Martha's Blog

All of this Social Networking stuff is totally beyond me.

OK, I guess it has it’s uses, like keeping up with family and friends that don’t have time (or the inclination) to communicate with everyone, but I don’t understand why I need to know about all of the strange creatures someone has found playing a game, or all of the other peculiar things that folks do with these games.  I certainly don’t need to know one of my friends is now friends with someone I never heard of.  I don’t need to know that one of my family members made a comment about one of those folks I never heard of. But I confess, I have a Facebook account.

And for the life of me I don’t understand why I should ‘follow’ some web site on Twitter or why I should want to be a ‘fan’ of some other website. I don’t ‘follow’ anyone and I certainly don’t want anyone ‘following’ me.  I think that used to be called stalking! I had a twitter account, but I cancelled it.

I keep getting invitations from some people I have never heard of, wanting me to be their ‘friend’ and join them on some weird website for some specific purpose like ‘studying’ or whatever. I left school along time ago, so what do I need to ‘study’ now?

My Gmail account wants me to ‘Buzz’.  What on earth for? My email is supposed to be private, so why does Gmail want me to share it with everyone? I don’t know everyone! (And I don’t want to, either!)  I still use Gmail, but I turned Buzz off.

Facebook wants me to let everyone in the world know what I post. Why? Does Facebook think I am so wonderful that everyone in the world is eagerly waiting for me to say something marvelous?  I am afraid they are all going to be very disappointed. Marvelous and me are not something that goes together.

There is a lot of other stuff that makes me think I may be an old fogey.  I don’t like cell phones!  I have one, but I don’t use it much.

I see folks everywhere with cell phones in hand. What are they always taking about?  What they had for breakfast?  Who knows, but when I am out in public I don’t care to be overheard taking to anyone.  I don’t want to hear them talking either, but there they are yakking away, oblivious to their surroundings and who might be listening.

The Old Fogey

You probably have had some of these programs.  Some but not all are free and everyone likes free.  Some free programs aren’t really free.  In order for them to install, you have to agree to some stuff you don’t want.  There may be an option to un-check it if you don’t want it, but some of them will install it anyway. I always look to see if it did install and a lot of times I have to uninstall the unwanted junk.

Foxit is bad about this.  I love the reader and I know the folks at Foxit need to make some money so I guess this is how they do it. Because it is so much better than Adobe I just have to watch and uninstall the stuff I don’t want.

I recently had an email program update. Incredimail is a good email program for folks that love the eye candy in email.  I use it just for testing an a test computer as a lot of folks sometimes have questions about it. When the update downloaded and before it installed, it wanted me to change my home page. I have no reason to make Incredimail’s site my home page so I ticked no and guess what, it changed it anyway. Naughty Incredimail!

I use Snagit, a wonderful screen capture program that is so much more than just a screen capture. Snagit isn’t free. But Snagit wants me to use Internet Explorer.  If there is an update, it takes me to their site always using IE.  I don’t use IE. I use Firefox. It really ticks me off when a browser opens that is not my default browser unless I choose to open it.

I don’t want every program on my computer to run at Startup.  But most times I don’t get to choose.  After the program installs I have to first check to see if there is a way to disable that by looking at ‘Options’ (if there are any) and usually there is no option to stop it loading at startup.  So I have to go to msconfig and disable the program from loading at start up there. Why every program writer seems to think I want my computer to be bogged down by programs running in the background, I don’t know.

There a lot more of these misbehaving programs out there, I am sure.

I’m not the only one who feels this way!  ‘Legal Software More Annoying then Most Viruses‘

Martha

Never, ever! This makes me want to jump through the screen and slap the perpetrator silly!

If I want my browser full screen, I, not anyone else, will make it full screen.

Extremely annoyed,

Martha

The Consumerist

Some stuff I have learned while reading what has happened to other people.

Be careful who you bank with, as the big banks are trying to find ways to gouge you big time. Check out a small local bank and move your accounts to them. (This is not new)

Don’t get a credit card with the same bank where you keep your money.  Keep your savings account, if you have one, at a different bank than your checking account. Diversify!

Get a prepaid cell phone and forget about the telcos.  They just find ways to over charge you.

If you have Comcast, find alternatives.  Comcast does not want to help you, they just want your money.  This is true of most companies that provide TV, phone service and broadband Internet, so good luck finding a good one!

Read the fine print before you sign the dotted line.  Everywhere. For Everything. You can’t believe everything a customer service representative tells you.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  Folks who write to the consumerist are telling one side of the storey. (I am inclined to believe them though.)

One thing stands out. Big banks, big corporations, big companies will lie to you to get your business.  Don’t trust any of them. Once they have your money and if things aren’t as promised, too bad for you.

I truly thank ‘The Consumerist’  for keeping me informed.

Martha

Every now and then I see an email account that seems to belong to more than one individual.
An example is ‘johnandmaryjones@some isp.com’.

You’ve probably seen an account like this as well.  Causing even more confusion, the email address might be johnsmith@some isp.com, but the sender signs the email with a totally different name, like ‘Charles Smith’.

I suspect at least one of the reasons for email account oddities is because the owner may not be aware he/she should have a separate private email address. Or perhaps the owner of the account does not want anyone else to have a separate email account so he/she can read emails intended for the other party. (Possessive?) At any rate, this practice seems odd.

Almost all ISPs (Internet Service Providers) allow several email addresses for the account. So John Jones can have a separate account and Mary Jones can have her own account. Even if the ISP allows only one account, why don’t folks make use of Yahoo or Gmail to get their own account?

I have no idea why an email account that includes someone’s name would belong to another person that signs a totally different name.  I imagine there is a reason, but what it could be escapes me.

Sometimes I wonder too much about stuff, this may be one of those times.

Martha

LinkScanner supposedly stops those drive-by rogues from installing on your computer.

I installed this program because I am paranoid about security. However, it never let me know if it stopped anything and to be truthful, I suspect my ESET Smart Security was doing the same job.

Since it seemed like my web browsing was slower I decided to uninstall LinkScanner.

The uninstaller kept hanging. The only way to get out of it was through Task Manager.

What a challenge this was! Every thing I found in searches on how to remove this program indicated first I would need to install AVG’s virus scanner and then uninstall it. Since I have ESET, I knew that wasn’t an option for me. I would have had to uninstall ESET first and then install AVG!  No way was I going to uninstall ESET!

AVG’s website was no help, or at least it was well hidden.

So I just kept trying to uninstall the LinkScanner. The uninstaller would get to a certain point and just hang. The dreaded ‘not responding’ message would pop up every time.

Then I tried to uninstall LinkScanner by using Advanced Uninstaller.  It finally managed to uninstall it after I performed some other steps first.

I stopped it from running by disabling it in Task manager and rebooted. Then it finally uninstalled, but there were ‘leftovers’  that had to be deleted manually. When trying to delete these files I kept getting a message ‘The action can’t be completed’ because the file is open in AVG LinkScanner©9Watchdog’.

So what is this? I did a search for this on my computer  and all it did was take me back to the files I couldn’t delete.

Finally it occurred to me it must be a running service. So I went to Administrative Tools/Services and sure enough there were two entries for this stubborn program, ‘AVG LinkScanner©9WatchDog and AVG Security Toolbar Service.  Once I disabled these two services I was able to finally delete the ‘leftover files in Program Files.

CCleaner removed the leftover Registry entries and now the LinkScanner is finally gone.  And browsing is much faster!

Martha

Today I called WalMart.  I know, but I wanted to know if they carried a particular item.

I almost fell out of my chair.  It rang once and a real live person answered!  No horrible automated phone menu! I almost forgot why I called I was so astonished.

Later I called AT&T to add a service to my account. Too bad, I got that horrible automated phone menu that makes me want to jump through the phone line and strangle the jerk that came up with it, if only I knew who it was.

Oh well, can’t have everything, but still I wish ‘customer service’ really meant something. Now it’s all ‘the bottom line’. Customer Service seems to be lip service and not much else any more.  I will say when I finally got a real live person, that person was helpful even though I could tell a lot of the time it was scripted.

Martha

There are countless movies, TV shows, books, etc. warning us about the danger of the killer asteroid that will someday hit the earth and destroy every living thing including us. Some depict horrendous scenes of fire engulfing the planet, boiling away the oceans and turning the surface of the earth into a molten bubbling mass.

Not all of these scary scripts are the same, but nearly all indicate gloom and doom for the human race.

There are times when I wonder, ‘maybe this wouldn’t be a bad thing’.

One of the things that make me wonder are terrorist attrocities. How can they justify killing of innocents? They claim it is because their supreme being tells them to kill, but I don’t believe that. The terrorists are destroying the airline industry in bits and bites at a time.

Another thing that makes me wonder is how greed has nearly destroyed our country’s financial well being and ruined so many lives. People are still losing their jobs, their homes and their health care due to pure greed.

Corporations send jobs to other countries due to greed. Never mind more people here are unemployed when those jobs leave. It’s the bottom line. Greed.

Big pharma is a major player in greed.  Paying big bucks to convince people to ‘Ask your doctor’ and paying kickbacks to the doctors so they can sell higher and higher priced drugs that have side effects that can and probably will kill countless folks over the years. (I think I may start rooting for that asteroid!)

It is pretty obvious the Lobbyists own most of Congress. (Look at the good things for consumers that get voted down because the Lobbyists tell the congressional members if they want support come election day, they better vote no.)

False statements like “Health care for every one will cost too much money and ration it for everyone.”  Guess what, health care is already rationed. If you can’t pay, you get no care and you die. It seems to me like it’s a case of “I got mine, to hell with you.”  Some of the more vicious of the statements about health care for everyone were saying when you get old, you get put to sleep. Maybe not in just those terms, but that is what came across to a lot of folks.

Yep, those are just a few of the things that make me think maybe the asteroid will be all for the best.

Rant over for now,

Martha

There is Google’s Gmail and Buzz.

Google made this ‘Buzz’ automatic. They didn’t ask me, they just turned it on. As a result I decided to turn it off, but before that I deleted all of the email addresses in my Gmail accounts. (I have more than one)  Now I download the emails to my computer. I am seriously thinking of deleting my Gmail accounts and just using my ISP or my domains for email.

Facebook keeps adding changes. Facebook keeps making changes.

I looked at my privacy settings.  They had to be changed again! I am seriously thinking about deleting my Facebook account.  Who knows what they will do next?

Now it’s Microsoft and Hotmail.

Years ago I got a Microsoft Passport as it is needed sometimes to get content from Microsoft.  Fortunately, there is nothing in my profile and I intend to keep it that way. I left Hotmail about 6 years ago, so hopefully that is now defunct.

Nothing concerning privacy really seems to matter to the ‘big boys’ (Microsoft, Google and Facebook).  Usually they make changes available to users, but it is ‘after the deed is done’, so in the meantime private information is exposed to the world.

I think I may have to forget the Internet and go back to socializing face to face.

Martha

The Supreme Court is now saying it is OK to torture animals.
The Court says “banning the videos is an unconstitutional violation of free speech”.

Well they said it is OK to show videos of animals being tortured. In my book it’s the same thing.

The only member of the Court to vote against this despicable practice was Justice Samuel Alito.  Too bad the rest of the members of the Court don’t seem to think it’s wrong. I hope they don’t decide to ban the child porn laws.

A sad day for animals and animal lovers every where.

Martha