Spitting Into the Wind

How lovely to receive something for nothing!

I signed up today for a blogger relief pack from Berocca, but later read that it was only open to UK bloggers so I won't be too disappointed if nothing turns up in the post. How many people actually read the terms and conditions when signing up for something. Later I did read it, and number one on the list was:

This promotion is open to any UK resident aged 16 or over, etc etc.

I read about the offer on The Blog Herald and got a little bit excited... The post shows a great collection of freebies that the author received. Worth a look.

Posted at 6:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

I've had a sore neck and back for months now, and I'm blaming my posture in front of the computer. My monitor is too high and my desktop is too high to type comfortably. So today, I bit the bullet, and searched EBay for a new monitor and keyboard drawer. The monitor was easy, there's plenty of those. A sliding drawer to fit under the table was another story entirely. I have emailed a place here in Australia that has some for only about $45, but this includes postage only to capital cities. I didn't complete the online transaction, because I'm in the bush (so to speak) and postage is possibly dearer. But I am pleased with my purchases.

The monitor is a ChiMei CMV 19" Widescreen LCD with speakers. Never heard of the brand, so I did some Googling, and there's a website offering lots of technological products, and it comes with a 3-year warranty. The price was $290, with an extra $25 for postage. A New Zealand site (similar money rate) was advertising the same product for $399 (excluding GST). Now, when I'm looking at the computer screen, I'll actually be looking down, instead of up, as is the case at the moment. I'm also upgrading from a 15" to 19", and I can't wait for it to get here.

The keyboard tray fits under any desk and screws onto the underside of the desk. Simple instructions, so even I should be able to install it. I'll be ergonimically set.

Posted at 4:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) |

I don't know if anyone else has had problems with their site, but last week my site was hacked and my servers actually locked me out of my weblog by changing the name of the folder that MT resides in. The mt folder was renamed mt-overloading-script. It took me over a week to sort it out, first, because I couldn't get in to fix anything, and second, because I didn't know what the problem was (or vice-versa).

Talk about frustrating. There are perils galore when you're responsible for hosting your own site. I've learned so much about it in the last 2 years or so, and learned much about Movable Type in the process. At one stage, I thought I might have to forego MT for another platform, but I've tried Blogger and Live Journal, and though I've used them I know very little about the internal workings.

The thing I was most disappointed about was why someone would want to hack my site. Just because they can? It seems like a senseless act to me. It just caused me a heap of time spent trying to fix things. These hackers are so talented and yet waste their knowledge and ruin the internet experience for "normal" people like me and you. One script in particular seemed to be the culprit, and that was mail-entry, where you could click on the link and get the whole entry emailed to you rather than just the link. A shame, because I thought it was a cool idea. The link to mail an entry is gone now, but the robots or whatever they are, are still looking for it, because the error log on my server is full of the same thing.

We're coming in to the silly season, with lots to do, and this was one problem I could have done without.

Posted at 5:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

I have two computers sitting at home here that I need to fix for friends, and upon booting the first I was horrified to see what Microsoft had done to my friend's computer. I immediately search the web for a way to disable and remove the WGA Notifications warning messages and found My Digital Life, that listed twelve workarounds.

Posted at 9:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) |

Microsoft has started pushing its "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool, but what they might not be telling you clearly is that if you DON'T have a genuine copy of Windows, you'll see messages -- probably pretty frequently -- that will remind you that you're using a pirated copy. Oh, and don't think about uninstalling the software, because you can't. And you'll want to get used to the system if you're planning on using Vista -- because there are features that won't even work if the OS isn't properly licensed.

Posted at 7:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0) |

Have you ever done a search using your own name? You might be surprised with the result. Your comments on forums, guestbooks, articles, site signups, posts, everything comes back to haunt you. If you want to keep a low profile while surfing why not come up with a cyber name. Mine is Juneegirl This helps me when it comes to signing up on various forums and internet sites too, the same username and password for nearly everything. Not altogether smart, but a password with a twist that isn't hard to remember, something like urgr8, makes it easier. That's not my password, by the way!

Posted at 7:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

Yesterday I was getting bombarded with emails from my web host telling me my bandwidth was nearing it's limit of 10,000 MB. I felt sure it had to be a mistake because I chose the hosting plan initially thinking I would use no-where near that amount of bandwidth. With my previous hosting provider I stayed under 300 MB per month, so I went to the stats page on my cPanel and saw that since mid October my bandwidth had been gradually increasing. I was convinced that someone was stealing my bandwidth and so I did a very thorough investigation of all the statistics on the site and noticed a few anomalies.

Posted at 2:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |