Obscure Mania

I’ve been using Crossloop for my remote control access software for a long time, but I’ve switched to using Team Viewer. It not only does remote support, attended or unattended support, I can switch to meeting or presentation mode, file transfers and a lot of other features all in one program.

It seems to be fast and secure. Remote sessions can be one way with the remote keyboard locked or not. Remote sessions are fast and just like being there. It’s comparable to Crossloop with secure remote requests, you can ask for support give your support person the id and password and not have to worry if he can log back in later when you’re not there. Team Viewer not only does support requests with id and password, but I can set computers for remote unattended access and have all my computers available online from anywhere.

I can get rid of two tools and only use Team Viewer. Crossloop I can drop and I can uninstall Logmein from all of my computers and friends’ computers. I can also not worry about getting something like Go to Meeting, because I can do presentations as well and have complete control who can participate. Team Viewer is a great program, so anyone asking me for support will be asked to go to TeamViewer.com and download the small program. After downloading, you don’t have to install permanently, just run the program and no administrator privileges are needed.

Simple, easy, fast and many tools in one program, no monthly fees like a lot of remote access, support and meeting programs. I’m still exploring all of the features, but so far, it’s an incredible program.

Made by a friend of mine showing how to disassemble, test and repair a hard drive. Not responsible for any data loss.

I was going to twitter or facebook this, but it became too long. My wife wanted to go and it’s her birthday this weekend, so we went early on a workday for most. I could have gone or not even though I’m the same age as Michael and listened to all of his music growing up, I wasn’t emotionally attached to what became a spectacle.

The theater had about a dozen people in it, perfect timing for us. Hopefully the weekend will have more people, other wise it will be on DVD next month, but it really is worth going to see. Micheal Jackson was such a talent on stage and an incredibly talented creative genius, no matter what you thought of him.

That would have been the concert of the century and hard for anyone to beat. The footage is from the rehearsals, but the only thing missing was the audience. You see different costumes and sometimes everyone is in casual clothes, but the talent and the show is still definitely there.

Throughout the entire movie I was thinking about what a waste his death was. Wasn’t there anyone that could have said something? How about someone saying, “No more!”  How about, “Look what you’re doing to yourself?” How about just being there for him and not being the leech everyone around him seemed and still seems to be. Seeing Joe and the brothers on TV now makes me so angry I either have to throw something at the TV or change the channel. Talk about disgusting leeches, and now the brothers are going to go on tour? That’s got to be the sickest sort of profiteering there is. His entire family could have died and no one would have noticed and now they think people will pay attention to them now because Michael’s gone? Or even because they happened to be related to him? Absolutely sick.

Granted, an addict is going to do what they want and not always listen to those around him. From what I’ve heard, he shut out those that did try and help. The doctors he went to should have said no, but someone else would have said yes, so it might as well be them profiting.  What is it with doctors that can’t or won’t say no to celebrities. All of the doctors that wrote ’scripts for Anna Nichol Smith knew they were doing something wrong as well.

Except for highlights you couldn’t escape from, I didn’t watch the funeral because I knew it was going to be such a freak show. It is incredibly sad that things had to end like they did. The man must have had some serious demons to deal with. Can you be that talented and not be seriously eccentric.

Back to the movie -They were filming rehearsals anyway at Michael’s request, probably for the DVD extra so a lot was available. All the great songs from Billie Jean, Beat It, Man in the Mirror, a few new ones and a stage production of Thriller. Incredible talent everywhere from the band and dancers to the man himself, it would have been a heck of a show. Great, great stuff.

This is the documentary about the “Atomic Age”. The beginnings of the Atomic bomb testing, deployment and how it changed the lifestyle of the country. It includes all of the newsreels and propaganda films of the era. My question after watching it was after dropping the two bombs on Japan, why was more testing needed? Purposely putting soldiers and civilians in harms way telling everyone there’s nothing to worry about.

Testing in the middle of the Pacific around the Bikini islands, the wind shifted unexpectedly and other inhabited islands were affected. Of course the Army sent a response crew to take care of the natives all the while explaining how there were only minor injuries while the film was showing sores and rashes but everyone is fine except for any future illnesses they might encounter and quote, “the 236 natives appear to be well and happy” as a medic is pulling hair out of a guys deformed head.  Nothing to worry about except in Japan where they threw out and brought fish back from market that had radiation, but I’m sure people were fine.

A military exercise outside Las Vegas that sent troops into an area just after the bomb blast to see how fast troops could get in and secure the area if they had to. Watch the military telling troops there was nothing to worry about and watching those troops running toward a mushroom cloud. What’s worse, who knows how many of those troops died years later from the fallout they received?

One odd thing (among many) was that there was an MP (Military Police) standing next to the interviewee while he was telling the reporter what he went through and showing his radiation detector and then the news report how the wind shifted and now Saint George was going to get some fallout, but there was nothing to worry about. The winds shifted again? Darn the weather.

Earlier a news conference reporting about the senseless execution of the Rosenbergs and how Ethel Rosenberg was still alive after her first electrocution and needed two more was really sad.

It’s edited showing newsreels and the propaganda films put out back then showing what we know now is the silliness of bomb shelters and radiation suits for kids, it also shows the ignorance of the government wanting to test something they knew nothing about on innocent soldiers and civilians and telling everyone there was nothing to worry about.

The cover of the Atomic Cafe listed on Amazon says it’s a comic horror film. Yeah, kind of. It’s comical in that we really lived like that and it’s a horror film from what the government was trying to convince us of. What was a little sickening was how the politicians and others said God was on our side including all of the pastors and reverends interviewed.

I had to watch this for the history class I’m taking and was going to leave the link but it’s behind a user id, so probably shouldn’t. It’s available at Amazon and probably most public libraries. I checked and it’s definitely in all of the Las Vegas libraries.

Update: Found on Youtube and Google Video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOUtZOqgSG8
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1126269724766604475#

It’s what I was trying to point out in my last post, My PC Has Virus. You can have a bullet proof system with a great antiv-virus program, but if you download something you could be toast.

Trend Micro CEO: hackers hitting AV infrastructure
By Robert McMillan
October 23, 2009 06:28 PM ET
IDG News Service – It’s become an all-too-common scam: A legitimate Web site pops up a window that looks just like a real security warning. It says there’s something wrong with the computer, and click here to fix it. A few clicks later, the victim is paying out US$40 for some bogus software, called rogue antivirus.

The rest of the article is worth a quick read. What happened to my virus? I did it on virtual machine so it didn’t really affect anything real. Between school and work, I’m still playing with it.

The Real Fix

For an ordinary person is to backup your data and reinstall Windows. If you don’t already have a backup, it’s usually safe to backup only your Document folder, just none of your program folders. Reinstall with a quick format should do it. If not you don’t have a backup or your backup is infected, then you’re getting into the paid part of the program and finding someone that can boot into Linux or a specialized program on CD or bootable USB and cleaning it that way.

I went and got my PC infected on purpose. It was not hard at all, I clicked on a link in my spam mailbox and it went downhill from there, these things can be nasty!

How Did I Get Infected?

When I clicked a link it sent me to a website to watch a video and I was told I had to download something to view it, that’s the first clue. If you change your mind, it won’t let you cancel. It’s getting serious now and you should turn off the machine immediately because that’s the only way you’re getting away from that website.

So, I downloaded what it wanted and nothing happened, I still couldn’t watch the video. It was supposed to be good too! So I downloaded it again and again and still nothing. What did happen, a strange program popped up in my task manager as “a.exe”, I killed it, but I still had problems. Even if you kill every single process you think is a virus, it’s not enough and they’re only going to come back alive anyway.

If I did a search, either a different search engine would pop up or when I clicked a link, I went to a completely different website than what I clicked.

These programs are really helpful when they tell you you’re infected and they send you to a site that will scan your PC for free, then the scan tells you your PC is infected with 54 viruses that sound really nasty. Of course you want to get rid of them, but you have to pay $49.99 to download the anti-virus. And not just any anti-virus, their anti-virus, because it won’t let you go to any other site and download any other anti-virus.

Now What?

I tried to download a real anti-virus and I was able to download it, but every time I installed it, it would disappear. I couldn’t open a Command Line to run Microsoft’s MSRT program. Every time I would open a CMD window, it would open for a second, then disappear.

I tried going to legitimate sites that had virus scans and sometimes I could go there and start the scan, but it usually hung the system or got worse. Now I can’t start Internet Explorer or even another browser I downloaded earlier, it keeps bugging me about buying their protection and it won’t let me do anything else.

I also had something called “Spyware Doctor” that kept popping up too.

Every time I try and start a program a balloon pops up and tells me a program is a keylogger and it trying to steal my identity and sometimes it would throw in credit card information or equally scary stuff.

The program that kept bugging me to buy to fix everything was called “Security Tool” for $49 or for a lifetime of grief I could pay $79. Any time I would try and do something it would pop up and tell me something bad.

Going into control panel and clicking Add/Remove programs was when it would tell me it “detected harmful software” and they strongly recommend buying their crap to fix it. I couldn’t open the Properties of My Computer to go back to a Restore Point, this PC is really hosed.

I really feel bad for people that don’t know what to do, because even though I know what to do, it won’t let me.

What Did I Do?

To be continued…

My first thought, perfect… Following in the footsteps of the worst American President, Jimmy Carter. His fate is sealed. Even CNN has reported how ridiculous this is. Maybe it was his indecision about Afghanistan, but that can’t be, because his nomination had to be into the Nobel committee only two weeks after he was elected. Most of the comments about how he deserves this honor were about his good intentions, his hope for peace in the Middle East and of course, how well he spoke about peace.

When did the Peace Prize become a participation trophy? It wasn’t today, it became irrelevant awhile ago, but it was too irrelevant to even write about till now. The Prize has been awarded based on Hope and Change. Anyone else would see how silly this is and decline the award, but Obama is so arrogant he is going to accept this and probably even keep the money. He might say he’s giving it to a charity, but it will be his charity foundation.

I actually had to listen to his speech because it was carried by everyone. An arrogant man trying and failing to be humble and no mention of what he’s going to do with the money. What a crock.

Can we survive another three years? It’s only a year till 2010 when people can show they have woken up and replace some of the idiots in Congress. With some sort of stalemate in the government, maybe the left agenda will be on hold for awhile like what happened to Clinton. He had to come center right to get anything done. Putting some reins on this administration and this government as a whole is needed.

With this President following in the footsteps of Carter, who will emerge as our next Reagan. Sarah Palin? Probably not. She would be a good VP again, but she doesn’t have the leadership or the experience to pull us out of this mess, let alone the mess this country will be in several years from now. And the press will bring up the past when McCain threw her under the bus, let alone every other press fiasco, so maybe even VP wouldn’t be such a good choice. My vote is on Romney right now, but because of the chaos and disaster that may be upon us if this agenda goes any further, the pendulum will have such a wild swing the other direction we could be looking at someone like Ron Paul.

I’ve been approved as a Crossloop Certified Helper. What the heck is that?  Crossloop is the program that allows remote access to someone’s computer. You are completely under control of when and who connects to your computer. When you need help you start the Crossloop program and it generates a code you give to the person you want to give access to.

You can disconnect any time and they can not log in again with that same code while you’re not around, even if the program is still running. It’s a very secure way to grant temporary access to your computer while you sit there and supervise.

A Certified Helper has gone the extra step in receiving an independent background check, has been personally interviewed by Crossloop staff. The Certified Helper is familiar with the ethics, guarantees and the professionalism Crossloop wants to convey to the helpers customers.

If you need some help with your computer, I can be trusted to be ethical, honest, I passed a background check and Crossloop.com has put their trust in me to represent them professionally.

See the post that will explain Crossloop in more detail and watch the little video that explains the CrossLoop System.

What’s the best way to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP Pro or XP Home? You can’t, but you don’t have to format your drive either. If Windows 7 finds an operating system on the destination partition, it will ask you if you want to wipe it out or keep the old operating system.

Keep Your Stuff

What happens if you install Windows 7 over XP? Windows 7 will move your entire drive into a Windows.old directory it creates. When the new Windows 7 install is finished, when you boot it will ask you if you want to Boot into the new Windows 7 operating system or the old one. It doesn’t say XP it just says old. What happens if you boot into the old operating system? I don’t know. I did this on my wife’s machine and already messed it up once.

Rule #1

Always have a bootable CD (DVD) to restore your system. Make copies of your original install disks and keep the originals in a safe place and the copies in a safe place. My wife’s PC had a bad file and wouldn’t boot. I tried overwriting the file it said was bad with the same file from a different machine and it wouldn’t work. After hours of searching for some sort of ISO image for XP. A free ISO doesn’t exist on the net except as a torrent and how do you know which one to trust? You can’t even get a free trial from Microsoft anymore.

I finally gave up and installed a XP Home CD I had and got it to work. But then I figured I have a brand new Windows 7  the production release, (Schools received their copies early) and figured this was as good a time as any. Especially since my product key was for Pro and I had this Home disk I was going to have to do something else pretty soon anyway.

After installing 7 and restoring the data, I had to reinstall Office, but everything else I downloaded and found the keys in old email. Make sure you have enough space to keep both operating systems. The official space requirement for 7 is 16 gb a little more wouldn’t hurt so you have room to move folders around to your new user account on your data drive.

Personally I prefer a separate partition for my operating systems using Bootit NG (see side bar for link) as a boot manager, but if your going to only run one operating system on a drive and are a little concerned about wiping everything out, choosing installing over current operating system will work. Make sure you have backups somewhere else just in case.

This is the best book available for the Network+ N10-004 exam. Make sure you get the right book for the exam you’re going to be taking. The old exam is still being administered and books on the old exam of course are still out there. The new 2009 Network+ exam has been updated and concentrates on general network topologies, cabling, tools, protocols, the OSI model and other networking stuff. While the older exam asked questions about AppleTalk, Netware and some vendor specific networking.

The book covers some Cisco stuff but I didn’t have any Cisco protocol or router questions on my exam. I only used this book to study. I take that back a little, I ordered some practice exams from somewhere else at the last minute because I was panicking about not being ready. Don’t waste your time or your money, all of the questions and answers are in this book. While there may have been some other questions from the other place, the answers were still in this book. Even though I’m not thrilled with how the chapter and practice exams work, I would have bought extra questions, but the practice exams Sybex were selling weren’t for this N10-004 exam.

Todd Lammle (the author) must have access to the exams because the questions in the book were almost e same as the real exam. The only problem is the errata page. There are some practice test questions that give the wrong answer, but go to the website and get the corrections and you’ll be fine.

I really liked this book. I’m in the process of selling all of my textbooks and have decided to keep this one. It’s filled with great information. This is the first edition and they may have been corrected in later editions. In any case, ensure you log on to the website in the book and get the corrections.

The hardest part of the exam for me was trying to memorize all of the hardware. What cable goes with what network and how fast and how far they are spec’d. There were a lot of those questions for me and most were guesses. Everything on the test is in the book, read memorize, how ever you study. I tried a new technique for me – I used my RCA Voice Recorder reading parts and notes from the book, transferred to my PC, converted them to .wav then imported into iTunes to listen on my iPod while I’m walking the dog. I’m not sure if it helped or not, I should have concentrated more on the different cable specs, but I passed. There’s no score on your certificate but you have to pass with about 80%. I was getting a solid 80 or above on most of chapter and practice exams I was taking from this book.

Link: CompTIA Network+ Study Guide: Exam N10-004