IT Legends - Tech in Connecticut

I decided to post up some training videos for questions people ask me, or things that I answer on some support forums I’m a part of, to make my life and hopefully other people’s lives easier.  The first one I did was on how to change your default save type in Word 2007 so that the rest of the world can open your attachments.  The video loops after you click OK after choosing the default save type.  I recommend Word 97-2003 or Rich Text Format.

OK, so I noticed one of the most popular tags on this site was “rants”. I’m really not that negative a guy, though granted I did start this site to start ranting about a recent Dell experience. So I thought, well hey there are a lot of products I use that I also really like! Why not mention a couple here.

I just recently bought a TomTom Go 720. It’s pretty neat. Has handsfree with my phone, multiple methods of getting audio to me (via internal speaker, line-out, wired headset 2.5mm cell style, and FM transmitter), and an expansion slot for SD cards that I can put my Security Now podcasts on. The player is a lot better than the Windows Mobile player on my phone, so that makes me happy. It also has voice-activated commands! Yeah, I can talk to my car now. “Computer… navigate to…” almost like Star Trek. (oh god, I’m such a dork)

There is a feature that doesn’t work, but its because of my phone and not the TomTom. It will use the data plan on a PDA phone to update things like traffic. I’m considering buying a phone on the Bluetooth compatability list (scroll down and you’ll see a link for the compatibility list), but none of the PDA phones I’d be interested in do anything more than my current phone - which is just for handsfree.

Buy your own! I bought mine “recertified” - cheaper and works just fine for me.

TomTom GO 720 4.3″ Automotive GPS Navigation TomTom GO 720 4.3″ Automotive GPS Navigation

I’ve used a few mobile phone platforms over the years. My first was a hearty Motorola StarTac - remember those things? haha. Most recently I’ve used an HTC phone made for Verizon - the XV6800 with Windows Mobile 6. I was pretty excited, let myself buy into the hype. My Treo 650 (which for the most part I was enjoying) was broken with a shattered screen so I went out and bought the HTC. Read the rest of this entry »

So I have been using a coffee press at the office because I wanted some flavored coffee (cinnamon from dunkin’ donuts) and don’t want to weird anyone out with my peculiar taste. I think my obsession with cinnamon probably extends back to when I first saw Dune as a child. The closest thing in the house to the spice was cinnamon! mmmm!

Actually, that’s not the topic of the post. I was curious about what happens to coffee grounds when you flush them down the toilet. I know you’re not supposed to put them down the drain or even in the disposal unit in your sink (I’m guilty) but at the office I’ve been flushing the grounds left over from my press. So with a little google-fu, I ended up finding this very misconceived article on “To Flush or Not To Flush“. It starts off very well with some valid points about poisoning aquatic life with chemicals down the toilet. It makes sense. However, their proposed solutions aren’t so great:

1. They mention that landfills are the best place to put chemicals and medical waste products because of the plastic liners in all modern landfills. This seemed dubious to me. First I doubt that all landfills actually have this geomembrane (that’s what they call the plastic liners). Secondly, while plastics can be pretty amazing materials, they aren’t immune or inert. This means that plastics will eventually break down, they can be pierced by heavy machinery, they can leak. A little more google-fu shows some details on this from a trash presentation at a university.
2. The one that really gets me is:
   

   Placing kitty litter in empty milk container and pour liquid cleaners, or liquid medicines into it that way it will be absorbed, with no worry of contaminating the environment.

   Sounds good from the outside, but think about this a little more. Kitty litter? Have you ever smelled well-used kitty litter? Smells like kitty pee, doesn’t it? Have you ever picked it up with your bare hands?  No, because its wet with kitty pee and who knows what else!?  This is a solution for no worry of contaminating the environment?

So what has me so riled up?  Its misconceptions like these that lead to lazy environmentalism. Lazy work can often get things really messed up, maybe not at first glance, but over time I’ve come to know that lazy work just fails. What’s the point of giving someone a false sense of saving the environment?  If it ends up in the landfill, and the landfill leaks into the water tables, then the aquatic environment is still threatened.  These are ultimately empty measures.

(note about coffee presses: I like the idea of using a press because I use less materials (no coffee filters) and don’t waste coffee (only 1 cup at a time) or water. It also makes a pretty nice cup of coffee. The water cooler also has hot water in it in the office, and I’d hate to see all that energy expended if noone used it.)

Well, it’s always been my advice to change your router’s password.  Even at your home network.  You might be wondering why?  No one wants to take over your network, right?  Well, this article points out how a malicious variant of a popular and wide-spread virus has found a way to hijack your router.  What does this mean to you?  It means they can redirect all of your traffic if they chose to.  As in, say…  redirect paypal.com to thei own paypal lookalike and get your password.  Except you won’t be able to look in your browser’s address bar to see if you’re actually at paypal.com to detect it - because this hack makes your computer think it is actually at paypal.com.   In any event, do whatever you can to change your router’s default password.  I don’t know why the router manufacturers don’t force you to set a password after each time you set up - they thought they were safe I guess.