Me: C’mon, let’s go.
Hubby: Huh?
Me: Let’s go!
Hubby: Where? I just got home.
Me: Downtown. You need to change your shirt.
Hubby: What? Why? I don’t wanna go anywhere.
Me: Yes you do. Go change.
Hubby: (rolls eyes) No I don’t.
Me: Yes you do!
Hubby: Why do I want to go somewhere? (gets off couch to go change)
Me: Because I don’t want to go by myself.
Hubby: Hrrrrmph! (goes to change shirt)
We get in the truck and head downtown.
Hubby: Any place in particular you want to go ‘downtown?’
Me: 101A N. Patterson St. That particular enough for you?
Hubby: Oooooo kaaaaaaay. Why are we going all the way down there?
Me: There’s a new business that openned there that I want to check out.
Hubby: Oh, great. (NOT enthused at this point)
Me: You’ll like it.
Hubby: (looks at me sideways)
Me: You can park any where in here. It’s not far to walk.
We pull over and walk to the new business.
Hubby: What’s The Golden Leaf? (name of the business)
Me: Let’s go in. You’ll see.
Hubby: And I’ll like it. Right.
We got inside and he stopped in his tracks. The new establishment is a cigar, tobacco and pipe shop, where you can actually sit and smoke. The city has an ordinance that you can’t smoke in any public place, so this is really a find, since my hubby smokes. I want him to quit, but he enjoys smoking and doesn’t want to. So, I figure since you don’t inhale pipe or cigar smoke, maybe we can work out a compromise. He gets all the flavor, but cuts the health risks. He really liked the place and the proprietor, so we will definately go back. Wish me luck.
Wet Investments
So the city I live in had a water treatment facility failure. For most of Saturday, we had no water service. So not knowing how long the system would be down, I went to get water for toilets, drinking, dishes, sink baths, etc. I got up late and and found out the water had been out for about 12 hrs. Figuring the grocery stores, Sams, and Walmart would be sold out, I headed to Lowe’s. For drinking water you say? I say yes. I bought 30 gallons in six 5 gallon bottles, the kind you pick up and put on the dispensers. $85 down, but I had enough to last us the weekend. The city issued a boil water mandate. Later that evening the service came back on. And yeah the water was supposed to be discolored and smell of sulfur. We have a whole house filter and water softener system. I bypassed it and ran the spigot closest to the intake from the city for about 30 minutes. That got rid of all the debris in the line. Then I turned the water to the house back on. Come to find out that the filter I use is rated for crytosporidium. Soooooo. I have about 25 gallons of bottled water, and a filter system doing exactly what I bought it for. And on top of that, a reverse osmosis system for cooking. Water, water everywhere and all of it to drink… but I’m not thirsty.
I have met you, EFS, and I have PWNED!!
I did it. I found a way to recover files encrypted by Windows XP encryption after a reinstall of the OS, and no encryption keys. Out of ignorance, I encrypted some directories that I wanted to keep private, but didn’t know about the export key thing. Then I got hit hard by a viral infection. The amount of time to remove it versus the time it would take to reinstall was ridiculous. So there went my file access, even though the username and password was the same. After a year of research and frustration, I have my files back. I won’t go into detail about how Windows goes about encrypting the files, but let it suffice to say that through a series of fortunate accidents, I succeeded. But there are a few catches. Catch #1: Physical access. You must have the drive in hand. If you don’t have physical access, you can pretty much forget it. Catch #2: You must buy software. I used a deleted file detector and was able to recover all of my files by directory. Catch #3: You cannot have used any scrubber software. What that means, is if you used a secure deletion program, this method won’t work. For the most part, if you are tech-savvy enough to be using one of these programs, chances are, you are tech-savvy enough to know better than to encrypt without exporting the keys to begin with, if you even bother to use
Windows encryption rather than a more secure option. If you meet these criteria, plug the drive in as a slave, power up, run the deleted file recovery program, and enjoy your files. A word of caution though – this is a VERY time consuming process. so you may want to do this on a spare pc. Also, sorting through all the files that you have deleted on the disk… Got a couple of days off? It took me a week of evenings after work and one solid – 16 hrs per day solid – weekend to finish. But I got my files back. 🙂 I should also note that you should never ever try to save the recovered files to the same drive you are recovering from. You may actually overwrite what you want back. Best bet? Use a spare drive or go get a second one. Happy filing! :woo:
Just in case you can’t find it anywhere else…
After 2 hours of searching I, finaly found a list of the first 30 companies to receive waivers exempting them for one year from the President’s healthcare legislation. The numbers in () are the number of employees affected.
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Fowler Packing Co. (39)
Baptist Retirement (127)
BCS Insurance (115,000)
Local 17 Hospitality Benefit Fund (881)
Greater Metropolitan Hotel (1200)
UFT Welfare Fund (351,000)
Aegis (162)
Maritime Association (500)
Aetna (209,423)
UABT (17,347)
Reliance Standard (varies)
QK/DRD (Denny’s) (65)
Guy C. Lee Mfg. (312)
I.U.P.A.T (875)
HealthPort (608)
Jack in the Box (1,130)
Allflex (34)
Transport Workers (107)
Tri-Pak (26)
Cryogenic (19)
Metro Paving Fund (550)
Health Connector (3,544)
Health and Welfare Benefit System (41)
PS-ILA (8)
PMPS-ILA (15)
Maverick County (1)
Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc. (326)
GS-ILA (298)
Allied (127)
CIGNA (265,000)
This is reposted from this link. Thanks to CBS for informing us.
An Oldskool Guide to Netiquette
I’m a geek. An old-school geek. I started out on a Commodore 64 and worked my way up to what my hobby is today – hardware and network administration. I don’t do it professionally. I don’t want to destroy my childhood memories of fun and games with stress and pressure. Along the way I learned quite a bit. Through all the tweaking and posting and calling and chatting, I learned a great deal. Here are some of the biggest lessons, often learned the hard way.
- 1. Always check your cables
2. Always proof your entries – preferably before you hit enter. (for those of us who remember entering machine language via hexadecimal code on an alpha-numeric keypad)
3. Double check the phone number you dialed for that BBS. Mrs. Johnson is tired of tones in her ear – they mess with her hearing aid.
4. Be clear about the subject you are posting about, and to whom you are speaking. Two ladies talking about where they like to keep their purses entangling with a guy asking about interesting locations can be quite messy.
5. NO FLAMING. This is a big one. You’ll often see it on today’s version of BBS systems, the open forum. Basically, this means if you can’t say anything nice, keep your hands away from the keyboard. The internet is forever, those posts don’t go away.
6. There are no girls on the net. While we all know that this is not literally true, it does make a very valid point. No one can see you. No one can know anything about you unless you tell them. We can’t see your face as you speak. You have no gender, no age, no race.
7. This is more of a corollary to the previous two – Your facial expression as you post has nothing to do with how your words will be read. NO ONE CAN SEE YOU!!! No matter how many smileys or emoticons you use, if what you say is ugly, then it’s ugly and no amount of 🙂 (jk) 😛 is going to fix it. If you just have to say it, do it in a private -PRIVATE- message. There is no penalty for being polite. You can’t be over polite on the net. And I promise you, the rest of the users on the forum, message board, etc. will appreciate your discretion. I’ve seen many online communities torn apart and fade away because of flame wars. No one wants to be involved in that.
8. Good or bad, if you post about someone else, make sure you wouldn’t mind them reading it. There is no such thing as a private post. If banks and schools can’t secure vital consumer information, what makes you think a social networking site can? Or would even try for that matter? It will get back to them, whether through a mutual friend, security failure or a deliberate hack, they will probably read it at some point. Make sure that you have said it to them directly first so that there are no unpleasant impressions of you left behind. Don’t be like the person that breaks up with someone via email. No one respects cowardice.
9. Don’t be vulgar. There are places for that and general topics and public networking sites are not it. Just because you are anonymous does not mean that you can’t be tracked via IP. Trust me, I’ve done it. If you want to post in an adult community, there are plenty out there. So if you post is Not Safe For Work (NSFW) label it so you don’t get folks in trouble or parents can catch it before the kids see it.
10. BE POLITE This is perhaps the best of them all. As I said, there is no penalty for being too polite. If there is even a remote chance that you might be misunderstood, clarify and clarify again. I’ve moderated in a number of forums and I can’t stress this enough. The way things are worded, phrased, and even punctuated goes a long way in setting the tone of a text post. Remember that no one can hear your voice inflection or see your facial expression. What was meant as innocuous teasing can seem cruel to someone who doesn’t know your posting style or is new to the community.
The internet is a place of freedom and self expression of a level that has never been seen before in the history of man. Don’t spoil it for yourself and others by assuming that everyone else is just like you. It’s very unlikely that someone will read anything the way you meant it to be read. If you see something you don’t like, give the author the benefit of the doubt – it’s probably not directed at you and not meant to be offensive. Not only that, chances are, it probably isn’t true. The anonymity of the net offers a place for people to exercise their alter egos. If you met them in real life, you’d never know it. Never take anything on the net too seriously, unless there is life threatening banter or talk of suicide. It’s for fun, let’s keep it that way.