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Removing Windows 10 Upgrade Notifications

I will start this entry by clearly expressing that I am most displeased with Microsoft’s approach to foisting Windows 10 upon the world.  I understand car manufacturers constantly bombarding me with advertisements for their new offerings.  But if they sent a remote kill command to brick my current car, I would be furious.  We should be able to drive the car we bought for as long as we decide to maintain and drive it.  It used to be we would complain about manufacturers having planned obsolesce just after the warranty expired.  But this takes things to a whole new level.

Impromptu Mobile Phone Amplifier

Have you ever been somewhere hanging out with friends and use your phone as music player?  The phone’s little speakers just aren’t able to produce full, rich sound.  But you can use common household objects to help.

My phone has its speakers facing out the bottom of the phone.  As a result, I can place the phone in objects and acoustically amplify the sound.

I first experienced this by having my GPS on and setting my phone in a cup holder in the car.  I noticed how the voice was far louder in the cup holder than it was in free air.  That got me thinking.

Malware cont. - Backups!

I never wanted to be a physician.  It is definitely a special calling on one’s life to be able to do what they do.  I had occasion last week to visit a friend in the hospital.  He had a brain aneurism.  He will be fine and is on the road to recovery.  However, as I sat there in the neuroscience ICU I observed someone being rushed in by EMTs on a stretcher. 

Malware cont. - "But I didn't do anything!"

In recent blogs, I covered common attack vectors for malware these days.  But I see infections pretty much every week of malware, or more frequently what is lumped together as “potentially unwanted programs” or PUPs.  The affected users are shocked because they did not open any email attachments and they did not do anything risky on their computer.  They are genuinely shocked that suddenly they have all of these pop-ups, ads, redirects and nonsense appearing on their computer.  If it has not happened to you by now, then I can pretty much guarantee it has happened to someone you know.

Malware cont. - Email

A very common infiltration method is to dress up as a good guy, get you to invite them in, and then release heretofore concealed bad guys.  I know, you are probably thinking, “Heeeeyyy.  I’ve heard this story somewhere before.”  Your memory serves you well.  The Greeks built a horse with Special Forces inside and then brought it to Troy as a “gift”.  Once there, Special Forces popped out of “the Trojan horse” to do their damage.  Thus the reason this eponymous malware category has such sweeping access to your computer.  You welcomed it into your computer and said, “Hey, make yourself

Malware - you have to get smarter!

Is it me, or do the frequency and severity of viruses keep increasing?

Save yourself time, money and peace of mind – outsmart those people writing computer viruses!

Computer viruses are a pain.  The world would be a better place without them and we all wish those people would find a constructive way to utilize their God-given talents.  Until things change, however, we just have to be smarter than them.

Viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware and even the newer creations like ransom-ware are collectively lumped into a category called malware. “Mal”, as in bad. 

USB 3.0 Drivers for Dell XPS 15 9530

Today I spent quite a while struggling to find drivers for a new Dell XPS 15 laptop.  My client purchased one of the new laptops from Dell.  Dell no longer offers Windows 7 on that laptop.  Of course, the first thing I do is to remove the standard HDD and insert an Intel 530 SSD.  We then buy an OEM version of 64-bit Windows 7 Pro and install it on the SSD.

YouTube – “I’m not talking if you’re not listening!”

I hope that someone reads this and saves themselves the six hours I spent to solve this problem!

One of my clients is a school.  Teachers occasionally use content from YouTube in their class.  It’s normally not an issue.  But I had one teacher contact me and explain that she could not get her “Mr. Magoo’s Don Quixote de la Mancha” to play from YouTube.

I arrived in her classroom and sure enough, she could get the first second of the video, then the screen blackened with old-school “static” on it.  YouTube said that there was some sort of technical problem.  This was weird.

Welcome!

Hi!  Welcome to my blog.  I’m not sure how you found it or got here, but I’m glad you’re here. 

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