4 Signs You Love Your Tech Too Much

 

There's a fine line between loving your tech and loving your tech too much.

After much consideration, I've realized that I fall on the wrong side of the line between tech sanity and tech obsession. I definitely love tech too much. Do you? Here are four warning signs to look out for.

You check your phone in bed

Like most people, when I first wake up in the morning I stretch a bit, get out of bed, brush my teeth, and turn on my coffee maker. Of course, before I do any of that, I use my smartphone. Priorities. And I’m not the only one who does it either: A recent ten-city survey of mobile phone users found that 84% of Americans check a smartphone app first thing in the morning when we wake up.

Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to stay connected. But researchers at the Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute warn that bright displays from tablets and phones is linked with increased risk for sleep disorders and melatonin suppression. Other scientists warn that using your phone, even just to check emails, can boost stress levels – something you don’t want to do in an environment dedicated to rest and relaxation.

So, as tempting as it may be to check your phone in bed, try to hold off. You’ll sleep better.

Come on, you're sitting right next to each other. Put down
your smartphones and talk to each other already!

From the other side of the couch, with love

From my younger cousins to my aging parents, everyone in my family has embraced text messaging. Sure, we could call each other on the phone, but texting seems simpler and less intrusive. Who has time for conversations these days?

That’s all well and good, but here’s where my tech obsession spills into social dysfunction: I’ve started to text people, even when I’m in the same room as them. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s becoming a natural habit. And that’s bad news – a recent Brigham Young University study shows that increased texting may ruin relationships.

So if you find yourself texting someone who’s sitting a few feet next to you on the couch, turn your phone off and start a real conversation. Your relationship will be better for it.

You genuinely fear being without it

I keep telling myself that I’m not addicted to my smartphone. I can quit using it at any time. But the moment I leave home for a quick errand and realize I left my phone at home, I go through a panicked withdrawal.

Believe it or not, there’s a word for this: Nomophobia, the fear of being without your mobile phone. According to a U.K. study, over half of us feel anxiety when we forget our smartphones or start running out of battery life. And in many cases, the level of stress caused by nomophobia rivals that of getting the drill at the dentist.

You keep watch over a tech graveyard

Open your right desk drawer. Now open the left. Are either filled to the brim with old, outdated tech devices like clamshell phones, beepers and digital cameras that record directly to floppy disk? If so, you’re probably an collector. (It’s okay – there’s a tech graveyard in my house too.)

People joke about tech devices practically being obsolete by the moment you cut the shrink wrap off the box. But that’s not quite true – even older devices like the iPhone 4 still have a surprising amount value to the right people. You can make a ton of extra cash by trading-in your gently used tech.

Can’t bear to part with that old smartphone you’re not using, even though you know could get some real cash for it? Then you definitely love tech too much, you collector, you. Either that, or you’re a hoarder.

How to Increase Lifespan of Laptop/Desktop

     Why do computers get slow or create problems over time? After all, it is a machine and should be like iron. But remember, even iron rusts when kept in humid atmosphere. It is all about keeping your machines – anything from computers to phones to cars – well maintained and cared for from time to time - just as you would care for your own baby. And for most of us here, our gadgets are more like our babies, aren’t they?

     All machines, including computers & laptops, have a time-period or lifespan as they call it. If you use it roughly, it will fall sick, work improperly and eventually die. If you handle it with care, show some love, it will keep on performing as new for a longer tenure and not only that, you will also end up extending the battery life of the laptop.

     Any electronic machine is composed of many parts and each part plays a role in the overall aging of the machine. For example, you have the motherboard, circuit joints, RAM, CPU, Hard Disks, and peripherals to name a few. I will provide a few tips on maintaining your computer.

Computer Maintenance Tips

     If you are using the Windows Operating System, you can reduce the wear and tear of your essential computer components significantly while enhancing battery life at the same time. The Power Options in Windows help you manage not only power consumption but also helps you in preventing wear and tear of computer components such as monitor, hard disks, RAM and the CPU. All you need to do is to get into a little details instead of just selecting from the given powerplans. Here is an article on the pro’s and con’s of different power plans in Windows by default.

     There is much more to the Power Options in Windows than is visible in the Control Panel. Navigate to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Power Options > Edit Plan Settings (Click any of the two listed). You will get a link below the usual Turn off Monitor etc. The link you need to click is labeled Change Advanced Power Settings.

Tweak Power Options

     The following computer maintenance tips will help you in two ways: a) They help in enhancing battery life and b) They help in keeping your computer working as new for a longer period.

     The above image of Change Advanced Power Settings Dialog Box shows you what you can do for enhancing battery life while at the same time, speeding up your computer. Once you are on the Advanced Properties dialog box, you just need to change settings under two sections: a) Hard Disks, and b) Sleep Settings.

     Most of us set up the computer to sleep for the whole night. I do not recommend this for two reasons. First and foremost is that you never know if a storm drops by and sends heavy voltage to ruin your computer if you are sleeping. You may be using ’fuse’ but then, the voltage can also pass through the Ethernet cable or phone cable.

     The second reason is related to enhancing the lifespan of computer and to keep it new for a longer period. Since now we know that screensavers do not save any energy, it is better to turn off the monitor or screen after 5 minutes of inactivity. Gone are the days when monitors needed high voltage to start-up. This, while saving battery, gives some rest to the monitor or screen as well.

     Likewise, if you are away from the computer for, say 15 minutes, why keep other components running? Put it to sleep either manually, while leaving the machine or set up the power plan to put the computer to sleep after 15 minutes. Many other devices – including audio peripherals – get rest that way. And if you are not sure if you would return early, set it to hibernate after 30 minutes or so. That way, it will store RAM contents to Hard Disk and shut down.

     This means all your computer components are getting rest until you come back and press the power button. You won’t lose any data as it was written to hard disk before computer hibernated. For those who don’t know the difference, unlike shutdown and restart, hibernate resumes from where you left it. That not only saves power but also gives rest to components when you are not using it.

Tips To Increase Lifespan of Laptop

     Here are four images I created for demonstration purpose. I have used CCleaner for two of the tasks. You can use any similar program. The bottom-line is, if you want to increase the life of your computer, you need to perform these tasks on a regular basis as mentioned in the images.

 CCleaner is a free app  http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

  always back it up. you can delete the backup once you are sure it has no effect
on programs you are using.

 there are several really good defrag programs with free versions.
I like http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10567503.html

 Don't forget to clean all fans (ie. power supply, graphics card and especially the CPU fan.

Dust and other contaminates are the major computer killers.

     The above tasks do not require any special type of training. You may easily get a video demo on YouTube regarding how to clean the motherboard and RAM slots - just in case you are skeptical about opening up the computer.

Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

I have watched our country go down the drain since the "Camelot Days"

(AKA J F Kennedy administration) 

I am an Indepentant and go with the candidate I hope

 will do the most good for our country.

THIS IS NOT POLITICAL.

It's common sense. I am an employer, you the employee. 

(setting the stage)

Government says I must increase your wages.

I do.

And so do my suppliers (the farmer, factory worker, the trucker,etc)

Cost of gas rises to pay their workers.

Now to pay you, I have to charge more for my product (service)

Who pays for this increase?

You and I both do.

What have we gained? 

 

 

Just a dog chasing our own tail.

Our government is doing the same.

Raising the debt ceiling means we all have to pay more..

It's time to say 

STOP.

This is total insanity!

Am I missing something?

Windows Temporary Files

5

We have already seen the nature of some temporary files like Temporary Internet Files, Index.dat file, Cookies and Prefetch Files. In this article we shall have a look at a few aspects of the Windows Temporary Files, which your computer creates, during the course of its normal running.

Windows Temporary Files

What are Temporary Files in Windows

Temporary Files in Windows are those files whose use is only temporary and become redundant once the task in hand is completed. Such temporary file are created to hold data temporarily while a file is being created or processed or used.

Why are Temporary Files created

Windows Temporary files are created by the operating system during the normal course of its running when there may not be enough memory allocated for the task.

Software which use large amounts of data like Graphics, Video or Media editing software also create temporary files. Such created temporary files are more often than not, left behind even when the task is over, leading to their wasting disk space.

Temporary Files are also created for backup purposes, by programs. For instance, Microsoft Office saves a Temporary File of the open document every few minutes. If you save the document and exit, the Temporary File gets deleted. If the program crashes unexpectedly, the Temporary File is not deleted. They can thus be useful to help recover lost data if the program or the system crashes.

Ideally, the Temporary Files should get deleted once the program exits. But this is not always the case, leading to wasted disk space.

Temporary Files Location

The Temporary Files in Windows are typically found located in two locations:

• %systemdrive%\Windows\Temp
• %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp

If you click on C:\Windows\Temp you will receive a message You don’t currently have permission to access this folder. Click on Continue to do so. You will see that most of its contents are .tmp, .temp and .txt files.

The other folder typically located at C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp, is created for each User. It’s a hidden folder and you will have to first ‘un-hide’ System folders from the Folder Options before you can see it.

The Temporary files created by the Windows operating system are usually stored in the %system%\Windows\Temp folder, whereas the one’s created by the User when running any software is stored in his user profile at %userprofiles%\AppData\Local\.

Temporary Files of a particular software may also be located in a sub-folder, inside the parent folder of the particular software.

On rare occasions, a temporary file or a temporary files folder may get created into the root directory of the C (System) drive. You may want to examine the folder in details, and then delete it if you are sure, if it indeed contains temporary files.

Change location of the Temp folder

If you wish, you can change the location of the Temporary Files folder. To do so, open System Properties via the Control Panel > Environment Variables > Edit the System and/or the User variables as you wish.

But do remember that it is never a good idea to combine the temporary directories together for all the user profiles, forsecurity reasons, since there have been cases of security vulnerabilities with temporary files, due to a particular software’s incorrect file permissions or race conditions.

Empty Temporary Files folder

You can use freeware junk files cleaners like CCleaner,  Quick Clean or the in-built Disk Cleanup utility to easily empty the contents of the Temp folders.

Planning to empty the contents of your Windows Installer Folder or WinSxS directory due to its sheer large size!? Think again! These are needed files for windows to work.

5 Common Mistakes on Facebook

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In many ways, Facebook is the water cooler of the Internet age. We all gather around our computers to chat about the news of the day, share pictures of the kids or just talk about what was on television last night. But if you make a social snafu around the water cooler, it's probably only witnessed by a few people—and it's quickly forgotten. But social blunders on Facebook have a much wider audience, which can make them more difficult to recover from.

We've identified the most common sharing missteps, most of which you've probably seen in your own news feed—or even made yourself. Fortunately, your Facebook friends are (hopefully) forgiving, and with a bit of foresight, you can dodge any social snafus in the future.

1. Not keeping private conversations private

This can actually be one of two problems. The first being, if you wouldn't say it loud and proud in front of your extended family at the Thanksgiving table, don't post it for all to see on Facebook. Facebook's messaging system can be used to send a private message. There's also email, texting and a good old-fashioned phone call if you need to keep your communication private. If you are shamelessly opinionated in your every day life, well, your Facebook friends are probably already used to this kind of behavior, but for the rest of us, think carefully about making private details public, even to the closed circle of your Facebook friends.

The second problem is accidentally making a post that you meant to only go to a few friendsbut instead goes out to everyone or posting publicly what you meant to send in a private message. It is an all too easy mistake to make—especially when Facebook's privacy settingsaren't always obvious. Fortunately, you can delete any post you make. Just hover over the upper right corner of the message and you'll see a pencil icon. Click on it, then click the delete option in the drop down menu that appears. Then hope you got rid of it before your friends saw it.

2. Overzealous tagging

Facebook makes it tremendously easy to tag people in photos and updates. And a new "feature" prompts you to tag photos showing up in your newsfeed with a suggestion of who Facebook thinks is in the image! It can be a great way to keep your friends in the loop on what you're up to or what you're doing together, but posting unflattering photos and tagging your friends in it can be a problem, mostly for your friendships.

Not everyone wants photos of themselves posted online and practically no one wants uncomplimentary photos posted, much less being tagged and linked to their Facebook profile. Fortunately, even if you have friends who overzealously tag content, you can remove the tags yourself. However, the pictures are still there unless you ask your friend to remove them. 

To remove a tag of yourself that someone has made on a photo, hover over the upper right hand corner of the update, click on the pencil icon that appears, then choose "Report/Remove Tag" from the drop down menu that appears. You can also manage who can see posts you've been tagged in on our timeline and choose to review tags people add to your own posts before the tags appear on Facebook by going to "Settings" >> "Privacy Settings >> "Timeline and Tagging."

3. Spam and oversharing

No one likes spam in any medium, but to the person doing the posting, it might seem more like sharing something they love instead of spamming. And that makes this problem all too common: everyone on Facebook has at least one friend who's always posting repetitive, uninteresting content. And this goes hand-in-hand with oversharing.

No one wants to know that they're making a sandwich, that they've made a sandwich, that they've taken a bite of the sandwich, and then that they've finished the sandwich. Talk about spam! Even if their sandwich is exciting enough to justify a post, it's very likely that one update will do.

So how do you avoid doing this yourself? Always think before you post and definitely avoid posting the same (or very similar) content over and over again. If you absolutely have to post something that's a bit repetitive or uninteresting, be sure to skip tagging friends in these posts, which flags them for their attention—unless you're positive they'll be fascinated.

If your Facebook friends won't stop spamming your newsfeed with their repetitive messages, you can always change what you see from them rather than unfriending them altogether. Move your mouse over to the upper right corner of any obnoxious update, click on the downward arrow that appears and choose "Hide" from the menu that drops down. The message will be removed and you'll see a new option in its place titled "Change what updates you get from [this friend.]" Mouse over that and you'll see a list of options. For the kinds of updates you want to see from a spammy person, we recommend choosing "Only important." Facebook uses its own judgment to determine what is an important update, but it may be preferable to enduring daily doses of nonsense.

4. Arguing with friends about hot button issues like politics or religion

If you want to keep your friends as friends, you need to tread carefully when you talk about hot button topics. It's frustrating when your friends post political diatribes—and you get shouted down for disagreeing with them. 

Of course, this doesn't mean you can't post about politics, religion or other potentially sensitive subjects that matter to you. Just remember that your friends may not all agree with you—and that's no reason to be rude or obnoxious with them. Doing so is a great way to lose friends, both on Facebook and in real life.

If your friends are doing this, check out how to limit the kinds of updates you see from them at the end of section 3 above.

5. Neglecting spelling and grammar

Sure, everyone uses abbreviated language popular in texting and everyone makes the occasional typo. But no one likes wading through posts that have so many typos and abbreviations that they may as well be written in a foreign language. If you have something important enough to say that you want to share it with all of your Facebook friends, it's worth making the effort to write it out clearly—anything else is just going to cause friends frustration.

If you make a glaring mistake in a Facebook post, there isn't any ability to edit the text. However, you can edit any comment you make on someone else's post as well as anything you've written attached to a photo. For editing a comment, simply mouse over the upper right corner of your comment box to see a pencil icon. Click on it and then on "Edit" on the drop down menu that appears.

For photos, click on the image so the picture fills most of your screen with your post and the comments displayed to the right of it. You'll see an "Edit" button below your update, but above the comments. Click it to change your message, the date taken, who is tagged in the message or location it was taken.

Of course, none of us are perfect and we all make social snafus now and again. But if you want to be top of the class in Facebook etiquette be careful not to make these mistakes yourself!

Computing Guide To Being Paranoid

They’re watching you. Literally. In a recent article posted at Ars Technia, it was reported that hackers have the ability to remotely take over your computer and install software on your computer that allows them to turn on your webcam. What? They do this using a RAT pack (Remote Administration Tool). In addition to that, we are hearing of new router exploits that give a hacker the ability to remotely access your router and gain access to your Local Area Network. If you think you’re overly paranoid about your computing you should be. This stuff is scary.

So now that you know that the whole world is out to get you, what can you do about it? These steps will help close some of the holes used to exploit computers.

Turn off Remote Administration – Remote administration in routers give users outside of your network the ability to access and control your router. In many cases, this is turned on by default. What? Of course the intention of this option is benign, but it can be used by a hacker to get into your LAN and see all of your internal computers, manipulate your firewall and do basically anything they want with your traffic.

To do this, you can navigate to your router’s admin page using your web browser. Normally, this can be done by typing http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1 into your browser’s address bar (not the search bar). Your router location may vary. You will also need to know the username and password of your router. If you do not know it, and the router was supplied by your ISP, you can check the physical device to see if the information is printed there or call your ISP for log in details.

Look for an “Advanced” or “Administrator” tab and make sure remote administration is disabled.

Turn Off Wake On LAN - While not necessarily an exploit, WoL allows your computer to be turned on when powered off from an outside source. Imagine this, ole paranoid one, if a hacker had access to your internal LAN and had the ability to turn on your PC whenever he or she wanted to perform whatever nefarious acts he or she wanted. Unless you have a specific need to have it on, go into your computer BIOS when booting and disable that wicked feature. Depending on your BIOS, it may not even be an option.

Turn Off Allow Network Traffic To Wake Computer – Similar to WoL, your network adapter has the ability to listen to network traffic and can allow your computer to be woken up while asleep.

To shut this down, go into the Control Panel, look for your network adapter, right-click it and select Properties. Under the Power Management tab, uncheck that option if it is checked.

Turn Off UPnP – Turn off Universal Plug and Play in your router. Universal Plug and Play allows programs within your network to automatically punch holes in your router. What? Us paranoids can’t allow this to happen! Imagin a virus on your network having free reign to open ports on your router to allow even more bad guys in. For most of us, having this feature off will not affect anything we do from day to day. For others, you may need to occasionally go into your router and manually open ports for programs or system that require them to be open–like game consoles, for instance. You can turn off UPnP in your router.

Uninstall Java and Adobe Reader – With Windows doing a better job securing the OS, hackers are seeking softer targets like Java and Adobe Reader, both of which seem to have some type of zero-day exploit a couple times a year. Most of us have these programs just sitting on our system, never being used and never being updated to the latest versions. If you simply must have them, be sure to update them frequently.

Scan Your Ports - The Gibson Research Corporation (GRC) has been providing a free online tool to scan your router for open ports for over ten years. This tool is called Shields Up and you can find it here. The UPnP Exposure test will check to see if your router is open to a new router exploit that gives hackers the ability to access and control your router.

If all is well with the GRC test, you will see the above image.

Run Your Browser In Privacy Mode – Private Browsing (which may be called something else depending on which browser you’re running) allows you to surf without the fear of a history being saved, and temp images, videos, files and cookies being stored on your computer.

In Firefox and IE, this is enabled by hitting CTRL+Shift+P.

In Google Chrome hit CTRL+Shift+N for Incognito mode.

Do The Basic Computer Security Measures – Of course, you should also make sure you are running a current antivirus–if your free antivirus from Symantec or Mcafee has expired, uninstall it and get another. If you do not have one, Microsoft Security Essentials is free. In addition, make sure your WiFi is encrypted in your router settings using WPA-2 so the whole neighborhood isn’t using your bandwidth. Make sure you have Windows automatic updates turned on. Make sure your Windows firewall is also enabled. Modern Windows Operating System will have these on by default, and if you’re running Windows 8 you also already have an antivirus called Windows Defender–built in.

If you have more tips for us paranoid folk, please be sure to leave them below so we can all sleep good at night.

I Spilled Liquid On My Laptop! Now What?

This may be your face when it happens to you. Every day, 1 in 20 Americans spill something on their laptop (Also, 48% of statistics are made up). So something liquid finds its way onto your laptop or smart phone whether by accident or angry significant other and now you must act, or weep in the corner.  With the steps outlined below, you will be able to confidently jump into action and try to keep the damage to a minimum.

I’ve been in the repair industry for about 9 years now and have cleaned the following liquids out of laptops which then went on to live normal computery lives: beer(lager and porters), wine, milk, water, coffee, juice, cat pee (grosses one by far), “mystery white substance”( basically looked like a HAZMAT guy on that job), “mystery smells like human urine substance”(from a frat house), and a couple others I know I’m forgetting.  I haven’t been able to revive every single one of these without a hardware change out, but I have been successful in a good portion of them.  Follow these quick thinking steps below and you will stand a fighting chance!

Water Everywhere!

We are going to show you a quick “not-to-do” section here so you know what to avoid to not put yourself in danger of a possible liquid to laptop unwanted interaction.  See the pics below for a jump start on what not to do…..

Now the above is mostly for comedy’s sake but you can gather some good insight on what to stay away from as well.  Don’t go around swimming pools, lakes, beaches, or Atlantis with your laptop or smart phone. They are not designed to keep out liquids. They do a pretty poor job of keeping out solids for that matter too. There are too many holes and vents all over them to make them proficient at keeping most stuff at bay.

Don’t drink or eat around your laptop.  I already hear the whining and moaning about how you don’t have enough time in your day to do homework and eat or play WOW and function in normal society without having a soda or water right next to you.  Try and schedule yourself a couple minutes away from the laptop to munch down food and drink.  If you HAVE to have food or a drink around, look around and find a good place to set them so if they do get knocked over you wont be making up new curse words because your laptop just became water cooled.

It Happened! What do I do?

That dreadful time has come and your dog has just spilled a gallon of water all over the keyboard of your precious new Alienware RAIDed, super max GPU, RAMy goodness and you think you may be on the verge of a breakdown.  Now is not the time for panic!  **Immediately pull the AC adapter from the laptop and flip it over.  Quickly remove the battery and breathe a sigh of relief.  If you got to these steps without your laptop shutting down or making a popping or zapping sound, you stand a fighting chance.  Go grab a towel or paper towels and set your laptop, keyboard side down, on the drying apparatus.  Let it sit for as long as possible.  There isn’t a good rule of thumb for how long you should leave it sit like this because it could be anything from a drop of water to a 5 gallon bucket full that assaulted your lappy.

Personally, I would leave it for a day with a small fan pointed at it to help the evaporation process.  The next day gently lift it up and see if you notice any still wet areas.  If so, repeat the waiting game.  When it is fully dried out, to the best you can tell, is when you should start crossing your fingers.  Look over the laptop and see if you can see any residue pointing you to where the liquid may have came in contact.  Did it stay on the keyboard?  Did it make it to the touchpad?  Was it fully submerged in the Pacific?  If it only got a little on the keyboard, you may be at looking at worst a new keyboard.(About $25-$60)  If it was a lot, time to take it apart.  If you are not comfortable taking your laptop apart, take it to a professional.  If you plan on that, then you can skip the next paragraph.

Taking apart a laptop can be a challenge but if you are up to it, time to dive in and see where all of the liquid made it.  Heavily inspect the keyboard and touchpad circuit boards and their connectors.  If you see any wetness, dry it off with a non-conductive method such spray air.  Look over the motherboard and see if you notice that it made it that far.  If you see anything like the below picture, clean with alcohol or electronics cleaner and a soft toothbrush or Qtip.

This pic above is from one where the liquid either got to the board before it could be fully powered down or was something like milk/soda/juice/water and started to corrode the contacts.  Be careful when cleaning corroded points like this because if they have been this way long, they can eat at the solder joints making them weak.  If so, then you could dislodge a component and be in even bigger trouble.

After making sure the liquid residue is dried up and cleaned off can we finally see if what we had done above is going to pay off.  Plug in the AC adapter without the battery and try to power it on.  Hopefully it will power on and fully POST and boot.  If so, put the battery back in and try to boot again.  If both went smoothly then it is on to testing out all of the keyboard keys and the touchpad.  If they are sticky or stuck, you can try cleaning them with electronics cleaner.  My favorite is from the Blow Off brand.  If you want to make sure each button is being registered, run over to thiskeyboard testing site and try out each of your buttons.  If they both work, try your wifi, camera, and any other devices your laptop has to make sure everything made it out unscathed.  Hopefully by your quick actions you have saved your laptop and don’t have to replace any parts!

Conclusion

What have we learned from all of this?  First and foremost, don’t try and put yourself in the situation to possibly contaminate your laptop with a foreign substance.  Don’t eat or drink by it if possible.  Stay away from the beach or swimming areas and leaky toddlers as well.  If it happens, DON’T PANIC.  You now are equipped to minimize the damage done with these steps and quick thinking and acting.  The steps you take immediately after it happens could determine the fate of your laptop!