands.
Tel: (31) 617 792 760.
Fax: (31) 847 506 277.
E-Mail: RoyalChambers@sify.com
=======================================

Please in order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, remember to quote your reference number and batch numbers

in all correspondence, also indicate your country and city. Furthermore, should there be any change of address, do inform our

agent as soon as possible.

To enable you file your winning prize, you are advised to fully comply with our co-respondent agency office.

Congratulations once more from our members of staff, and thank you for being part of our promotional program.
Note: Anybody under the age of 18 is automatically disqualified.

Sincerely yours,

Mrs. Susan Smith
Lottery Coordinator.








___________________________________________________
Check-out GO.com
GO get your free GO E-Mail account with expanded storage of 6 MB!
http://mail.go.com

Reads nice, doesn't it. The scammers are getting better at what they do, trying to part you and your money for their benefit.
Please, don't bother calling the above number, what you will get is a request to send money for the fees to collect the winnings. This is just a variation of a scam that has been around for a long time! Real lotto winners don't pay to collect and real lotto winners actually entered a lottery!
For more information about lottery scams (and other Internet frauds), just go to this site: How to tell if you have a Lottery Scam Letter

Until next time,
Martha

Martha's Web

Blue, Red, or United?

(I am ranting again!)

Whatever happened to the United States? I guess the verbiage on the legal tender doesn't mean much any more. You know,the statement 'United we stand, divided we fall'. It seems like this great land is no longer 'united', but instead we are 'blue states' or 'red states'. I know that this isn't really true (I hope!), but I have to wonder what kind of image or message this is sending to those countries that would like to see our mighty nation destroyed.

Why have normally intelligent people allowed this to happen? Whatever happened to the idea of voting for the person or ideas instead of voting for 'The Party'? The Democratic party is not always just what this country needs and neither is the Republican party. Each of these organizations have good ideas, but as soon as one of them announces one, the other immediately jumps on it as 'bad'.

Folks, the way I see it, there are just a few people in both parties that are fomenting the division of our land. I won't mention any names, but if you read the newspapers, listen to TV and/or the radio, you know who they are. My idea to stop this dividing of the United States? Vote these suckers out of office! Let's have just the United States once again!

A Follow-up to ' I Am Going to Say 'Goodbye' to Symantec'

I did finally receive a response to the inquiry I sent to Symantec about the rebate amount sent in and the amount received. The date on the email I received today, Jan 18, was Dec 27. I guess this email was lost in 'cyberspace' or maybe the same black hole where my rebates went!

Unbelieveable response! Not a single answer to anything I asked!

Thank you for your rebate inquiry. Our records show that check number 8369221 was issued on 10/23/2004 in the amount of $20.00. This check cleared our bank on 11/05/2004. ( I knew that!)

We appreciate your participation in this promotion. If there is anything else we can do to assist you, please contact us at symantecrebatesupport@symantecrebates.com. We are always happy to help. (I don't believe that!)

This was what I asked:

I have a question: My rebate check I received was for $20.00. Why? I sent two rebate offers, one for $30 and one for $40.
Please note, the product that I selected above is NOT the one I sent the rebate for, as Drive Image is not listed.
Comments: I purchased Drive Image because it works. I could never get Ghost to work, it would not install. I tried three times and it always failed. Everything else worked ok. If this is not resolved in a satisfactory manner, I will no longer use Symantec products.
Tracking Number: xxxxxxxx

Obviously this is a 'canned' response, I wonder if anyone actually read this inquiry? Or maybe I should ask 'Did anyone in office that processes rebates read this inquiry?' I am quite sure that Symantec outsources rebate processing, maybe they don't know what it is to followup for 'good customer service!'

I have totally removed anything from Symantec from my computer and guess what? It runs better! Just like everyone said, Norton is a resource hog! I am using eTrust™ EZ Armor™ LE from Computer Associates and so far I like it just fine!

Note: I am not the only one with rebate gripes! Rebate Gripes

My Magazine

I subscribe to several magazines and sometimes I actually have time to sit down and read one of them. I stopped my computer magazine subscriptions a while back, though. It just seemed like they keep repeating the same things I have already read in an email newsletter or on one of my favorite websites. The titles kept promising me how to clean up my hard drive, fix my email or
or some other wondrous thing, and when I read the article I would think, 'I already know that', or I would think, 'These guys are nuts'.

But I still want to read something once in a while that isn't on my computer monitor, so I subscribed to a couple of really famous magazines written mainly for women and home makers. I won't name them here, but if you really want to know, just email me and I will let you know the titles.

As I perused the latest issue of one, I started noticing how many full-page ads there are for everything from soup to nuts and lots of stuff in between. So I counted them! Yeah, I was bored. There were ninety-three full-page ads, including 20 for prescription drugs (ask your doctor). In addition to the blatant ads were a number of articles for makeup and hair care specifyng brands. There were a lot more half page ads. I didn't count those. Then there were the cards to pull out and mail, ten of those.
There were several interesting articles, but they were all mixed in with all those ads. Oh and I don't want to forget the special advertising section! Eight pages there, with a few coupons to entice me to try the products.

So, out of the two hundred pages in the magazine, less than half were devoted to anything I really cared to read. In that less than half was an article on redoing one of my rooms (a make over) with picture of both before and after. If my room looked as good as the before, I sure wouldn't worry about a make over! True, the after really looked great!

So when this subscription comes up for renewal, I think I will pass. But I will keep Discover magazine!

Do You Think?

I've been reading some of the security newsletters that come into my inbox on a regular basis. A recurring theme in these missives seems to be 'phishing' (see below) is going to be the biggest security problem for end users in the coming year. The sad thing, it is probably true.

How many times have the news media reported on this problem? Hundreds of times more than likely. How many times have users been told, 'Your financial institutions do not send emails telling you to go to a site and input your confidential information'.

Are end users like sheep, following wherever the paths lead? Do they just ignore common sense and blindly do whatever an email tells them? There must be thousands of these 'sheep like' users out there on the 'web' or the perpetrators would not keep up the endless barrage of 'phishing' emails I get in my inbox. The same holds true for spammers. They just keep sending and sending an endless stream of garbage email to just about everyone that has an email account. Some of the more gullible of users click and buy from this junk, thus encouraging the garbage handlers to send out more of their trash.

How can we educate end users to delete unopened all of this junk? How can we convince these folks to NEVER buy anything from a spam email? I wish I knew! If how to handle 'phishing' and spam is published in the local newspapers, reported on the news and written about on countless websites haven't made a dent in what these poor 'victims' will do, then what can be done?

Should ISPs make users take a security course before they let them connect to the Internet? Make them pass a test? That would seem to be impractical, but somewhere, somehow, there has to be an answer!

(Phishing, pronounced fishing, is a nefarious plot to steal a victim's information. The emails claim to be from a financial instution, like your bank or credit card company, eBay, PayPal or a simuliar company. The message varies, some claim to need you to update your information or your account may be closed. For an example,look at this page on Martha's Web.)

I Am Going to Say 'Goodbye' to Symantec

Symantec's products have been on my computer a very long time. I currently use Norton utilities, (I may have to keep that) Norton's Internet Security which is the firewall and Norton Antivirus. I have been happy with these products. True they are big resource hogs, but I have plenty of rsources and have configured the products to not load until needed. Of course, the anti-virus and firewall are needed at startup.

So why am I going to say 'Goodbye'? I don't like being lied to. I purchased a product called Drive Image back in August, from a very well known retailer of Electronics. The product was advertised for $69.95 with two rebates, one was for an upgrade, $30, (I already had an earlier version) and the other was for purchasing the product, $40. Unfortunately, the company that made Drive Image was bought by Symantec.

I duly filled out the rebate slips and carefully made sure I had everything that was required. I also made copies of each of the rebates. The copies are stored in my Rebates folder in My Documents. Imagine my surprise when I received a rebate check for $20! That was it! So, I attempted to find a contact email address for Symantec Rebates, however, if they have one, it is very well hidden. They do have a page on their site for rebates, but no contact information that I could find. Apparently they don't feel it is necessary for customers to contact them to find out why the advertised rebates and the actual amount of the rebate are not the same. So, when it comes time for me to renew my anti-virus subscription, another product, as yet undecided, will take it's place. The same thing will happen for my firewall.

The sad thing is, I would have bought the product without the rebates. But if someone (or some company) lies to me, it's all over!

Why I Changed Martha's Web

Been a while since I made a post to my blog, and below you will find out why! The post below is also found on my web site.

Every now and then, change is inevitable and usually good. I was pretty happy with the way Martha's Web looked for the most part. Since I was using Internet Explorer and most other folks were using IE as well, I didn't think it mattered. I was wrong!

Once I started using Firefox I could see there were big problems with Martha's Web. The template I was using just didn't render well in either Firefox or Netscape. In order to make the pages look right when they were opened, I had to make some drastic changes that made the pages render with a great deal of empty space at the bottom. Not good! Besides just being poor design, it caused the pages to take longer to load. I am not an expert with html, that's why I use FrontPage. Searching and testing just couldn't resolve the problem, so that template had to go!

I looked and looked for a web template I could live with and make my pages validate. I wanted my pages to look right in every browser.

I tried a template that caught my eye, pleasing colors (to me) and had the coolest popout menus! Well, guess what. The pages and menus looked nice in Internet Explorer, but they looked awful in Netscape and worse in Firefox! Forget that template! I paid for it, too!

So I kept trying. I stripped all of the javascript from the template and removed all of the theme stuff. Now it validated, but there were still problems with the visual aspect. The page banners looked too much like an amateur and I didn't like them. The pleasing colors started to look too dull. So I tossed the template and started over. This was starting to be a real drag!

Several months ago on a whim I purchased a neat program called Zara Webstyle 4. I had played with it some for another project, but really hadn't done that much with it. So now it seemed to be time to play with it again, this time for real! I did come up with a template that is now the backbone of Martha's Web. It bears little resemblance to what I started with in Zara Webstyle, but I like it.

I have learned a lot about html, but I am still no expert. I have learned a lot about includes, I love them! I have learned a lot about CSS, cascading style sheets, but still have a long way to go with CSS.

So while I was redoing Martha's Web in a new template, I decided it was time to reorganize as well. Outlook Express has a separate section now. Some pages just had to go and some were incorporated into other pages. Some of my screenshots needed to be redone with Snagit. (I love Snagit!) Some of the links no longer went to pages, so they had to go as well. There were some spelling errors to be corrected too! (There may still be some spelling booboos, spelling is not my strong point.)

You may think all I had to do was copy and paste from the old pages into the new pages. Wrong! Every page had to be redone, I copied most of it into Notepad and then into the new page from Notepad. This removed a lot of old bad formatting. Then of course the pictures had to be re-inserted, alt tags named and hyperlinks checked and redone. I have 111 pages on this site, so it took awhile!

I hope you like the new look for Martha's Web. (Because I am not going to change again any time soon!) If you find an error somewhere or a link that doesn't work, please let me know!

Defrag your hard drive!

Good advice! I try to keep my computer maintained on a regular basis and I suspect that's one of the reasons I don't have too many problems. But..................

There's always a 'but' isn't there!

A very irritating situation with Defrag for me was what appeared to be two huge files that would not defrag. A report said the file that had two fragments was 'hiberfil.sys'. Apparently this file cannot be defraged. (I found out about the report from 'The Langalist".)

Research let me know that this a file used by Window's 'hibernation'. (You know, Windows goes to sleep when you aren't using it. Supposed to save power.) This option is one I NEVER use, so I turned it off. Voila! The fragmented files are gone and my system shows no fragmented files or folders!

To remove the file, go to Start/Control Panel/Power Options, select "Hibernate", and uncheck box "Enable Hibernate". Reboot your computer, and Windows will delete hiberfil.sys for you.

'Useless' Virus scanners

I just read in an online forum that a certain popular virus scanner is 'useless and so are (the writer named two of the most popular scanners)' because the writer got a virus.

What a silly statement! For one thing, no virus scanner is perfect. There is always a lag time between when a new virus appears 'in the wild' and the anti-virus companies can write and deploy a 'fix' for the virus.

More importantly, how did this user get the virus? More than likely the user opened an email with the virus contained within. How many times do people have to be told, 'Don't open attachments unless you are expecting one'? And was the scanner in question updated? A virus scanner is only as good as the most recent update! I could tell from the tone of the writer's message, he/she is totally clueless!

The moral is, don't blame someone/something for something that is probably your own fault! Just check here for more information! Martha's Virus Info

Windows XP SP2, I did it, I installed it!

I must say, the installation of Windows XP SP2 went very smooth. I have been reading about problems that other people have had and was very hesitant to install SP2, but hey, I have the CD, I have my system backed up using PowerQuest Drive Image,I printed all the instructions on how to remove SP2 and if that didn't work, maybe it 's time to do a re-install! (Shudder!)
But everthing went just fine. I did disable everything on my computer that normally runs in the background like Norton Anti-virus and Norton Firewall, Spyware blaster and PestPatrol. It took less than 45 minutes from start to finish and so far everything is working ok. I hope I don't find programs that won't work! If I do, rest assured, they will be posted here and on my web site, Martha's Web. I have a lot of programs, so it may take awhile to scope this all out!