TechKnowMama

I work out of my home using the internet, making a reliable connection a must.

Last week I stared having connectivity issues with my internet, I was constantly having to reboot my router, and it was getting worse as the week went by.

By the time the Friday rolled around it was just getting ridiculous, my fiancé, started playing a game online, which left me unable to get on the internet at all, which was odd considering, I have in the past been able to watch streaming video, download a file and somebody could play an online game, and not suffer any significant lag.

I chalked it up to there being a problem with our ISP, and decided I would give them a call Monday morning to see if we could track down the source of the problem.

In the mean time my fiancé need a file off of my pc, and hopped on the network to copy it over, when he notice a strange pc on our network (had to be a close neighbor our wi/fi barley covers our house).

My first reaction was how is that possible we have taken the necessary steps to secure our network, and we are no amateurs we both have certifications in networking and pc maintenance. That doesn’t mean it would be impossible to get into our network, it just means they would have to really put some effort into it. My next thought was why would they put so much effort to hack into our network, and not take steps to hide their presence?

So I tried to log onto our router/modem, to boot the interloper off, only to find that my login for the router/modem wasn’t working, so I took a shot in the dark and tried the factory default password, and sure enough that worked. It turns out that at some point in the last few weeks our router had reset itself to factory defaults.

Well we set our router back up change passwords and wireless security, and we debated for a while weather the person we found on the network was responsible for the router being reset, or because of the reset they just connected because they could. We decided it was the later, because even a noob hacker would know enough not to let their presence on our network to be so obvious. (that, and none of our neighbors are that smart)

I did some research and found that a couple of people have had the same thing happen to their routers, and most likely its caused by some electrical interference, line noise, or the router is just trying to tell us it is about to go to the big router cloud in the sky.

So mystery solved, more or less, and we didn’t give it much thought….. until this Monday morning, when much to my disgust my internet went down. Here we go again! Right? Wrong! It turns out that my ISP turned us off because “someone” had illegally downloaded copyrighted material from our network.

At this point I was ready to kill, both the network interloper and my ISP.

I explain what happened to the tech support guy, he made me swear on a stack of bibles that I had taken steps to secure my network before he could get it turned back on, but it will take 2 to 24 hours before it was back on, and that’s when I lost it, I felt like I was literally just bleeding cash at this point I am losing money because I can’t do my job with no internet and I have paid for a service that I am not getting! It wasn’t my fault it happened, we are paranoid about network security, my router just has deferent ideas apparently!

My blood pressure must have went threw the roof, because I was seeing spots in front of my eye’s and my head was pounding! I disconnected the call as politely and quickly as possible, because its not the tech guys fault, so I wasn’t going to take it out on him, ( I have worked at a job like his before )

My fiancé however was not going to take it laying down, and he headed out for the local office and get them to switch back on immediately or he was going to disconnect the service entirely.

The service was back on before he even got to the office, and I called him to let him know but he was still going to have a word with the management, he felt after all the years of being a loyal customer should count for something, at least a phone call or a letter saying hey we noticed some nefarious activity on your network yada yada. I couldn’t argue with that. Well, apparently neither could the ISP, because they did try to make it right by upgrading us from the 5mb speed tier to the 10mb for free WooHoo!

So It got all resolved end of story, and I get calmed down I can go back to work and all is right in the world. Right? Wrong! My internet goes down again! WTH!

I am ready to go 3 kinds of ape shite on the person that answers the phone this time, thinking it is because of the same reason they had earlier, and I am sure their competitors will be more than happy to have my business.

That’s when my daughter called me to ask me why her internet wasn’t working, she has the same ISP as we do . we decided it was just an outage, and purely a coincidence that it happened right after the them turning me off.

What I found really interesting is my daughter said her router/modem did the same thing at the probably about the same time nearest we can figure, she had the tech out to fix it because her router is provided by the ISP ours is not and not even the same brand. maybe its an odd coincidence or maybe the ISP did something that made our routers reset (firmware update maybe?)

What really gets me is we have had this ISP forever, and they have been very reliable, and I have never had a complaint until this year. Now I am starting to see outages more and more, and I have to reboot my router on a daily basis, and they have started throttling bandwidth.

That’s my biggest gripe of all is the throttling of the bandwidth, I realize I am not the typical user, with streaming video, I watch, netflix and online video games, I maxed the 3gb cap they have for the 5mb tier in no time. The cap for the 10mb tier is 5gb that dose give me a bit more breathing room I guess.

I still don’t think its right, if I pay for 5 mb I should be able to use 5 mb all day long dammit!

It is however a mute point, because almost all ISP’s are starting to cap their bandwidth and if they aren’t they will be soon.

I have been into Natural medicine for many years now, and I am always on the look for more natural resources. Well I just happened on a very useful site to add to my list of great resources its NatMedTalk its a user based forum where users can ask questions and share information and resources about all things having to do with natural medicine.
There is a plethora of information on conditions from Nutrition to Dentistry, that being said it is a user based forum and with any forum like this, the info contained might not be 100% accurate, but it is a wonderful jumping off point to help further your research on natural medicine, and a great place to exchange ideas.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a big fan of the Windows operating system, in fact , if it wasn’t for video games, and work I would not use Windows at all. However, when Windows 7 Beta became available for download for free, I could not resist giving it a try.

It took about 2 hours to download, which given my experience downloading other things from windows, (like service packs), was relatively quick.

I installed it on my main computer, which spec are:

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5400+ (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz

Memory: 4GB RAM

Hard Drive: 300 GB Total

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO

Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor

Sound Card: Speakers (C-Media CM6501 Like Sound Device)

Motherboard: Asus M2N SLI    

I did a fresh install on an empty partition. The install process was very similar to Windows Vista install.

After the install, as I always do after any windows install, I checked the Device manager to see if everything was detected and drivers installed properly, and most things were detected and drivers installed. I loaded the board drivers and other drivers from the disk that came with my motherboard with out problem, and the video and sound were updated the first time I ran window update. (TR  has the newer M3N board and did not have the same experience)

So far better than I expected from a beta operating system.

The biggest thing, (for me) that set Windows 7 apart from Vista, was the desktop. not that the desktop is vastly different from the Vista desktop, Its just a bit cleaner,  more streamlined, and it seemed (to me) to be easier to customize.

The system tray , got a facelift, the icons  no longer expand into the taskbar (and sometimes infinity) as seen here.

They now reside neatly in this little box brought up by clicking on the little triangle.

The only icon residing outside that box are the system icons like the volume and network icons. 

Another interesting change is to the side bar, while it is still called the side bar, the widgets are free floating and can be moved anywhere on the desktop as you will notice on the first screen shot. 

One of the biggest changes, is to the taskbar. Instead of the the quick launch toolbar, application icons can be pined to the task bar for quick access to your most used programs.

Instead of the programs name to represent each open window,  the programs icon represents the open program, and if you have that program already pined to the taskbar  it uses the same icon, which might be a bit confusing at first ,( I know it was confusing to put into words) but just mouse over the icons and you will get a preview if there is an open window of that program.

When you mouse over the small preview, you will get a full size preview and have the option to close that window.

What I really like about the task bar in Windows 7 task bar is when you choose a color scheme, the task bar actually matches that scheme not some murky mostly black taskbar as in Vista.

What really surprised me, was that almost all of my software and games worked right off the bat, the only real trouble I  had was installing the software for my HP multifunction printer, but i was able to get it to work using Troubleshoot Compatibility wizard. I had a couple of games that would not install at all, however,  those games,  I had already run into install problems on other operating systems.  

Windows 7 boots faster, and uses less resources than its predecessor, and (for me) has less annoyances.

I have been using Windows 7 on a daily basis for a couple of months now, and I must say I am impressed on how stable,  and reliable it seems to be, actually its quite a bit more stable in beta,  than Vista was at release on my machine , or now for that mater .

Will Windows 7 take the place of my favorite Linux distro ….umm no, but it is my favorite version of windows thus far, and I can’t wait till it is released and I can kick Vista to the curb.

Last September I posted about the  then new  movie offerings from  Itunes. I have yet to purchase a movie from Itunes but I have purchased several episodes, of tv shows I have missed,it has saved me a flogging several times,when forgetting to record Star Gate

TechKnowMama » Itunes movies

I have purchased movies, and TV episodes from Xbox Live Marketplace, both in Hd and standard formats, that coupled with the downloadable (is that a word) demos and the live arcade game's have made the purchase of the xbox360 more than worth it.

I have since kicked Vongo to the curb, they never had any new releases, the software was constantly needing to be updated, and every time I updated it, it would corrupt the video library forcing me to have to redownload my movies all over again. I do have to mention that their customer service was pretty good, the problem is I spent an hour looking for the customer service number, it is not listed on  the site anywhere that I could find, I finely found it on some message bord.   

I have found a pretty good movie service called CinemaNow .

They have a wide variety of titles and yes new releases.  You have the option to purchase, or rent movies, although not all titles that are available  for purchase are available to rent and vice versa. Most new releases are only available for purchase for the first  few weeks , and then they can be rented in most cases.

The prices for purchase range from 3.99 to 19.99 and the rental prices are 1.99 to 3.99 about the same as other similar services such as xbox live marketplace
 
some purchased titles can be  played on  3 different devices, and some only 1, so look closely before purchasing if you want to play the title on more than one device 

You can begin watching your movies 30 seconds after you start the download. The movies play on Windows Media Player 10,or better, and the movies look great especially on my 37 inch LCD.

They do have a very limited selection of HD content, most of which are documentary type movies (and not very good ones), they are only available for purchase, and quite frankly I don't know why they bothered at all with a HD section, if thats all they are going to offer.

They have a beta feature I have yet to try, which is burn to dvd, thats a really cool concept, and I haven't heard of any other movie service doing that

One other thing that you may have already guessed this is a windows only service you must have Internet Explorer 6 or better and Windows 2000 or better.

fortunately my tv is hooked up to a windows computer so the widows only isn't and issue for me.

So I am using Itunes for missed tv episodes Xbox Marketplace for HD content and  CinamaNow for new release movies.

Now if I could find one service to do all three I would have it made

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I would soooooo Live there !!

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I was feeling well enough to go to the ZZ Top concert Saturday, and it was well worth it, it was a great show, the opening band sucked though, we went out to have a cigarette bought  some T shirts  and  got something to drink  and I swear it sounded like they were still playing  the same dam song they were playing wen we left LOL.

After the concert we went to Suzy Q's and shovelhead was playing they are a much better band than who ever the hell opened for ZZ Top

Anyway fun was had by all

I finely got my office organized sorta, I got my books placed on my book shelf anyway and one half of the office looks nice, the other half still filled with boxes half of those boxes are ceiling fans and light fixtures TR has yet to install, grrrr  and of course I am still waiting for my  cat 5 and and cable to be run in here dammit!
I could do that myself if I could manage to get in the attic but I cant get halfway up the ladder and I freeze , I am not scared of hights really I think I am just scared of ladders or maybe attics

well I am starting to ramble now so I will cut this short befor I go into a tangent LOL
Type at y'all  later

this week is spring break here and I was planing on taking off work and getting some stuff done around the house, and maybe relax a bit ……
Ha!! I woke up Sunday morning feeling kinda cruddy, thinking  the  crape myrtle tree  across the  street  was the reason why , but no.. it was not, I had a cold, and a bad one too.

So I have been in bed most of this week, feeling like a half dead howling snot monster!!  I started feeling better yesterday  but the most I could get accomplished was get dressed .

So by this morning when I finely had some energy the house was a pig sty, TR only straightened  out the kitchen to shut me up!
so I got the house cleaned finely  and would really like to go back to bed , but TR is having dental work this morning and I  know I will have to  take care of him  today,

Hopefully we will both be feeling better before Saturday we have tickets to go to a ZZ Top concert with some friends of ours and will more than likely end up at Suzy Q's  (the local biker bar)
for drinks and a game of pool   

Here  are some pictures of the new kittens and Jessie, and yes they are all spoiled rotten.
Matter of fact they don't know they are cats…..let alone adopted

My new favorite author is Zoe Whitten She has just published her first two books Waiting For a Miracle , and The Lesser of Two Evils

I just finished The Lesser of Two Evils and I tell ya I didn't get a thing done for 3 days because I could just not put the thing down
I have just started Waiting For  a Miracle  but have been  to busy  lately to get in to it , but I am sure I will not be disappointed.

Now I have to mention that I have actually been a big Zoe Whitten fan for a long time, because before she was a published author, she was my cousin, now that alone is not enough for me to plug her books , mater of fact if they weren't good I would not mention them at all LOL

honestly I knew she had talent but I was completely  awe stricken by her talent with The Lesser of Two Evils , I await the next book in the series with baited breath, and I honestly feel if this book got into the right hands it would find its way to the best sellers list

If you ever read the online comic Userfriendly then you know who Dust Puppy is, if you don't you should.
Well any way I have a stuffed Dust Puppy Doll That resides on my desk with a family of penguins , well I walked in the house yesterday after running  some errands to find Dust Puppy lying in the middle of the living room floor !!
 I had 3 prime suspects
we took in an abandoned litter of kittens this winter (I 'll post pictures later) Trouble, Little Girl, and Jr
they all lay on my desk from time to time and watch me work but none has showed any interest in the the toys that sit there.

 I suspected it was probably Trouble, there is a reason we named him that, but i just replaced Dust Puppy Back in his spot and sat down at my desk to read my email, and I was not there for 10 minutes when here comes Trouble , he jumps up on my desk meows at me and grabs poor Dust Puppy by the foot and takes of running toward the living room  where I find him rubbing his head on dust puppy like he dose the catnip toys , I reached down to rescue Dust Puppy again and Trouble takes off again carrying Dust Puppy off with him and Dust Puppy  has not been seen again .
he is probably under the couch with my missing house shoe and robe tie .

My penguins are all living in fear that they maybe next to fall victim to the Trouble monster