I’ve owned a PC since 1993 and today is the second time ever in those 16 years that I’ve found myself at the mercy of a virus. The last virus I had was the worm that went around with a IE6 update. It wasn’t too long after that that I abandoned Internet Explorer as my primary browser and development tool.

Considering that I make my living with a computer, any downtime is bad time. While I wouldn’t say it’s rare for me to download and install programs from the internet, I would say that on those occasions I take every precaution possible to make sure that it’s a safe file. Namely, I know the site that I’m downloading from, or the site is highly recommended by other knowledgeable web professionals. If I’m not sure, I don’t download.

Before I continue with this post…If you happened to stumble upon this post after doing a search for help in removing Antivirus System Pro, just hop on over to BleepingComputer.com for detailed instructions on manually removing this nastly little virus. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in October I’d made a post that Craigslist has become a waste for me to look for a regular job. However, it does still provide a reasonable venue for advertising services. Well, sort of.

Craigslist has finally started cracking down on spammers and over-posters, meaning that one used to be able to post an ad on Monday at 8am, make another post at noon, and then maybe another post at 5pm, and continue the same process every day of the week. Posters do that to keep their ads on top of the list.

If you’re like me, you don’t like to scroll and then heaven forbid you should have to click a “Next” button! I can’t stand it! Unfortunately, the ad that I posted on Thursday is now on a second page. Not likely it’s going to be found down there. Craigslist’s crackdown now makes it virtually impossible to make multiple posts to the same category, or more than 3 posts on your account at all. Furthermore, when registering your account, you now have to verify that you’re a real person and that you’re not creating multiple accounts by verifying either via telephone or text on your cell. Once that phone number is in the system, you cannot activate more than one account with that phone number.     Read the rest of this entry »

I have to laugh at myself sometimes. I used to think my mom was silly for complaining about how many commercials were shown during a typical tv show. She used to make us watch PBS all the time because there were no commercials. During their peak “giving” seasons, she would take the time that PBS celebs would take to beg for donations to keep the programming alive to clean up the house, go to the bathroom, make something to eat – whatever. That was 30 years ago. Since I have some Alfred Hitchcock in my Hulu queue, I can honestly say that a 30-minute program in 1957 had an average of 5 minutes worth of commercials. Today, there are closer to 9 minutes worth of commercials. Imagine what she could have done with all that time! An average 60-minute long show has about 17 minutes worth of commercials. Read the rest of this entry »