Friday, November 27, 2009

John Caparulo

We saw John Caparulo's 7:30 sold out show at Hilarities tonight and "Cap" was great. The first time we saw him was at the Ohio theatre and that show was sold out as well. We always have a good time when we see stand up at Hilarities and tonight was no different. That said, there were a couple minor problems. The first and worst, they took the hilarities club sandwich off the menu. This is a huge problem for us as it was our favorite thing on the menu, the other being the onion rings, which are also GONE! AAAHHH! As a substitute, we had mozzarella sticks and a fried chicken wrap. Mary just said "if I want a wrap, I'll go to La Bodega. They do wraps. We go to Hilarities, we want a Hilarities Wrap! " The other problem was we like to park at the 515 parking garage off Euclid Ave. and we got our ticket validated but it wouldn't work. We didn't have to pay but the guy told us we should get a receipt from now on. We saw the car next to us have the same problem and reconized them from the show. Minor problem, but never happened before. We love going down to East fourth for comedy, but BRING BACK THE CLUB!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

MSE - Microsoft Security Essentials Review

I recently updated my computer help site, jimzcom, and added a link to MSE. I've heard a lot about it but have'nt used it, so here goes. I'm putting it on computer #2, a windows vista/xp dual boot machine. I booted into Vista which already has Avira antivirus, Threatfire and Spybot Search and Destroy (all programs on the Kiss List) and installed it there. It took 5 minutes to install after downloading (a link is on Jimzcom) and then updated itself with new definitions (standard procedure) and started a scan. I don't expect it to find anything, but what the heck, can't hurt, right? Well, it took 12 minutes to scan 23819 items and not find anything. Again I'm not surprised because this isn't a high risk machine. I'd really like to run it on a computer that's already infected and see what it finds. Oh well, I'll give it a "C" because I didn't see it do anything but my computer still starts up.

Chagrin River Park and Wildwood State Park

We went to two parks today, walking about 3 miles between the two.
This picture is from Wildwood.













Euclid Beach is closed for the season 1969.

Lunch Time!


Good day for kayaking I guess!


And this last one is from Chagrin River park.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

La Bodega Again














For lunch today I picked up food from La Bodega. I had a #47 and Mary had the #15. Both were really good.
This time I took pictures too! Above is the # 47.








And to the left is the #15.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Fixing Franks Computer

These are the steps I took to fix a Compaq computer with windows XP on it:
  1. I booted the computer up to see what it was doing. It was exhibiting signs of infection.
  2. I rebooted into safe mode (to do this, before the operating system comes up keep hitting the F8 key. You'll get a menu, choose "safe mode").
  3. Once it's done booting and asking questions, click Start>Run. Type "msconfig" in the box. Here and here give some answers to how to use this tool. I basically went to the Startup tab and unchecked things I didn't like or reconize.
  4. I rebooted. Here's where you can tell if you're on the right track. The computer boots faster and no pop-ups.
  5. Next, I thought it would be fun to install Spybot Search and Destroy. I know it's growing long in the tooth but, it's free and still gets the job done.
  6. After that, Threatfire seemed a good choice. It doesn't use a lot of system resources and once installed you don't notice it, but computers seem more stable with it installed.
  7. Okay, out with the old, in with the new, antivirus that is. Norton had expired, so I clicked Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs. I went through the process of uninstalling Norton antivirus (required a reboot). 
  8. Prior to this step, I had downloaded Avira to the desktop. Consistently rated the best antivirus program, it's the one I recommend (and I'm affiliated with them).
  9. I scanned with Avira after installing, and again after booting back into safe mode.
  10. I also recommended CCleaner as a registry cleaner, located here.
I believe in good Karma, one of the many reasons I posted this How-to on restoring your computer to good health.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Lets feed the Christians(Browns) to the Lions!

The title is not so much a statement but a joke, and not so much a joke but a statement. As a joke, it's the eleventh week of the regular season, and to many Browns fans, it's a regular season. It's what we are used to. Losing. Losing is a disease, aah, but curable! (Okay, I'm channeling "The Natural", but with a point) and the point is, the team will win again. Just not now and that's what's unacceptable to the fans with a special thanks to our brilliant sportswriters who fan the flames of discontent no matter what happens. The Browns are going through a rebuilding process and I think we should realize this. More to the point, the entire organization is rebuilding, almost continually, before our eyes and we need to give it a chance. Al Lerner died in 2002, the Browns third year after being reborn. Randy Lerner was thrust into the spotlight as team owner and though it's been seven years, hasn't gotten it right yet. By comparison, the Rooney family has had the Steelers for 76 years. When somebody has an episode, a failure of health, a suspected heart attack, it's common to hear someone say "okay, everybody step back, give him some room, let him breathe!" then they loosen his clothing and let him relax. This team has had an episode and is trying to recover, there's still a pulse, a heartbeat. The team isn't just what we see on the field, it's like an army where for every 1 guy on the field there's ten providing support. Some of those ten should be us, the fans. Acting like a pack of wild dogs, the fans and media have pursued the Browns and nipped at their heels for every misstep they have taken. Sometimes I have to wonder who's side they're on. After watching the Lions lose to the Vikings this past weekend in something resembling style, and recalling the Browns taking the Bengals(who now lead the division) into overtime for a hard fought loss, should we really feed these christians to the lions, or support them even if they lose?

Monday, November 16, 2009

Browns fans suck and Bill Belichick PB&J

We bought the Browns season ticket product last year and it doesn't suck any more or less than this year. This Browns ban sucks! Mary's a Steelers fan and she's disgusted!  Anyhow, here's a nice video of Bill Belichick when he was with the Browns and liked people, for your enjoyment:

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Installing Windows 7

It's Sunday, there's football on, but its time to install windows 7. I ran the upgrade advisor and it says go ahead. I just exported my bookmarks from firefox and transferred some data to other drives. Then I made a list of installed programs. Right now I'm formatting an external hard drive because they advise using one along with "windows easy transfer" located here. I've also decided to install the 64 -bit version of windows 7 (maybe I'll be the first kid on the block with it). And, I'm putting this operating system on computer #1. Oddly, when you purchase windows 7, you get a card that tells you to use windows easy transfer. But after installing windows easy transfer the program contradicts the card. Let me explain. The card say's you need an external hard drive in order to use easy file transfer and goes on to say you can use a USB flash drive or Cds or DVDs  but must copy files manually. Yet the program offers the use of a network option thats not mentioned on the card. Weird, huh?

Anyway, after running this very cool program it ends up wanting to back up a huge amount of stuff (almost 600 GB) and the external drive I'm using is old and small (80GB). This computer has 4 hard drives in it (two for operating systems and two for data) and it picked up the other 3. I went to customize and then advanced and deselected all drives except "c". The result, 315.7 MB is more reasonable.

Wow! A lightning fast transfer time of 5 minutes! That's a wrap!

Step 4 on the card that came with windows 7 says "Insert the windows 7 DVD into your PC. When asked "Which type of installation do you want?" click "Custom (advanced). Only that didn't happen with me. What happened was a message that says "This installation disc isn't compatible with your version of windows. To upgrade, you need the correct installation disc. For more information, check your computer's system information. To install a new copy of windows, restart (boot) your computer using the installation disc, and then select custom(advanced).

I chose to boot with the 64 bit Dvd in the drive to see what would happen. What happened is theres a box asking for a driver for a CD/DVD! I haven't heard this one before. Of course its my fault. I have an add in card for IDE drives because my motherboard only has one. The chipset on it is from Sillycon image. I went to them but had to use the AMD version to get it to work. Well, its installing anyway.

That was at 5:00 its now 7:30 and it hung about an hour or two ago. I'm used to this behavior and will let a computer and/or software try to sort itself out. But, I gave up for today. I rebooted and my original configuration came back I.E. dual boot, 2 o.s.s to choose from. No data gone. No problem.

Euclid Creek

This morning we went for a walk in the Euclid Creek Reservation. A little chilly but a good day for a walk.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Wildwood/Wildwood Cats

I stopped down at Wildwood yesterday one, because it was so nice, and two, to see if Brain and Ginger were down there catching the wild cats. Well, no Brian and Ginger and no cats. I did see three cats on Thursday including the little orange kitten. He (or she) is not so little anymore so he's probably eating well. I've stopping after work most every day hoping to see Brian so as to give his trap back. I completed the project to make it remote controlled and I'm anxious to see it work.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

To Windows 7 or not to Windows 7, that is the question

Let me explain. I use two main computers. Computer #1 has a dual boot system installed, both Windows XP, one for productivity and the other for games. Both have two accounts set up, one as general(limited) and the other as maintenance(administrative). This is how everybody should have their computer set up, as far as accounts are considered.
Computer #2 is also dual boot, with Windows Vista and Windows XP options. Either operating system has general as well as maintenance options. Now, I have to decide how and why to put Windows 7 on which computer. The why is obvious, as I've already beta tested it and I want to keep up on current operating systems. How is a little more complicated, as I'm quite happy with what I have going on. As I write this on computer#1, I'm uploading pictures to pikshures and indexing all the pictures on computer#2 with Picasa after booting into Vista. Why screw things up? Probably because I'm getting a little bored and need a challenge, so, I'm going to install Windows 7 onto computer#1 sometime this week. Stay tuned!

Lakeview Cemetery and Wade Park Lagoon

Sounds like a broken record. We went to Lakeview Cemetery this morning and then afterwords visited the Wade Park Lagoon, the proper name for the waterspace behind the Cleveland Museum of Art next to Severance.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

La Bodega

After walking in the cemetery we went to La Bodega because all that walking makes you hungry. Mary got #27 again, but as a wrap (I had this before and shared it with her, well, actually she took it and wouldn't give it back) and I got #31, a Cajun Chicken Salad, Corn, Black Beans, Colored Peppers, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, as a Wrap. This may have been the best sandwich I've gotten yet from there. There's a little bit of heat, but it's balanced by the rest of the ingredients. Every things always fresh and even the next day (because sometimes the portions are generous, especially the wraps) it's still good. This is my new favorite!

Lake View Cemetery



Did Lakeview again today, maybe a two mile walk.



We really wanted to see Charles Pinkey's grave. A minor leaguer killed by a pitch during a game on September 15, 1909. There's an article here and here that gives more detail on his life and death. He lies in what was an unmarked grave until recently. Kotecki monuments said that they would donate a headstone. I went in and asked without knowing his name and came up empty.


We still walked around and visited Ray Chapmen's grave among others. It was quite crowded, just not by the living. After that, it was off to La Bodega.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Add music to a web page

Seems like a simple enough procedure, right? Wrong! This is for The Emijj, to juice his page up a bit. I had some of his music already ripped in MP3 and WMA but my web development package Microsoft Expression Web) only recognizes WAVs and some other crappy formats and I wanted to just knock this out and be done. Well, the WAV file size is 39.1 MB and even with most people having broadband, it seems to big. I'm pretty sure that the file downloads first, then plays, so, no, we're not going to do that. Option two is to take that big WAV file and cut it down to size. Audacity will help, so I downloaded it and installed. I imported the WAV file, selected about 30 seconds, played it to check what I selected, then cut it and pasted it into a new project. Then I exported it as a WAV file.
  • The result is a file size of 5.12 MB for 30 seconds
  • The original WAV was 39.1 MB for 3 minutes 52 seconds
  • The original MP3 was 8.88 MB for 3 minutes 52 seconds
  • The original WMA was 3.58 MB for 3 minutes 52 seconds
Then I uploaded it and it doesn't work. Well, it works in internet explorer but not in firefox. For now. Till I find a way to make it work. Because this is doable!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Missing Mark by Julie Kramer

Forgot to post about "Missing Mark". I finished this book about a week or so ago and went on to "1491" by Charles C. Mann. I read "Stalking Susan" first and was pleased enough to want more. They are both easy reads, but I believe in a good mix of books. I really like the insight from a newsroom perspective.

The West Woods at The Geauga Park District

Went for about a three mile walk this morning at The West Woods, a new park(for us anyway). This park has around seven miles of trails and we loved it. We'll be going back.