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If you receive a file and you’re not certain if it’s a file clean of viruses or malware, then visit VirusTotal. The site allows you to upload a file (or you can email a file to them) and they will scan it through 39 anti-virus programs.
VirusTotal is not an anti-virus solution for your personal computer. Rather, you use it when you have doubts about a particular file or files. For example, I downloaded a zip file and my anti-virus program quarantined it the instant the download finished. When I removed it from quarantine and extracted it, I ran the anti-virus program against the resulting folder and it found no viruses. So, while writing this message, I’m uploading the file to VirusTotal to see if any or all of the 39 anti-virus programs they employ identify it as containing a virus.
By the way, my preferred anti-virus program is NOD32 by Eset. It’s more costly than Norton or McAfee, but it’s cheaper on your computer. By “cheaper on your computer,” I mean it’s very light on using your computer’s muscle. Norton and McAfee are such big anti-virus solutions, they are often targeted by the virus creators themselves. When I found out about NOD32’s strong track record several years ago, I started using it and have never looked at anything else for my own computer.
I first found out about NOD32 from a VirusBulletin report. Recently, NOD32 was awarded another VirusBulletin’s VB100 award. NOD32 is the first product to receive the 60 of these awards. Getting to 60th first means they have been around awhile and they make a very good product. You might be thinking getting to 60 just has to do with their age, but they have a better than 97 percent success rate. I very strongly recommend NOD32.
My wife has discovered Sloppy Joes, thanks to my good friends the McGinnises. Janet makes my mom’s version of Sloppy Joes. However, since they like spicy food, they usually up the Scoville scale of their Sloppy Joes by adding peppery stuff. My mom’s version is not peppery at all, but feel free to use hot stuff if you want.
Recipe: Sloppy Joes
Summary: Sloppy Joes using Campbell’s soups and barbeque sauce
Ingredients
- 1.5 pounds ground beef
- 1 medium onion
- 1 cup barbecue sauce
- 1 can Campbell’s condensed cream of tomato soup
- 1 can Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable soup
- 1 Package of hamburger buns
Instructions
- Dice and sweat onion
- In same pan, brown ground beef
- Stir in barbecue sauce and add both soups
- Stir periodically and let simmer for a half-hour
- Serve by placing a good sized spoonful of sauce on a bun.
Quick Notes
Sloppy Joes by their very nature can be experimented on. My family likes to sprinkle shredded cheese over the sauce (after we put it on the bun). We use a cheddar cheese.
Variations
For barbecue sauce, try different brands and flavors. Go with spicy if you want hot Sloppy Joes. Got someone in your family that doesn’t like onion? Leave it out and/or replace it with a little onion powder.
Cooking time (duration): 40 minutes
Number of servings (yield): 4
Meal type: lunch
Culinary tradition: USA (General)
Microformatting by hRecipe.
No, this isn’t a post about the Linux commands More and it’s younger sibling Less.
Rather, this is about a philosophy. I recall when I was president of a computer user group, we were re-writing the by-laws and one of the objectives of the by-laws committee was to avoid boxing ourselves in. For example, if we very specifically wrote in the by-laws a task requiring an officer must do such-and-such by a particular day of the month, did we then have to go through the motions of charging said officer of nonfeasance if the officer failed to meet the deadline? Worse yet, while the board may choose not to proceed with such an action, a member could decide to press the matter.
So, we opted for the Less Is More approach. If we outlined their duties but didn’t require how and when they accomplished them, we could incorporate it all into our by-laws. Separately and not as a legal document, we were going to write a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). The by-laws committee was going to forward recommendations to the SOP committee as we thought of ways to flesh out tasks and duties.
The same philosophy can also apply to work. Leave yourself enough flexibility to avoid restricting yourself (or your department) overmuch.
The title doesn’t mean I think you need a budget, rather it’s the name of a product I’ve been using for a little while.
I’m currently using YouNeedABudget (YNAB for short), a program aimed at helping us straighten out our budget woes.
YNAB is a budget program built on a simple idea. It’s for people, such as my wife and I, who struggle living paycheck to paycheck. It’s not hard to use and it’s not difficult to get there. Just be prepared to spend a little time on it every day and to think about decisions and consequences every now and then.
YNAB has a method built around four rules. These are not directly in the program, so don’t worry that the program will nag you about completing and/or implementing a particular rule.
Rule 1: Stop living paycheck to paycheck. This is the main thing YNAB assists you with. I’ll go into it in a little more detail in a bit.
Rule 2: Give every dollar a job. When you’ve completed rule 1 and even before you do that, you use this to address the decisions versus consequences dilemma.
Rule 3: Save for a rainy day. Disasters happen: car accidents, emergency medical or dental problems, family members in dire straits, etc. This is in addition to the “Oops. I forgot about that expense.” For example, insurance premiums, taxes due, etc. If the saving is big enough, rule 1 can stay intact.
Rule 4: Roll with the punches. If something does happen to goof up your YNAB process, absorb the disruption and get right back on track to maintaining a budget.
So, what’s rule 1 all about? That’s easy to understand but challenging to implement. Basically, put in all your expenses and categorize them (food, utilities, etc.). YNAB has default categories built-in and you can expand those very easily when you think to yourself, “Hmm…what does this expense go under?” If need be, just enter a new category as if it already existed and YNAB will ask if you want to create that category and let you move on. It’s that simple.
Now, review all the money ins and outs for the month. After you pick yourself up off the floor because you had no idea you were spending so much money in one category (for many, it’s food related), start thinking about ways to tighten anything you think is wild spending.
Now you’re asking, “Wait, what’s rule 1 about again?”
Oh, didn’t I tell you yet? Basically, keep paying this month’s bills with this month’s paychecks. As you get tighter on your spending, your checking account will start getting a padding of extra money. Someday you will have enough money in your checking account at the beginning of the month to think, “Hey. I can pay all of this month’s bills with the paychecks from last month!” That’s the secret. Get your checking account balance high enough to allow you to pay a whole month’s bills at any time.
In effect, you’ll be putting your budget on a diet. The diet is a portion-control diet, meaning we’re not going overboard with calorie counting, fat reduction, and so on. All we’re doing is reducing the amounts of anything we can and still eat, live, and be happy. If you’ll keep your budget on the diet, you’ll have the one-month-in-advance thing licked and you’ll end up saving for emergencies, and clobbering all your debt, and saving for college for the kids and retirement for yourself.
Rule 4 is very important. Very few people starting a new budget stick with it for the first few months. If something unexpected happens to your money (an emergency), try to be one of those who gets right back on the horse and keeps on going even if it feels like you’re starting all over.
And don’t be afraid to just start the YNAB information all over if you feel like it’s just too much work to catch up from a month or two ago. If you keep at it, you’ll get those daily and weekly habits, your family will better understand what you’re doing, and you’ll keep on going.
Today, my boss at work (who’s not so much bossy as he is supervisorish), Rob, told me about Sprint’s AIRAVE™. The AIRAVE is a device for your home to add a miniature cell tower and extend your cellular coverage inside your home for up to three phones. When you enter it’s range, it notifies the Sprint network and your incoming and outgoing calls are routed through the AIRAVE which is connected to your home broadband internet connection. Because you aren’t using Sprint’s real cell towers, they don’t charge you minutes for any time used via the AIRAVE.
Sprint’s AIRAVE is $99.00 to purchase and $4.99 per month added to your cell bill.
I was curious about the technology and, after some quick searching, found Verizon has a similar device. They have a device made by Samsung called the Wireless Network Extender, which is a really poor choice of words for a product name. Imagine someone asking a salesperson about extending their wireless network. After much frustration, phone calls, and returning the device to the store, they then find out this extended the wireless cell network, not their wireless computer network.
The Verizon Wireless Network Extender accomplishes much the same thing as Sprint’s AIRAVE. It’s more expensive at $249.00. However, there are no monthly fees associated with it. The drawback is it uses your plan minutes. Why? I have no idea. I’m a Verizon customer and really like them, but you have to question the idea of taking minutes away from our plans when we’re not even using their network to do it. By the way, this was difficult for me to find, but I eventually discovered it by going to the FAQ, clicking “Billing” topic on the left and then clicking the only question they had on the right.
So, while the Sprint box has a monthly additional cost associated with it, you could make up the difference by going to a lower monthly voice plan.
The only thing Verizon’s box does for you is give you a stronger signal in the house and surrounding area. Nothing else is gained by it.
Verizon’s solution is not better than Sprint’s.
You may remember Myst from years ago (early 90s). It is said Myst was a big part of helping computer users get their computers upgraded with a CD drive. The game was too large to distribute on floppy discs. Cyan, the maker of the game, has created and released a free-to-play version of Myst called Myst Online: Uru Live. It’s a puzzler and visually stunning. The same was true of the original.
Many people put down the original version because it wasn’t animated much. I never played the original (except for one or two clicks, literally) nor the sequel, Riven. But, I knew from friends and from watching others play it could be very absorbing. The game was really a whole bunch (I mean thousands) of beautifully rendered computer-generated scenes and was driven by a basic “click here and I’ll show you this picture” engine. However, between the graphics, the developing storyline, and the music, a strong mood and feel was created which allowed for wonderful immersion.
Myst Online may be like that. I downloaded it tonight and played for about 30 minutes. It’s a rendered and animated 3D environment and it’s a puzzle game requiring some clever mental trickery to solve the puzzle and figure out the clues. If you are stuck, there are documents and sites providing a walk-through available (here’s one).
It’s free and other than take up about 3 gigabytes of space on your hard drive, it won’t cost you anything except time. Have patience and be willing to explore. (Hint: Take a peek behind things, like the big sign leaning against a wire fence in the desert.)
 My wife and I have been enjoying Pandora Internet Radio, a free internet radio site, for the past few months. The player has thumbs up and thumbs down buttons to indicate you like or don’t like a song. Pandora is available via web, phone (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre, and Windows Mobile), a desktop application, and numerous media devices.
They have something they call The Music Genome Project that allows them to determine a song’s traits (which they call genes). As you use the thumbs up and thumbs down features, the site tracks how often you do or don’t like songs with similar genes.
Pandora allows you to create multiple stations for you to listen to on your own Pandora which you can optionally share with others. The gene traits of your song selections are applied to the station you are listening to at the moment. So, if you want slow-dancing on the current station and Pandora starts playing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by the Charlie Daniels Band, you can indicate you don’t want that song on this station by using the thumbs down button.
I just wish there was a way to say, “Thumbs down for this station, but I’d love it in my Pop station.”
In spite of an admittedly small caveat, Dilia and I enjoy it so much we’ve paid for the one year subscription so we can run the desktop application and so Dilia won’t keep using up her monthly limit from the free mode.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, Queen is singing to me and I need to sit, relax, and drink in the some of the best music of my lifetime.
 Some time ago I stumbled across a new text editor called Sublime Text. It’s visually appealing and has quite a few features. The only reason I still use TextPad is because it launches faster. If Sublime launched quicker, I’d make the switch completely.
It has a very smooth and polished feel to it. It’s a pleasure to work in and many of its features make a lot more sense than those in other text editors. The author is still actively developing it. The “minimap” feature along the left gives you a birds-eye view of your text file and is updated instantly with what you’re doing in the main editor.
The editor supports all the usual features of most programming editors. However, it has many features tailored towards those who wish to just sit down and write a letter, note, message, or prose.
The forums seem pretty active and useful. Check out the author’s Beta changelog for an idea of how frequently he updates.
Sublime supports plugins via the Python language, which is very robust and flexible.
One final comment. Whenever I open Sublime, I get a sense of, “Mmm…dark chocolate!”
I use the Gmail from Google Apps Standard Edition now for my email. Google Apps allows you to move select parts of your own domain’s services to a Google-hosted solution. The best way to think of it is something like an Exchange server (email, calendaring, contacts, tasks, etc.) all on Google Apps and using their excellent interfaces. I particularly enjoy the spam filtering and the ease of access.
But, Gmail is web-based, even via Google Apps. This is a positive except when it comes to the Email key on my keyboard. Now that something else was the default, my Email key no longer launched anything where before it launched Outlook.
Tonight, I wrote a script for AutoHotkey to launch my Gmail for me. I’m sharing it here in case it’s useful to anybody else. The main part of the script is a one-liner:
Launch_Mail::Run https://mail.google.com/a/desertdwarf.com/#inbox
There are just two parts to the script. The first part is the Launch_Mail:: portion which tells AutoHotkey to do the following when I press the Email key on my keyboard. (Launch_Mail may not work with all keyboards, but it should work with most.)
The part following the :: (two colons) is the command to execute. In this case, we’re telling AutoHotkey to run something. It can be a program, a document, or a URL. Basically, anything that could normally be double-clicked on the Desktop or in Windows Explorer, the system will run that item. Since this is a web address (a URL), the system will open that page in the system’s default web browser.
After that, I found a nice Gmail icon, created by one of the greatest icon creators ever, and converted the .ahk (AutoHotkey script file) to .exe (a program) using a program that comes installed with AutoHotkey and told that converter to use the second Gmail icon in Foood’s file. Now when I run the program, which runs every time I start Windows and login, the cool Gmail icon shows up in the System Notification area down by the time, letting me know it’s running, and I can press my Email key to launch my email on Gmail.
Full script is below…
Continue reading “Email Key and Gmail” »
A lot of time and a lot of updates in my life since Dilia and I had our wedding.
- We moved into two different apartments. (Not at the same time, of course.)
- We have our own dog, Bitsie.
- In the same company, for the same pay, I switched back to an old department as part of a layoff (they eliminated my position and moved me back to my original one). I’ve had two new bosses, one of whom is pretty good with computers.
- Related to the last item, I’ve been denied a promotion not because I wasn’t qualified (3 years in my current department with only 6 months in a closely related department), but because my new boss is a newer mover-and-shaker and the VP wants to move and shake things. I’m looking forward to the new changes and I hope the new boss stays with Mesa as he proves how good he is at management and implementing things. (No brown-nosing here. I don’t think he knows about my blog, yet.)
- I received a wonderful gift from my wife of a 24-inch monitor for Christmas.
- I updated Wordpress, my blog software.
I’m sure there are other things, but these were what came to mind easily.
This post was both a test and to try to get me back in the mood of blogging again. I’ll try to follow up with my usual useful stuff soon (maybe not tomorrow, but soon).
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