Stop and smell the grass?

While this was posted elsewhere some months ago it still is good and was requested by a reader.  It is a short article about enjoying a very small town and its peace and quiet. Enjoy!

http://wp.me/p4LQ3B-E

Windows XP help site

    Somebody finally started a site to help those of us who like and want to keep Windows XP for our operating system.  http://www.lovemyxp.com  - and I think they will have tips for various hardware and software problems, and for those who want to put XP on newer hardware, or those who need to do fresh installations of Microsoft Windows XP.  
    I just looked again and they have a message board area for us to post questions and comments too.

A Better Way To Roll Up Long Cords

Ok - its just a simple tip on how to roll up and store your extension cords, but its a really GOOD simple tip..

  I had been rolling cords up the old way for many decades and this is the first real improvement I have found. Works Great!!
 Check this link : Click Here 
Also this site has some very good gardening tips and tips for rural living.

ARE SEARCHES INFECTING YOUR PC?

When I spend time cleaning out malware, adware and other bugs from friends and clients computers, I get a pretty good idea what to watch out for.  While it used to be just folks that dug around in the darker corners of the Internet who got the big share of these, these days I find so many get bogged down by the various pests which they saw recommended or got bundled into other good software.

   Increasingly we see popup boxes and notices that look very much like typical Microsoft or Adobe update notices.. but are for things you don't want.  You find a video you want to watch, but it says it requires a specific video player or video update to play.  Chances are getting better and better that it is a attempt to install something you do not want or need - something that will be a pain in the rump to remove from your pc.  And even if they do no real harm, they clog up your system and slow it down a bit with each piece of unwanted garbage you install.

  Bundleware - the practice of giving you "free extras" when you download something that you want and would likely trust otherwise - extra toolbars, programs to check your system for faults (that don't or do a poor job) and driver update tools - these are getting more common.

 My favorite to grumble about lately is the way search engines favor paid advertisers at the top of your search results.  While its a basically good idea - it has gotten used to be very mis-leading and downright dangerous in some cases.  Take any good malware cleaner program - or even the popular remote control program "TEAMVIEWER" for example.  If you search for that word, you may get several matches from paid advertisers - but the actual site for www.teamviewer.com is listed much lower down.  If you go to some of the others, you may get the TEAMVIEWER program but it may not be the official (and safe) version.  They may come with extras that you don't want.   Likewise when you seek SPYBOT or MALWAREBYTES - both well known and usually safe free programs.

  An article I found today on CHANNELPRO.COM also warns about the common searches on Google that come with many dangerous results.  It's well worth a quick look here.  And another good short read on just bundleware is here at PCFIXES.COM

NEW FAMILY

Sorry if I have been away a while - but we had a death in the family and it really slowed things down around our little hacienda.  The odd thing is that God seems to close one door and open another around the same times - giving you a new path to walk, a new place to work or be as it were.

   45 years ago my Dad died.  My adopted dad actually, and the next day my future son was born.

Now that may sound a bit confusing considering I did not know the lovely woman who gave birth that day.  But I was to meet her and marry her some 10 years later.  The same son took his life in August this year - and again within 24 hours prior to that my research to find my birth parents had taken a leap and I had found  my birth father.   Odd that it worked that way but again its part of big picture I am sure.  Then a few weeks later we found what would turn out to be a distant cousin on my birth grandmothers family - and she by email put me in touch with a closer cousin - who actually knew my birth mother.  Today I expect to get pictures in the mail (snail mail) of my mom and be able to see her for the first time since I was taken from her at 4 days old - over 61 years ago.  Am I excited ? Sure!  I talked to this closer cousin on the phone and then to a niece I never knew I had and then last night to an older brother - and everywhere I go (by phone or email so far) they are genuinely glad to visit with me and share stories of my missing family.  My adopted father died in 1969 when I was just 16 - but my birth father died in 1990 - its a shame that we could not have found him sooner.  I also have an older sister,  My birth dad was in the Army during WWII and Korea - and married another woman in the early 1960s - and adopted her children.  It appears he had lots of love to go around and would have welcomed me if he could.  These other children are also mostly deceased and the trip thru Ancestry.com to find them was a real roller coaster - finding you who have always been an only child have a brother or sister - then tracing them to find out they were nearby but have died from this or that is a bit of a bitter sweet thing.   However I do feel enriched knowing I have more family - and that they can share the history and ups and downs of the group with me today.
 
   All I can add in closing is that if you have a missing family or family member - please start getting back in touch with them as soon as you can. Even if they reject you - you will have the satisfaction of trying and doing it - and most likely they will at least be interested in connecting - and could be glad to see you.  After all this time with no siblings it was a real hoot to talk to my older brother on the phone - to see the resemblances in his pictures and the way he talks - we even worked in very similar areas of expertise and both appreciate many of the same things in life.

This is a picture of my birth father at a lake in the mountains somewhere. Colorado, California, Washington?  If you have an idea of where this is - please let me know. It was probably taken in the late 1930s or 1940s.  

PCFIXES.COM GETS A FACELIFT

My oldest website - which started over 20 years ago - is getting a facelift.  

Well, to be completely accurate it is much more than that - quite a overhaul in fact.  What was started as a convenient set of links and helpful tips back before Windows95 came out has grown over the years to be an confusing and cluttered mess. Then for most of the last decade or more it got very little attention and has as a result many out of date links and is in sad need of an update or proper burial.

   Like the mechanic who seldom fixes his own car, PCFIXES.COM got little attention as I felt it was more important to work on sites I was building for other people, and those that were pet projects of mine. I keep thinking I would get around to it - sooner or later, but did very little with it over the last few years at all.

   Recently, in studying how to better rank sites online with Google, I found a funny and unexpected thing to be true. Some of my older sites had better ranking (probably due to age - surely not due to changing content) than any of the newer sites.  Yes, I do know that older sites are supposed to have a better ranking than new sites - but we are talking about new sites which are a few months old versus sites with 3 years or more online.  Here I am talking about a newer site (maybe 18 months old) and my older sites of 10 years or more.

  PCFIXES.COM, even with the bad links and out of date advice, was still considered useful and having good content (maybe?) and so it was showing some good ranking.  I first saw this when a local younger fellow pointed out a site of mine offering free advertising to him was useless as it had no page rank. Ok... err... well..  my dog is bigger than your dog..
    Heck.. what is page rank and is it even something a small site can obtain? I hit the Google and studied and tested and found sites like MOZ and others and learned a bit more about page rank. I found then my old trusty site had a page rank of 3 - and it had some popular pages within with page ranks of 0 to 3 also.  I was a bit surprised to say the least.  So I put links to some of my new sites in the PCFixes site - and that has helped their placement in search engines some.  As PCFixes has lots of links and that is part of its scope its a natural to put some links to my other sites there and does add to the content.
    Google is basically going for quality - they want a site to be ranked higher if its a quality site - not just one that is artificially higher in popularity.  I think this is a great way to be - and though its complicated to measure and do - they are doing a better job of it each time they revise the algorithms they use to rank with.  I find it odd but telling in a way when I can search with the same keywords and find a site as on the first page in Bing and its page 11 or 12 in Google.    Bing is trying hard to be popular - but last I read, Google still gets the main share by far of all searches.  The TV commercials about Bing vs Google seem to show Bing is as good as or better - but I find it depends on how you search and what it is you search for. Bing may be optimized to look better on popular items - but does not (in my opinion today) do as well all the way across the board in searching for the many other things. Heck, I still use and recommend DOGPILE.COM for searching - they show the top results from a group of search engines and often give you some very useful results.
  Meanwhile - I am keeping the old PCFixes.com site live under one menu button for everyone, and slowly adding bits of the content into the new part of the site - trying to clean, update, improve and shine up things as we go. When finished most of the site should be viewable on smart phones and tablets too.
Wish me luck!

Electric Harley?

Some folks will get on the bike thinking "golf cart" and get off thinking "rocket ship".

I learned today of the newest project (and likely a product) at Harley Davidson Motorcycles - a new electric Harley called the LIVE WIRE.  While this is fairly revolutionary in itself - how I learned of it was even a bit odd.  I get a regular email from the ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS website - usually specializing in news about new components, better ways to do things, new test gear and such. They cater to the electronics manufacturers and designers mostly - but as new products can often shape how we build our projects or how the new consumer electronics will work - I usually give a once over to news from this source.
   Imagine my surprise when it lists the ELECTRIC HARLEY as an item!   I put a bit more of the specifications and a link to the story and some pics and videos on the main site - if you you want to check them out. Impressive and very radical motorcycle. Zero to Sixty in under 4 seconds - so its not a golf cart by the way.. lol