try defragging your weblog
You know what I don’t miss? Being the guy who keeps your computer working. 
Not that I didn’t enjoy that when it was my profession – I’m sure you’ll agree that one should take a certain pride in fixing things, and lord knows I would typically run shrieking away from the more traditional repairs that involve plumbing or tools or protective eyewear, so being good at an act that transforms something useless to something functional is nice, for me. Getting paid for making sure people could print or whatever was a hilarious and satisfying twist in my career path, if not exactly one I would have foreseen.
Did you know that I won the math award in grade six? Once upon a time, I was supposed to work in numbers. And did you know that I was accepted into a journalism program at that college in Oakville whose name I forget, when I outlasted high school? Once upon a time, I was supposed to work in sentences. Both LOL-worthy facts from the past, when I look at them now.
Today I work in keywords, and pointy brackets, and timing. The business of ‘online marketing’ (picture the author gesturing at nothing in particular for emphasis) is the most fun sort of job to have, I think. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t still take an interest in making computers work – kind of need them to, both on my end and yours, in order for my cheques to clear.
Here’s a few things I’ve spotted on the subject of making computers work that are worthy of your attention:
- Windows maintenance tips: the good, bad, and useless deconstructs a bunch of the old myths and legends of computer upkeep. Defragging your hard drive seemed like a savvy icon to click in Windows 95, but that was fifteen years ago, people. If you want your computer to be faster, buy and install more RAM (cheap and easy to do, by the way), then uninstall the programs you don’t use.
- Lifehacker also offers up the five best offline backup tools. If you use your computer for anything you want to keep – be it work, digital photos, your MP3s, anything important at all – you have to own an external hard drive. You can pick up something useful for less than a hundred bucks, you don’t have to install any software or open up your computer to use it, and you can set up one of the programs suggested above to automatically take care of saving the files you’re forgetting to back up. (I’m going to try Syncback this weekend.)
- Seven things Geek Squad employees wish every computer moron knew. #1 is a rehash of my last point, and the others are pretty good, too – lose that toolbar! You have how many antivirus programs? Jesus h. (Though I would say that point #8 here needs to be ‘if your computer is broken, Geek Squad is not your best choice for repairing it’.)
There. Keep all of the above in mind and you should be fine. If not, expect me to refer to the periodic table of swearing while I deal with you, Ysfs.
three tries, three days
There are people who like to fiddle and fuss with things, twiddle the knobs a degree or two, throw a variable in there, maybe a comma instead of a semi-colon and give it a shot. Me? I’m into attention to detail, but really, when it comes down to it, when stuff just works, I’m happy with that.
Listen: Blurtonia, 'I Don't Want to Kill Today'
Stuff isn’t just working at the moment, due to fiddly plugins and an even more fiddly client. I may just crowd surf off a cliff.
forming
I’m waiting for my hosting company to get back to me about a problem I’ve run into this evening. Seems I’ve exceeded my allowed limit for number of SQL databases. Since I’m on a grandfathered annual payment plan, I suspect I’ll be asked to move over to one of their ‘current’ plans that will require four times the cash without offering four times the value. A victim of my own business success – time to jack up the prices!
I’ll blame the HST. People will buy any line of reasoning if you blame the government somehow.
While we wait for what’s his name in India or wherever to write me a message that will only make sense because I’ve grown used to that particular brand of jibberish, I thought I’d share some of the many links that I’ve been sitting on since… what, June? Really? Damn.
- Openbook is another exploit of Facebook’s impossible-to-parse privacy settings that tend to leave people’s status updates out there dangling for anyone to pick up. Go ahead, search on a term that someone would be embarrassed to have the internet at large know they talk about. The ‘recent searches’ alone are usually worth the time spent.
- American Drink. Cool layout, subject dear to my heart and liver… yes.
- If you’re a writer who keeps a blog that you don’t update often enough, Plinky wants to help. It’ll offer up a topic and integrate directly with Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, or whatever other system you might be using. I’ve signed up, we’ll see whether any of their prompts show up right here on the mighty A1.
- If the Earth Stood Still. What would happen if the Earth stopped spinning? “If earth ceased rotating about its axis but continued revolving around the sun and its axis of rotation maintained the same inclination, the length of a year would remain the same, but a day would last as long as a year.” Wicked!
Finally, there’s more fine artistic work going on at Hyperbole and a Half. The latest:
“My dog might be slightly retarded.” This sounds pretty much exactly like every dog I’ve ever known. People who choose to keep animals in their home just don’t make any sense.
let’s detensify
Wikipedia has introduced me to weasel words, a sort of language that we’re surrounded by constantly. I’ll crib from their explanation:
“The expression weasel word derives from the egg-eating habits of weasels. An egg that a weasel has sucked will look intact to the casual observer, while actually being empty. Thus, words or claims that turn out to be empty upon analysis are known as “weasel words”.”
I like to think that I’m pretty good at spotting ‘empty upon analysis’ marketing-speak, most of the time. Scary to imagine that many other people are not.
In any case, ‘weasel words’ is a phrase that I think we should carry with us at all times. Or at least up to 50% of the time.
food and how to eat it
Have you heard of the Good Food Box? They throw a bunch of fruit and vegetables into a box, which you buy, and then take home with you, presumably to eat. Here’s this month’s haul:
This cost $15 for the food itself, plus $1.50 for the privilege of ordering online, and then throw in another $2.75 for the O-train ride over to Carleton, where I picked up my box. Reasonable deal, probably comparable to what you might pay at a proper produce store, and I guess it could be argued that you’d spend that money on exactly the items you wanted there, as opposed to the grab-bag of mystery items that come along with the Good Food Box. (For instance, cauliflower – an offensive vegetable if there ever was one.)
But the winner today was the tomatoes, an item not typically purchased here at the Awesome household. Three of ‘em were included in the box, so what else could I do but make spaghetti sauce?
So. Good. Like, proper italian restaurant twelve-bucks-a-plate good. Do yourself a favor and whip that stuff up next time you have a few tomatoes, a bit of garlic, and some olive oil around. Totally bitchin’.
- The HP update program on my desktop computer appears to exist only to update itself.
- So over weak-stomached Ottawa'ans and their maggoty green bins. Don't like it? Please, stop using it. Thank you.
- If nothing else, this suggests that our deliberate purge of cable television products has been a success. Yay!
More of this on my Twitter page. Follow me! I'm fun.
· An Entirely Other Day
· Blogawa
· Chartattack
· Fray
· Fussy
· Hyperbole and a Half
· Laid-off Dad
· Manifesto Multilinko
· Metacritic
· MetaFilter
· Miss Vicky’s Offhand Remarks
· National Capital Rock
· The Daily Swarm
· West Side Action
· Zoom
· Let's Talk Babies
· Missives from the Foxden
· Payment Networks
· Walden Cabin
· Google Chrome
· Last.fm
· One Change
· Ottawa Web Design
· Quotes Collection
· Twitter for Wordpress
· Wordbooker
· Wordpress
· WPaudio
· 
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“I was a superman, but looks are deceiving.” – Sour Girl, Stone Temple Pilots