Hacking My Life

Oh The Things I’ll Do for a Girl

2009-11-01T22:56:00.001-05:00

Okay, so there’s this blogger (bloggette?) named Little Miss Queenie who has decided to give away make up sort things on her blog. In an attempt to please the demands of my girlfriend, I have entered the contest at her behest. Wish me luck. If you so desire, you can also enter her contest at the following link (although there are lots of steps and you would need some motivation to finish the entering process).

To visit her site click here or just click on the giant cartoon of her. To go directly to the sweepstakes entry, click here.

Good luck and good riddance.

The Swine Flu (AKA Mexican Flu of DEATH) Kills People, I Care.

2009-04-27T00:18:00.003-04:00

For those of you that don’t know, the World Health Organization has declared an international state of health emergency (meaning a large scale disease that is spreading at uncontainable levels) due to the recent outbreak of the H1N1 Swine Flu. That means we are in an international emergency. So get out that copy of I Am Legend, and start wishing you’re Will Smith, ‘cause if you aren’t. YOU’RE GONNA DIE!!! (The actual ending for that movie is MUCH better than the one we got in theaters, IMHO).

Here’s a map to track known cases of the flu (you may think Mexico is very far away, but think again, its already in Ohio):

Suspected infections are the pink balloons
Confirmed cases are the purple balloons
Deaths are balloons with no black dot in the middle

Due to the MASSIVE number of cases that have now been confirmed, the swine flu map can now be found here: http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/

Internet Explorer 8 vs. Firefox 3.0.9

2009-04-25T13:43:00.001-04:00

I’m not comparing apples to oranges, so there’s no Firefox 3.5 in this comparison, as its still in beta. I’ll update this post as soon as Firefox 3.5 goes final and I’ve had a chance to use it for a while

So, without further ado, here we go!

I’ve always been an avid Firefox user, all the way back to when it was still called “Phoenix”, I was a Firefox user. Before that, I used Netscape almost exclusively (back when I was young and did not know the wonders of Linux), in essence, I’ve avoided Internet Explorer for a long time now. However, IE isn’t available in Linux, so I wanted to perform my tests (both quantitative and qualitative) in the same environment. All the tests and browsing were done on a brand new Sony Vaio FW laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 w/ SP1.

Before I get to the personal impressions, here are your standard test results that concern numbers and the like, both browsers were fresh installs, and all private data was cleared before each test. For the cold start test, I restarted the computer, and bookmarked 5 websites (google.com, yahoo.com, live.com, espn.com and ign.com) that I had saved locally and set this as the homepages for each browser. Then, I measured the amount of time it took from the instant I clicked the shortcut to the time when every webpage reported itself as “Done.” For the warm start, I did the same thing, but I measured the time it took for the fifth time I started the browser after a restart. All commonly used plugins (Flash, Silverlight, and Java VM) were installed ahead of time. All tests were done 5 times (except for the cold start, as I did not want to restart 5 times) and averaged.

Test	Internet Explorer	Firefox	Winner
Cold Start	3.8 seconds	5.5 seconds	Internet Explorer 8
Warm Start	0.9 seconds	1.2 seconds	Internet Explorer 8
Sunspider	5171.0 ms	2771.2 ms	Firefox
V8 Benchmark Suite	91.4 points	213 points	Firefox
Acid2	Pass	Pass	Tie
Acid3	CRASH (furthest it went was 12 points)	71/100 points	Firefox
Total Wins	2 (with a CRASH)	3	Firefox

As we can see, Internet Explorer opens quickly, but once you actually getting around to browsing actual websites, at least according to these tests, it fails tremendously compared to Firefox (even Internet Explorer 7 got further than Internet Explorer 8 on Acid 3). Mozilla’s Gecko engine takes a commanding triumph over Microsoft’s Trident engine in this war, although Firefox’s XUL interface could use some further performance tweaks, but I guess that’s the tradeoff for cross platform compatibility.

However, in real world web surfing, Internet Explorer felt faster than Firefox. I attribute this to the difference in how IE and Firefox render pages, but just to make sure, I installed Fasterfox Lite (please note that this addon is still experimental, which means that it may not be safe for every day use) in Firefox, and sure enough, IE still felt faster, even though timing the actual load times proved that Firefox was faster at actually loading the pages. I’m not sure what causes this, maybe its the satisfying “Click” you hear in IE when you click on a link.

Things I like about Internet Explorer 8 (bolded are the things I REALLY like):

Quick startup
Pleasantly attractive interface (available with Firefox themes, even one that is designed to look like IE)
Impressive search suggestions in search box (Firefox doesn’t support this)
Draggable bookmark folders on the bookmark toolbar (Firefox can’t do this)
InPrivate Mode (which actually blocks banner ads as well) (Firefox users can install Adblock Plus and Stealther). I STILL CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO TURN THIS OFF WITHOUT CLOSING ALL OF MY BROWSING WINDOWS!!
Every website on the planet is written for it (at least in Compatibility Mode anyway) (Firefox can render just about every site, except those that implement ActiveX, which only IE supports)
Colored Tab Grouping (Firefox can’t do this, although there is an addon for it, it doesn’t work very well or at all)
Snappy webpage loading
Efficient use of screen real estate (Firefox users can install Personal Menu to hide the menubar)
Crash restore for individual tabs
Nice “New Tab” page (Firefox users can install Fast Dial or Google Toolbar to get Opera’s and Chrome’s new tab page respectively, but it doesn’t support one like Internet Explorer’s)

Things I like about Firefox 3.0.9 (bolded are things I REALLY like):

Add-ons like Adblock Plus (which I personally don’t recommend, but it is quite nice), Personas, Shareaholic, GreaseMonkey and many many others. (IE users can install IEPro, which offers many additional features for IE)
Fast, smooth web surfing
Open source development philosophy
Better RSS feed management
Built in download manager
Custom searches
Cross platform compatibility
Low RAM usage

If you’re just glancing at these two lists, it may look like I have much more to like about Internet Explorer than I do about Firefox, but that just isn’t true. Firefox Add-ons offer an infinite amount of customizability. There were many things both browsers had that I liked, such as suggestions in the address bar, find as you type, and bookmark and setting importers that work.

After being a Firefox user for a long time (I did have about 2 weeks when I randomly decided that Microsoft was my hero, and I didn’t use anything but Microsoft products, that experience has scarred me forever), I was pleasantly surprised by how far Internet Explorer 8 has come, and I can’t wait for Microsoft to push out the automatic update for it. To those people who haven’t heard of Firefox, please try it! But if you’re stuck with Internet Explorer, or are scared to try new things, Internet Explorer 8 certainly isn’t a bad choice either.

The browser I’ll be using for the rest of today and like, ever?

Note: I have purposely ignored Chrome, Opera and Safari as Firefox and Internet Explorer are the top choices for most users out there. Whether you’re on Mac, Linux or PC, Firefox should be your number 1 choice for internet browsing. Think otherwise? Chrome lover (Matt! I’m looking at you!), Opera junkie? Other browsers? Any Lynx users out there? Konquerer? Tell me about it in the comments!

Edit: Just a quick fyi, this screenshot doesn’t represent a test or anything, but this is what IE’s RAM usage looked like after about 2 hours of normal web browsing with only Xmarks being the only addon installed. That’s almost 800 MB of RAM just to IE folks. That’s crazy…

I’m Bored (RTAM 19 of 25)

2009-04-12T12:22:00.001-04:00

Give me things to do! Cool sites to check out, games to play, anything!

Top 10 Things I Can’t Imagine Life Without (RTAM 18 of 25)

2009-04-03T23:18:00.001-04:00

I have tons of homework tonight, but hey, that just makes posting an entry all the more enticing, right? Yes, I know that in a lot of ways, I’m spoiled. However, I’m still going to be as honest as possible with this list, but it won’t include people, remember these are things! The people I can’t live without are my family and Ranni. I can’t live without God either.

10. Digg

Oh Digg, where would I get my daily dose of random, off the wall news without you? After discovering this site in 2006, I’ve Dugg over 3000 stories, submitted 40 of my own, and have made over 50 comments. I have 61 friends on Digg, which is probably more than I do in real life (but I have some 435 on Facebook, go figure). Without Digg, I don’t know how I’d fill those days when I’m up ‘till the wee hours of the night procrastinating on homework.

9. Fast Food

Hungry? Too lazy to cook? Can’t cook? Lack someone to cook for you? Don’t fret! Just drive right down the street and hit up the local Subway, Wendy’s, McDonald’s or any of the dozens of other fast food restaurants. My favorites? The Baconator at Wendy’s, and the Steak Burrito at Qdoba, mmmmmmmm.

8. My Cell Phone (A lowly, free, SPH-m300)

I know, I’m not even able to text, but it absolutely freaks me out when I miss a call. It freaks me out even more when that call was something important. You’ll never see me without my cell phone, it’s one of the 3 things that are always in my pockets (the other two being my wallet and my keys).

7. The Internet

What’s this? The internet is only number 7? Have I gone crazy? No, I really enjoy using the internet, and you’ll never see me without Gmail, Remember the Milk, Google Calendar and Pidgin open, but I’ve gone weeks without an internet connection, and I’ve been just fine. Oh sure, I was a bit overwhelmed when I came back, but nothing a little Gmail filtering and hardcore keyboard macros can’t handle.

6. Access to University of Michigan Sports (especially football and basketball)

I try to catch every game possible, and when I can’t, I always come back and watch it later if I’ve taped it, and if I didn’t tape it, then I go and read every possible recap of the game, trying to find out exactly what happened. I’m so obsessive (which you would know if you read my previous posts) about Michigan sports, it’s definitely unhealthy. Thank goodness for ESPN360, it has saved my butt quite a few times when my lame HD antenna fails to receive the game.

5. Videogames

I’m not video game nerd (you may beg to differ all you want, I stand by what I think!) but I am wholly convinced that video games are a legitimate way of interacting with other people, and a very fun one at that. Who doesn’t enjoy some good, simple fun with Mario Kart and Smash, or some hardcore (not that Mario Kart and Smash can’t be hardcore, because they most certainly can) Resistance or Halo? I’m up for any of those games, even though I’m quite horrible at console FPS (I just don’t get how dual analog sticks can even try to compete with the precision of the mouse, although I’m following the development of The Conduit for the Wii very very closely, as it’s shaping up to be awesome).

4. Americanized Chinese Food

I love Panda Express, China Wok, Lucky Kitchen and anywhere else that sells greasy “Chinese Food”. Did you know that General Tso was white? Yeah, a white guy invented that. Chinese people traditionally don’t eat chicken, but that’s what Americans like, so that’s what we sell. Either way, orange chicken has got to be one of my favorite foods in the world, and paired with fried rice, Mmm mm mm mm… good!

3. My Teddy Bear

Cue the emphatic “awwwwwwwws” or the derogatory “SISSY!” at this point. There’s no denying that I love my stuffed bear. His name is Cubbi, and he was specially customized from a Build-a-bear workshop from a very special friend of mine for my birthday. Yes, I am taking the bear to college, but I’ll need to find a way to keep it from getting destroyed by my roommates.

2. My Two Babies (Desktop and Laptop)

I do a lot of light web surfing and basic word processing, but the reason why I have such powerful machine is that I do much heavy duty stuff as well. Be it editing photos and videos or converting files, I need the extra oomph my computers offer me. The great gaming performance is a definite plus as well. Of the two, I really can’t say which one I like better, because I don’t know. It’s like your kids! You like them both the same (or so our parents lead us to believe…)

1. What Could Possibly Be More Important to Me Than My Computer?

My bed. I’m really picky about where I sleep and how I sleep, I find it very difficult to sleep anywhere else. I love the soft springs of my mattress, and my thick pink down comforter, and my two big soft down filled pillows. I’m falling asleep just thinking about it…

What are the things you can’t live without in life? Think I’m crazy? Tell me about it! Also, in future posts, I’m going to put more pictures I’ve taken myself because I now have access to a decent camera (an Canon Powershot SD1100 IS if anyone’s curious).

Support Hungry Kids All Around the World!! (RTAM 17 of 25)

2009-03-29T18:31:00.002-04:00

Stop holding your money so close to your chest! Give them to people who really need it. Giving away your money may be the last thing on your mind this year because of the rough economic times we’re going through, however, there are tons of kids out there that really your help. I’m doing a program with my church called 30 Hour Famine. It’s hosted by a non-profit Christian organization called World Vision. No, World Vision is not one of those “charities” that take all of your money, in fact, if you look at its latest financial statements, 95% of its total revenue go directly to programs that help kids or to raise money to help those kids. Only 5% of its revenue is used to cover the many costs of running such a large organization. The Salvation Army, for example, only gives 83% of its revenue to its programs (I’m not taking anything away from the Salvation Army).

At 30 Hour Famine, my church youth group at AACCC will go without food and “fancy drinks” for 30 hours, only consuming water and apple juice when we’re hungry. Why are we doing this? 30 hours is nothing compared to the constant hunger that many people are in, but for many of us Americans, it is still quite a painful and eye-opening experience. During these 30 hours, we have bonding events, Bible studies, and a large community service project. Whether its cleaning up in neighborhoods or helping to process food at Food Gatherers, its all about giving back to both our local community and our global community. It’s loads of fun, but during the last few hours, when the hunger really kicks in, no one wants to move, giving us just a tiny taste of what its like to truly be hungry. Plus, anyone is welcome to join!

We ask for pledges from everybody, even something as little as $1 can feed a hungry child in Africa for a while day. $30 can feed a child for a whole month. Think, just $30, that means going to McDonald’s twice a week instead of three times, or buying Kroger brand cereal instead of name brand cereal, and you can help save kids. Plus, you’ll feel great while you’re at it.

Come find me at school, or leave a comment telling me how much you’ll pledge, check and cash are accepted, and all donations are 100% tax deductible (you’ll get a receipt). Please make checks payable to World Vision.

Go give yourself a pat on the back, and if you don’t give, think about how much that extra trip to McDonald’s actually helps you, wouldn’t you want to help someone else for real instead? Something to think about.

I Shoot Things (RTAM 16 of 25)

2009-03-26T23:28:00.002-04:00

Sorry about my long hiatus, I’ve decided to treat this blog much more casually, and with college coming up soon, I really need to get going on the logistical stuff. Admissions are all coming by the 1st of April, but I’m not worried, ‘cause I’m going to be a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN WOLVERINE! Go blue!

In Combat Arms, that is. What began as a cheap Korean mod of the F.E.A.R engine to create a laggy and glitchy Counter-Strike knockoff was almost hacked out of existence, but is is now an excellent (IMHO) game. There were more hackers than legitimate players in this game. Even I hacked, it was the only way to level the playing field. But 4 months of updates and tons of user complaining later, Nexon finally got its act together, and Combat Arms is now an excellent game. Great balance, decent graphics, and AWESOME gun variety make this one to try out. And oh, did I mention that it was completely free? Check it out at Nexon (the same people who brought you Maple Story) America. FWIW, sacrifice 500 MB of your precious monthly bandwidth (for all those poor souls stuck with Comcast) and get this game. Find me! I’m PeanutsLove and my little brother is DarkKantana.

BPA For the Weekend (RTAM 15 of 25)

2009-03-19T01:24:00.001-04:00

I’m off later today for a statewide business skills competition in Grand Rapids, and I won’t be back until Sunday afternoon. There hasn’t been a significant post in this blog for a while, and I apologize for that, but I’ve been extremely busy this past week for this competition. Wish me luck! I won’t post anything about what I’m competing in for fear of my competition stealing my ideas. So without further ado, I’m taking on the world.

GO BLUE in the tournament, I’ll try my best to watch the game!

Winter Jam 2009! (RTAM 14 of 25)

2009-03-15T19:13:00.002-04:00

Note: this is my first post written on my new laptop!

Last night, I attended my first ever big rock concert. Granted, it was a Christian rock concert, but a rock concert nonetheless. In a word, it was awesome. Here’s a sampling of artists that were there, Hawk Nelson and tobyMac were the sweetest.

Also, happy bunnies in Ann Arbor! We're going dancing baby!

My New Baby, the Sony Vaio FW378J/B (13 of 25)

2009-03-12T21:06:00.006-04:00

Click the picture for detailed specs and features. Here are some highlights (I got this whole setup for $1090.20 after taxes because of the one day promotion today ($330 off) and my student discount).

Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit (I’m going to upgrade to Vista Ultimate)
Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.40 GHz with 1066 Mhz FSB and 3 MB L2 Cache (Better than my desktop)
4GB PC2-6400 RAM (Same as desktop)
16.4 in. glossy screen @ 1920x1080 (Holy moly, this is amazing)
320 GB SATA 7200 RPM HDD (Same as primary drive on desktop)
Integrated 7.1 Dolby Audio, Gigabit Ethernet, a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (2.1 + EDR), 1.3 megapixel webcam and card reader
Blu-Ray read and write (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 HD with 512 MB VRAM (Not as good as my desktop, but I don’t plan on doing any heavy gaming on this thing)

Yeah, I’m excited. Order was placed today, here’s hoping that it’ll come by next Wednesday.

Open QA! (RTAM 12 of 25)

2009-03-11T18:51:00.008-04:00

Ask whatever you want about me! Just leave a comment and I’ll type up your comment and my answer in this post. I’ll try to answer every reasonable question, and even some unreasonable ones too. Feel free to ask more than one!

Question 1 from James I.C.C.: How far can you go when typing up pi without using anything else but your brain?

Answer: 3.141592654

Question 2 from Matthew K.: What's the worst thing you've seen on the internet?

Answer: Goatse, I clicked on it by accident when someone fakelinked it on Digg. I have never seen 2 Girls, 1 Cup, thankfully.

Question 3 from RAnni: Assuming your family and friends are healthy and happy, what would you do if you had a free day with unlimited amount of money?

Answer: First, I would wake up, and bring my whole family to IHOP to eat breakfast ('cause we've never been there before). Then, we would all go to see Slumdog Millionaire. Now it's lunchtime. I would bring you (Ranni) out to eat. We would probably go buy a kite, a nice picnic basket, and lots of picnic food and go to Nichols Arboretum (assuming it's a nice 72 degree spring day, although, knowing my luck, the day that I get unlimited money, the weather will be crappy) and have a picnic and fly out kite. In the afternoon, I would bring you and a bunch of my friends to the mall, and we'll all have a shopping spree. Finally, for dinner, I'll invited all the families from our youth group to eat at the Chop House. That'll take a while. Afterwards, I'll bring you to Borders, and I'll buy you and Jeffrey cool books. I'll read one to Jeffrey before he goes to sleep, and I'll read one to you as well. Finally, after a long and fun day, I would relax in the brand new bed I just bought. The end!

Emotions, Emotions, Emotions… (RTAM 11 of 25)

2009-03-10T01:10:00.002-04:00

Edit: Got it! His name is Seta Sōjirō

Growing up, I was always happy. Cheerful and bright, I would light up every room I was in. Teachers hated me because I was loud and pretty obnoxious, but my classmates loved me because of my random humor. However, there came a long period of time from about 7th grade to 10th when I wanted to be completely emotionless. My inspiration was this guy from an anime series that I can’t remember the name of. I’ll describe it so maybe someone can help me with it. The main character was a highly skilled swordsman, and he always wore scarlet red. His main enemy was a guy who almost burned to death, but was saved at the last second and he lives covered completely in bandages. The emotionless guy that I found really inspiring was one of the bad guys. He was extremely good at fighting, but he would always appear to be happy no matter what. I can’t remember the name of this, I think it was cartoon network at around 10 pm at night about 5 or 6 years back. Anyone help?

I thought that if I just held one positive emotion, my “problems” would just go away, but that wasn’t the case, it got worse. I became attached to many things and people, and my life was going in the wrong direction. I’m not a sad person or a depressed person by any stretch of the mind, just a slightly messed up person (but who isn’t?)

Now, you may be thinking, this is where he introduces someone else and all of his problems are solved. While that statement isn’t entire untrue, I still find myself struggling to let my emotions play themselves out. I would be what you would call a very practical person, although I can be quite spontaneous from time to time. Spontaneity doesn’t necessarily correspond to practicality.

I’m working it though. My closest group of friends (which oddly, seem to be mostly girls) should be able to tell that I’ve changed from middle school, but still not enough.

So yup, this post obviously isn’t quite on the same wavelength as my other ones. It was neither a thing I like or a tech article or a petition for change, this is blogging at its most personal level, just someone to scribe my thoughts. No pressure on reading this one, although if you’re someone who only reads the last sentence, please try to read the 1st paragraph and help me think of that anime’s name so I can get a picture of it up. Either way, that’s all folks.

By the way, Pepsi won the pop poll, I’m quite glad ‘cause that’s what I voted for =)

Please Don’t Use Adblock

2009-03-08T11:49:00.002-04:00

I know that many of you use Firefox and have Adblock Plus (or the older Adblock) installed (Internet Explorer and Safari both offer ad-blocking with add-ons as well, and everything I’m going to say applies to them, too). Adblock blocks all sorts of ads on webpages you go to everyday. It blocks everything from flash ads (those banners that move around tell you that you are the 10000th visitor) to simple text box ads (those ones that say “Ads Brought to You by Google”). Now, I understand that these ads can be annoying and they may increase your load time, but please, think about how many web services you use for free. How do you think they get their money? Think about Youtube, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Google, and every blog you read, how do they keep their services free? Ads. Those companies sell their ad space, and they earn money per click on those ads. If no one sees the ads, or if no one clicks them, you’ll soon see these businesses tumble.

If you want to block those annoying banner ads, please consider using Flashblock, which blocks those flashing ads but doesn’t block the simple, non-intrusive text ads. Hey, maybe actually click on one of those ads once in a while; web developers’ families will thank you =)

*Note: One of the most “geeky” arguments for Adblock is that since it blocks the connections to the ad servers (which it really doesn’t), it speeds up the loading time of the web page. However, numerous research articles have been done on this statement, and it is, in fact, ~~just not true~~ is still up for debate. Adblock doesn’t decrease load time at all because of the way it blocks ads, in fact, it may even increase load times because Firefox must check every single image on the page to see if it matches a filter. Just another thing to consider before you install Adblock.

You can help me (and any other blogger or website owner) by simply clicking our ads; Google checks all the sites for malware, and you aren’t obligated to buy anything at all when you load the website!

Or if you MUST have Adblock installed, at least configure it to allow blogspot.com and blogger.com (if you want instructions on how, leave a comment)

CELEBRATE!!! (RTAM 10 of 25)

2009-03-07T14:16:00.007-05:00

Michigan 67 – Minnesota 64

‘Nuff said.

Thanks =)

Check out the recap at umsportsanalysis.blogspot.com

Random Picture, just ‘cause I’m so elated.

Blog Better with Windows Live Writer

2009-03-06T22:52:00.005-05:00

Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer is, in my humble opinion, the best WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) blog writer. Once you download the program and install it, it is super easy to set up; all you need to do is select your blogging service (be it Blogger, Wordpress, Windows Live Spaces or dozens of others) and sign in. Then, writer will download your blog template and all of your settings for your blog. Once you’ve done that, you can start blogging!

Windows Live Writer supports the insertion of images, videos, photo albums and many many other things through the use of plugins (akin to Firefox’s extensions). It supports saving locally and remotely, editing your past posts without double posting and adding and removing labels and categories (that automatically sync with the ones you have created online or vice versa) among many other features! There is nothing you can with the web based editor for Blogger (which is my preferred service) that you can’t do with Windows Live Writer, and Windows Live Writer is just so much more flexible and easy to use. Plus, you don’t need to worry about losing what you’ve written because it automatically saves your work every minute. Try it, you’ll never want to go back to writing your blog posts in those cramped little boxes that are built into your blogging service.

Good luck with your blog. Other things you should look into when you’re blogging is setting up Google Adsense (to profit off your blog) and Google Analytics (to track usage data and improve your number of pageviews). Search around for tutorials on how to set these up for your blog, or look out for a tutorial that I will get around to writing sometime.

But one last thing! Remember that it doesn't matter what editor or service you use, the most important thing about blogging is to try your best and write consistently good content and to not be discouraged!

3 of My Favorite Songs of All Time (RTAM 9 of 25)

2009-03-05T17:20:00.001-05:00

Obviously, one from each of my 3 favorite bands (or actually 2 favorite bands and one favorite rapper, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park fame is the leader of Fort Minor, however, my favorite song of his falls under the Linkin Park label, although its much more like a Fort Minor song). So without further ado, mushy Youtube videos! By the way, I am more than glad to hear recommendations for music from you guys, as you probably already know if you’ve been keeping up with my blog, my music collection is vast, but I’m always looking for ways to expand it! Help me out, I’m open to things from any genre of music!

Watch out for some NSFW language, and no, I am not anti-war, nor am I pro-war. War? What war? We keep talking about winning a war, but hello Mr. Bush, no country has ever won an occupation before.

I hope you enjoyed these! Other bands I like include O.A.R, S.H.E, Nickelback, Vertical Horizon, Weird Al, and Avril Lavigne (go ahead, laugh)

Set up (EXTREMELY USEFUL) Custom Searches in Firefox

2009-03-04T17:34:00.007-05:00

I absolutely love this “hidden” feature of Firefox. Firefox comes with the ability to add a key word for any search box on any web page that you can use from the address bar. Everyone knows about Firefox’s built in search bar, but did you know that you could search, for example, rottentomatoes.com (which is an EXCELLENT and honest site for movie reviews and previews) from your address bar by simply typing its keyword then your search term? If our set keyword for rottentomatoes.com was "r", and we wanted to search for the movie Wanted, we would hop up to our address bar and just type in “r wanted”, and bam! Rotten Tomatoes’ search page for Wanted comes up, much quicker than going to the site, then clicking up to their search box, and finally typing in wanted. I’ll walk you through how to set this up, it’s quick, easy, and very convenient!

Head over to the site you want to search quickly and easily from, in this case, we’ll use our Rotten Tomatoes example. Wait for the page to load in Firefox, then right click inside the main search box on the page, like so.
In the menu that appears, click “Add a Keyword for this Search…”, a dialog box titled “Add Bookmark” will pop up.
In this dialog box, enter a name and a keyword that you want to assign to this custom search. In this case, let’s call our Bookmark “Rotten Tomatoes” and we’ll make our Keyword “r”. Choose a folder for this search, I’ve made a whole folder full of these custom searches, only because I have a lot, then click “Add”. Presto! You’re done! Let’s see if it worked.
Open a new tab in Firefox, make sure your typing cursor is in the address bar (“Alt+D” is a great keyboard shortcut to highlight the address bar, I prefer it to “Ctrl+L”, which also works, but Control and L are so far away from each other on the keyboard!) and type in your search, in this case, we’re going to type “r wanted”, then hit Enter. Note: Remember! All you’re typing in is your keyword and your search, you don’t need any www’s or anything! The Rotten Tomatoes search result page should pop up with its results for Wanted. Tada! We’re done!

Try it and tell me how it goes! Once you start using it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it! Remember, this works for any search box, ANYWHERE! I have ones set up for Wikipedia, Hulu, and AADL, among many many others. Also, if you run into a problem when you have two website’s that both start with “r”, don’t fret, you don’t need to assign a random, unrelated letter to your website, you can put more than one letter or even a whole word as your keyword. For example, the Rotten Tomatoes search we set up could’ve easily been set up to use “movies” as its keyword, so the search for wanted would be “movies wanted” in our address bar, and BAM! We’re at the results page! Good luck!

I’m Sleepy, A Lot (RTAM 8 of 25)

2009-03-03T17:13:00.002-05:00

Nothing much, except a desperate request for any advice, any at all, on how to get things done when they should be? I’ve read articles on prioritizing my work flow, I’ve cleaned out my workspace, and I’ve organized my life beyond comprehension, but I just can’t get things done efficiently? Any help would be greatly appreciated…

Open .docx Files in Internet Explorer, No Internet Connection or Office 2007 Required

2009-03-02T14:16:00.003-05:00

You may be thinking, why the heck would I ever need to do this? Well, here’s my story. Last year, at BPA nationals in Reno, Nevada, I was on the Financial Analysts Team. We were tasked to prepare a financial plan for a company. I composed this document on my laptop with Word 2007, and when I was done, I emailed the .docx file to all of my teammates. The problem is that the teammate whose laptop we decided to use that day did not have Office 2007 on his laptop, only Office 2003. So we were in a jam, we didn’t notice this until our 10 minute set up time at the competition, and there was no internet connection allowed. When we thought all hope was lost, I remembered this little trick that I found while messing around. All the instructions are for Windows Vista, although you can do this in any version of Windows.

Disable the “Hide extensions for known file types” in Windows Explorer. To do this, open up the folder in which your stranded .docx file is in. Click “Organize” on the green explorer bar. Then, in the drop down menu, choose “Folder and Search Options”. In the dialog box, go to the “View” tab and ensure that the following box is unchecked.
Then, right click on your .docx file that you want to open, and click “Rename”. Once you click rename, change the “docx” to “zip”. So if your file was called “happy.docx”, it should now be called “happy.zip”. Windows will pop up a warning, just confirm that you want to change the file extension. The file icon should change. What it changes to depends on what extraction program you have installed. My wholehearted recommendation goes to the free and excellent 7-Zip (which is what I am using here, although any extractor works for this purpose, even the one that come free with Windows)
Extract the zipped folder into the current location. For 7-Zip users, you would right click your .zip file, mouse down to “7-Zip”, then click “Extract Here”. You should now see a bunch of new folders with names like “_rels”, “docProps” and “word”. The “word” folder is the one we are interested in. Open up the “word” folder, and you should be presented with the following.
Then, double click your “document.xml” file, and your default web browser or XML editor (in this case, Internet Explorer 7 for me) will open up with your file! Granted, its full of code and its in plain text, but at least all of your information is there! This thing saved my life, and our team got 4th in the country with the information, I hope you’ll find a use for it too! Here is a quick before and after of our document named “happy.docx”.

Before

After

I Never Delete Any Digital Media, Ever (RTAM 7 of 25)

2009-03-01T11:25:00.004-05:00

Short post today because I’m operating on 2 hours of sleep (from 6 AM to 8 AM). My literature teacher once told me that at the heart of every good paragraph is a list. Well, this blog post isn’t a paragraph, but its close enough. So here’s a list.

74,568 emails, taking up 6278 MB of Gmail’s space (86%)
52,027 photos (taking up 53 GB of my hard drive)
14,483 songs (taking up 56 GB of my hard drive, it still bothers me that people are buying 120GB iPods and using like 1% of it, while I’m stuck with an ancient 4 GB Samsung player)
9,378 Stepmania tracks (Can anyone recommend a good mat for the PC?), only using up 2.13 GB, dang that’s highly compressed…
129 full length movies (taking up 266 GB of Hard Drive space, yeah guys, these are 720p and 1080p rips, albeit quite compressed)
486 installation files (taking up 15.3 GB)
6,553 Word, Excel, Powerpoint and other Office files (866 MB)

And yes, I have everything backed up multiple times, dang I need more hard drive space…

Yup, I’m just a bit OCD. Do any of you have me one-upped?

P.S. If you guys received a random email from me asking you to follow my blog, it was one of those ~~evil~~ cool things that Google does when you click “Search for friends with Google Friend Connect”. Yeah, sorry about that…

I’ve Logged Over 10,000 Combined SSBM and SSBB Matches (RTAM 6 of 25)

2009-02-27T22:58:00.005-05:00

For the uninitiated, SSBM stands for Super Smash Bros. Melee and SSBB stands for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Both are fighting games starring Nintendo’s (and recently third party characters as well) most famous characters. I bought a Gamecube for SSBM, and I won a Wii at a tournament because of my SSBM and Mario Kart skills (and some other undisclosed method of winning…). Anyway, I just got back from Gamers for Giving today, which is a tournament that is held to raise money for good causes like researching diseases. I placed decently well considering that this is my first ever competitive Brawl tourney (I’ve been playing all of my casual buddies ever since I got the game). The most noteworthy person that I beat was JV_ (swept 2-0, Snake over DK). But then when we met again in the loser’s bracket, he swept me with his Fox. Anyway, I got 9th, so that was way better than I thought I did. Later, if I feel like it, I’ll post a video of me getting destroyed by his Fox. I don’t play that matchup enough, and I had no idea what I was doing. Finally, notable people at the tournament were The Mann, Juggleguy, Irsic, Mojo, Hot_ArmS, and JV_ (who was the host). There were also lots and lots of noobs as well.

Anyway, all nerd talk aside, I have another open ended question for all of you.

If you suddenly came upon a million dollars, what would you do with it? (Imagine a real life scenario, so no, you wouldn’t want to build a rocket and shoot yourself into space, things like caring for your grandparents, or paying for college). Comment and tell me!

I’m a DIE HARD Michigan fan, GO BLUE! (RTAM 5 of 25)

2009-02-26T16:59:00.005-05:00

Edit: MICHIGAN WON!! We beat #16 Purdue, 87-78, if we hadn't missed all those free throws at the end, we would've scored almost if not 100 points! YEAH!

So, short post today. I know that Michigan's football team isn’t in the greatest of circumstances right now, but things will get better. If you haven’t been following, here are a few of the quick points you should know about what’s been going on in U-M’s offseason (hit me up in the comments if you need me to source any of these)

Steven Threet has transferred to an unknown location
We signed 22 recruits, good for the 7th best recruiting class in the country according to Rivals.com
We already have 3 recruits in our 2010 class. They are all wide receivers. One of them, Jeremy Jackson, goes to Ann Arbor Huron High School, he is expected to be high 3 star, low 4 star range. Another, Ricardo Miller, hails from Florida. He is so into Michigan that he has convinced his entire family to move to Ann Arbor so he can play at Huron with Jeremy for his senior season. Miller is likely to be a top 25 player
Michigan hockey is 3rd in the country, but also third in their conference (the CCHA)
Michigan basketball has been doing well, but the officiating is absolutely destroying them. At least 4 games this year have been DIRECTLY decided by the officials, all against Michigan’s favor. (The hockey team is getting screwed over by the officials as well, what’s with all the Michigan hate lately?)
UM softball and baseball are both off to hot starts
Our water polo, track and tennis (men’s and women’s) are all ranked in their respective polls
Overall though, it’s looking good to be a Wolverine, as usual =)

Things will get better. In the mean time, let me direct you toward some of my favorite resources for all things Michigan

MGoBlog, my personal favorite, the writer there (Brian) is an absolute freak when it comes to Michigan reporting
UMHoops, in my opinion, the best source for UM basketball news, check out their preview of tonight’s UM-Purdue game (which I will be at)
MGoBlue, the official site of the Michigan sports, check out their great highlights and live audio streaming.
Other notable sites that I don’t check as often include Varsity Blue, The Blog that Yost Built and Wolverine Liberation Army (beware of NSFW language)

If you watch the UM-Purdue game on ESPN or ESPN360, you might see me, cheering on my favorite team. Go blue!

“Without sports, this wouldn’t be disgusting”

Go out and watch some sports, better yet, play some, you couch potatoes!

I’m Addicted to Changing My Wallpaper! (RTAM 4 of 25)

2009-02-25T11:23:00.001-05:00

Really short post today, I just want to say that I change my wallpaper a bit too much. My absolute favorite source for completely free wallpapers is InterfaceLIFT, if you want to brighten up that desktop (the wallpapers work on all operating systems!), be sure to check it out! It supports almost all screen resolutions and are all of EXTREMELY high quality, don’t pass this one up! Here are a few examples of wallpapers (at 1680x1050, ‘cause that is most common resolution among my readers) that I have personally used that I’ve gotten from InterfaceLIFT. Enjoy!

Redundant Software Part 3: Photos, System Optimizers, and more!

2009-02-24T19:04:00.004-05:00

See Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

This post will be the final one highlighting redundant software unless people have suggestions of things they want me to do. I’m going to go over photo management applications, offer recommendations on what system optimizers you should be using (if any at all) and talk about any other random programs that I feel do very unique but useful things and should be in your arsenal of applications.

Photo Management

Gone are the days of managing your folders with Windows Explorer. There is no longer any need for having an intricate naming scheme, or a mind-bogglingly complex folder hierarchy. Today, photo management software offer ways to quickly fix blemishes, color and lighting problems in your photos. They also have extensive organization features such as tagging and facial recognition. In this section, I will go over locally installed ones only, no online ones. However, for online photo management and sharing, I recommend Picasa Web Albums (for free) and Flickr Pro (for pay).

Commonly Used Programs that are Completely Redundant: Picasa, WebShots, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Bridge, Windows Live Photo Gallery

Recommended Pick if Money was No Object: Adobe Bridge

Recommended Pick for a Poor High School Student: Picasa (a very close win over Windows Live Photo Gallery)

Adobe Bridge, current in edition CS4, is an integral part of Adobe’s Creative Suite (which costs $2499 in its most expensive iteration). Bridge is the media organizer and manager for Adobe’s industry leading photo and design products, however, I won’t go into it too much because if you have shelled out that much money to get Creative Suite (legally of course ;-)), you probably know more about photos than I ever will; which brings us to Picasa. Picasa, offered for free from Google for both Windows and Linux (with a Mac version already in beta), is my personal choice for organizing, managing and sharing my photos. With excellent and straightforward editing features, including a one touch fix button (I’m Feeling Lucky), it also offers seamless integration with Google’s online photo storage/sharing service, Picasa Web Albums. On top of all this, it has many features that aren’t present in other organizers such as sorting by color, and a built in scanner tool. Now, Windows Live Photo Gallery has features that are very comparable to Picasa, and even includes an applet to stitch together many photos to make a panorama. However, where it falls short is the social features. It does integrate with Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces, but in my humble opinion, this service offers nowhere near the flexibility and ease-of-use offered by Picasa, even though the actual programs offer almost exactly the same features (tagging, labels, all sorts of ways of sorting and organizing, inline search, etc.)

System Optimizers and Tweakers

For all the hype about system cleaners, tweakers and defragmenters, their actual effects are still up for debate. In the olden days of slow hard drives and low processor speed, hard drive fragmentation was a serious problem. In response to this, Microsoft began including a Disk Defragmenter in every copy of Windows that it sold. Later, it also added a Disk Cleanup utility. While neither of these offer the same features and configuration settings as many of the 3rd party applications out there, quite frankly, it gets the job done decently well. Furthermore, with today’s blazingly fast and compact hard drives (we’re even moving into the even faster flash-based solid state drives), fragmentation and storage space is no longer much of a problem. Especially in Windows Vista, which has SuperFetch, which automatically caches your most commonly used programs and files and make launching them very quick. That being said, there are still tons and tons of third party system optimizers, and I do not have the time to go over all of them, instead, I will offer my recommendations for a few of them, so pick at choose at will. Having multiple programs from these choices isn’t too harmful, but take caution when running multiple registry cleaners concurrently, and make backups before you start tweaking anything!

Recommended Picks if Money was No Object: TweakVI (for easy ways to mess with Vista’s configuration settings, also available in a free but limited basic edition, check out the absolutely free TweakUI for Windows XP), Diskeeper 2009 for registry cleaning, and CCleaner for cleaning up old files (it also includes a basic registry cleaner).

Recommended Picks for a Poor High School Student: CCleaner for registry cleaning and system cleaning, Defraggler (made by the same people, Piriform, who brought you CCleaner and the file recovery tool, Recuva, which is used to get files back that you’ve accidentally emptied from the recycle bin) for defragmentation and WinBubble for tweaking and customizing your system.

*Note: The program that I am personally using now to perform all of these these features and more is the Comodo System Cleaner (remember Comodo from my security post? They’re the ones with the excellent free internet security suite). I haven’t been using it for too long, but so far, it outdoes the competition by a mile, and best of all, its completely free. Pick it up and try it if you can, you won't be disappointed. I would put it in the list of recommendations, but I just don’t think that I’ve used it for long enough to give it a fair assessment.

Other Recommended Programs (for Windows)

The following are some programs that may or may not be very well known that I think should have a place on every Windows system, I don’t test too many paid programs, and I know that most of my readers aren’t going to shell out any money for software when their first priority is paying for college, so all the programs listed below are offered free of charge.

Dropbox – An cross-platform file-synching tool that works over the internet, offers instant synchronizations over many many computers. Dropbox earns my utmost recommendation if you work in multiple places at all, it can also be used to sync passwords in conjunction with another excellent free program, KeePass. For home-network based synchronization, check out Microsoft Synctoy.
Secunia PSI – this program automatically scans your systems for outdated programs and updates them for you, very useful in ensuring that you have an up-to-date and secure system
7-zip – A file archiving program that handles all major formats (i.e. ZIP, RAR, 7Z, TAR.GZ) and is updated quite often; very stable and very fast.
Daemon Tools Lite – A program that is used to mount ISO images, essentially a virtual DVD-ROM drive
Notepad++ – A text-editor that is so much more than just a text-editor, a must have for anyone who programs or designs webpages
Foxit Reader – A drop-in replacement for the bloated Adobe Reader, the newest version even integrates into web browsers. It is very light and opens much faster than Adobe Reader, don’t open PDFs without it.

Did I miss anything? Leave a comment and tell me!

Gotta Catch ‘Em All, Pokémon! (25 RTAM, 3 of 25)

2009-02-23T14:27:00.007-05:00

*Edit 1: So, according to my poll, I need help, tell me in your comments exactly what kind of help I need! I'm so curious!

*Edit 2: 'Cause people requested it, you can find a box set of season 1 that's in stock at here: http://www.amazon.com/Pokemon-Season-Box-Set-Indigo/dp/B000I0QLF0

Argh, I just got my game deleted in Diamond, so here’s where I am right now

Yeah… I know I fail, but I have all of this break to get back to where I was.

Which gets to my main point. I love Pokémon! Well, I used to be absolutely obsessed with it. I wanted Pokémon everything! I had Pokémon boxers, Pokémon cereal, Pokémon pajamas, Pokémon toothpaste, and the list goes on!

As a kid, I would run as fast as I could from the bus stop to my house so I could catch the beginning of Pokémon at 4 o’clock (I’m sure many of you did this too, but are just too chicken to admit it). Many episodes made me cry. I have tons of memories with Pokémon. Pokémon: The First Movie was, ironically, the first movie I ever watched by myself at the movie theater. To this day that movie still brought me to tears. **sigh** The simple days of getting emotional over things like love and friendship, nowadays, people don’t cry at movies unless the story is truly one a kind. C’mon y’all, give those writers some loving! Pokémon can be very heart touching too!

Random Fact: Did you know that Ash and his mom are both voiced by the same person? That person is Veronica Taylor, a 50 year old lady (last I checked). Kind of odd.

I honestly think that Misty was the one for Ash, but they took her out of the later seasons but kept Brock? Pokémon has gotten so much worse now that the new production team and voice actors are in. Ash sounds like a prepubescent princess.

Anyhow, my all time favorite scene:

This is from the very beginning of the series, when Pikachu had no idea that Ash would one day become his best friend. So Ash is wearing rubber kitchen gloves, and has Pikachu on a leash because he refused to go into his (I am convinced that Pikachu is a guy, contrary to common knowledge. Also, do not ever refer to him as an “it”, that’s degrading to the max) Pokéball. How cute! (I know, I’m a girly guy, go ahead, laugh).

**sigh** But all these things are things of the past, Diamond version is so insanely complicated I don’t know what I’m doing half of the time, movies aren’t coming out in theaters anymore, and worst of all, the T.V. series sucks. Please bring the old crew and voice actors back, they were amazing!

Since no one really reads these ramblings about my life, I’ll post part 3 of redundant software tomorrow. Oh, another milestone was reached yesterday, 500 page views! Yay!!

25 Random Things About Me (2 of 25)

2009-02-22T12:21:00.006-05:00

Jeff Dunham is my hero, if it wasn’t for Achmed the Dead Terrorist and Mr. Dunham, I wouldn’t have made it through the months from October to January in one piece. He is just so funny, and his kind of humor is my kind of humor. It’s smart funny and dirty funny at the same time, you’ll have to think of some of his jokes, but they are laugh at loud funny even if you’re watching it by yourself (that rarely if ever happens for me, but this is the one glaring exception) Check out my two favorite videos below (if you’re only going to watch one, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch the first one all the way to the end, the rest of your life will thank you), and leave a comment telling me what your favorite joke was in those videos! This ventriloquist is absolutely amazing!

That’s all folks! I hope you’re enjoying my 25 random facts about me so far, look out for more coming later.

One completely unrelated note, this blog reached 100 completely unique (as determined by Google Analytics) yesterday night! Yay!! Also, you may have noticed random buttons to blog directory services, I'm sorry about those, but I have to have them, if you think that they are too annoying, you can install Adblock Plus (which is awesome for getting rid of all those flashy advertisements you see on the web, although, those flashy advertisements also happen to be how I plan on funding my college education...) if you're running Firefox and block all of them.

The Much Delayed Redundant Security Software Post Part 2!

2009-02-21T14:12:00.006-05:00

Check out Part 1 here

So, finally, 3 days after I promised it would happen, here it is!

I’m going to go over the 3 main types of security software that everyone should have on their computers, and offer my most educated recommendations. So here we go!

Software Firewalls

Now, I say software because EVERYONE should have some sort of hardware firewall (virtually all modern routers come with one, and nowadays, even some broadband modems have them built in). So guys, if your network isn’t being routed with a Ethernet/wireless router, get one! It’s for more than just sharing your files!

Commonly Used Programs that are Completely Redundant: Windows Firewall (built into Vista and XP SP2 and later), Zonealarm Free Edition, Comodo Firewall PRO (which happens to be completely free), “Safe surfing” or no firewall software (highly highly not recommended)

Recommended Pick if Money was No Object: Zonealarm Pro Firewall 2009

Recommended Pick for a Poor High School Student: (If you’re a safe surfer and you have Windows Vista) Windows Firewall, (if not or you have Windows XP) Comodo Firewall PRO

Zonealarm has long been the best firewall money can get you, but other companies are quickly gaining on it features and security wise. Zonealarm, BitDefender and Norton all offer very capable firewalls in their all in one security suites (one of which I will recommend at the end of this article). However, the default firewall that comes with Windows Vista is quite capable, protecting both inbound and outbound communications. It is also quite customizable if you know where to look, and for the most part, is very “quiet” (which means that it doesn’t display too many annoying notifications). Unfortunately, it still isn’t very secure, so if you feel like you visit a lot of sketchy sites (I’m looking at those people who scour all over the place to find free online streams of Asian dramas) or if you’re running Windows XP (whose built-in firewall is next to useless…), then by all means install Comodo Firewall PRO. It has long since taken over the free edition of Zonealarm as the top firewall, and its feature set more than holds up to the standards set by Zonealarm Pro Firewall 2009. It really is the best there is. The one caveat is that at first, it’s very annoying as it will pop up a warning asking you to confirm the safety of just about everything you do, but after you use it for a while, it runs very smoothly and silently. It’s also quite resource intensive (whereas Windows Firewall is not), so beware of that.

Anti-Virus Software

Commonly Used Programs that are Completely Redundant: Any online scanner, any anti-virus software that came with you computer, AVG, Avira, Avast, Norton, Kapersky, ESET NOD32 and many many many more.

Recommended Pick if Money Was No Object: Norton Anti-Virus 2009

Recommended Pick for a Poor High School Student: AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

Norton? Sure, it had a horrible reputation for being slow, ineffective and very buggy. But, the problems were fixed 3 years ago, but the misconceptions still remain. Nowadays, (just like the old days), no anti-virus software can pray about holding a candle to Norton’s. It is the least resource intensive (and only adds an unheard of 4 seconds to your startup time, which I tested very unscientifically on my computer, I believe the second fast, AVG, adds about 35 seconds to your boot time), doesn’t hog RAM, has blazingly fast scan speeds, and almost perfect detection and removal rates. Please, by all means, if you have had virus problems in the past, or if you’re scared of them in the future (when the problem will be worse than it is now), get Norton Anti-Virus 2009, I can’t recommend a program more highly, even more so than Firefox, drop the $25 and get it (or, if you know some other channels of obtaining software… its available that way too…;-)). If you really are broke, or you’re stupid and you don’t think you should have to pay for the best, then go with AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, it passes most reference tests for detection rates, and it is reasonably light-weight and quick. However, be warned that the UI is pretty clunky, and a lot of the settings are buried in many redundant (I love this word!) menus. Plus, it comes with a browser safety scanner, which should prevent you for going to those sketchy sites I talked about.

Anti-Spyware/Malware Software

Commonly Used Programs that are Completely Redundant: Windows Defender, Ad-aware, Spybot Search & Destroy, Spyware Terminator, Spyware Doctor, Spy Sweeper

Recommended Pick if Money was No Object: Webroot Spy Sweeper

Recommended Pick for a Poor High School Student: Windows Defender

Webroot Spy Sweeper is by far the best in the business, and like Norton, it is head and shoulders above everyone else. Most good security software share the common aspects of reliability, effective and speed. Those three traits are exactly what we’re going for by removing redundant software. Again, if you have the money to spend, and you’re serious about protecting yourself against threats, get Spy Sweeper, it even comes with a decent anti-virus program (but I still recommended that you turn that part of Spy Sweeper off and Norton Anti-Virus). For the first time ever, Microsoft has actually bundled quite decent security software in Windows Vista (Firewall and Defender). Sure, they may not have the best detection rates or scan times, but they are very very light as far as resources go, and they each hold their own. Windows Defender even offers a robust Software Explorer to see running services and enable or disable start up programs (disable as many as you can and watch your startup times go way down!)

Overall Security Suite Recommendation: Norton Internet Security 2009 (experienced with computers), Norton 360 (little experience with computers

When I talk about a security suite, I’m talking about programs that try to package all your security needs into one convenient package (they have to include at least a firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware parts to be called a security suite, although most today offer parental controls and spam filtering as well). Norton easily takes the cake here as its security suite goes above and beyond the call of duty. Not only does it protect you from viruses, spyware and intruders, it also does parental controls, spam filtering, computer optimizing, and many others. The feature list is too long to list here. However, what really stands out is how well all these features are presented. In NIS 2009, everything is configurable, so it will satisfy even the hardest core of security gurus. If you’re looking for a set it and forget option based on the same underlying technology as NIS, look no further than Norton 360. Designed for the uninitiated, and with only 4 gigantic buttons on its main configuration page, even your grandma won’t have trouble protecting her web surfing with this one. Please, go out to the store now and it. Now. If you’re really broke, give Comodo Internet Security a shot, its completely free and offers some compelling features, but it doesn’t even come close to Norton Internet Security 2009.

That concludes part 2, look for part 3 later sometime (no promises on a date this time!). I will go over everything photos and graphics!

Again, shout out your opinions in the comment section, please!

*Edit: I understand that for the initiated user, viruses, spyware and intrusions aren't really a problem because you read those error messages, spot suspicious websites, and watch out for rogue processes. However, for the uninitiated user, having security software is a must, because they may not know that by clicking links such as "YOU'RE THE 1000000th VISITOR TO THIS SITE, CLICK HERE TO CLAIM YOUR FREE IPOD", they are putting their computers in grave danger. Smart computing only works if you're a smart computer, for everyone else, prevention is the best tactic.

Here’s My Friday Post

2009-02-20T19:14:00.002-05:00

Well, I’ve been thrust into the midst of a so-called “Asian party”, so the second half of the redundant software must be pushed back at least one more day. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the concept of an Asian party, let me give you a quick rundown of what happens.

The heater gets turned up way too hot in the summer, and the A/C gets turned down way too far in the winter
You make sure that the street in front of your house is empty, as you know that in the next half an hour, various cars will fill the entire street (because you know, its not proper to car pool to an Asian party)
Once everyone gets here (usually about 30-45 minutes late, hence “Asian time”), people make a HUGE pile of coats, which the host’s children have to hang up (read: me).
All the food is spread out everywhere on the table on which we’re going to eat on, leaving each person with a minimal amount of space. Think a buffet except all the food trays are in the middle of the table.
Everyone eats and talks and laughs all at the same time, food squirts from noses, but nobody really cares.
I finish as fast as I can, and go to my basement to avoid the carnage.
But later, inevitably, I am called back up to “entertain the guests”, which means I’m stuck play Super Smash and Mario Kart with 6 to 10 year olds.
Finally, at an hour that’s way to late, one person leaves.
Within the next 3 minutes, EVERYONE leaves.
I’m up for the next 2 hours cleaning up
Then, we refrigerate all the leftovers, and prepare to go to sleep
At last (this happens every time), someone calls us very late at night, panicking because they left their $300 fake iPhone at our house.
They come back, and then we have to talk to them for the next hour.
The sun rises.
The last family finally leaves.
We look at our calendar, and realize that we another party tonight.

Be glad, very glad, that Asian parties are a rarity during the school week, but as soon as a break comes, the above ensues.

Wish me luck.

Since I Don’t Have Much Time Today…

2009-02-19T14:02:00.003-05:00

I’ll ask you all a random question, I want to know your opinions.

Imagine you are married adult, and your entire family depends on your income. You are about to take a test that reconfirms your qualifications needed for your job (you are a professor of kinesiology at a major university). You, however, have not studied at all for said test, and the test happens to be tomorrow. Suddenly, a man calls you out of the blue and offers to sell you a copy of the answers, once you have you confirmed that the answers do indeed correspond to the test you are taking tomorrow, what do you do? If you do not pass this test, you will lose your job and your family will starve. If you cheat and pass, you will get a nice promotion, and your spouse takes you out on a very nice date. What do you do?

I made that up myself, so you won’t be able to find some deep analysis no matter what site you go to, I’m just curious. You’re more than welcome to answer anonymously!

By the way, Orchestra Night is tonight! I’m excited! I stayed up really late and did all of my math homework last night just so I could go today.

Back to posting “Redundant Programs” tomorrow, then after that, I’m going to continue with my 25 random things. If this blog never turns profitable, I really won’t mind, it’s really fun writing it!

Hold On! I’m a High School Student! Argh!

2009-02-18T18:19:00.004-05:00

So… I loaded my todo list (powered by the ever amazing Remember the Milk, don’t forget to grab the Firefox add-on as well to integrate it with Gmail, it owns the task manager built into Gmail), and realized that I’m probably not going to finish everything even if I pull an all-nighter tonight. Wish me luck guys!

Task List in a Nutshell

Biology take-home test over chapters 22 through 24
Notes and vocabulary due over those same chapters (about 65 pages of reading)
Humanities typing up notes for people
Humanities Western Traditions study guide and read book IV of Gulliver’s Travels
Physics all the work for chapter 12 (namely, 2 worksheets, a lab, and all the book questions)
Math, all the work for chapter 8 (8.1-8.4)

Someone save me from this world!! But I’m also super happy, ‘cause very special friend of mine got a HUGE scholarship to the University of Michigan!!

So obviously, I won’t be posting until Friday afternoon, and even then, I need to figure out an efficient way to spread the word about this thing, I’m trying to paying for my college education! =D

You Have Redundant Software? Let Me Help Part 1

2009-02-17T23:22:00.007-05:00

I’m taking a break from the 25 posts about me project to help people out with a common problem in Windows PCs nowadays.

Everyone who has used my computer, be it a geeky guy or a valley girl, has commented on its speed and efficiency. Now, not everyone’s computer is going to be as fast as mine, just like how my computer will never be the fastest in the world. Now that we’re on the subject, here are the specs on my computer (if you’re not into nerdy stuff like this, please skip past it, I promise the rest of the post will make your computing experience much more enjoyable and efficient):

Windows Vista Ultimate x64 w/ SP1
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (OC’ed from 2.1 GHz to a perfectly stable 2.5182 GHz)
4x1 GB of DDR2 800 SDRAM (PC2 6400) (OC’ed from 800 MHz to 839.4 MHz)
320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 GBps Hard Drive 8MB cache (with 1TB of additional external storage)
ATi Radeon HD 4670 PCIe 2.0 x16 with 512MB GDDR3 RAM
LITE-ON 20x DVD-RW Burner

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, here we go with my actual post. When I boot up a friend or family member’s computer to “fix”, the first thing I notice is the amount of programs on the machine that serve the exact (or very similar) same purpose as as much as 3 or 4 other programs on the computer. So I’m going to highlight a few popular (and not so popular ones), I’m willing to bet that you have redundant programs on your machine too. I’m only including Windows programs for now, even though I’ve had extensive experience with both Mac and Linux machines. Maybe I’ll make one for those if the demand is there (but I doubt it). Each program is decent to good, but when put together, there’s just no point. Download or informational links will be included for every program just to serve as reference.

Today, we’re going to go over Web Browsers, Instant Messengers and Media Players. Tomorrow, look for a plethora of security software, I’ll go over commonly overlapped firewalls, antivirus and antispyware applications, offering my recommendations as I go.

Web Browsers

Commonly Used Programs that are Completely Redundant: Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Chrome

Recommended Pick if Money was No Object: Mozilla Firefox

Recommended Pick for a Poor High School Student: Mozilla Firefox

Ah, Firefox, the little (that’s not so little anymore) web browser that could. It’s open source, it’s blazingly fast, it’s free, and best of all, it’s completely customizable, what more could you ask for? I know that you can’t get rid of Internet Explorer, but nowadays, there’s not much reason to use Firefox (unless you’re still using XP, in which Internet Explorer must be started to use Microsoft/Windows Update)

Instant Messengers

*I’m not even going to get into all the IM services (like AIM, YIM, MSN, GTalk) that are totally and utterly redundant, why can’t we all just settle on one IM service already?

Commonly Used Programs that are Completely Redundant: Pidgin, Trillian, Digsby, AIM, Windows Live Messenger

Recommended Pick if Money was No Object: Pidgin

Recommended Pick for a Poor High School Student: Pidgin

I realize that tons of people are going to furious that I didn’t pick Digsby as the best free client, and that I didn’t pick Trillian as the best for pay client. However, I simply cannot overstate the rapid pace of innovation that is offered with open source software, and Pidgin more than delivers on this aspect with its treasure trove of plugins (akin to Firefox extensions). On top of that (like Digsby and Trillian), it supports all common IM protocols (see the ones mentioned above) and even some obscure ones.

Media Players

By media players, I mean programs that help you organize and play your media (music and videos, etc). My recommended “everything but the kitchen sink player” is VLC Media Player.

Commonly Used Programs that are Completely Redundant: Windows Media Player, iTunes, WinAMP, Media Monkey, Songbird

Recommended Pick if Money was No Object: iTunes (because you need it to fully enjoy your iPod, and iPods and legal song downloads are expensive!)

Recommended Pick for a Poor High School Student: Windows Media Player

Edit: A commenter mentioned foobar2000, I have not used this program too much personally, but its definitely worth a long hard look.

After seeing my previous choices, you may have assumed that I would crown Songbird the victor. However, even though Songbird is based on the same engine as Firefox, and offers a similar level of customization, it lacks features that are commonplace in competing products (like automatic library monitoring, integration with a music purchasing service, etc). It is one to keep on an eye on though, as they clearly have many things going for them (namely its open source mindset). iTunes is the obvious choice for those with deep pockets, as it is necessary to fully enjoy that overpriced iPod you just purchased (no, I am not a Microsoft fanboy, seriously, I’m not =P). It’s very bloated, and it installs many services that start with you computer and bog it down. But why Windows Media Player? Well, besides the fact that it’s the one that I use, it’s just so easy to use. I highly prefer its stacked album look over Apple’s coverflow. It supports many more file formats, and can even be loaded with DirectShow filters to play even the most obscure file formats. Best of all, you don’t need an Apple Store account just to automatically download album art (this absolutely must change Apple, can you hear me Apple? Can you? Can you?).

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this post, if you have anything you want to argue with me on, or you need help setting any of these programs up (that’s one negative about open source programs, you may encounter things that you don’t understand, or the product doesn’t always work the way you want it to right “out of the box”). Drop a comment. Remember to uninstall everything you don’t need!

Continue to Part 2 and Part 3

25 Random Things About Me (1 of 25)

2009-02-16T23:06:00.021-05:00

Note: This is the first in a series of 25 posts all containing random facts about me. I have stayed true to my word and have not written the "25 Random Facts About Me" Facebook note, but I still think it would be entertaining to come up with 25 things about me.

I LOVE 24, plain and simple. I’ve watched every single episode, listened to all the director commentaries, and read every review. I’m obsessed, probably a bit unhealthily.

24 airs every Monday from 9 pm to 10 pm (EST) on Fox (usually channel 2 for all us Michiganders), and seeing as today is Monday, I have just witnessed another mind-numbingly awesome episode.

Sure, 24 has had a few bad seasons (season 6, season 3), but the great ones more than make up for it, and so far, this season (season 7) is blowing me away. I was morbidly disappointed when the writer’s guild strike forced Fox to cancel 24 last year. Then, when they released 24: Redemption (a 2 hour T.V. film that sets the backdrop for season 7), I was again disappointed with another faulty release (insert numerous “that’s what she said jokes here”).

So when this season finally got start in mid January, my expectations were cautiously high. Then, this happened:

Tony… TONY!!! I can’t believe he’s not dead. We’re 9 episodes into the season, and the best explanation is that someone had broken into CTU, and magically revived him. I doubt the likeliness of that, but I’m just glad that he’s back. Season 7 is going to be absolutely epic (I'm not going to apologize for using one of the most overused words in the English language)

Emotion has never really played much a role in 24’s 8 year long run, but this season, a surprising amount of character interaction is unfolding. Everyone except Jack really seems like they care for someone. Jack, on the other hand, is simply focused on the mission. Watch out for this, as everyone else loses something precious, what will Jack do? I’m calling a return of Kim Bauer (his daughter, played by Elisha Cuthbert, of The Girl Next Door fame), we’ll see what happens. It gets on my nerves sometimes, hearing René Walker (Jack’s partner this season) talk about how she feels about doing some of the “necessary” things that Jack demands and Jack just simply ignores her.

I can’t wait for the next episode. But oh! One more thing, you’ve got to check out Lie to Me, it’s produced by the same people who produced 24, and its actually based on real scientific evidence, awesome show!

So I made a blog

2009-02-16T18:16:00.023-05:00

Whoopdedoo!

This post is more for satisfying the one post requirement that Blogger imposes before I can preview any template changes I apply than anything else.

Well, right now, I'm trying to motivate myself, like always. Why do people have so much trouble motivating themselves these days? It's like all of a sudden, the entire world lost its motivation. Maybe that's why the economy is tanking? You know those people in school or at work that always seem really motivated? Well, I don't think they're too special, its just that they haven't been hit by the slacker bug yet. Open any history book, and you'll find that in the past, you were either hard working, or you were dead. Simple as that.

Man, that's kinda depressing? Let's brighten this up. Only one more week until break! I'm quite excited, except that I have to get through this week first. It's gonna hurt, and it's gonna hurt badly.

Life with Ranni (no... that's not her real name... but its close, isn't that a cool name? Wouldn't you want to name one of your kids Ranni? Just think of all the things that it rhymes with!) has been pretty tumultuous as of late, she's not as open as she used to be, I just really hope things will be fine soon.

Random tech tip of the day: read lots of blogs, like, lots and lots, people always ask me how I became so "Tech-savvy", well, I read lots of blogs. Here are a few that I follow almost religiously (in no particular order, although Lifehacker is by far my favorite blog, we'll miss you Gina!), I've also linked them in my sidebar, check them out! Seriously!

Lifehacker
Engadget
Ars Technica
Gizmodo
Digg (okay, so its not a blog, but its the biggest culprit in my lack of motivation, you'll find a treasure trove of obsure sites here)
Reddit (see comment above about Digg, but beware of the mass of NSFW content available there)

Finally, when you're faced with something, ask Google before you ask me! Sometimes, a simple Google search will be by far the quickest way to get a problem solved, that's what I'm usually doing when I'm on the phone with you helping you out!

I hope that I'll keep writing in this, it was surprisingly fun. Here we go!