Archive for the ‘Advice & How To’ Category

« Older Entries

Another XP Annoyance Bites the Dust!

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

I’ve been using Windows XP for 8 years.  8 long years.

Ironically, one reason that I have been so hesitant to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 is that my transition from Windows 98 to Windows XP was so traumatic.  (OMG, I sound like an abuse victim on Dr. Phil.)

Anyway, one thing that has always irritated the sh*t out of me is the “All Programs” menu that you get when you click on the XP “Start” button.

If you love software as much as I do (especially free demos), your “All Programs” menu is chock-full of mysterious menu items arranged in a random, non-alphabetized mess.  More than once I’ve started to download software only to find out that it was already installed on my PC.

And for 8 long years, I’ve assumed that there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

But today is a new day!

Just open up the All Programs menus, and right-click on any menu item.  Near the bottom of the drop-down menu, you’ll see the magic words “Sort by Name.”  Give that baby a click, and all of a sudden, everything is in alphabetical order.

Yep.  8 long years…

Here are some more tips:

  1. You can rename any item on the All Programs menu by right-clicking it.
  2. Specifically, if there are any items that you want at the top of the list, you can add an initial zero or two to the name of the item to get it to come first in the alphabet.  (Some folder names shouldn’t be changed.  Don’t rename “Startup.”  Also, pay attention to any warnings that pop up — it’s XP trying to stop you from doing something stupid.)
  3. You might also want to rename any items with non-intuitive or downright baffling names.
  4. If you want to go to the folder containing the items on the All Programs menu, you can right-click on the All Programs button and then click on “Explore.”  (The items on the All Programs list should be located in the folder containing your profile in a sub-folder named “Start Menu\Programs.”)
  5. Actually, clicking on “Explore” will only show you the menu items associated with the profile you logged in with.  If you can’t find what you’re looking for in that folder, try right-clicking on All Programs and then clicking on “Explore All Users.”
  6. One reason that you might want to go into the Start Menu\Programs folder(s) is to create groups and subgroups of menu items — you can create new folders, name them whatever you want, and then drag (or cut-and-paste) menu items to your heart’s delight.
  7. If there’s a menu item that belongs in more than one group or subgroup, you can make as many copies of that item as you need.
  8. You may find one or more All Programs menu items consisting of a folder containing a single folder or shortcut.  You can chop out a layer of the hierarchy by dragging, moving, or cutting and pasting the single lower-level item up into the “Start Menu\Programs” folder, and then deleting the original folder (which should now be empty).
  9. If you want, you can move individual menu items from one profile to another.
  10. Finally, the All Programs list includes both shortcuts and folders containing shortcuts.  After you alphabetize the list, the folders and the shortcuts will be alphabetized into two separate groups.  If that bothers you, you can move each shortcut you care about into its own appropriately named new folder.

Before you get too creative, especially with Tips 6-10, I urge you to make a backup copy of any “Start Menu\Programs” folder that you want to make changes to.  (But you knew that already, didn’t you?)

Good luck!

Tags: , ,
Posted in In the News, Tech Tips | No Comments »

Another scam to add to the list…

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

I’m talking about debt settlement companies.

You’ve seen the ads — settle your credit card debt without filing bankruptcy!  Yay!

The first thing you should know about debt settlement is that it really is possible, under certain circumstances, to get your credit card company to accept less than you owe in full settlement of your debt.

That’s 100% true.

But hiring a debt settlement company to get you there?  You might want to consider:

  1. Most, if not all, debt settlement companies charge a hefty fee up front, which they keep regardless of whether your debt gets reduced.
  2. In fact, a depressingly low percentage of customers get their debt reduced.  An awful lot of customers end up filing for bankruptcy.
  3. Assuming you get a settlement, it goes on your credit record.
  4. Also, under certain circumstances, a settlement might result in taxable income to you.
  5. Working with a debt settlement company usually, if not always, involves paying money into a third-party account — money that you would ordinarily be paying to the credit card company.
  6. That means that, until you actually reach a settlement with your credit card company, your credit card company is likely to try to collect from you — with phone calls, letters, and even lawsuits.
  7. Much, if not all, of the “service” provided to you by a debt settlement company is stuff that you might well be able to do yourself.

It is possible that there is an honest debt settlement company out there, I suppose.  I just haven’t ever heard of one.

I did an internet search for “reputable debt settlement company.”  I found one company that claimed to have a spotless reputation for honesty.  But when I searched for that company’s name on the internet, I wasn’t able to find one single non-suspicious web site supporting the company’s claim.

To paraphrase Sam Malone from Cheers: “Not that many people know this, but we’ve got a great reputation!”

Check out the article in today’s New York Times:

Link to Article

Tags: ,
Posted in Don't Get Scammed! | No Comments »

Windows XP Tip — Selecting from Cursor to the End of the Doc

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

This has bothered me for years.

Here’s the situation — you’re working with a long document (20, 50, 100 pages, whatever).  You want to chop off the last 10+ pages.  So you move the cursor to the cutting point, click on it, and then laboriously scroll through the pages to be deleted while holding down the left mouse button.  Then, when you get to the end, you hope that everything is still highlighted as you hit the Delete key.  But more often than not, your finger slips somewhere or other, and you have to spend a couple of really annoying minutes trying to figure out if you’ve deleted exactly what you wanted to…

Never again!

Shift-Ctrl-End

will highlight everything from the current cursor location to the end of the document.

Shift-Ctrl-Home

will highlight everything from the current cursor location to the beginning of the document.

Unbelievable!

Time for a doughnut.

Tags:
Posted in Tech Tips | No Comments »

The joy of the extended desktop…

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

It’s only a matter of time before just about everyone at work will have more than one monitor on their desk.  (I’ve got 5.)

It’s unbelievably handy — you can use one monitor for a document you are working on, and another monitor for looking at other documents or doing research on the internet.  You can even open the same document on both computers — this saves a bunch of time and aggravation, for example, if you’re revising a document and need to look at page 22 while editing page 50.

Years ago, I had two PCs on my desk, and I used a KVM switch so that I could use the same keyboard and mouse for both computers.

However, there is a far more elegant solution — the extended desktop.  In effect, the desktop of the primary computer is stretched across one or more secondary computers.  You can move your mouse cursor seamlessly between the monitors, and you can also drag individual windows from one monitor to another.  The keyboard is operative in whatever window is the “active” one, regardless of which monitor it is located on.

The easiest way to create an extended desktop is to connect a monitor to your laptop. (Just about every laptop or notebook has an external monitor jack.)  Assuming you’re using Windows, you can go to “display properties” and select “extended desktop.” Your desktop now extends across both the notebook’s built-in monitor and the external monitor. If you like, you can also hook up an external mouse and keyboard to your notebook — that way, you can position the two screens any way you want.

Another way to create an extended desktop is if your graphics card has a second monitor jack.  (Not all graphics cards have a second monitor jack, but it’s worth a look.)

A third way to create an extended desktop is to place a second PC and monitor on your desk, network the second PC with the first PC, and then install Maxivista multi-monitor software.  The basic version costs $39.95, and is worth every penny.  (If nothing else, it will keep your old PC out of the landfill.)  In addition to an extended desktop mode, Maxivista also has a “remote control” mode that allows you to control the second PC with a keyboard and mouse connected to the first PC.

I’m a PC guy, so I can’t speak for Apple computers — the extended desktop is so awesome, though, I can’t imagine that there isn’t some way to use a Mac to drive multiple displays.

Good luck!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Tech Tips | No Comments »

Why did my TiVo stop working?

Monday, April 26th, 2010

TiVo rules! (Except when it sucks...)

I have a love/hate relationship with my TiVo.

99% of the relationship is love — really, it’s a terrific device that has completely changed the way I watch television.

But 1% of the relationship is deep, searing hatred.

You can sail along for a few months — maybe even a full year — without incident, and you’re Master of the TiVo Universe.  Then, one day, you try to transfer a show to your PC, and you find that your computer is no longer able to find shows on your TiVo.

As you grind your teeth into non-existence, you shake your head in disbelief.  It was working perfectly yesterday!  What the f**k happened?

The answer usually boils down to software and firmware updates.  Late at night, while you’re asleep (or while I’m working), your TiVo is dialing into the Mother Ship for the latest TV schedules.  Every once in a while, it also gets an updated set of instructions.  While all of this is going on, your cable box may also be getting its own set of updated instructions.  And in the meantime, you may also be updating TiVo DesktopPlus (or Sonic MyDVD, or whatever) on your PC.

Hilarity often ensues.

The problem is that TiVo isn’t in bed with Verizon FiOS (or whoever your local provider may be).  Thus, when your local provider makes some change in your cable box, it takes time for TiVo to catch up.  Sometimes a lot of time.  Sometimes, TiVo never catches up (at least, not without intervention on your part).

The other night, I spent a good 3 hours trying to get my TiVo DesktopPlus 2.8 software to work again.  If the internet is to be believed, there are thousands of frustrated subscribers out there having similar issues.

One fix that has apparently worked for a lot of people is to unplug the  TiVo box for a couple of minutes. (Note — this is not the same thing as using the TiVo reset option on the onscreen menu.)  For those lucky folks, when the box is plugged back in, it magically starts working again.

That didn’t happen for me.

After trying a half-dozen other fixes, this is what finally did the trick:

(BTW, I’m running DesktopPlus on an old Dell Dimension, Windows XP Home Edition, SP3.)

  1. Completely uninstall everything on your PC having anything to do with TiVo, Sonic, and Roxio.
  2. Use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to remove any dregs that you can’t remove otherwise.
  3. Use the fabulous freeware CCleaner to scrub your registry of anything relating to TiVo, Sonic, and Roxio.  (Of course, make a backup copy of your registry before making any changes to it.)
  4. Reboot.  (It may not always be necessary, but IMHO it’s never wrong to reboot any time you remove software.  In fact, you might want to reboot between steps 1 and 2, and between steps 2 and 3.)
  5. Now, get the latest version of DesktopPlus from the TiVo website.
  6. Install the software, and cross your fingers.

DesktopPlus now works perfectly.  I haven’t summoned up the courage to reinstall Sonic, but I’m cautiously optimistic…

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Tech Tips | No Comments »

The Greatest Gift…

Friday, December 25th, 2009

My indescribably beautiful daughter, who is going to be turning 7 in ten days, wanted to know if I thought she was funny-looking.

When I asked her what she meant, she told me that we should look at her class picture hanging on the wall.  (Of the 21 kids in her class, 2 are Asian American, 4 are Latino, and 15 are European American.)

She told me that she was funny-looking because of her eyes — her sparkling, intelligent eyes, filled with endless wonder.

I wanted to argue with her.  I wanted to prove to her with indisputable logic how exactly the opposite of funny-looking she truly is.

But then I remembered how little it helped all those years ago when my parents tried, in their own way, to do the same thing when I came home in tears.

So instead of talking, I listened.

Lord knows I’ve got a long way to go in becoming the father my daughter deserves.

But something deep inside of me tells me that the greatest gift a parent can give a child, or for that matter any human being can give to another human being, is to shut up and listen, really listen, to what they have to say.

Happy holidays…

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Parenting Tips | No Comments »

Things to try before throwing that old _____ away…

Friday, December 18th, 2009

I’m on a roll!  I’ve gotten three things to work that were headed for the scrap heap:

  1. My dad’s Gateway notebook computer.  It’s maybe 5 years old, running Windows XP Home.  It had slowed to an agonizing crawl, and my dad was thinking about tossing it.
  2. My old Dell P991 Ultrascan monitor.  Maybe 6-7 years old.  It was working okay, but it couldn’t show a true “black,” and there were these tiny green diagonal lines spaced apart by two inches or so.  Really annoying, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
  3. My old Zenith color TV.  Maybe 8+ years old.  It was working fine, but then one day, the greens started looking blue, and the picture in general had an orange tint.

Here’s how I fixed them, without spending a dime:

It turns out that the old Gateway computer was the victim of the security suite that comes with Verizon FiOS.  (My dad had recently switched over from Optimum Online.)  I uninstalled the Verizon bloatware, and all of a sudden the notebook was blazing fast.  (I subsequently installed Microsoft’s free Security Essentials software, which apparently has a way smaller footprint than the Verizon package.)

I fixed my Ultrascan monitor by rolling the driver back to the OEM driver that came with the monitor all those years ago.  I then used the “color return” feature, and the monitor is now as good as ever, with true black and without those unbelievably annoying green lines.

I fixed my old Zenith color TV by unplugging it (literally pulling the plug out of the socket), and leaving it unplugged for 2 hours.  (I found this tip somewhere or other on the internet — it acts as a hard reset.)  Amazingly, when I plugged it in again, the greens had come back.

Hope this helps!

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Tech Tips | No Comments »

You Can’t Cheat An (Intellectually) Honest Man

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Last night I went to Atlantic City to see Cirque Dreams at the Taj. (It’s a really good show, btw, and the best seats in the house were only $35.)

Anyway, as I was walking through the casino on the way to the parking garage, it occurred to me — what do the following things have in common?

  1. Poker
  2. Day Trading
  3. Multi-Level Marketing
  4. Nigerian Scams

    The answer is:

    In each of these activities, someone who knows what they’re doing is making a whole bunch of money by taking advantage of someone who thinks they know what they’re doing.

    There was a time if you went to a bookstore and looked in the games section the large majority of books would be devoted to chess.  (Trust me on that one.)

    But now, most of the books are about poker.

    And a lot of geeks, having achieved varying levels of success at the chessboard, now dream of making it to the final table at the World Series of Poker.

    An obsession with chess can be sad.  But an obsession with poker can be downright life-destroying.

    I honestly believe that it is possible for someone with the right combination of time, intelligence and motivation to make a lot of money playing poker.  (I’m not so sure about day trading, MLM, or sending money to Nigeria.)  But here’s some advice:

    1. To become a money-making poker player is 1,000 times harder, and takes 1,000 times as much work, than you think.
    2. There is a ocean full of sharks who will be licking their chops once they realize you’re one of those guys who thinks he knows everything about Texas Hold’em because he’s read 3 books and owns a copy of Wilson Turbo poker software.
    3. Remember the all-too-true adage — if you’re sitting at a poker table and you can’t figure out who the sucker is, it’s you.  (And even if you’re pretty sure that guy sitting across from you is the sucker, you might want to do a reality check at the end of the evening when the “sucker” leaves with all  your money.)
    4. Finally, if you think long and hard, I’m sure you can come up with something better to do with the amount of time, money, and effort that it takes to become a good poker player.  (May I suggest blogging?)

    Good luck!

    Tags: , , ,
    Posted in Don't Get Scammed! | No Comments »

    Halloween Costumes for Asians, Geeks, and Geeky Asians – Do’s and Don’ts

    Friday, October 23rd, 2009

    Another Halloween, another dreaded decision — what costume should I wear?

    Here are some general observations, in no particular order:

    1. If you are good-looking and/or super-cool, you can wear any costume you want — heck, you could wear a Hefty garbage bag over ratty underwear and still hook up with the hottie wearing the naughty nurse costume.
    2. The correlative of No. 1 is that if you are not good-looking and/or super-cool, you should not get costume ideas from good-looking and/or super-cool people.
    3. Avoid any costumes that have an ethnic component (martial arts dude, Buddhist monk, Confucius) unless you want people to be offended and to feel sorry for you at the same time.
    4. For the love of God, don’t even think of going as Mr. Sulu, Bruce Lee, or a Transformer.  (I knew a guy who spent hours on a homemade Gandalf costume.  99% of the people he ran into had no idea who Gandalf was, and the other 1% told him that his costume sucked.)
    5. I knew one guy who covered himself, head to toe, with peanut butter.  He said he was a turd.  Don’t do that.
    6. Dressing as a doctor was only cute when you were five years old, and not yet a disappointment to your parents.
    7. Don’t go for clever — it will only puzzle people or piss them off when they conclude (correctly) that you think that you’re smarter than they are.  Example of a clever costume: covering yourself with feathers, and then telling everyone that you’re Hope.  (Take that, you English majors!)
    8. Don’t dress as a woman — no one is going to believe that you’re doing it just for Halloween.
    9. Same goes for any costume involving a diaper.
    10. Don’t dress like a mummy — every few years you hear about some guy dressed as a mummy who catches fire.  And he probably didn’t even look that much like a mummy before he got too close to the jack o’ lantern.
    11. Don’t fake a hanging.  True story — some guy died, even though he was wearing a protective harness, because his chest was too constricted for him to breathe.  No one around him knew that he was in distress until it was way too late.
    12. Don’t even think of doing anything with a gun and blanks.  At close range, blanks are like 99% percent as dangerous as real bullets.
    13. The only thing worse than a bad costume is no costume.  Unless, of course, your object is to further distance yourself from human contact.

    Some reasonable costumes:

    1. Zombie — especially if you can figure out some way to make a realistic looking head wound.
    2. Vampire — but only if you can get some high-quality fangs, and cat’s eye contact lenses.
    3. Death — wear all black and paint your face white.  (Of course, there’s some danger people will think you were going for Yoko Ono.)

    Tags: ,
    Posted in Advice & How To | 1 Comment »

    Blogging from China: Ugliness at the Buffet

    Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

    The hotel has an above-average breakfast buffet.  Maybe 8.0 on a 10.0 point scale.

    So yesterday, at breakfast, a large white guy is standing in front of the toaster.  He towers over the woman he is talking to — one of the Chinese restaurant workers.

    The white guy says:

    “You really need to get a new toaster, because this one iS A PIECE OF SHIT!”

    He doesn’t notice me (or, more likely, doesn’t care).

    Man, this is something I’ve dreamed of for years — my chance to say something rude in perfect American English to some jerky white guy who isn’t expecting it, and who thoroughly deserves it.

    Like:

    “Well, you oughta know about shit, seeing as how you’re such a huge ASSHOLE!”

    Or:

    “Why don’t you leave this woman alone and go back to beating the crap out of your wife and children?

    Or even:

    “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

    But I’m speechless.

    America’s number one export:  Entitlement.

    Tags: , ,
    Posted in Travel Tips | No Comments »

    « Older Entries