ALERT!

My blog is now on my own website.
You can view it here:
www.ComputerTutorFlorida.com/blog

Bookmark the new address, because that is where ALL future information will be posted (the archive of previous posts is there also).

See you there!

Type a special character in any document

Windows has all kinds of special characters built in - characters that you don't see on your keyboard. Here's how you access them.

First, make sure your NUM LOCK is on. Then, hold down the Alt key and type a number, such as 164, on the number pad of your keyboard. See the character that just appeared? If you typed 164, you saw the letter "n" with the squiggly line over it (used when writing in Spanish). There are all kinds of different characters available to you - you just have to know the codes.

And for your reading pleasure, here is a chart with all of the codes.

This week's video profiles a new invention. Click below to see the running-powered bike in action. Somehow I don't think it's going to be a big hit.

The Invisible Shelf

Here's a neat idea - create a bookshelf that you can't see. Full instructions are here.

Yahoo's spam filters grow even more incompetent

I hadn't checked my old Yahoo email account in a while, and I recently logged in just to see what was there. What you see here is just a partial listing of what Yahoo's spam filters determined were legitimate, non-spam emails that had a rightful place in my Inbox. With Gmail having such a smart spam filter, I can't imagine any reason to use Yahoo for email.

(Click on the image to see it full size)

How to create a good password

Here's a rule that just about everyone knows, but almost no one follows: whenever you create a new password, use a random mixture of letters and numbers, don't use regular words, and make sure it is a password you have never used before. No one does this because the password would be too difficult to remember.

Here's an easy way to create a good password that you WILL remember. Instead of thinking of a password, think of a sentence. For example:

I got my driver's license when I was 16.

That's easy to remember, right? Then take the first letter of each word of the sentence, and here's your password:

igmdlwiw16

There we have random letters and numbers that don't spell a dictionary word. If you wanted to get tricky, you could use the last letter of each word in the sentence. But don't get so tricky that you can't remember the method that you used!

This week's video is a really freaky robot, created by a team of engineers in Boston:

I love Florida!

Today was a great example of why I love living on the gulf coast of Florida. First, the weather today was fantastic:


I took one of our dogs up to the Safety Harbor Marina/Pier for a walk. There was a wedding that had just taken place:


Then over at the boat ramp, there was a couple launching their kayak -


And right after that, a pontoon boat full of people came in to the dock after spending the afternoon out on Tampa Bay:


It was a great day!

Tip on making a fake ID

Need a fake ID? No problem, there are places all over the internet where you can order one. Here's a tip - choose carefully which photo you will use. An authentic state identification card generally pictures just one person.

Free fonts - thousands and thousands of them!

Everyone loves to spice up a text document (or an email) by using a different font. Most people have a lot more fonts installed on their computer than they will ever use. Can you have too many fonts? Absolutely. Here's why:

1. The fonts that are installed on your computer are all catalogued in a Registry key. The key that holds all of that info does not have unlimited space. If you have too many fonts, you might find one day that you try to install a new one, and the computer won't let you. This is usually when you have several hundred (or maybe close to a thousand) installed fonts.

2. Practically speaking, if you are creating a Word document and want to use some different kind of font, do you really want to scroll through 500 fonts to choose one?

So, the point is, don't just go installing fonts all the time unless there is a chance that you will actually use them.

Now, having said that, I present you with a collection of websites that offer...free fonts! From the sites listed below, you can choose from thousands and thousands of different fonts, and you don't have to pay for any of them. This blog post will be a good reference for you to use in the future when you need a new font - so I recommend that you bookmark it.

And now - the free fonts:

Font River

Fontsy

Fawnt

Mike's Sketch Pad

Filecart

Bittbox

Iconian

Font Garden

Search Free Fonts

Get Free Fonts

The Font Shack

Keith Devens

Font Foundry

Font Reactor

Simply the Best Fonts

Fontennium

More free quality fonts

Acid fonts

Daily Free Fonts

Fonts 500

Urban Fonts

High Fonts

Web page fonts

Da font

Font Freak

Larabie Fonts

Themed Fonts

Divide by Zero

1001 Fonts

Better Fonts

Blambot Comic Fonts

Modern Life

Abstract Fonts

40 Excellent Free Fonts

Free Font Downloads


This week's video isn't funny, but it is entertaining and has a good message.

Personal service is best

If your computer has a problem, what do you do? Maybe you're lucky enough to have a family member or close friend that is good with computers and has time to fix it. Or perhaps someone like that can walk you through a repair over the phone.

Because of a big advertising campaign, the first choice for some people is the repair guys at the local "box store". I am talking about the Geek Squad, which is part of Best Buy. This is not always the worst choice, but the problem is that these guys just work for an hourly wage. They don't usually get to know the customer very well, and they don't necessarily have the customer's best interests at heart. Here's a good example of this.

I have repaired hundreds of computers with all kinds of different problems. Before I do anything, I want to get a good idea of exactly what the problem is. I also want to make sure that the customer's data will never be at risk, so I determine that all important data is already backed up (or I back it up). Then, I completely analyze the computer and determine what the problem is and how long I believe it will take to fix it. If, during the course of the repair, it gets more complicated and will take longer than I estimated, I contact the customer to explain the situation and get permission to proceed.

My point is that when you deal with me, you get personal service. You are not just one of thousands of machines that I am working on. I understand your dependence on your computer and my job is to make sure it is working correctly. I don't want my customers to be satisfied; I want them to be raving fans!

Don't do this to your computer

I tell all of my clients to not have food or drinks near their computer. Does my own household listen to this advice? Not exactly.

No more comments

Unfortunately, I have had to disable the "Comments" feature on my blog. Recently there have been comments added that were not acceptable.

Today, a scumbag spammer scammer posted a link to a scam antivirus website. The site appears to be "scanning" your computer for viruses. Then it shows that it has "found" several viruses on your hard drive. Then of course, there is the offer to get rid of those viruses - for a fee, of course. This is a complete scam, and these vermin travel the internet posting their links on blogs such as mine. Well, not any more.

I do enjoy hearing from you, so if you have any comments about a post here, just send me an email. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Get hassled!

"I decided to quit procrastinating. Starting tomorrow."

You know there are some things you have to do, you just avoid getting started. Or you forget about them and then remember at a time when you can't get started. Of course, once the job is started, it's usually not that big a deal and I wonder why I kept putting it off for so long.

Sometimes all we need is a little nagging. A reminder every so often that "hey, you need to do this thing - don't forget!". Now there's an internet service that does just that. It hassles you!

You can sign up free at www.hassleme.co.uk and enter those things you want to get "hassled" about, and approximately how often. You will receive an email reminder to get busy and do that task. Some examples:

- go to the gym roughly every 4 days
- write an entry in my diary roughly every 3 days
- call your mother roughly every 7 days

One of the future planned features is that you can get hassled via text message to your cell phone - handy for people who don't check their email very often (you know who you are!).

In the past I have used video clips of people singing the Star Spangled Banner - usually because they mess up. This week's video is the same song, but performed very well by the Cactus Cuties - a group of very talented (and very young!) girls.

Not all teachers are underpaid

Homeschooling is not right for everyone, but this letter from a school teacher to a parent sure makes a good case for it.

You may be cool, but...

you'll never be Four-Popped-Collars cool.

NOW who do we vote for?

For those of you wondering which candidate should get your vote this election season, the picture just got a whole lot more confusing.

The rapper known as 50 Cent (if you say it out loud, be sure to pronounce it correctly: "fiddy cent") has decided to switch his endorsement again.

A few weeks ago, he was a Hillary backer: "There's nothing bad about Obama in my eyes...but I just think Hillary would be my choice."

Then he heard Obama's recent speech on racial issues: "Yo, Obama! I'm Obama to the end now, baby!"

Yet his most recent comments were, "To be honest, I haven't been following that anymore. I lost my interest."

So where does that leave the rest of us, the ones who were looking for some guidance in these complex political issues? Are we supposed to just research the issue ourselves now, without any help at all from the rap community? I just don't know what to do.

Fix a pesky Word problem

I like Microsoft Word, but it sure does some annoying things sometimes. This week's tip is about one of those bothersome Word functions, and how to fix it.

I like to use tables. If you have several different information items and you want to display them in a Word document, using a table is often the best way to do it. However - if you make your table fill up the whole page, you might find that you now have a 2-page document. Page 1 is your table and your data inside that table, and page 2 is...nothing. Yes, the cursor blinks there, but you cannot backspace and no matter what you try to do, that second page just sits there laughing at you because you can't get rid of it.

Here's what's going on, and how to be done with it.

After the table, Word inserts a paragraph mark. You just can't see it. If you tell Word to show the paragraph mark(s) then you will see it. This is done by using the "Show/Hide" command. In Word 2007, get to the "Home" tab, and then in the Paragraph section, click on the paragraph symbol. Now you will see all of the paragraph symbols in the document - including that pesky one on page 2.

First, highlight that page 2 paragraph mark by double-clicking on it. Now, go up to the font size selection at the top of the screen and click the drop-down menu as if you were going to change the font. Instead of clicking on one of the font sizes displayed, hit the number 1 on your keyboard, and then the Enter key (this actually changes the font size to 1). Now you will see that the paragraph mark is extremely small, but it has moved back to page 1! Page 2 is gone.

You can now go back to the paragraph section and select the paragraph symbol so that you don't see all of those symbols on the page any more.

This week's video is about a wonderful woman and what she does for the families of fallen soldiers. I cannot embed this video in my blog, but you can see it at the link below.

http://www.militarytimes.com/hancock

Vintage iPod advertisement

Click to see it full size:

A good cause

My son David will be graduating from college in May (don't ask me how those years flew by so fast - I have no idea). David plans to teach English in Ecuador, but right after graduation will be taking a short trip to China. He is in the process of raising the needed funds for that trip. Here are some details, as written by David:

As many of you know, I will be finishing my undergraduate education this May. Many of you also know that my plan and dream is to return to Ecuador to teach English. The prospect of graduating is especially exciting to me since I will be making the formal transition from student to teacher.

I would be perfectly content to move to Ecuador after graduation to join friends and begin my career. After much prayer and advice from adults who were once in my position, however, I have decided to postpone my plans, for a time, in order to travel and gain new experiences. Although I do not yet know the full implications of this decision, I have already begun planning for this new and exciting time. Several weeks ago, I was asked if I would be interested in joining a team from my church who would be traveling to China this summer to teach English. Needless to say, my decision was not a difficult one to make!

So, this May 16th, I will fly from Tampa to Yinchuan, China, a city in north, central China. Led by my church’s Community Life Pastor, Jack Piquette, who recently moved back to Florida after having lived in Yinchuan with his family for two years, our team will work in one of the universities in Yinchuan, teaching English, building relationships, and serving the faculty in any way we can.

My hope is that we will not only be able to help those in China with whom we come in contact, but that this experience will open doors and yield more opportunities for me to serve in the upcoming year before I return to Ecuador.

Right now, everyone on the team is preparing for the trip in several ways. One way we are preparing is by asking for the support of family and friends. Not surprisingly, one of the areas we need support is finances. The total cost for each member to go on this trip is $2,000. So, please keep us in your prayers, and, if possible, please consider joining those who have already given to make this trip possible. If you are able to assist financially, please make checks out to Clearwater Community Church and put “David Johnson – China” on the memo line – (by early April, if possible).

Thank you all SO much for your help! Finally, when I return, I will be posting pictures from the trip. So, if you’re interested in seeing those, check back here in late May for the “debriefing”. Thanks again! David

If you are able to help David with this trip, he would greatly appreciate it! Please mail your check to:

Clearwater Community Church
2897 Belcher Road
Dunedin, FL 34698

Create an email signature

If you use email (of course you do because everyone does) you should have an email signature file (better known as a sig file). Why type your name at the end of each email, when it is always the same anyway? Let the computer do it for you. If you get an email from me, here is what is at the end of the message:





If you have a business, you can put your business name and address or whatever other contact information you want on there. It's your sig file, so it's up to you what you want to use.

There's a great website if you want to create a signature in your choice of font. It is mylivesignature.com and that is where I created mine.

Once you have created it, how do you get it to show up in your emails? That depends on what you use for email.

Outlook Express: click Tools - Options - Signatures

Outlook 2007 (and earlier versions of Outlook also, I believe): Tools - Options - Mail Format - Signatures

Web-based email:
Gmail: Settings - General tab - Signature
Yahoo: Options - Signature
Hotmail: I don't use Hotmail because it is a truly awful email service, so I am not specifically familiar with the sigfile procedure - but you can get the instructions here.

This week's video shows what firemen do when there are no fires and they get bored. They make cars fly.

Not every IT person is an expert

From Computer Stupidities:

A friend of mine told me that when he was in junior high school (mid-to-late nineties), they got a computer in the classroom free for the students to use during breaks. The first thing many of them would do to was to change the dull Windows 95 desktop. The school's IT Manager for some reason thought of this as vandalism, so he frequently fixed it in the only way he knew how -- by reinstalling Windows.

I was almost on the floor laughing when my friend told me about how the IT Manager had come into their classroom one day and told the students, "Will you STOP changing the desktop background? I've had to reinstall Windows every day for the last two weeks now!"

Gmail tracking tricks

As you know by now, I use and highly recommend Gmail - Google's free email service. I could probably do several month's worth of weekly tips on things you can do with your Gmail account. But this week, I want to tell you about two of the most valuable tricks available.

Trick #1
Let's say my email address is pctutor@gmail.com (which it is!). Gmail allows you to use dots in between the characters of the user name portion (that's the part to the left of the @ sign). So - any email that gets sent to:

pc.tutor@gmail.com
p.c.tutor@gmail.com
pct.u.t.o.r@gmail.com
or even
p.c.t.u.t.o.r@gmail.com

would still end up at my regular email account, pctutor@gmail.com. Even though you only signed up for one Gmail account, you effectively have several accounts by using this feature. You can use one configuration for work, one for home, one for school, etc. and you still only have to check that one email account to receive all of them.

Trick #2
This one is really cool. You can use the "+" sign after your user name and enter anything you want after that, and the email will still get to your original account. So, next time you are at a website that requires you to put in an email address to register, you don't have to worry about them spamming you because you can enter your email address like this:

pctutor+flakywebsite@gmail.com

If you wanted to get really fancy, you can use a different word or number (or combination) every time you give out your email address, then track which site or company sold your email to some spammer. Then, just tell Gmail to automatically delete any emails that contain that code.

This week's video will make you think about your life, and put your problems in perspective. You need to see this.

Fun in New York City

This week is a little diversion from the typical Monday "here's how to fix your computer" tip. Sometimes you just need a break.

One of my favorite shows was Candid Camera. To me, some of the best humor is found in seeing how human beings react in various set-up situations. Of course, there have been many shows that have copied Candid Camera (Punk'd, Scare Tactics, etc.) and some of them have been pretty entertaining at times.

There's a group in New York that operates on the same premise, except they are not on television. They are on the internet. The group is called Improv Everywhere. Basically, this organization plans and executes scenes in public places that catch the attention of passers-by, to get their reaction. These scenes can use just a few people (those that are involved are called "agents"), or there may be hundreds involved. Some of them are quite complex and involve lots of coordination.

Here are a few examples of what they have done:

- 60 cell phones ring at the same time (in the bag-check area of a large bookstore)

- The McDonald's bathroom attendant

- Of the thousands of people in Grand Central Station, over 200 people freeze in place for 5 minutes

- The Hug Patrol

- Surprise birthday party - while on the subway

There are lots more and they have lots of pictures and video. It's good, clean, clever fun - which is a nice thing to find on the internet!

This week's video is a combination of comedy and gymnastics:

The trick to viewing online videos smoothly

Even on a high-speed connection, when you view an online video the playback can be choppy sometimes. Depending on the format, a video can use a lot of "bandwidth" - that basically means that you are transferring a large amount of data from the video's server to your computer. Since your internet connection speed can vary, sometimes a video will play smoothly and other times it might have that stop/start problem. And if you are still on dialup - don't even bother trying.

Here's how you can get your videos to play without having to stop and let the data "catch up" to it. Just click the Pause button and wait for the download to get well ahead of the scene marker.

You can try it with this week's video below. Instead of just starting to play it as normal, click the Play button and then right away click the Pause button (that's the one that replaces the Play button when the video is actually playing). Watch the gray bar fill up across the bottom - that's the data loading. You can wait until it gets about halfway, or you can wait until it is completely across.

Now click Play again, and you can watch the video without interruption.

This week's video is a great display of redneck art - which is actually rather impressive!

TinyUrl links - the real destination

Most people that have used the internet for a while know about the TinyUrl service. For those that are not familiar with it, here's a quick primer.

If you find a website that you want to tell your friends about, all you have to do is copy and paste the URL (the website address) into an email. Simple, right? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What if the address looks something like this:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

You really don't want to paste something that long into an email. This is where the TinyURL service comes in. Just go to www.tinyurl.com and paste that ridiculously long address into the form on the front page, and they will automatically create a nice SHORT address that you can use instead of the long one. You will get something like this:

http://tinyurl.com/6

So now, whenever you see a link like that, you know it is really just a shortened link that goes to some other website.

But what about security? I mean, you don't really want to be blindly clicking on links and not knowing exactly where you are being taken, right? That is the subject of today's tip.

The TinyURL website has a special feature that you should enable: the Preview Feature. You will see a link on the left side of the TinyURL website called Preview Feature. Just click on that, and then click on "Click here to enable previews". That is all you have to do - the site puts a cookie on your computer so it knows your preference.

Now, whenever you click on a TinyURL link, it will first take you to a page that tells you the ACTUAL website address to which you are being taken. Then, you can continue on to the site, knowing that you will be safe.

This week's video - forget being smarter than a 5th Grader; are smarter than a chimpanzee?

Email forwards

Okay...I have received an email from 3 different people in the last week, asking me if the virus they were being warned about was real. I am going to cover this in detail here, because there is an element of truth to it that makes it dangerous. The best scams/hoaxes usually have a little bit of truth in them.

First, here is the text of the email:

I received this from a friend that is in the loop on computer virus issues. Thought I would Forward.
I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!
I checked snopes.com, and it is for real!!
Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!
You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD,' regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.
If you receive a mail called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it.! Shut down your computer immediately.
This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.
COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US.

There are a few elements that jump out here as a red flag. Primarily, it violates email Rule #1: the encouragement to send this to all your friends. Rule #1 says that if an email encourages you to send it to everyone you know, do not forward it. Delete it.

For the other elements, I will take them line by line:

"I received this from a friend that is in the loop on computer virus issues. Thought I would Forward."
Yes, the ambigious reference to the "expert" friend. Your friend was such an expert, he decided to forward an email on to you about a computer virus. Remember Rule #1.

" I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!"
Here's some news: Norton does not "gear up" for a virus. Norton has a specific procedure in which they identify a virus, discover its characteristics, create a solution based on those characteristics, and post information about it on their website. "Gearing up" is not part of the process.

"I checked snopes.com, and it is for real!!"
It is pretty common for most hoaxes now to include this line, because snopes is where a lot of people check to see if an email forward is legitimate. So why include it in the email? Because that way people will be less likely to question it - after all, it's been verified, right?

"Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP."
Remember Rule #1.

"PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!"
Again, Rule #1. The fact that it is written in ALL CAPS means it is even less likely to be legitimate.

"You should be alert during the next few days."
There are currently over 200,000 viruses in circulation. My opinion is that you should be alert every day. Even better, follow certain email practices that make it almost impossible for your computer to get a virus. More on this in a minute.

"Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD,' regardless of who sent it to you."
How about this plan: don't open any attachments, regardless of who sent it to you. The only exception is if you KNOW what the attachment is ahead of time. So if you get an email from your best friend, and the email says, "Hey, check out this cute puppy!" you DON'T open it, because you don't know ahead of time what it is. If your friend's computer has a virus, the virus could have sent that email just to get you to open it. The point is, it doesn't matter if the attachment is called Postcard or any other name - don't open attachments.

"It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer."
That's interesting...I wonder how, after the whole hard drive is destroyed, the virus then uses that computer to send itself to all of the email contacts?

"It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it."
That is where I disagree. I think I would rather get the virus.

"If you receive a mail called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it.! Shut down your computer immediately."
Hey, there's some good technical advice on how to handle a virus: just shut down your computer. Guess what - it will still be there when you turn your computer on again.

"This is the worst virus announced by CNN. "
Not true. CNN did not announce it.

It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.
Not true. Microsoft does not "classify" viruses.

This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday
Not true. Notice how the term "yesterday" is used and no date is given - "yesterday" could be any day.

This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.
Wow, with that kind of technical language, this warning must have really come from someone that knows about these things - some kind of Special Expert! Didn't I read a few lines earlier that the virus "burns" the whole C drive? Why would it then have to destroy just a certain sector?

COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US.
Here we go back to Rule #1 again.

Are there viruses in circulation? Of course. Should you be careful? Obviously. You should have a good antivirus program (not Norton or McAfee) that is up to date. You should not click on any links in emails, and you should not open attachments.

And if an email tells you to forward it to everyone you know, you should delete it.

Self-destructing email

Have you ever sent an email, and then regretted sending it? Maybe it had some harsh words, or maybe you made a business commitment that you really didn't want to make. In any case, we have all typed things that we wish we could somehow magically make disappear, even after we have hit that "Send" button.

Now it's possible. However, you can't use your "regular" email program such as Outlook to send this "special" email. You have to go to this website: www.WillSelfDestruct.com and send your email from there. You can choose the time period for the email to destroy itself:
- a single viewing, and it will destroy itself after a certain amount of time (measured in seconds)
- multiple viewings (you can designate how many times it can be viewed before destruction)
- multiple days (it will destroy itself after a set number of days)

The service is free - try it yourself and see how it works before sending an email to someone else. The service and website are also for sale - so if you have $17,000 you can own it.

This week's video is for all the men out there - tired of candles that are all scented based on female preferences? Now for men we have...Mandles.

What is the Standby option?

I recently received an email question from Lynn, a friend in Maine (incidentally, Lynn and her husband Bill are owners of Old Comfortable, a great place to stay when you are vacationing in Vacationland).

Lynn writes: "When you click on start, turn off computer, you get a screen that asks you three things. I have either hit restart or shut off and never paid any attention to the other option, standby. If I use standby for overnight, does it save on electricity? Will the overnight programs (backup, virus update, etc) still run in Standby mode? When should you use this standby option if ever? I just turn my monitor screen off and don't worry about turning anything else off."

The idea with Standby mode is that the computer is effectively powered down, but it saves your current session in memory (assuming enough memory is available). So, if you have a Word document open, and 3 different websites open, and you're in the middle of creating an email, all of that should come right back on the screen when the computer comes back out of Standby mode.

However, using Standby for overnight is generally not an option that I would recommend (depending on how your computer is configured). All of the computers in our house do their "housekeeping" overnight: antivirus is updated, antispyware is updated, and all data is backed up to a single external drive. If the computer is in Standby mode, those things will not happen. Of course, if you have your computer do that stuff during the day, then it doesn't matter.

Since the computer is basically shut down while in Standby mode, it does save a little on electricity. However, the biggest electricity hog is the monitor (especially if you are using one of the old CRT monitors). You can always shut down the monitor and it has no effect at all on the functions of the computer.

I do still recommend that you restart your computer once a day. This clears the memory and gives it a "fresh start" so that it will perform at its best. The easiest way is to do the restart when you are done using it at night. When you come back to it in the morning, it will be ready for a new day of work.

This week's video was made by some guys in Finland with a whole lot of time on their hands. They set up a supermarket with a domino-like trail of pallets, boxes, etc. and then video the trail of falling items throughout the store. Interesting to watch, but it seems like a whole lot of work for not enough reward. And then they have that whole mess to clean up.

Those silly Floridians

This was from an Associated Press article about Super Tuesday:

"In Florida, election officials across the state fielded hundreds of phone calls from confused voters asking where they could vote Tuesday, apparently unaware that Florida's presidential primary was last week."

I guess this explains Ron Paul's low numbers here in the Sunshine State.

Naming those vacation photos

You just got back from the vacation of a lifetime (or any event during which you took a lot of photos). You just transferred about 300 new pictures from your camera to your computer, and now you are looking at your "My Pictures" folder with hundreds of pictures in it, and they are all named something like this:

P1010035.jpg
P1010036.jpg
P1010037.jpg
P1010038.jpg
and so on...

Obviously those file names don't mean anything to you; they are just the sequence of file names given them by the camera when the picture was taken. Of course, you could right-click on each one of them individually and rename them, but that would take a very long time. You might want to do that eventually, but there is a quicker way to solve the immediate problem.

First, click to select all of the photos in the same group at one time. In other words, you can hold down the CTRL key, and click once on each of the "Christmas Vacation" photos until they are all selected. Then, do a right-click on one of them and choose "Rename". Name it "2007 Christmas Vacation".

No, the computer won't give all of those selected pictures the same name. What you will end up with is a list that looks something like this:

2007 Christmas Vacation001
2007 Christmas Vacation002
2007 Christmas Vacation003
2007 Christmas Vacation004
2007 Christmas Vacation005
and so on.

It's still not the most ideal way to name your pictures, but it is better than before. And now you can put all of those photos in their own folder and rename them specifically at your leisure.

This week's video deals with Google - their first rule as a company has always been "don't be evil", but have they crossed the line?

Government always knows best!

Did you know that you are too stupid to know what to do with your money? That's right. And because you don't know how to properly spend the money that you have earned, it's the federal government's God-given right to step in and spend your money for you.

No, I'm not talking about all of the earmarks and pork-barrel spending that goes on in Congress every day. I am referring to having your personal wages garnished - money forcibly taken from you, right out of your paycheck - in order to force you to buy health insurance.

Think I'm joking?

Safely remove your USB flash drive

I remember when USB flash drives first came out - I thought "what a gimmick - who would use that?". How wrong I was! Now just about everyone has one, because they are one of the easiest ways to carry computer files with you. And like everything else related to computers, they are getting better - and cheaper - all the time.

There is something important to remember when you are using your flash drive. When you are finished with whatever you are doing, you cannot just pull it out. Well, you can, but you are risking damaging the data if you do it that way. If you just pull the drive out of the USB port without the proper preparation, you are sort of "surprising" the computer by its removal. The computer doesn't like surprises.

Before you physically remove the flash drive, open My Computer and see what drive letter the flash drive is using (once you know that, you can close the My Computer window).

Then, look in the System Tray (the lower right corner of your screen). Move your mouse over the icons until you see one that displays the words "Safely Remove Hardware". Double click on that icon.

In the new window that appears, you should see some drives listed (and some other things that are plugged into USB ports, such as your printer or mouse or keyboard). Your flash drive probably is listed like "USB Mass Storage Device" or something similar. There should be a box near the bottom of the window that says "Display device components" and you will see exactly what drives are connected to your computer. Click once to highlight the flash drive, then click on the Stop button.

When you see the message appear in the lower right that says you can now safely remove the device, that's when you can actually pull the drive out of the USB port.

This week's video - apparently this boy had been in the hospital for a while, and this is his first birthday after recovering from his illness. His parents got him a new X-Box. What makes this video so remarkable is his excitement and gratefulness.

Another reason to use Gmail

I have recommended several times that you NOT use the email address that comes with your internet account. Here's another reason.

Is your computer screen dirty?

Just click here and get it cleaned right through the internet!

January 30th - say good bye to MySpace!

It's a fact: MySpace is just awful. It's full of spam, obnoxious ads, and bots that pretend to be human and send you requests to be their friend. If you want to be on a social network, get on Facebook. It's free, and it's where your friends are.

January 30 is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day. I'll be deleting my account that day (I never look at it anyway). Check the list below - if you have experienced any of these, it may be time to delete your account:

1. You spend five minutes writing a wall post only to hit an error message when you try to post it because of all the website glitches.

2. You’re a girl who constantly gets marriage proposals from random men in the middle east.

3. You visit someone’s Myspace profile only to suddenly have music start blasting out of your speakers.

4. You have to make redundant clicks to perform simple tasks because Myspace keeps taking you to advertisement pages where you have to click on “return to myspace profile” in order to continue what you’re doing.

5. You visit someone’s profile only to have your eyes bleed because of terrible page layout with non-matching designs and font colors.

6. Your experience is hindered because of intrusive banner ads that either talk to you or try to reach out and block your view of what you’re trying to look at.

7. You read yet another news account about how some child predator using Myspace has abducted a little girl or that some hoax myspace account has caused a teenager to commit suicide.

8. You’re frustrated with the fact that Myspace doesn’t allow you to post your contact info, meaning to contact someone you can only use Myspace’s glitchy Instant Messenger, message/email system, or wall commenting.

Good bye MySpace, and good riddance.

Get the quickest access to a website

There may be a website that you want to check sometimes, and you just want to look at that website right away. What is the quickest way to do that? Of course, you could just add the site to your Favorites or Bookmarks list, but there is a way that will give you even faster access.

First, open your web browser (should be Firefox, but I know there are some people still using Internet Explorer). Go to the web page that you want to check quickly. Look at the top of the window, in the address bar. You should see a little icon, and then the address that starts with "http". It looks like this:

Now click and drag that little icon to your desktop (that's the main screen on your computer with all the various program icons). You might have to move some windows around so that you can see the desktop area to be able to drag to it.

Now close all of your open windows. You should see your desktop, and you should see a new icon with the Firefox logo, or the Internet Explorer logo, depending on which one you use. To get to your website, just double click that icon and in a few seconds, there you are!

This week's video is a couple of little British boys. The younger of the two is named Charlie, and he is learning to use his new teeth. And enjoying it.

View your System Tray - all the time

The System Tray is that little row of icons in the lower right corner of your screen. It is one of the best indicators of what programs are running at any given time. However, in Windows "default" mode, most of those icons are hidden. That's why you see this:

You can click that little blue circle on the left end to see the rest of the icons for a second or so. Windows thinks you don't really want to see that row of icons. But you do! The more programs you have running, the slower they all run. So if there is a program running and you don't need it at the time, you can just close it for the time being. A common example is MSN Messenger - when you install it, it automatically sets itself to run every time you turn on the computer. And if you can't see your System Tray icons, you don't even know it is running.

Here's how you can always see your whole System Tray:

The taskbar is the bottom of your screen. In fact, the System Tray is the right-end of the taskbar itself. Somewhere in a blank area of the task bar, do a right-click and choose Properties. In the new window that comes up, UNcheck the box that says "Hide Inactive icons". Click Apply and OK. Now the little blue circle disappears, and your System Tray is fully visible at all times.

This week's video is a clip of just a man, singing a simple song that we all know. Can you guess what the song is, before the halfway mark of the video?

Use the free Waker-Upper service

There is an easy way to remind yourself to do something. You can use this free service to:

Set a wake-up call at a specific time
Remind yourself of important events
Remember to take medication on time
Escape from a boring date or meeting
Remind child or spouse to do chores
Set reminders for tasks and follow-ups

Using this couldn't be easier. Just go to www.wakerupper.com and set the date and time for your reminder. You can have your reminder sent as a text message to your cell phone, or your home phone, or it can be sent as an email.

This week's video is a pretty amazing demonstration of precision rollerblading: