Category: Illinois

Damn politicians. No, really.

April 29th, 2009 · · Family, Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My employer has laid off no less than 1/3 of its employees. Yesterday morning we had meetings with Man-Tra-Con and unemployment people. Lawyers are negotiating.

Some of you may ask why, if you know me very well you know why – DAMNED politicians.

I’m not talking about elected officials that are upstanding (in Illinois?) and try to do their jobs properly. I’m referring to the jerks that run this state. They have successfully raided the Underground Storage Tank Fund to the point that payments for work already completed in good faith and approved for payment by the IEPA are almost two years behind.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I let any debt go for a month I’ll be receiving phone calls daily at all hours. Apparently the state of Illinois can rape funds and move them around however they like. I’m sorry, these are called sweeps by the politicians so that the public doesn’t notice as much when the funds are stolen to pay for another social hour in Springfield.

Granted, these sweeps happen all of the time, but this time they are causing my employer serious issues that may even include closure. I consider the people I work with to be friends, and my friends are not getting paid and/or are laid-off thanks to flipping politicians ‘legally’ stealing money to go to pet or pork projects. It’s bullcrap.

For those who don’t know, the UST Fund is used to do a number of things. The most common that I’m aware of is removing/replacing petrol tanks from gas stations and cleanup of these sites so that there is no contamination. This keeps land ‘clean’ so that it can be sold and used safely. What happens when businesses that clean up these sites are all forced to close thanks to politicians?

I’m willing to wager that the politicians are still getting their paychecks and that welfare is continuing to be doled out.

The World Wide Web is evil?

April 22nd, 2009 · · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Technology No comments - Tags: , , , ,

This article was originally printed in my ‘Ask a Geek’ column in our local Mount Vernon Register-News. Please feel free to email me at askageek [at] register-news [dot] com if you have suggestions, criticism, thanks, hate mail, or whatever. Thanks for your time.

Well, no, not exactly. The Web is a great tool and resource that a lot of people find incredibly useful. There are ways to access information once only available within libraries (www.wikipedia.com). There are resources to investigate and log your genealogy (www.geni.com). Heck, you can even find video lectures from colleges that cost thousands of dollars to attend (www.tinyurl.com/lkgsq).

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of bad guys who know that millions of people use the Internet to access the Web, and not everyone is as careful as they should be when accessing this wealth of knowledge. These same persons spend quite a bit of time and energy doing very little but trying to gain control of your computer and/or trying to get your personal information.

Why would people spend so much time and energy trying to break in to your computer? The simplest answer is money. Even if you don’t do shopping or banking on the Web, will they bother with you? Absolutely. These hooligans might not get anything directly from your computer, but if they control it then they can use it together with others to attack a bank server or to send out spam (junk email) to people who will give up money in some way.

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You don’t need Microsoft Office

April 10th, 2009 · · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Technology No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This article was originally printed in my ‘Ask a Geek’ column in our local Mount Vernon Register-News. Please feel free to email me at askageek [at] register-news [dot] com if you have suggestions, criticism, thanks, hate mail, or whatever. Thanks for your time.

I should really say you probably don’t need Office. Some businesses need Office because it is the only suite that will work with some programs. So, other than those rare exceptions, let’s move on.

Most everyone has used Microsoft Word and Excel. They are great programs that can help get work done easily and efficiently. What most people don’t realize is that there are several free options to both of these programs to help you get work and homework done without wasting money.

OpenOffice.org is my personal favorite productivity suite. It is free for public use and includes replacements of Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. I have not had any issues in my two-plus years of using OpenOffice as my choice for replacement of Microsoft Office. OpenOffice will even open MS Office documents and save as MS Office files. OpenOffice can recover documents from a crash similarly to Office if needed. I am pretty sure I’m not the only user who has had Word and Excel crash for no reason. OpenOffice has not done that once to me (yet).

An online option to avoid buying Office would be to use Google Docs. Docs is free to use as well, and should meet an average user’s needs quite easily. Google also allows you to share your creations with friends or coworkers by simply sending them a link to the document.

To use Docs you should have a fast internet connection, it requires a lot of traffic between your computer and Google. Docs will automatically save your document every few minutes, so all is not lost if you lose your internet connection. Google Docs is quite good at being a replacement unless you require access to documents when you are not online.

Abiword is a completely free word processing program that is similar to Microsoft’s Word. This program will work with Word files and save as Word files as well. It is a great program for making documents. I find the interface simple and intuitive. If you are just looking to make text documents, you should give Abiword a look. It doesn’t cost a thing, and could be a great find for you as it was me.

Those are a few suggestions for replacing or just not buying Microsoft’s Office suite. The replacements aren’t always perfect, but neither is Office.

Your USB stick can do more than you think

April 8th, 2009 · · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Technology One comment - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

This article was originally printed in my ‘Ask a Geek’ column in our local Mount Vernon Register-News. Please feel free to email me at askageek [at] register-news [dot] com if you have suggestions, criticism, thanks, hate mail, or whatever. Thanks for your time.

Wouldn’t it be great to have your browser the same on vacation, at home, and at work? With Portable Apps you can do just that and more.

A lot of people carry USB sticks today. They are extremely easy to use to move information from one PC to another. What a lot of people may not be aware of is that they can be used to carry useful programs and use them wherever you happen to have computer access.

Portable Apps are versions of applications that you may use every day, but they can be put on a USB drive and don’t usually leave any traces on a computer.

This way you can hop on to a library computer and not worry much about the next person seeing where you have been (bank, work e-mail, etc.).

There are many other useful programs other than just a browser however. You can get everything from a word processor (Abiword) to even the old Mac operating system.

These portable applications can come in very handy on vacation, business trips, and even at work if you need something that isn’t already installed. All you need to do is download what you need, then unpack (install, but not really) whatever programs you need. Even with these programs on your USB, you can keep using it just like normal to move or store files.

Even if you don’t have a need for keeping applications with you all the time (we can’t all be geeks), the applications are all very trimmed-down, and work great on a regular computer. This way you don’t have to worry about gumming-up your Windows Registry or making a bunch of folders that take up space on your hard drive.

Go see what they have and if any of it can be useful for you.

The portable Abiword is proving useful for me right now. It is how I wrote this article on grandma’s computer.

Wireless and you

April 6th, 2009 · · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Technology No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This article was originally printed in my ‘Ask a Geek’ column in our local Mount Vernon Register-News. Please feel free to email me at askageek [at] register-news [dot] com if you have suggestions, criticism, thanks, hate mail, or whatever. Thanks for your time.

Like most homes with more than one computer, we have wireless network access set up in our home. This makes it very convenient for me to prop the laptop onto my lap and write articles while watching the Golden Globes.

Unfortunately, anyone driving down the street can pick up my wireless connection as well. They would have to be pretty close, but neighbors (especially in apartment buildings) would have no trouble ‘borrowing’ a signal. This often happens on accident.

Your computer is dumb, and will connect to the strongest wireless signal it can find. If your neighbor has their wireless placed so that your laptop or computer picks up that signal stronger, then it will connect to their network. This is not a safe situation.

Your neighbor can see everything on your computer while you are connected to their network. They can also watch every bit of traffic you send across the air and then through their cables. As horrible as it may be, they might be doing something illegal, and if your computer has been using their network you may be implicated.

Borrowing signal and your laptop randomly connecting can both be overcome fairly easily though. The simplest matter is to enter your wireless router’s settings and change your system identification (SSID) from ‘linksys’ or whatever the default name is to something you pick. This will let you be sure you connect to your home network and help your neighbors stay off of your network.

The most important step to securing your home wireless network is to enable encryption between your computer and wireless router. There are 3 types of encryption – WEP, WPA, and WPA2.

Something is better than nothing, and that’s what you will get with WEP. It is extremely easy to crack within minutes, and how-to’s are all across the internet to follow the process.

WPA and WPA2 are good enough to keep 99% of home wireless networks secure. Recently there have been reports of flaws in WPA, but they are theoretical and very unlikely to matter unless someone wants into your network traffic badly.

There you are, two simple steps to keep your private network private. There are many different manufacturers, and each will have slightly different steps to making these changes. A quick trip to your help menu or manufacturer’s website should help you make necessary changes and keep you safely surfing from the couch.