We survived the last 5 years too.

I am still here on earth...

A quick update to all of you, (and/or future me.)

I have now been running a successful computer services business for over 15 years, and running my favorite non-profit, Operation Community Cares, for almost 5 years. (OpComCares is preparing for its 20th anniversary.) My beautiful daughter has graduated college, and moved back East. And my lovely wife is, as always, helping me be better at everything I do. We are also coming up on our 30th anniversary.

PS Our 3.75 cats, Aurora, Wookie, Cali, Gilly, and Ollie, say 'Hi.'

I do still live...

A quick update to all of you, (or future me.)

I have now been running a successful computer services business for over 10 years. My beautiful daughter is preparing to graduate high school. And my lovely wife is now helping me run the business, and has for the last two years. We are also coming up on our 25th anniversary.

PS Our 4.5 cats, Aurora, Wookie, Bella, Mittens, and Phantom, say 'Hi.'

I am still here, sometimes.

Just a quick redirect to the new version of one of my old blogs Decoy's Poetry has been started anew after the accidental deletion of the old location.

Albert, Pi & I

Happy Birthday Albert Einstein. In light of the next line, I wonder if Albert ever had birthday cake...

Happy Pi Day!!! How are you going to celebrate? How 'bout some pie?

I can't believe that Google has no Pi Day doodle/logo. What is up with that? Where is the love of Pi and all things mathematical or geeky? I mean won't this day suffer in maintaining it's significance if it is not even honored with a Pi Doodle?

Yes, I still live, at least I think this is me. It seems that after 40 it gets harder and harder to tell these things.

For both of you who have checked back faithfully with every new post... Wake up!!! Sure it has been 17 months since my last post, but hey, I could cut that time in half for my next post, and who among the two of you would want to miss that one interesting thought that might slip onto the net out of my head. Yes, I realize the odds, like the digits of Pi, are very long that an interesting thought would survive long enough to make it to the keyboard and beyond... But, it could happen, after all this started as a four word post: "Yes, I still live." and look at all the time you have used reading it now, not to mention the 15 minutes I spent typing it. (I guess I did mention it.)

I figure that since you have shown a continual interest I would give you a link to a site I am slightly, though sporadically, more actively posting on. Here is the link to my Pinterest page: http://pinterest.com/decoyflyer/ Enjoy my pins.

I am not necessarily done here on blogger, but let's face it, I haven't been doing much here even when I was active.

FYI

I am still alive.

Happy 2009!!!

Just a quick post to say:

Happy New Year.

Happy Ground Hog Day.

Happy Valentines Day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy Easter.

Happy Mothers Day.

Happy Memorial Day.

Happy Fathers Day.

Happy Fourth of July.

And of course...

Yes I am still here, even if I am not "here", and will eventually make it back... I hope.

(Thanks Bell for the wake-up call.)

Hello again to you both

I know it has been two more months plus a little, I really will get back to writing someday.

In the mean time, I just wanted you to know I am still here. (Or perhaps I just wanted to know I was still here.)

Oops...

So, let me get this right, it is May 21, 2008, and I have not posted yet this year?

Well, it has been a rough stretch since my last post, one I need not go into here. I will however, be back to posting here more frequently soon.

Stay tuned as you wish, both of you... I shall return!

VMK no BS Forum - II

The site came back up after 16+ hours of down time.

I was very unimpressed with 1&1 web hosting and their lack of anything approaching customer service. The tech support line rings to India, (I think), they just said they were in the far East, and only has email communication to the people actually working on the servers in Germany. They could never give me an estimate as to when it would be back up. I did however get this nugget of information: "We don't have backup servers."

I will certainly not recommend them in the future, and will gladly post here as I find out whether they actually charge me full price this period. I sent two emails to the specified address to request a credit, but have as yet received no response from either.

Wallop - A New Social Site

Just signed up and love it already, I can upload pictures & music, I am using it as my custom radio right now...

The interface is very web 2.0 online desktop, and can be customized with any wallpaper you like and several themes.

More info to follow... Once I try the social aspects.

VMK no BS Forum

At www.vmknobs.com we are experiencing a problem with the web hosting company, it seems that the physical server hosting the forum, 5 of my / my client's sites, and the sites of approximately 1000 other customers has gone down. It has been down for nearly 15 hours now, and they still can not even give an estimate as to when it will be up.

For all you VMK no BS Members, fear not, we will be back.

More details of this incident will follow, as will the chronicles of the "service" received from this host. (If I ever get any...)

The PortableApps I Use Most Often

I have still yet to lay my hands on portable organization, so the promised reviews are still 'on the list' and will be here eventually. In the mean time here is a list of PortableApps I use most regularly. It is not a comprehensive list of all that I use or have tried, and it is in no particular order.

Some of the below may require special extraction, or an initial install, to be able to copy the files to your USB drive. (Universal Extractor and Inno Setup Unpacker come in handy for such things.)


Anti-Malware:

• Rogue Remover gets rid of rogue anti-spyware/adware programs.
• Winpooch Watchdog detects system modifications and includes real-time anti-virus.
• ClamWin Portable is an open-source anti-virus scanner.
• Avast! Cleaner is a virus removal tool.

Archivers:

• 7-Zip Portable is a favorite made mobile.
  
• IZArc2Go can extract almost 50 types of archives.

Browsers:

• Firefox Portable enough said.
  
• Torpark is portable Firefox + Tor for anonymous browsing.

CD-Burnning:

• Small CD Writer (English Version) is a great single file program for burning CDs.

Defrag Tools:

• Auslogics Disk Defrag is a nice GUI-based defrag program.
  
• JkDefrag has commandline options and does all disks in one run.

More to come another time...

Another Delay

I am giving my business a full court press, and the PortableApp reviews, while still coming have been further delayed.

Here is a link to an article I wrote for Daily Cup of Tech: Five Critical Tips for New Computer Consultants

I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for your patience.

What to Take to a Service Job

PortableApp reviews are coming, in the mean time read this...

Every service job a take shows me at least one more tool to bring to the next job.

Here is the list so far:

• Small tool kit (Screwdrivers, zip ties, etc...)
• Software Tools (On CD & USB Flash Drive)
• Live CD
• Patience

The small tool kit was the most obvious, I brought that to my first service call and it wasn't even needed, but when it is, it is hard to open some cases with out it. ;-)

Software tools was also obvious yet over time the make-up of this kit has changed. Many of the calls I get are to support older operating systems so it is important to have tools that work on them. I have found that some old computers have no CD-ROM and no USB drivers so I also carry a floppy disk with the drivers needed to get the flash drive working.

Most recently I have added many common installation files to a seperate CD. Things like AIM, YIM & MSN Messenger all of the Google Pack tools and many Windows updates. I added these to avoid having to take a computer with a dial-up connection home. (or having to wait hours on site for it to download updates.) I have found that many problems can be solved with a fresh install of the offending program.

If there is a cd drive and the operating system is toast, then a live CD is a must have. With most live Linux distros you can recover and back up the data on the computer before you reinstall the old operating system. You can additionally test most of the hardware and find failures that a dead system won't show. (Dead Systems Tell No Tales... ;-) )

Patience is probably the most important tool to bring to any job. If you are impatient, your client will be as well and that will never end well for you.

Let Us Begin

Here are some links to various places of interest in the Portable Apps genre:

First my ever growing list of PortableApps links at del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/DecoyFlyer/PortableApps

Next I give you several of my favorites:

• PortableApps.com
• TheInfoBox.com
• PenDriveLinux.com
• The Portable Freeware Collection
• Wikipedia's Portable Apps List

I have played with a U3 device, but have found that I prefer the flexibility of the PortableApps Suite at portableapps.com. Among other features, it allows you to add any program you put in the applications folder to the "start menu" it has for a launcher.

I will get into more detail another time, but for now check out the links, and remember i have not tested all of the programs they have, so use them at your own risk.

A New Direction For CRS...

OK, Both of you who have read this...

You are as aware as I am that I don't post here as much as I could, but that is about to change. I have finally picked a direction to go with CRS.

First let me say, I have two addition blogs now, Decoy's Poetry & Just a Decoy . They will go in the different directions this one has in the past, freeing this one up to go in a more Techno Geek sort of direction.

I will focus this blog on my tech experiments & interests, which currently are focussed on playing with portable, self contained, computer aplications & Linux live-CDs.There will be reviews, recommendations, warnings & anything else that comes to mind, as I play with my USB Flash Drives.