The two regions unified in 1873 to become Budapest and they are still nestled on both banks of the Danube.

Nice response from last weeks computer files… so let’s do something like it again.

“Warning:” is not always a good thing

You ever get those e-mails about a new virus that will destroy your computer and cause warts to grow on your nose if you open them? Yep… had a few of those have you? Well, the part about what it will or won’t do isn’t what you should be concerned with, it’s the part which says “send this to everyone on your address list…” or some such drivel.

I have made it a point to NEVER EVER send anything to anyone that’s part of some type of e-mail note or message. You should do the same. That goes for “lucky” chain letters, bad ju-ju “don’t break the chain” letters, virus warnings (good or bad), happy face notes, “tag your it”e-mails… JUST DON’T DO IT!

Here’s why… It makes you look stupid. I get probably twenty such notes from other sources each and every week. I have broken more “chain e-mail letters” in the past six months to have bad luck from the day I was born. 99.9% of these things are drivel and/or have not one shred of truth. Imagine sending a chain e-mail about a September 11th virus and not one ounce of that information is true. People receiving the notice would think you’re a goof. Well, I’m going to share with you a web site that you should place on the tool bar of your favorite browser. It’s SNOPES.COM. If you get anything that looks bogus, “stoopid” or just too good to be true, visit this site and makes sure it doesn’t fall under that “I am so dumb sometimes…” user bracket.

There are many other sites that can help you determine is some or all of your e-mail in-box is just trying to part you with your money/ information / sanity!

hoax-slayer.com hoaxbusters.org vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp

The funny part about all this? I constantly warn friends, neighbors and relatives about this proliferation of crapola that can be found in the e-mail in-box. Yet I still get stuff from my closest sources expounding on the fact that Viagra can get my SUV up to 30 more MPG’s if I drop just two tablets in my tank (there’s a joke in there somewhere…).

Just say NO… No to anything that looks cheesy, corrupt or just to good to be true. If you can’t identify what crapola is after all the tools I have given you, I will resort to my e-mail “twit” filter and NO e-mail, good or bad will be allowed in my in-box from you!

Put it in a folder

I’m not telling a lie here… One computer I was asked to fix had over 125 icons on the desktop. These icons handled all of the things this user worked on in the course of a normal month. 125 icons… 125 little pictures that made the desktop look like it had thrown up all over itself.

Did you know that a folder can exist on the desktop? Try doing a right click and NEW… there it is… Folder. Now you can store all those irritating little pictures in folders that classify what they do. In fact, I use folders almost exclusively on my desktop.

One little folder contains all of the diatribes I have posted since January 2008.

Do yourself (and the five year old computer guru you have on retainer that fixes your computer for you) a favor and place like kinds of icons in a folder. A cluttered desktop is so… not cool!

A shortcut is a short is a shortcut

Since we are on the subject of folders, let’s do something fun. Let’s make a shortcut to a folder that exists on the computer’s hard drive.

Right click the START button and click on Explore. Let’s create a folder on the c-drive called “Bad Photos”. Just click on the “Local Disk (C:)” in the left hand window. Mouse up to “File” and select “New” and “Folder”. Call the folder “Bad Photos”. Once the folder is created, right click on the new folder. Do you see the “Send to” listing? Select “Send to” and the words “Desktop (create shortcut)”. That’s it. You now have an Icon on your desktop that is a shortcut to a folder on your hard drive.

But why do that? In short, expediency! (For those of you in Rio Linda: “makes things quicker”) You no longer have to use Explorer just to find the folder for all your bad photos. Just click on the icon that says “Bad Photos”. In fact, let’s take this one step further. You could have a folder on your desktop called “Photos”. In that folder is another folder that’s called “Bad Photo’s”. In that folder you could have a folder called “Really Bad Photos” and inside that folder you could have another folder called “Drinking all Nite Photos”. With just one little icon on your desktop, you can get to all of the photos you have on your hard drive.

One more thing about icons on the desktop. You can change the little pictures of those icons. Right click on your “Bad Photos” icon on your desktop. Select “Properties” and then select “Customize”. In the bottom pane should be a “Change Icon” button. Click on it. You now have more icons to choose from than you can shake a stick at. Windows XP provides you with more than you can ever use, or you can go browser shopping for icons and download enough icons to make a computer technician green (and not from envy).

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Still here? Some good stuff right there. As I have said before, this is something you can do right now, later on in the week or sometime in the future. The key thing is to “just do it”. (I wonder if Nike will call???)

I leave you with one thought… All of those jokes you are sending to friends, neighbors and relatives? Don’t! At least not in the numbers you may be getting and/or sending. One a week is OK with me (and might be OK with the recipient). Just try not to be a pest… Not to be confused with the district across the river next to Buda…

Until next week…

The Chemstrand Company created the synthetic greenery, which was originally called Chemgrass. It became known as Astroturf when it was laid down in the Astrodome in time for the Houston Astro’s ‘66 baseball season.

There are times when cruising the internet brings up things that must be looked into. In fact, just recently I was doing just that, when a small item caught my eye. Did you know that all items manufactured for use have a shelf life. OK, so your saying “Duh…” In other words, these manufactured items are not considered to be new, and should not be sold after a certain period of time, hence the “shelf-life” dates on some manufactured items.

So… now what? Well, an integral item used in the course of your daily routine does not have a shelf life. And every day your lives depend on this product.

I’m talking about your tires… Car… Motorcycle… whatever you use to get around the town. And tire dealerships are selling tires that are six, seven, even eleven years old and are calling them new. And many people are paying with their lives by driving on these “past shelf life” products.

Tires, like everything else that is manufactured, have a useful life span. After a period of time, and not being used, they loose their elasticity; they tend to rot or dry up. The process that welds the tire tread to the carcass could become unstable if not mounted and driven within a short period of time. How short? That is not really known, but most experts believe that the shelf life of a new tire is between five and seven years. Once past that shelf life, the tires could delaminate at speed causing severe control issues.

Every tire sold in the U.S. requires a DOT imprint be placed on the tire shell. This DOT info is long, complicated and coded. The last part of the code tells you when your tires were manufactured. In a small oval or rectangular impression are numbers; numbers like 439, or 1205. This is the code for when your tire was built. The code 439 means the tire was built in the 43′rd week of 1999. That tire would be 9 years old. The 1205 means the tire was built in the 12th week of 2005 and the tire is 3 and a half years old.

What is disturbing is that the U. S. tire manufacturing community has not adopted a shelf-life concept for tires that have never been used and several vendors will sell you these “old” tires and call them new. How can a 9 year old tire be called new?

In England, tire manufacturers are required to tell vendors when stock should not be sold and/or returned to the manufacturer. However in the U.S., there is no such mandate. Most manufacturers still believe that tires have a very long (if not indefinite) shelf life. Some say that scientific evidence is just not able to say one way or another if a dated tire is good or bad. So, turning a blind eye, the manufacturers and vendors refuse to do anything about it. And tires that could be over ten years old are going on vehicles, just like the one you drive today. And no one seems to care… until the tread separates from the casing.

The problem is also prevalent in motorcycle tires where the shelf life could be less than half of what a car tire is. Certain types of motorcycle tires are sent to dealers where they will sit in storage until someone needs one. Your life could depend on a tire that is well over 6 years old and has never been mounted on a rim.

OK… so I checked my tires on my little Toyota pick-up. Three of those tires are less than three years old. That’s about right considering I just had them replaced two years ago. But one tire has a DOT date of 1901. You do the math. It went on the vehicle as new and it was five years old. Right now, I’m OK with that. But you can darn well bet that I am all over the next tire installation done on my car and/or motorcycle.

This isn’t just a rant by old Uncle Marky, trying to spread terror, dread and concern…

Here’s one place you can go to for this same information.

Hopefully, this link will still be viable and you can see a 20/20 news report about old, dated tires.

My final point… Take this information for what it is. It’s very simple to remember where this date information is and what it means. If you care about your life, and I think you do, you will make sure that “new” means new when it comes to having tires put on your vehicles. You will not rely on the vendor’s inventory system when it comes to your vehicle’s tires. This was an eye opener for me.

All of this now makes me wonder if even Astroturf has a “use by” date on it. I wouldn’t want my Dallas Cowboys playing on a surface that is over 15 years old!

Until next week…

Italian burger ingenue and MacDonald’s franchise owner, James Delligatti, invented the famous sandwich in 1967, and he has managed to keep the ingredients of the ’secret sauce’ secret all these years.

Ah computers… fun right? Work flawlessly all the time; they are always ticking along in perfect harmony with your world, right?

OK, ok… well, don’t yell at the messenger… jeesh!

Those that know me, know that I dabble… in computers that is. And there are some good things that YOU can use to make your machine a happy go-lucky bit of your day. So hit the “PRINT” button… I will impart a wealth of knowledge…

The good ol’ RIGHT CLICK

Seems that most of the apps we use today have buried secrets that can be easily uncovered by using the right click button. For example, if you right click on the START button, a window opens with a listing of applications (‘apps’) that you can use. One of these apps is “Explorer”. If you haven’t used Explorer, where have you been? In the old days, we used the DIR (short for directory) command to locate and look at the files and information stored on your computer. Explorer is a couple of steps above that old time command. I won’t expand on Explorer, but suffice to say that the “right click” can be used in many ways while you have Explorer open and active.

The idea of the “right click” permeates the application idiom. You may be using an app right now and have never used the right click button of your mouse on some part of the app. Try it. What you will find is that a right click in just the right place will allow you to change the app’s overall look and feel. For those who like photo-play type videos, play one of the videos located here. By right clicking on the video as it plays, you will see a selection that allows you to expand the video to fit “full screen”. Sweet!

No matter what application you have on your Windows desktop, the right click is always a part of the function of the application. The only way to find out what a right click will do (that is if you decide not to read all 1287 pages of the “Windows Applications Secrets and Tips” book) is to just try the right click on some part of the application and see what happens. Just using right click on Windows Explorer application alone could bring up as many as eight (8) different right click boxes.

Does your Explorer window look anything like this? With a couple of right clicks you can customize your views.

Slow Machine? DEFRAG

If you have never done it, DON’T DO IT NOW! But running DEFRAG on your computer can speed up its function. As you use the computer, files get moved in and out of the hard drive. Sometimes a file won’t quite fit in the spot it was taken from, so Windows breaks the file into bits and pieces. It takes time to reassemble those bits and pieces and this is where the DEFRAG function helps out. It grabs all of those bits and pieces and makes them whole again. Complete files means faster load times.

To run the defrag application, you could choose START -> PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SYSTEM TOOLS -> DISK DEFRAGMENTER, but there is a better way, and you can set this up once and forget it. Use Windows Scheduler. To do that, several things must happen;

1. The computer must be running
2. Desktop shortcuts are created that can be scheduled
3. You monitor how things run

To defrag a disk drive, the computer has to be on. You know, electronics are funny things. When they are running they warm up and when they are not running they cool down. This “heat-up / cool down” cycle can kill a computer in short order. So, if you use the computer a lot, leave it running. If you plan to use the computer later in the day, leave it on. If you used it heavily one day and need to use it heavily the next day, leave it on. If you PLAN to defragment (or do other system upkeep things, like virus scan) on Wednesday evening/night, leave it on. If you are going on a motorcycle ride for three days, turn it off.

Let’s create the short-cuts. Follow these steps to create the C-drive defrag short-cut.

1. Right click on desktop
2. Select NEW
3. Select Shortcut
4. A window appears asking for the location of the item. Type “defrag c: -f” (without the quotes and include spaces).
5. Click Next
6. Name the shortcut DEFRAG C DRIVE
7. Click FINISH

That’s it… Now all we have to do is tell the SCHEDULER to run it on Wednesday (or any other day you choose).

1. Click START -> Control Panel
2. Double click Scheduled Tasks
3. In the window, double click on Add Scheduled Task
4. The Scheduled Task Wizard starts, click Next
5. You will see a list of applications that you could run, but ours are special, so we click on Browse.
6. Here is Windows Explorer, in the left hand pane click on Desktop
7. Find and click on your new DEFRAG C DRIVE shortcut and click OPEN
8. Type the task name as Defrag C Drive and click on the Weekly radio button
9. A schedule window opens. We correct the time for 3:00 AM. Make sure the “Every 1 weeks” is set and we select Wednesday as the day it will run. Click Next.
10. If you use password and login names you may be presented with a login box. Place you name and login information here then click Next.
11. You are presented with a successful task completion box. That’s it, your done. Click Finish.

You will now see your new task in the Scheduled Tasks window. On Wednesday, while you sleep, the Windows Defragmenter will run, grind away those bit of files and your computer will run faster. As a side note, you may not want to place the Defrag task on the scheduler. However all is not lost. You can also just click the new shortcut icon’s and the Defrag utility will run in the background.

Don’t forget… Clean-out your Recycle Bin and/or close any open applications. This makes the defragment operation work more efficiently (BTW, you can right click on the Recycle Bin icon to empty the Recycle Bin).

Have the right programs

I can’t say this enough. Having the right programs working for your computer can make your day on the computer a wonderful experience. I’ll list some of these applications and discuss them briefly;

Virus scan software

Without a good virus scanning program, you are courting disaster. There are n’er-do-wells (hacks) that prey on unsuspecting computers that access the web or internet. These “hacks” are looking to corrupt your computer, disable it’s abilities or worse yet, steal your personal information. Get a good virus scan package installed and keep it current. It’s worth it’s weight in gold.

E-mail program

You use Microsoft’s Outlook at work. So you use it at home… WRONG! Virus predators and hackers alike know that Outlook is used almost exclusively on Windows machines. If you are at home, use another (read as ‘different’) e-mail program. Your “at work” Outlook stuff is probably being monitored by your IT department and IT guys who speak geek all day long. But who monitors your e-mail while your at home? Changing your e-mail program does a couple of things;

1. It removes the Outlook e-mail program function overhead dramatically (Outlook does a lot of work in the background and your computer speed suffers for it)
2. Keeps the predators and hackers away from your vital information (you aren’t vulnerable if you use something that the hackers aren’t counting on you using)

Just do a search on EMAIL PROGRAMS and the list will be staggering. Me? I’m partial to Eudora. Why? Small footprint, no background “garbage” tasking and text based e-mails (smaller storage size and virus attachments will not run).

Backup your data

If your life is stored on your computer and your computer dies, what happens? It’s kind of like “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, does it still make a sound?” WHO CARES! If your computer goes ‘bonk’ in the night and all your pictures, e-mails, dates, documents and important information is on that now dead computer, how usable is all of that important data to you? IT’S NOT! Get a plan in place to backup and/or save your important information. Buy a third party backup program and learn how to use it. Use Microsoft’s built in backup program (START -> PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SYSTEM TOOLS – > BACKUP) if you have to. You can also copy all of your important files to an external USB hard drive, network drive, CD-Rom drive… whatever… just get it copied so that you have some information in the event the Tommyknockers come calling to your piece of silicon diodes.

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Wow… that was a lot. For those of you who are still with me, take a breather. I could fill volumes on things I have found out in my over thirty years of playing with this “beefed up calculator” and trust me… some of the lessons were hard learned.

One last bit of advice? Find someone who knows a lot about computers and place him/her on your speed dial. There is nothing better than having a relative (hence the nick-name “Uncle Mark”) or friend who has been inside the box and knows why it goes “bonk” in the night. And yes, I do tech support for my friends as well as my family (just ask my 86 year old mother-in-law about that).

I look at computers very much like I look at a Big Mac. Without the secret sauce, it’s just an overgrown adding machine!

Um… did that make sense?

Did I get fries with that?

Until next week…