Must Have Maintainance

I got a lot of great feedback from the post about my top 5 favorite programs, and I have even noticed a bunch of hits coming from google.  I figured I would continue the series with my top 5 favorite maintainance programs.

1. Antivirus – Avast and AVG (Tie)

Its very hard to pick between these two programs.  I have used a whole mess of antivirus programs including Nortons, McAfee, Panda, as well as these two.  On my PC I am using Avast! mainly because when I first started beta testing Vista, Avast! was the only antivirus available that supported the 64bit operating system.  AVG was my choice when I used Windows XP and still is my choice on my laptop which is running XP Home edition.  I was quickly turned on to these programs when, after having Nortons for years, installing these and finding tha norton’s missed viruses.  Also both use very low resources, and have no bloatware.  Daily updates are also an awesome feature.

AVG Antivirus

 

2. CCleaner (aka “Crap Cleaner”)

Lets face it, the more your browse the internet, themore you use the computer, the more garbage is collected.  The guys over at Piriform developed a wonderful, small program that at the click of the button will rid your PC of unwanted temporary files, clean out any downloaded files and cookies, and clear out all search forms.  I can guaruntee that the first time you run this program you will free up more than 100MB of space and will see better performance out of your PC.  This program is a staple on any PC that I run or maintain.

Piriform CCleaner

 

3. Spybot Search & Destroy

I am sure by now everyone has used, heard of, or even seen read about Spybot.  Being one of the best free spyware cleaners around, it is a must to have this on your system, especially if you are accessing the internet on a daily basis.  Spybot performs an extensive scan of your PC lettng you know of any and all cases of spyware and allowing you to remove them at the click of a button. Immunization adds protection to your internet browsers to prevent any future spyware attacks to enter your PC. 

Spybot

 

4. O&O Defrag

I have been in the market for a really nice set of defragmentation software, and finally found the winner here with O&O Defrag.  This program provides various different defragmentation options, auto defrag, and scheduled defragmetation.  O&O also provides various different types of defragmentation that can benefit your Hard Disks, your HDD Indexes (also known as MFT), as well as analyze your disks to let you know exactly what is causing heavy fragmentation.  Albiet defrags take a few hours even on my Raid0 Raptor drives, it is very extensive, and very powerful.  Although this program is not free, if you have some spare change, I suggest you pick this up for optimum system health

O&O Disk Defrag

 

5.  Wise Registry Cleaner

Although CCleaner provides a registry cleaner, I personally never found it to be powerful enough for the most demanding computers.  Wise Registry Cleaner is a program I came across within the last year.  Its a free, fast, and powerful registry cleaner.  Wise allows you to scan your computers registry for errors, make a backup, and warns you which entries are safe to fix, and which are not.  At the click of a button you can fix all entries that are safe to fix leaving behind questionable entries until further updates.  For a free program, this program is again, another staple on PC’s that I own.

Wise Registry Cleaner

Bubble Wrapped For Safety

Ok, so waking up today, I was scared of rolling out of bed…hey, with the way things have been going I would expect a down syndrome bear to jump up from underneath my bed and shoe me in the tushy.  But low and behold, I made it out of bed safely, showered, and didn’t even drop the soap….so far so good.

Off to making some breakfast!  Thinking twice about weather I should break out the fire extinguisher prior to toasting some bread, I figured “hey, ill press my luck today”, turned the toaster on, and walked away, checking behind me a couple times to ensure that things were going as planned.  Its crazy, how your whole outlook on the day changes when things start going wrong.

Did I do something wrong?  *Checks for a mishapen halo on head*

All in all today went pretty well, nothing out of the ordinary.  My collegues at work joked around, wondering if a “third” incident had occurred.  Luckily, my car was safe and sound this time around; Then again, it could be because I was driving like a granny, both hands on the wheel, staring at the road in front of me, checking for nails.

Hey now you dont have to be cautious, you have a warranty on the new tires

…Reassures one of the people I work with, as if I spent 800 dollars so that I could wake up the next day, drive like a one legged ape, and walk away thinking “oh good, if i kill a small child, at least my tires are covered”.  But hey, we have to have a positive outlook, and you figure that things can only get better after this *knocks on wood, really hard*.  Tomorrow I have my meeting that I had to reschedule.  Hopefully all will go well and things should start smooth sailing; same procedure, the CSC office until 1, then over to Pratt.

It was wierd, sitting at work today.  During some downtime you cant help but to evaluate the things that have been going on.  My dad actually called me a few times, making sure that all is well.  Makes you realize how important your family is, and that when you are away from them how much you miss them.  It would have probably been a different feeling, if instead of being at work, I got the flat tire outside of my house, being able to run inside, and be consoled by my parents.  But standing in a parking lot, realizing that there is no “mom and dad” to walk home to.  Granted they are a phone call away, but I think that makes it worse, hearing them try to console you over the phone, realizing that you are separated.  My dad keeps offering to pay for my tires, but I am not going to let him, they have helped me so much throughout the years, its time for me to take responsibility and handle situations as they come to me.  Maybe thats more of the “macho” mentality, but I guess thats another chapter in the book of “growing older”.

One of my favorite quotes of all time, from the wise Bruce Lee:

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

Until tomorrow….

Wizzzzzz……

Yup, thats the sound of me just pissing money away.  Of course, you would think that after a near violent encounter last nite things would start going on the up and up, NOPE!  Today, and of course its the beginning of the week, I had a meeting scheduled for 1pm.  Things were going good, I was on my way to getting some work done, and then working up some excitement to head to this meeting, and to see my desk over at my new office.  So i grab all my crapo-la, and head out the door.

Now here is the situation, currently at the CSC building, parking is only assigned to associates that do most of their work there, but in my case, I will be actually working over at Pratt and Whitney, so, because things never really go your way, I am plagued by having to park down the street, and walking about 3-5 minutes in nice hot temperatures to the front door of the office.  So, on my way I go towards my parking spot, at 1pm, in 100 degree weather

Its so damn hot, I cant wait to get in the car, run the AC and drive to Pratt

Dont worry, I am not going to tell you my car was stolen (of course I wouldn’t put it past myself), but, at first glance, everything was fine and dandy.  I get in the car, turn it on, and immediatly get out because of how hot it was on the inside.  The AC blasting did justice after a while, and expelled all the hot air, so finally, i was all nice and snug in the car, getting an ice cold blast of air into my face.

BROOM BRROOMMMM, plop plop plop plop HARDSTEERTOTHERIGHT

Oh boy, this chain of events was all too familiar, even though my last encounter was back in 2004….I had a flat tire.  Grrrreeaaaaaattttt.  I start poking at the tire, thinking some ignorant asshold could possibly have just let the air out, which cmon, I’m in hartford, it could happen.  But nope, to my demise, i find a cute, shiny screw, flush against the tire.  Now at first, you are filled with rage that you dont really know who to get mad at.  So i stand up, flip off the tire, flip off the car, and then flip off the road….im sure one of those is at fault.

So of course, time to walk back from the parking lot, call the person I was meeting with, and cancel.  Luckily the GF wasn’t working at the time, so she gladly came to pick me up, and off I went back down the street to change my tire.  I have AAA, but lets face it, they would have taken about an hour to get there, made me stand there while they put on a spare, and then drove away, been there, done that, no thanks.  So I start jacking up the car

You son of a ***** I hate you you piece of ***** You’re lucky i dont $@#(&*$@&(@

Swearing because the rim seemed to be glued on the damn axel, I stood up, gave it a nice hard boot, and off it fell.  On goes that stupid looking donut, with markings printed all over it “DO NOT DRIVE FASTER THAN 40 MPH”.  It looks as if my car was plagued with cancer, 3 normal wheels and one shriveled up piece of garbage.

Eventually, I had to pay a cute sum of $802.00.  Ah yes, not only did I have to change 1 tire, but all 4.  Why?  Because these days, even when you take great care of your car, there are still some things that come jack you in the ass.  Turns out that the tires were wearing out their age (mind you the car is 6 yrs old, with only 23k miles on it, do the math, thats only about 4k miles a year, some people rank up 15k miles a year on average).

So yea, $802 out the window it goes, if anyone is around, and grabs some of it, please, feel free to walk it down to the bowels of hell where I will be sitting and waiting.

And It All Falls Down!

Ok, so in one hour my whole life just turned upside down, then rightside up as if someone was shaking the earth from a little space age snow globe.  Ok ok, so maybe thats just a tad dramatic, but seriously.  At around 10pm, I come in my room and realize that my screen is black.

Click…….Click…….CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKDAMNITCLICK

…Awesome, my computer is frozen.  So, like any other computer literate human being, I go ahead and shut down the computer (couldn’t decide whether to do so polietly with the power button, angrily by pulling it out of the socket, or remorsefully by giving it a good jab…..i took the polite rout this time).  Pressing the power button again, I was looking forward to writing blog number 2 while sipping a cup of coffee, what has now become a nightly routine.  So I sit, and wait,….and wait…..and wait…..”oh awesome, im staring at a blank screen”

Blah, luckily I have enough computer knowledge to get this back up and running (thank god for Windows System Restore), but to do so, I need my handy dandy………thumbdrive!  So I go to its usual spot, on my bookshelf, but (of course) its not there.  So I start digging, and digging, and searching…and after about 30 minutes, I was ready to pull out the shotgun (the one in my head, pew pew).  Of course, my thesis, and all of my grad work is sitting on that wonderful, easily misplaced item.  So now I start pacing the room, looking at every place I could possibly think of (except the toilet tank, that would be a funny place for it to be).

Well, I might as well call Hill and say “hey so is there any way for me to still get my masters?”

Of course I would find it an hour later, in the most random damn spot on earth (in a gym bag at the top of my closet).  Seriously, if I could go back in time and watch myself put it in that bag, I would slam myself in the chest with a rubber mallet (bet that would teach me).

Luckily, after having thoughts of self mutilation due to my own stupidity (that would be fun to explain to people), I managed to get the PC back up and running.

Moral of this story?  If you have an important thumb drive, especially with something that would make or break your graduation, hang it on the wall and have a string run from it to a cleverly designed knife catapult.  That would sure make you think twice about placing it in a stupid place.

New Blog, New Beginning

Well,  I have been really wanting to do some blogging recently, but have never had the will to sign into my myspace account, blog, and then add it to my page.  After reading some reviews, I cam across this domain.  Looks pretty cool, lots of neat stuff to do.  I hope all of my readers from my myspace blogs follow me, should be a fun adventure.  Either way, we will see how it goes.

In general, things are going pretty good!  I graduated from Hartford, still need to defend my thesis, but once I do that, that wonderful ticket to free-from-school-freedom should be in my hands (aka my Masters Degree).  All in all, the road to the “real world” has been filled with not only fun, but learning.

I recently got a job at the Computer Sciences Corporation here in East Hartford.  Its a giant company with offices in basically every state.  Their main common use is outsourced IT for big companies, but I am on the higher end, the engineering/application development side.  Its been a lot of fun so far; I am basically doing what I love, and loving what I do (as if i couldn’t get any corny-er).  Pulling the 9-5 every day is a bit rough, but I am getting used to it.

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast

I live in Hartford now, actually, right in downtown.  Patrick, one of my college buddies, and I decided to live in style over at the Hartford21.  Rent is decent, the ameneties are spectacular.  Oh what fun all the bills are, but hey, I guess thats part of living, and something I will have to get used to very fast.  But hey, its great having income (money baby!).

I know I dont have you on the edge of your seats yet, but I am just breaking mine in before story time really kicks into gear.  Stay tuned.