Category: Geek Love

For years, I have used Lavasoft’s AdAware program to find the bad things hanging out on my computer and get rid of them. I ran it yesterday and it only found one thing running. Kathy has suggested in the past to use Spybot – Search & Destroy also to help clean up the bad stuff. Considering how wonky my poor laptop has been acting, I thought it might be smart to test it out.

It found and destroyed 86 things that were running on my computer. 86 bad things!

I feel so clean now. Hopefully this will help end some of the bizarre behavior, but I might just run a defrag to go along with it. Any other suggestions on things I can do to keep the computer pristine?

Since Mike is the type that writes his own IRC clients in Python for fun, he should be amused by the story of the Myserious billboard. At least I was. [via Melissa.]

Years ago, there was a company called FreePC.com. The premise was that you signed up for their free computer, and they sent you one – with banner and spy software, so they could monitor your surfing habits. I didn’t own a computer at home at the time, and I was happy to sell my soul just for a free machine. I signed up, but didn’t hear anything. I forgot all about it for the most part, randomly checking back to see if they had updated the site or if there was any new information.

Then, one day I received an e-mail asking me if I still wanted to participate, and if so – to verify where to send the new PC. Yes, free. Well, somewhat free, but I had to be willing to be spied on. Ok, whatever – I didn’t mind.

A year or so later, the company folded, and they sent us the information on how to reformat things to get the banner ads off the computer. Since then, I have replaced the hard drive, buying one from a co-worker for $40. The PC still works just fine. Free.

The point of all of this? You can have a chance to get a FREE iPod. I signed up for the pink one. Shocker there, huh? Anyways, I need to refer five friends – so if you are interested in helping me out and want to sign up, go to my special freeiPods.com referrer page. Once you sign up, get 5 friends to sign up and go for one of the offers (Columbia House DVD, AOL for Broadband, White Smile, BMG Music Service) and … well, that’s it. Free iPod, or so they claim. For a price slightly cheaper than your soul. (UPDATE: I removed the link to my referrer page because I’ve met the requirements for one. If you still want to sign up, help these people out.)

Don’t want an iPod? That’s ok. They will give you $250 in gift certificates for iTunes instead.

I really, really, really want the pink iPod though… although the silver is nice too…

Just the other day I was ranting about TypePad. It would never let me log in, so whenever I try to comment on MT sites, my comments end up in moderation mode. I’m sure Kristine and Meredith just love me for that.

However, the fabulous Shelley (in her role as a MT staff member) fixed me right up tonight. I can log in to Typepad again! Now, you’ll never believe how simple it was…

I was using my full e-mail address instead of my username. Oops!

Because working on the website today just wasn’t enough, I have brought the Blogomania Forums back online too. They were once a great place of community sharing, but while planning the wedding, I simply didn’t have time to moderate them properly. While on our honeymoon, I set all of the forums to moderator only mode so that I could focus on the Helpdesk. It improved our service response times.

Now that I have taken back the primary support role, I realized that there was a hole in the grand scheme of things where the forums used to be.

Tomorrow’s big fun? Playing Guido the Killer Pimp and collecting on past due accounts. Oh yeah, the dirty job that no one likes to talk about, but someone has to do. I know you’re jealous.

Oh, and I also have a post that I have to edit. Something that is long overdue here. (Yeah, like the list of things I need to post about isn’t a mile long…)