analog_kidd

Well, I'm sure there are people using every AntiVirus out there that have said that it let a virus through. For any AntiVirus to be effective, you have to keep it updated every day. Timing is crucial too. You could catch a virus moments after it's been released and hours before a definition is released. Browsing habits are important too. I can't tell you how many times I have reinstalled Windows on friends PC's, time after time, because they can't keep their pointer finger from clicking every link that gets sent to them, even after I tell them to not click anything and stay off questionable sites. Yet, they keep bringing the PC's back to me. A quick glance at their browsers history usually tells quite a story.   A good rule of thumb: stick to just browsing TGO and you'll be OK. What other websites do you really need?  :up:

I would not install Norton. It is bloatware that will slow your PC down worse than before. MS Security Essentials is the way to go. It's Free and lightweight. It just does Antivirus. No gimicky stuff. You never even know its there.

It's called the Impenetrable Wall Blocking Defense. 

April is when Microsoft stops making patches for XP. It will still run fine on your PC for as long as you want, or until the PC dies a tragic death. If you like XP, and can't afford a replacement, I'd just stick with it. I'd keep a good antivirus on it, and keep any programs you have installed up to date. A lot of hacks come in thru Internet Explorer. You might be able to uninstall that, and just use a browser that is supported and updated regularly, like Chrome or FireFox.   Alternately, if you want a free O/S that is updated regularly, look at Linux. Ubuntu is pretty easy to figure out for Windows folks. You can even download a bootable CD and give it a try without wiping out XP. Try it from the CD for a few days, if you like it, wipe XP and install Linux. You might be surprised that you find you actually like it.

I watched Pacific Rim over the weekend. It was a little over the top, but I thought it was OK, at least for the effects. The one thing that hit me in the middle of the movie, was this was a remake of the old Godzilla movies. It had big, nearly unbeatable monsters from space or under the sea somewhere, the Asian setting, nukes were involved, the monsters breathed fire or acid and could fly around, and they stomped thru the cities destroying everything.   I did find it interesting that both Jax and Clay from Sons of Anarchy were stars in the movie.

For a really bad, but great movie, check out "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist". The movie is silly and makes very little sense, but becomes great if you realize that the movie maker cut up old kung fu movies and spliced them together and digitally added himself to the scenes to make a whole new movie. It's kind of funny like those clips of shows with bad lip reading.

Pack of 3 Magpul PMags for $36 at MIdway. No tax or shipping.   http://www.midwayusa.com/product/218760/product?cm_mmc=pe_Tier3-_-Super_Sonic_Promos-_-Other_20131108_1-_-Main_Image&cm_mmca1=midwayusa@pc-networx.com&cm_mmca2=CustNum=101477550

I dunno, I'm kind of digging this season. I think the show lost it's way last season with it being all about the two groups fighting and the walkers were just background noise. The first season was great because it was all about how to survive against the walkers. This season it is all about the walkers again, but the enemy is within this time, with the threat of anyone turning.   I was wondering if the sickness was coming from their water supply. I saw that they just pull it from a nasty creek. No telling what foul dead thing is rotting in the creek just upstream.

  I've had mine probably 6 or 7 years now. To be honest, I never even give the watch a second thought. I never have to do anything special to keep it charged, or synced. It stays on my wrist 24-7 except for showers. It's always dead on accurate, and it is under the covers at 2:00 am. Maybe it just keeps good time and I'm clueless to it not completing an atomic sync, but I never have to face it to a window, and it is always accurate to the second with my work servers.   I think turning off the setting where the light comes on after you flick your wrist saves a lot of battery.Before I turned it off on my watch, I noticed the light would come on all the time just moving around. For the rare times I need to see what time it is in the dark, its no big deal to push the light button.

http://youtu.be/_UJI31UJuzc

I have the Solar / Atomic Clock version and love it. I've had it for years and have never had to replace a battery. I never have a problem with it not having enough juice. They say you need several hours of sunlight or bright interior lights to keep it going. When I first got the watch, it was set to turn on the light when you flicked your wrist. I found it would get low on juice with that setting, because the light was always coming on. I found the feature distracting and turned it off, and now it always has plenty of battery.   The Atomic clock is a neat feature. It seems to work well. It syncs up around 2:00 am every day, and the watch is always dead-on accurate. We sync up our servers and workstations at work to the atomic clock, and my watch is always perfectly in sync with them, right down to the second.    I have worn out a few bands, however, The bands themselves seem to hold up ok, but the little strap that the tail of the band slips into after you latch it, always seems to break. It's not a frequent event, but I replace mine about every three years.

Well, iGoogle, the customizable homepage from Google, was officially killed on November 1st. I don't know about the rest of the world, but it caused quite an uproar in my house.

Hey, who hasn't sat around a fire drinking beer all night, and then tried to pee the fire out?

  They'll do the same thing the insurance companies in Florida did just before we left 15 years ago. Back then there were several hurricanes in a year that pretty much cleaned out most of the insurance companies due to homeowner claims. So the next year most of them said "we are getting out of the home insurance business". They left the majority of homeowners unable to get their houses insured, and had to go on the State insurance coverage, which was about 5 times what they were paying, for very little coverage. As a final slap in the face, these insurance companies said "We don't do homeowners insurance, but boy, we'd love to insure your car". You could tell them to F off, but the company you would move to just did the same thing to their homeowners.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/10/22/powers-out-and-in-a-pinch-how-to-create-5-makeshift-urban-survival-lights/   Cool ideas on a few ways to make a candle in a pinch. This is one of my favorite websites.

Growing up, I never really was around guns much, other than my little BB gun. When I was about 16, I was visiting a friend who owned a .22 rifle and he was showing it to me. I asked if it was loaded and he said "No way". I picked it up and aimed it at the neighbors house, cars driving down the street, probably even swept my friend with it. Thank God I had the sense (luck) to point it at the ground before I pulled the trigger. Of course it went bang. I shout a hole right into his bedroom floor. His mom came running in totally freaked out. My friend was pissed at me for pulling the trigger, I was pissed at him for telling me it was not loaded.   To this day I still think about that incident. It didn't strike me as much then as it does now that I actually own guns. And now, it really freaks me out that I could have pulled the trigger while pointing it at someone. I tell that story to anyone I take shooting for the first time before we even take the guns out of the case. I don't care if its a cap gun, it's loaded and does not get pointed at anything I don't want to kill or destroy.

SPECIAL ALERT   This just in... In addition to finding the Washington Redskins name offensive, President Obama just announced that he also thinks New England should select a new name. Said the President: "I kicked out all the Patriots from Washington when I took office, and I can't in good conscience let them in ever again, even if it's just a football team. It would just set a bad precedent. And I'd like to watch some football once in a while" 

  I use the free VMware Player application and I use it to host several VM's on my desktop machine. Of course the desktop (physical) machine is subject to malware, and I do use MS Security Essentials on it, but I never go anywhere on the web, or install anything even slightly fishy on my physical machine, and I've never gotten a virus on it. I always install shareware or go randomly surfing on one of the virtual machines. If they get hosed up, no big deal, my physical desktop is safe.   With VMware Player, when you create a new VM, there is a .VMX file that goes along with it that is full of all kinds of settings for the VM. This is a text file that you can open in Notepad. It's not there by default, so you have to add a new line:           scsi0:0.mode = "independent-nonpersistent" to the file, somewhere near the top. When the VM starts up it reads this file to see how it should configure itself. It reads the line I mentioned and that tells the VM to not keep any changes made to the virtual hard drive once it is powered off. I think the Player creates another file that it uses to store any changes made to the disk while the VM is powered on. Its all done under the covers and you'll never see anything different within the VM while it is running. So, if you install anything, be it shareware, malware, patches, or anything, it is all added to this temporary disk. When the VM is powered off, it erases the temporary disk, and all that is left is the original disk, completely unchanged. So all those programs, patches, malware, etc that were installed are just wiped away. If you boot the VM up again, it is exactly the way it was the last time you booted it up.   Once a month or so, I power off the VM, put a # in front of that line I mentioned above, save the file and boot the VM up. the "#" acts as a comment indicator in the file, so that line is ignored at VM bootup. Now the VM is going to remember any changes to the drive. This is when I install patches, or if there is a piece of software that I really trust that I want to install. Get everything installed, reboot once or twice for good measure and power the VM off and remove the "#" from the file. Now it's ready to be booted up again and set to forget any new changes.   Keep in mind that it erases all changes using this method, so it's not a good option for creating important files you want to save forever, or setting up Outlook to download emails that you want to keep. They will all be lost the next time you power off the VM. I do use the VM to download files and check them out. If they are legit, you can simply drag the files from the VM to a folder on the physical machine, where you can keep them forever.   If you have the extra space on your PC, you can also just create a nice clean VM and get it all set up just the way you want it, and then make a copy of it. Leave the original powered down and only use the copy. If the copy gets hosed up, just delete it and make a new copy from the original.

  Go register an account on the CMTTactical.com right now and then send a PM to MacGyver with your name and CMT account info. Hopefully he can still get it to CMT, Once he does, you'll have items available to add to your cart in the TGO link on the CMT site.

My order has had a status of pending since I placed it several days ago. Is that normal? Wasn't sure if that meant pending payment or production.

  I realized that over time I had accumulated so many boxes of computer parts that I was keeping "just in case someone needed something". I went through it a few months ago and found video cards with 1992 copy writes on the circuit boards. I think I did have some 5-1/4 drives in there too, along with some old modems, original Pentium motherboards, and tons of cables. I boxed it all up, and took it and a few old cases down to the local recycle center, where I cashed it all in for about $100. It probably would have been worth $1000's back in the day brand new, but it was so old now and obsolete they were worthless. I was glad to get what I got, and freed up some space in the basement.

Another really great trick I use is to edit my Hosts file. Google "No-ad Host File" and you'll get plenty of sample files and instructions.   The idea behind it is this: When you enter a website into your browser, the browser has to convert the easy to remember name into an IP address. It usually uses a DNS server to do that lookup. But, before it checks in with the DNS server, it looks in a file on your PC called "hosts". In that file you can add webites and their IP addresses. If your PC finds the site and IP in the file it stops looking and uses that one, and never asks the DNS server. You can use this to your advantage by putting a bogus IP address for malicious websites. So when you (unwittingly) click a link that may take you to a bad web site, your computer goes nowhere.   Get a replacement host file and it will have tons of malicious sites already plugged in for you.

I'd recommend downloading Malware Bytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ to clean up your PC. You may need to download it from a different PC and put it on a thumbdrive to transfer it over to the infected PC.   For Antivirus, I use Microsoft's free Security Essentials. I've seen reports that it is not the absolute best antivirus, but I've been quite happy with it. You can't argue with the price. Plus, it is not bloated with all the crap that comes with Norton. It's just an Antivirus and does not use a ton of system resources.   Another trick of mine is to use virtual machines. I have a Win7 Vm running on my desktop. I've configured it so that the virtual hard drive is non-persistent. In other words, when the VM is powered down, any changes that were made to the VM while it was powered up are forgotten. It goes back to exactly the way the VM was when I powered it on. That way, if I get a virus, just rebooting the VM cleans it all up. Once a month I set the disks to persistent and install patches, then set the disk back to non-persistent. I use VMware's free VM Player application to run my VM's. You can even download free, and already installed and configured VM's in O/S' like Linux. Just download and run the VM. If it gets crapped up, delete it and download a fresh copy.

  Yeah I tried that already, and that link is empty for me.

Thanks for the update, TDR