tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:41:45 +0000Stories of tech issues resolved. I was thinking maybe someone else might benefit from my experiences, as I have benefited from others experience. Or laugh at my folly. Your choice.http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/noreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)Blogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-39559549305279382Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:56:00 +00002008-11-13T16:41:45.815-07:00I thought it was an email hoax at first...you know, like the one about the 190 pound cougar that someone supposedly shot in Iowa...but I guess it's real. Here's the email I received: Another one, actually a malware, is called Anti-Virus 2009. It is a seriously obnoxious problem. You will go to a website that looks innocuous, and suddently this fake anti-virus program takes over your screen andhttp://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/11/antivirus-2009-email-going-around.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-1182828942008159818Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:20:00 +00002008-11-12T21:51:54.533-07:00At least that's what Nod32 thought. I installed the demo via Steam and after it finished (2GB download!), I tried to launch the game. Steam told me, "This game is currently unavailable. Try again later." Weird. So I g-g-googled it, and the Steam knowledgebase told me to rename ClientRegistry.blob, to delete a bunch of files in the Steam folder, to verify the game cache...yada yada. Whathttp://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/11/left4dead-demo-has-virus-in-it.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-1751892075078798882Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:22:00 +00002008-11-12T22:56:11.934-07:00EMFelectromagnetic radiationcell phonescancerI think this is interesting... The proton precession magnetometer operates on the principal that the protons in all atoms are spinning on an axis aligned with the magnetic field. Ordinarily, protons tend to line up with the earth's magnetic field. When subjected to an artificially-induced magnetic field, the protons will align themselves with the new field. When this new field is http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/09/electromagnetic-radiation-is-unlikely.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-6620058078019307094Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:38:00 +00002008-10-23T18:48:56.820-06:00If you Don't Already Get Spam First and foremost, never put your email address anywhere out the internet where it will be visible on a page. If you do put it out there, you will get spam. Do not register a domain name without whois protection. If your registrar can't hide your email in the domain registration records, use a Gmail acct for your domain contact.(see below). Next, Have two email http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/10/how-to-deal-with-spam.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-6274955228571188524Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:20:00 +00002008-10-22T18:42:12.843-06:00Google's Adwords Keyword tool supposedly shows how much competition there is for a given keyword phrase, but sometimes when I perform a search on that keyword in Google, I see no ads whatsoever. Here is an example: According to Adwords there is a medium high degree of advertiser competition for the phrase "visa logo" Click for larger image Yet when I go to Google and do a search for "visa logo"http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/10/horribly-wrong-adwords-keyword-tool.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-751908412900830560Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:44:00 +00002008-09-22T18:00:46.631-06:00Hi xx, Like 99.9% of these forwarded emails, this one is also not true. [http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/missing/penny.asp] Snopes is a really good place to check the truth of FW[re:] fw: RE: type emails. Or, you can safely ignore ALL these types of emails. In 14 years of internet usage I have only ever seen two that were true. (One was the "uses of bounce sheets" email, which had a few http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/09/letter-to-send-to-friends-who-fwd.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-9076236214908527881Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:39:00 +00002008-09-22T17:41:40.619-06:00"our extensive research has shown that failure in relationships is directly proportional to the number of Alt codes one has memorized" ~Author Unknown [How bad is it if I only know three? Well, maybe four.] "I spent a minute looking at my own code by accident. I was thinking 'What the hell is this guy doing?'" "I went on a 30-day diet, and lost 30 days" "How can you think you matter http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/09/funny-if-you-are-web-developer-i-guess.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-2452160044937292203Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:53:00 +00002008-09-09T00:09:02.495-06:00wordpressstrange charactersAfter a wordpress upgrade we started to get all kinds of weird symbols in our posts, including  and ’. I figured it was a character encoding mismatch problem and a quick search on the Wordpress forums confirmed it. You have to comment out two lines in your wp-config.php file (found in your main blog directory). These are the two lines: define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8'); define('DB_COLLATE', '')http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/09/strange-characters-and-in-wordpress.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-4536716180533144121Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:51:00 +00002008-09-08T23:44:51.782-06:00sort orderzen cartproduct orderHere's a simple one, but I didn't know how to do it right away. If you want to feature the products on your main Zen Cart page in a certain order, you can do that by going into the admin and editing the sort order number at the bottom of each individual product. Lower sort order numbers show up first on the catalog page.http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/09/changing-ordering-of-products-in-zen.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-9056746771044901524Fri, 30 May 2008 20:52:00 +00002008-05-30T15:11:20.543-06:00Ok, so this is how I solved a problem with Win xp install. Problem presented itself as a file that could not be copied during file copy stage. Comctl32.dll and controls.man could not be copied from the xp cd.I got a copy of comctl file from my laptop's xp, and I was able to copy the controls.man file from the xp cd, using the cdrom drive in my laptop instead of the desktop I was trying to installhttp://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2005/09/comctl32dll-and-controlsman-could-not.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-7655653698537690858Sat, 17 May 2008 04:05:00 +00002008-05-16T22:23:32.123-06:00Gmail has the world's greatest spam filters. They process billions of emails everyday and they own Postini. Today, I hooked up a client's website email to Google's spam filters using Google Apps. I had to change his MX records in his hosting account cPanel. The change over was instant, though they say it could take a couple of days to take effect. I know it was instant, because he was collectinghttp://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/05/hooking-up-worlds-greatest-spam-filters.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-9071809959988514767Thu, 15 May 2008 21:35:00 +00002008-05-15T16:02:47.500-06:00selectiveadsensemoneyadsOne more for today... I also found a couple interesting articles on adsense ads. Specifically, on who sees your adsense ads. Do you want to show them to all your visitors? Your regular readers have learned to tune them out by now, right? Ozh at Planet Ozh has written a nifty wordpress plugin that I can't wait to try out. Serve ads to just the visitors from search engines. They came to my site http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/05/be-selective-about-who-you-show-your.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-3560527849920138793Thu, 15 May 2008 19:00:00 +00002008-09-08T23:37:43.965-06:00anti-spamspamsecureform to emailrecaptchaTwo of my clients are getting a lot of contact form spam. The spambots fill out the contact forms with their spammy links and submit them. The strange thing is that a lot of the time the forms are just full of random garbage: contact via: Phone, at this number: contact_at: tkvhmn@ohmodb.com time to contact: wfqpbwdwi addr1: 1 addr2: http://fbzmzdnszlkv.com/ city: YRGKofnQEDfSFlctLKZ statehttp://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/05/search-for-secure-accessible-anti-spam.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-1773332980491436377Thu, 15 May 2008 17:11:00 +00002008-05-15T12:59:46.444-06:00blog network softwaremulti user blogwordpress multi userYesterday I did a ton of research. One of my 'back burner' projects is to set up a multi blog for a bunch of hardcore outdoorsmen. yesterday I did a long power search on multiple blog systems. I found at least three promising paths: Wordpress Multi user or wpmu - The forums for WPMU, in a stickied post, indicates that it is not for tha faint of heart. Undeterred, I still think I could http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/05/research-on-multi-user-blog-platforms.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-6066249388224306362Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:52:00 +00002008-04-24T10:52:18.906-06:00 Wide angle panorama Originally uploaded by Rejetto [gone diving!]A wide angle image from Pantellaria, and interesting island off the coast of Africa. I hope to go there some day.This is a test blog post from Flickr.http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/04/pantellaria-wide-angle-panorama.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-6784872187616671007Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:15:00 +00002008-04-11T12:28:50.307-06:00lightscribedv9500dv9653clHPcd burnerI see that I have forgotten to write more about the Lightscribe feature of the Pavilion dv9500. It's cool. It's slow. I bought a pack of colored Lightscribe disks, and it really works. It takes a long time to burn the image on the top of the disk though. 20 to 40 minutes. I have done it in draft mode and in high resolution mode, and there really isn't that much difference in quality. The high http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/04/hp-dv9653cl-lightscribe.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-1378344493574271038Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:09:00 +00002008-04-11T12:13:16.038-06:00repairdv9500dv9653clHPfailureHP got my computer back to me within a week, in perfect condition. I have played a few directx games and it didn't burn up. Cool, eh? I am very happy with the way HP handled the situation. I got to talk to an english speaking tech, they agreed with my diagnosis right away, and service was prompt and perfect. Way to go. Not that I am pleased with the fact that it burned out in the first place...http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/04/back-in-business.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-1578976475882830211Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:11:00 +00002008-04-02T17:14:30.710-06:00dv9653clHP sent me a box via Fedex overnight. That makes me feel like they are serious about getting my computer fixed. It took me a few days to finish getting all my stuff backed up and to 'shred' my passwords and email and stuff. Now the HP dv9653cl is at their repair facility. And I have my fingers crossed.http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/04/cautiously-optimistic-and-waiting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-2408736184839165815Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:47:00 +00002008-03-26T22:04:54.496-06:00burn outvideo carddv9500dv9653clHPfailureThe video card, an 8600m GS, in my HP dv9500 failed on Easter Sunday while I was starting Quake Wars. I called Costco concierge services and they put me in touch with an HP support person, who spoke english(Thank God!). They agreed that the video card had burned out and the support rep is sending me a box to ship my baby back to HP in. I bought a SATA hard drive enclosure to use to transfer, http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2008/03/hp-dv9653cl-video-card-failure.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-4194864032663598956Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:25:00 +00002008-05-15T17:22:57.977-06:00XP sidebar gone in Vista[Update] Actually I am a moron. If you click on 'Organize' you can have your choice of an adjustable right side preview pane, or an adjustable bottom details pane. Another thing that is different about Vista is that the left hand sidebar is gone from Explorer windows. I noticed this today when I was looking at a list of images I am sorting through. It used to be that I could look at the details http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2007/10/xp-sidebar-gone-in-vista.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-6790602203381010837Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:22:00 +00002007-10-17T19:32:42.538-06:00outlook junk mail not workingOne of the things that really has been annoying me about the new Vista setup is that my junk mail filters on Outlook 2003 quit working. I tried uninstalling the trialware of Symantec crap, but that didn't help. Today I discovered a side benefit to uninstalling the Office Home and Student trialware was that my Outlook junk mail filters started working again. Yayyy!!http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2007/10/one-of-things-that-really-has-been.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-2485537755139385896Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:46:00 +00002007-10-17T19:34:03.250-06:00The HP 9500 came with a trial version of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 on it. Csv files that I opened while doing keyword research kept opening up in Excel 2007, which I couldn't use until I entered the key, which I was able to get with the Activation Assistant. Very handy. At least it was until I opened one of the aforementioned .csv files and was asked to activate Office 2007, which Ihttp://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2007/10/hp-9500-came-with-trial-version-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-5568373820538859740Sun, 30 Sep 2007 05:39:00 +00002007-10-02T16:34:15.713-06:00HP Pavilion dv9500 review9653cl17" laptopFirst looks at the HP Pavilion DV9500 Model 9653cl My old workhorse Dell Inspiron laptop died suddenly while on a business trip, forcing me to select a replacement from what was available for sale over the counter in Missoula Montana. I haven't been paying attention to the progression of computer computer tech lately, so I dove in and learned about Core 2 Duo and DX 10 cards and Vista. After http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2007/09/first-looks-at-hp-pavilion-dv9500-model.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-6855452116488111743Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:36:00 +00002008-09-22T17:38:15.582-06:00I downloaded a copy of Unbuntu Linux the other day. I clicked on download. I was hooked to a fast pipe, so I got the whole ISO in 20 minutes. (Wow! Never been on a fat pipe like that before.) I had to figure out how to do an MD5 checksum...download a free utility...say...five minutes of research. I burned a disc. Another five minutes. I popped the disc in the computer and rebooted. Unbutu's livehttp://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2007/09/bill-gates-sees-handwriting-on-wall.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27134342.post-4250931022442021347Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:50:00 +00002007-09-14T13:14:41.770-06:00quickbooks errormiva synchroimport ordersxml text streammiva merchantYesterday I got a call from a client that they could not download their orders into Quickbooks with Miva Synchro. They were getting an error message that read: "Quickbooks found an error when parsing the provided XML text stream." After looking around a bit, I found that some one had placed an order in Miva Merchant for $0 (zero dollars) somehow. I guessed that if we got rid of this order, that http://www.northforkmedia.com/blogger/2007/09/yesterday-i-got-call-from-client-that.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Techwiz)0