One of my biggest pet peeves is the automatic flush toilet – you know, those toilets that have a little electronic sensor that tells the plumbing that you’re all done and it’s ok to go ahead and flush. Well, all too often you aren’t done when you hear that tell-tale swoosh, and things really go downhill from there.
 
The concept of automatically flushing toilets is a good one. In a perfect world it would ensure that a toilet never goes unflushed while allowing you to avoid touching a nasty handle in a public restroom. It’s in the implementation where the idea breaks down. Simply put, the sensors are easily tricked into thinking you’re done when you’re not, and fewer events in life are more disturbing than having a toilet flush on its own while you’re still sitting on it.
 
Now I can’t say that every model of every brand has a problem with pre-mature flushing because my experience with them is limited to the units you find in department store restrooms and the like, but I can say that virtually every automatic flush toilet I’ve ever used has left me feeling like my life was totally out of my control. I mean really, who wants to use a toilet that has a mind of its own?
 
Now, if they could just do something about those automatic faucets that turn the water off while you still have soap all over your hands!

This evening I did a little math and discovered that I pay approximately $108 for every ounce of colored ink that I use in my HP Deskjet 3910 printer. No, that’s not a typo, that precious ink really does cost a whopping $108 per ounce! You don’t believe me? Well, here’s the proof:
 
The 3910 uses the HP 22 colored ink cartridge which costs approximately $18 per unit. Each unit contains .17 ounces (that’s 17/100 of one ounce). Divide .17 into 1 and you discover that it takes just about 6 cartridges to hold one ounce of ink. Now, multiply $18 by 6 cartridges and you’ll see that the total amount I pay for a single ounce of colored ink is indeed $108!
 
Of course the other printer manufacturers are just as bad, and some are worse – I just happen to use the HP 3910 so I used it as an example. To add insult to injury, it’s often impossible to completely use up all of the ink that comes in a cartridge. Many inkjet cartridges these days have a little sensor in them that tells the printer that the cartridge is out of ink. The problem is, it often isn’t empty at all, even though the sensor says it is.
 
How do I know? Because I can shake some of my “empty” cartridges and feel and hear the residual ink sloshing around inside. Does the printer care? Of course not. If the sensor says the cartridge is empty, it’s empty – Period, end of story. Never mind all that ink sloshing around inside. I can almost hear my printer talking to me right now: “Just throw it out and buy a new cartridge if you ever want to print again, you cheapskate!”
 
Granted, there probably isn’t very much ink left when the sensor tells the printer that you need to spend another $18, but at $108 an ounce I should be able to use every single drop of that .17 ounces of ink.
 
I can remember a time when the cheapest inkjet printers you could buy cost around $300, but nowadays you can pick one up that is a heap better than those dinosaurs were for a measly 25 bucks at Wal-Mart. You see, a few years back the printer manufacturers realized that electronic items were constantly getting better and cheaper at the same time, a fact that would eventually make it pretty difficult for them to make any real money by selling the printers themselves.

The solution they came up with for this dilemma was both brilliant and devious: practically give the printers away and then sell the proprietary ink cartridges to match them for outrageous prices! And it has worked wonders for their collective bottom line.
 
So the next time you head over to your local computer supply store to pick up a new inkjet printer cartridge, bear in mind that you too are most likely spending $100+ for every ounce of ink that runs through your printer. Doesn’t it give you a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you’re helping the printer manufacturers resolve such a sticky problem with their business model?

Well, it has happened yet again. It seems like about once a month or so my work PC ends up catching a virus, a trojan horse, or some other piece of malware. Today it was a virus, and it was a particularly nasty one.

First of all, it corrupted one of the most important Windows XP system files which rendered the system unbootable. In fact, it wouldn’t even boot into Safe Mode. After much tweaking, I was finally able to get it to boot into the “Command Prompt” version of Safe Mode which allowed me to overwrite the corrupted file with a copy of the one from my laptop. That fixed the booting problem, but…

When the PC booted up into Windows, my anti-virus software real-time protection mode wouldn’t activate, ultimately leaving me with no choice but to uninstall the program and then re-install it. Talk about a hassle! At first the corrupted anti-virus installation refused to be uninstalled (thanks to the virus that caused the problem in the first place), but after manually removing a couple of files it finally agreed to ride off into the sunset.

I then downloaded a fresh installation package for the anti-virus program from the vendor’s website and began the install process, only to have it fail – not once, but three times! The fourth time was a charm however, and after the installation was complete I initiated a full scan of all drives. That scan is still in progress some 45 minutes later, so I’m actually writing this little diatribe on my laptop.

Hopefully the scan will find and remove the offending virus(s) and all will be well. If not, I suppose a hard drive format will be next on the agenda.

I know exactly how I got the virus – I got it the same way I always get them…

I receive anywhere from 300-400 emails per day, and most of them are spam or contain attachments that I have no interest in opening. When I hold down the CTRL key to select them all for deletion, every so often all of those “bad” emails will simply open up all on their own, allowing any attached viruses to install at their leisure. You gotta love Microsoft Windows!

Well, today one of those nefarious emails obviously contained a virus, and now I’m having to clean up one doozy of a mess. I guess that’s the price I have to pay for having my email address splattered all over the web on the websites that I maintain, but I really have no choice in the matter. For now at least, I’m at the mercy of the email harvesting robots and the good folks from Microsoft.

As I was taking Houdini for his morning walk, I couldn’t help but notice that the side of the road that borders our long field was littered with dozens of bottles, cans, fast-food containers and various other pieces of garbage. During the summertime I clean up the roadside at least once a week so that I can mow, but this fall and winter I have sort of let it slide. Big mistake!

Of course we drive down our road every day and see pieces of trash here and there, but until I actually took this rare daytime walk along the edge of the road I had no idea just how bad it really is.

I have always wondered why people feel compelled to litter. Is it an irresistable, childish urge to degrade the look of someone else’s property? Is it because they are too lazy to drive two miles to the landfill? Or perhaps they are simply too dumb to even realize that throwing garbage out their vehicle is a dumb thing to do? Your guess is as good as mine.

I really have no idea what motivates these people, but one thing is clear: They obviously take no pride in their neighborhood whatsoever or they would want to do everything they can to help keep it clean, not mess it up.

Oh well, I guess it’s time for me to shut up, grab a garbage bag, and get down to business. I can only imagine what our place will look like come spring if I don’t!

Every December, neighborhoods all across America come alive with Christmas displays both large and small, and far too many of them these days tend to lean a little too much towards the large side.

It seems like every street has two or more families that are bound and determined to “out-decorate” all of their neighbors, resulting in a perennial Christmas-style “arms race” which ends up turning their block into Al Gore’s worst environmental nightmare by the time December 25 rolls around.

Well, in my neck of the woods there is one house in particular that deserves the “gaudiest display of the year” award. Although their lawn is about the size of a tennis court, they have enough blow-up Santa’s, snowmen, and reindeer packed onto it to fill up a soccer field. Why, you can practically see the street lights dim when they turn on all those lights and blowers every evening!

Now this is just my opinion, but when it comes to Christmas decorations, less truly is more. I would much rather see a house and lawn tastefully decorated with a candle in each window and a simple manger scene, and perhaps even a tastefully done “Christmas Tractor” than a million lights strung all over the place to light up the bloated plastic figures that cover virtually every square inch of some lawns.

But this is America of course, and as the old saying goes, “To each his own!”. But I can’t help but wonder if our nation hasn’t become more interested in celebrating “the season” than the birth of our beloved Saviour.

If you’ve been using the Internet for more than 20 minutes, you have no doubt received a number of emails with subject lines similar to these:

“Learn how to make $10,000 a day, from home, while watching TV!”

“Your millionaire uncle Mombutu Rouse has passed away in Nigeria, and he has left you 6 million US dollars!”

“Photoshop CS3 (an $800 program) for only $89!”

Of course these “spam” emails don’t just trickle in, they arrive dozens, even hundreds at a time, making it almost impossible to wade through the mess in order to pick out the handful of legitimate emails that might be hiding somewhere in your inbox.

It simply amazes me that the people who send out this garbage are actually able to convince enough people to click on the links and fall for their scams to make it worth their while to engage in such a sleazy business, but apparently they do or they would stop doing it. Add in the fact that junk emails deliver a huge portion of all computer viruses to unsuspecting recipients and I’m sure you’ll agree that something has to be done about it, and quickly.

Spam has been the scourge of the Internet for years now, and in spite of Congress’ attempts to put a stop to it, the problem is constantly getting worse instead of better. While there is no realistic way to stop spam from flooding your email account, there are a few things you can do to keep many of them out of your inbox and prevent your computer from “catching” a virus:

1 – Install high-quality anti-virus and anti-spyware software programs and configure them to automatically update their threat databases every day. Personally, I use Webroot Spy Sweeper and the free version of AVG Antivirus.

2 – Create message rules in Windows Mail, Outlook Express, or whatever email client you happen to be using to divert the majority of your incoming spam directly to the Deleted Items folder. Click here for an excellent tutorial on creating rules in Outlook Express (while not exactly the same, the procedures are similar for most email clients).

3 – Turn off the “Preview Pane” in your email client. This is very easy to do, but you’ll need to follow the instructions provided in the “Help” section of your particular program.

4 – Never, ever open an attachment that you weren’t expecting to receive, even if the email’s “From” line indicates that it came from someone you know and trust. Email headers are extremely easy to fake, and one of the favorite tricks of spammers, scammers and other scumbags is to make dangerous emails appear to have come from someone you have corresponded with in the past.

If you think an attachment might actually be from the person indicated in the “From” line, simply pick up the phone or send them an email and verify it before opening the attachment. A hassle you say? Just wait until your system gets infected by an insidious virus or worm and you’ll quickly gain a whole new understanding of the term “hassle”!

5 – Did I mention keeping your anti-virus and anti-spyware threat databases up to date? Ok, just checking…

A while back, Cheria and I were checking out the latest cell phones at our local Sprint store, and I must say that the technology used in today’s phones is nothing short of amazing. There were phones with built-in PDA’s, phones that let you surf the Internet, phones that let you play games, take pictures, even tell you exactly where and when to turn next to stay on your route to Uncle Eddie’s house up in the Catskills!

That’s all well and good, but with all of those bells and whistles, there was one feature that still seemed to be unavailable after all these years…

What I would like to see is a cell phone with a battery that lasts longer than the lifespan of a fruit fly. Since we all started using these pocket-sized wonders a few years ago, my family alone has gone through several dozen handsets. It’s almost as if the engineers that design these things have been instructed to design them to last until about 90 days before your service contract expires!

I’m not kidding. It seems like every time we get within three or four months of the end of our contract (which would free us up to switch to a different provider), one of our phones starts acting up. It’s almost always the battery, which apparently “forgets” how to hold a charge, but sometimes the phone simply stops working correctly.

Well, whatever the cause of the phone’s demise, we go trudging back to the Sprint store, debit card in hand, to purchase a new phone and reluctantly sign a new contract. It seems like this is a vicious cycle that will never end. I look forward to the day when phones are no longer tethered to specific providers, and trust me, that day is coming eventually (and probably sooner rather than later). Maybe then we’ll be able to buy a phone at our local Wal-Mart for a price that isn’t a dozen times more than its actual worth, then take it to our provider of choice to have it activated on our “line”.

Now don’t get me wrong – I have no problem with phones that can do everything except take out the trash and mow the lawn, but I don’t want one of them. What I want is a cell phone that does precisely what a phone is supposed to do, and does it well. All I need is a simple phone that will allow me to talk to another person without a thousand distractions or the carpal tunnel syndrome that will eventually result from having to press a thousand tiny buttons in a certain sequence just to call and check on my elderly mother.

I suppose modern technology has left me behind, and that’s ok. But I know what I want, and I’m guessing that I’m not alone in wanting it. Some day, some enterprising cell phone manufacturer is going to step up and satisfy my desire for a line of simple phones that work as just well, and for almost as long as the old black rotary-dial telephones that used to sit in our living rooms so long ago. And that, my friend, will truly be progress.

One day last spring, our home took a direct lightning strike which destroyed approximately $4,000 worth of “stuff” and left us with quite a few headaches. Much to our chagrin, we discovered that one of the items that got fried was Cheria’s whiz-bang Gateway PC that we had bought just about a year earlier. Luckily, the hard drive still worked so we were able to save her precious pictures, but we were still faced with the unpleasant task of shopping for, purchasing, and setting up a new PC.

Well, off we went to do some computer shopping, and after checking prices at a few stores we bought another Gateway system at Office Depot. That beauty was packed with all the latest features and more, and we couldn’t wait to get it home and fire it up! As we removed the “pieces” from the box, we looked them over one by one, quite impressed with the apparent power and quality of Cheria’s new hardware. We just knew she was going to love this baby! Well…

It hasn’t quite worked out that way. The problem? Windows Vista – the latest version of the monstrous pile of code that Microsoft lovingly refers to as “Windows”. What do we not like about Vista? Allow me to list a few of the annoyances for you:

1 – It’s slowwwwww! Cheria’s new Gateway is the most powerful computer either of us has ever owned, but my 2 year old HP running Windows XP runs rings around it.

2 – It’s non-intuitive. Tasks that used to be a snap to complete in XP are now a headache thanks to the way Microsoft’s design team have moved, renamed and changed beyond recognition many of the functions and utilities that Windows users have become accustomed to using over the years.

3 – It’s incompatible. Several pieces of trusty old hardware and software that have served us well for years are now gathering dust because they don’t work with Vista. In fact, we can’t even install Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4.0 which was less than a year old when we purchased the new computer.

4 – It’s unstable. Yeah, I know that Vista is billed as “the most stable Windows version ever”, but, well…apparently it isn’t. Several times a week the new Gateway simply freezes up and sits there waiting for the old “Unplug me from the wall so I can die with dignity!” style of shutting down. At first I thought it was most likely a hardware problem, but after digging around for a few minutes online I discovered that the problem is both quite common and within Vista itself. Microsoft has promised Vista users a service pack to fix “problems with instability” among other things, but I understand that it has been delayed until sometime in 2008. Thanks a lot, Bill.

For the life of me I can’t understand why the guys up in Redmond can’t simply leave well-enough alone. Although it still had its problems, they had finally managed to tweak XP until it was relatively stable, and everyone knew how to get things done in a timely manner because they were familiar with the user interface. New features are always welcome, but what amounts to a brand new operating system isn’t – especially when it works about as well as a car with one dead spark plug.

It seems like every few days I hear a new ad on the radio or TV that goes something like this:

“Have you or someone you know ever used (insert name of drug here)? If so, you might be eligible to receive monetary compensation. A class-action lawsuit has been filed against (insert pharmaceutical company’s name here) for damages caused by the use of this medication. But you must act now to protect your rights! Call the law offices of (insert ambulance-chasing lawyer’s name here) today at 1-800-xxx-xxxx to have your name added to the list of plaintiffs.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly have no interest in seeing our pharmacy shelves flooded with dangerous or ineffective products, but the litigation that we’re seeing today is both excessive and immoral in my opinion. Drugs that have been helping millions of people for decades are now being blamed, rightly or wrongly, for causing problems stemming from side-effects that didn’t show up during the testing and approval phases. I believe it is both unfair and unwise for us Americans to go after the drug makers seeking potentially bankrupting judgments for these types of unforeseen problems.

If the Food and Drug Administration approves the sale and use of a drug after independent clinical trials prove it to be effective with relatively few and manageable side-effects, then the company that makes it should not be held liable in the future for any problems that arise years down the road. After all, they conduct medical research, not consultations with a crystal ball. Of course if there is wrong-doing that clearly leads to a drug being approved when it should not have been, that would be a different story, and I would say go after the guilty party(s) for everything they are worth.

You see, most everything in life involves a certain amount of risk. For example, there’s a very small, but very real risk that a child will have a severe reaction and die the first time he or she eats a bag of peanuts, but we don’t let that acceptable risk stop us from letting them try peanuts. And the same holds true for medications.

Our bodies all react a little differently to drugs, and any drug on the market today has probably caused at least a few deaths on occasion, and that includes the old stand-by aspirin. But by and large, the good that most drugs do usually far outweighs the small amount of risk involved in using them. Flu shots kill a small percentage of the people that receive them every year, but you’ll find me at the head of the line to get one come fall.

If we’re wise, we’ll put a stop to all of these witch hunts that the trial lawyers are getting rich from before the drug makers either go out of business altogether or stop researching and making new drugs. Would you like to see a cure for cancer, diabetes or Alzheimer’s some day? How about an effective vaccine for the HIV virus? Yeah, me too. But don’t count on seeing them any time soon if the pharmaceutical companies decide that the only way to remain in business is to only manufacture and distribute drugs that have long and safe track records. My dad used to use the term “cutting off your nose to spite your face”, and it seems quite appropriate here.

I believe it’s time for Congress to enact legislation that provides pharmaceutical companies with immunity from lawsuits over the manufacture and distribution of drugs that cause side effects that don’t show up until after the drug has been tested and approved by the FDA (assuming there was no wrong-doing during the testing and approval process). In my opinion, anything less is simply immoral, and actually quite dangerous.

Disclaimer: This article simply states an opinion – mine. I don’t claim to be a medical expert, and I have no ties, financial or otherwise, to any pharmaceutical company other than seeing my life and the lives of many of the people I love change for the better after going on various beneficial medications.

Well, here we are heading into November which means the first Presidential Primary elections will be coming up in just a few short months. Of course that means we should all be preparing for the upcoming bombardment of negative campaign ads, repeated ad nauseum, over and over and over again, until we all just want to turn off our radios and TV sets and stay in bed all day.

Modern presidential politics is largely a money game, the outcome of which is often determined by which candidate is able to raise the most loot to spend on a nationwide slash and burn ad campaign. The days when candidates would get their message across while speaking “on the stump” are long gone. Those up-close and personal ”get to know me” events still take place, but their purpose nowadays is for creating soundbites for the news outlets to repeat ad nauseum, over and over and over again in the hopes that we’ll eventually start visualizing their opponent(s) as a little red guy(s) with horns and a pitchfork.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against campaign ads and media coverage of the electioneering in general. I think it’s important for those who choose to help decide who our next leader will be to learn about the candidates and what each of them brings to the table in regards to experience, intelligence, political views and moral character. But it shouldn’t take a constant barrage of negative ads aimed at ones opponent(s) to get that message across. But the sad fact is negative campaigning works, and it works extremely well.

As an electorate, we Americans by and large no longer vote for the person that we perceive to be the best, most qualified candidate who also happens to share our views. Instead, we now vote for the man or woman who appears to have the shortest horns and the smallest pitchfork.

The fact of the matter is, with few exceptions the candidates on both sides are decent people who want nothing more than to have the opportunity to do what they feel is best for the country while serving as its elected leader. Their visions for what is best for America might differ quite a bit from our own, but for the most part they’re still decent folks with good intentions. Unfortunately, by the time election day rolls around all of the negative ads have us believing that we have to choose between Hitler and Stalin, and that just isn’t so. And it doesn’t have to be that way…

When it comes to helping select the next President of the United States, we should all be able to rise above having to vote for the “lesser of two evils”. I hope that some day we’ll once again be able to feel good about exercising our constitutional right to pull that precious lever and help make the candidate of our choice the leader of the free world. I’m growing quite weary of stepping out of the voting booth with a bad taste in my mouth.