Garage Sales

Garage sales are a good way to clean out some extra 'junk' (excuse me - treasures), and get a little cash at the same time. Or it's a great way to find some bargains. We got a pet carrier for our dog for $5, which would be $40 or more at a pet store.

They help the local economy, too. Why send more money overseas for clothes, when you can pay somebody down the street for something that their kids have outgrown.

Our subdivision is holding a Community Garage Sale, this weekend (May 6-7, 2011). We've been doing this twice per year for a couple of years, now. Usually 20 to 30 homes participate.

One nice thing about community garage sales - A person can go to a subdivision and have a better selection from multiple garage sales, than going around town to different ones. It saves them time and gas. For this reason, it seems increases traffic to each sale, which helps the seller have more potential buyers.

To promote the sale, our Homeowners Association had a banner made, which we hang at the front of the subdivision. This seemed to draw quite a bit of interest. In addition to that, I posted on Facebook and Twitter, announcing the sale, to get the word out.

Then we found a site called GarageSaleHunter.com, which lets you post garage sales for free, they will make a link to mapquest for you, as well.
Click Here for the map to our neighborhood sale.

For this sale, we also posted a listing on CraigsList and another site, which I recently found: YardSaleSearch.com. There's looks pretty slick, and they are working on a section just for community garage sales. It's free, but if you pay $5 they'll move your sale to the top. Or promote their site with a link , then they'll waive the $5, like this:
Find garage sales in Spring, TX.

Tazer Stun Gun Humor

A friend forwarded this to me as an email. It was too funny….

I decided to post it here:

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Pocket Tazer Stun Gun, a great gift for the wife.

A guy who purchased his lovely wife a pocket Tazer for their anniversary submitted this:

Last weekend I saw something at Larry's Pistol & Pawn Shop that sparked my interest. The occasion was our 15th anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my wife Julie. What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized tazer.

The effects of the tazer were supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on your assailant, allowing her adequate time to retreat to safety....?? WAY TOO COOL! Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home. I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button. Nothing! I was disappointed. I learned, however, that if I pushed the button and pressed it against a metal surface at the same time, I'd get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs. AWESOME!!! Unfortunately, I have yet to explain to Julie what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.

Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn't be all that bad with only two AAA batteries, right? There I sat in my recliner, my cat Gracie looking on intently (trusting little soul) while I was reading the directions and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh & blood moving target. I must admit I thought about zapping Gracie (for a fraction of a second) and then thought better of it. She is such a sweet cat. But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. Am I wrong?

So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and tazer in another. The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a major loss of bodily control; and a three- second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water. Any burst longer than three seconds would be wasting the batteries.

All the while I'm looking at this little device measuring about 5" long, less than 3/4 inch in circumference (loaded with two itsy, bitsy AAA batteries); pretty cute really, and thinking to myself, 'no possible way!'

What happened next is almost beyond description, but I'll do my best ... I'm sitting there alone, Gracie looking on with her head cocked to one side so as to say, 'Don't do it stupid,' reasoning that a one second burst from such a tiny lil ole thing couldn't hurt all that bad. I decided to give myself a one second burst just for heck of it. I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and ... HOLY MOTHER OF... WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION . . . WHAT THE ....!!!

I'm pretty sure Hulk Hogan ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed us both on the carpet, over and over and over again. I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs!

The cat was making meowing sounds I had never heard before, clinging to a picture frame hanging above the fireplace, obviously in an attempt to avoid getting slammed by my body flopping all over the living room.

Note: If you ever feel compelled to 'mug' yourself with a tazer, one note of caution: there is NO such thing as a one second burst when you zap yourself! You will not let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor! A three second burst would be considered conservative! A minute or so later (I can't be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape.

My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. The recliner was upside down and about 8 feet or so from where it originally was. My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs I had no control over the drooling. Apparently I had crapped in my shorts, but was too numb to know for sure, and my sense of smell was gone. I saw a faint smoke cloud above my head, which I believe came from my hair. I'm still looking for my testicles and I'm offering a significant reward for their safe return! P.S... My wife can't stop laughing about my experience, loved the gift and now regularly threatens me with it!

12 Useful Tips To Secure Your PC

I found this article on Smashapps.org, with some useful tips to help you keep your information and your computer safer.

Here is a link to the original article: 12 Useful Tips To Secure Your PC In 2010

I have hi-lited the 12 points below, along with my own comments.

Use an "anti-virus software" and keep it updated - pretty self-explanatory. 

Keep your Firewall turned on - Firewall programs block common hacker threats. This is software that runs on your computer. Don’t have more than 1 running as they may conflict with each other. Also, a hardware firewall (an actual box that is between your local network and the Internet) will provide additional protection. Before I had a firewall/router, my software router was constantly logging blocked attempts (from the outside world). These virtually went away with the installation of the hardware firewall/router.

Use anti-Spyware software – I liked the Wikipedia Article about the effects of Spyware.

Use genuine OS and keep it updated - Do not use pirated OS package to run your PC as it won’t provide you with any updates which will inform your system against latest threats online. Moreover it's a crime to use a pirated software. Use Windows 7 and keep your OS regularly updated. You might look at the Linux operating system as an alternative to Windows, especially if the machine is mainly used for web-surfing. 

Handling email attachments - Be careful of any suspicious and unexpected emails and attachment. (EVEN if it appears to come from somebody that you know)  Hackers more often will use your inbox to get into your PC to hack information or plant a virus. Best way to handle these emails is by deleting these suspicious emails right away.

Strengthen your web browser - Microsoft's Internet Explorer is most commonly use browser, hence it is subjected to a large number of security threats than any other web browser. To cut down these threats online, start using another browser Firefox, Google Chrome or Opera straight away.

Keep your passwords safe - Do not use common passwords like 123456, jesus, password, love etc. instead use tough combination's which includes alphabets, numeric and symbols. Hacker use various techniques to crack simple passwords, one of the most common method is Dictionary attack, hacker tries different combination's and phrases using some software to decrypt your password. Use at least an eight digit password, don't share you password with anyone, change your passwords after some time. Also, do not use the same password on every website that you use. There are programs that can keep your passwords safe (I use KeePass which has many nice features, and can auto-generate new passwords for you)

Secure downloading from internet - Don't download anything just because it's free. If it's a free software then you must read reviews about it, user reviews will give you an idea if the software is worth downloading or not. (I like Download.com and Kim Komando’s site) Avoid downloading data from untrusted websites. Also don't use torrents to download files because torrent is one of the major sources of viruses.

Use a dynamic IP address - A computer's IP address (a numeric address which is assigned to your computer or network on the internet) is said to be dynamic when it changes time after time. Usually whenever you will restart your computer the IP of your PC is subjected to change. It's better to have a dynamic IP address because it's not easy for a hacker to track a computer because it's IP keeps changing after every session. As one of the commenters to this article pointed out, hackers may scan a range of IP addresses that are used by your Internet Provider, and a better solution may be a NAT (Network Address Translator), basically what the hardware firewall-routers do.

Protect yourself from wireless connections - Hackers sometimes setup a free and unprotected wifi connections in locations near apartments, offices, complexes, airports, hotels etc. These are often traps setup by hackers to get inside your PC and extract information out of it. If you use public wireless connection then try not to access your online bank accounts or payal account etc. If you have a wireless network at home or work, make sure it’s secure and not un-secured, or else somebody could sit outside your driveway with a laptop and get past your firewall/router, which is your first line of defense from the outside.

Never store all information in one place - Hacker are always looking for these kinds of notebook where they can find all your confidential and personal information such as your passwords, credit card details, bank account details, etc. Do not create any such online diary to store all your confidential information at one place, by creating it, you will only be helping a hacker.

Use of virtual keyboard - Whenever you login to your bank account, use virtual keyboard to enter your ID and password to reduce the risk of keystroke logging. It's not easy for a malware to monitor the display and mouse movements to gather the data entered via virtual keyboard. I will have to find out more info on this one. There are programs that will detect if your computer has some keylogging malware on it. See Kim Komando’s site for one.

I hope you find this information useful. Remember, Here is a link to the original article.

QR Code: ZXing Decoder Online

See one of those 2-dimentional barcodes (a square with a bunch of small squares inside). Like this one

 

This is called a QR-code. See the Wikipedia Article here. For more information.

Many smart cell phones have apps that can read these codes and take you to a website or provide contact information.

ZXing Decoder Online is provided by Zebra Crossing, and May decode a QR-code and tell you what information is in the code. I have decoded a few with this website, but several that I have tried did not work. Maybe there is a better one out there.

Truths For Mature Humans (Humor)

A friend forwarded this to me via email . I don't know the origin. These are posted on several blogs, but I've never seen them before.

Paraphrasing the Al Capone character in the movie The Untouchables:

Some things are funny, because they are true.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Truths For Mature Humans

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How the heck are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.

13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this - ever.

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.

20. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

21. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.

22. I would rather try to carry 10 over-loaded plastic bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

23. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.

24. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

25. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?

26. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

27. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

28. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?

29. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

30. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate bicyclists.

31. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

32. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet my last dollar everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!