Spam… a word that used to simply bring up images of cheap meat in a can, which had an (undeserved) reputation for being lousy meat substitute for the poor. For the record I happen to like Spam (the meat in a can… not the other one, which we will get too shortly) AND potted meat (another secret treasure in a can with an undeserved bad rep). In fact, whist figuring out what to write about today, I also decided we are having spam burgers (Yes, you read that correctly) for dinner tonight. That pretty much wraps up the love side of spam… though I may drone on a bit more about spam burgers before I wrap things up today… and then I may not! Anyway, I digressed. Now the word spam brings up images of something far worse than the tasty meat in a can…
The real meat (pardon the pun) today is spam in the inbox. A major pain in the backside for productivity. It’s gotten to the point where many dread turning on the computer at work because we know that there are going to hundreds of spam messages (junk messages designed to separate you from your money and/or time for those new to the scene) that need to be deleted before the actual work begins. In today’s economy who can afford to sink money into spam filters that, much like their anti-virus cousins, charge you for annual updates? Okay.. for work, your boss should probably provide it for you, but that doesn’t help you at home. While I suppose I have to admit that the expensive programs do a more reliable job, but I don’t like to be forced to pay for software to keep away email I didn’t request in the first place.
I do need to digress again for just a moment here though. Many of you do request your spam. You know those cute chain letters, forward this to everyone you know so you can get rich letters, and funny joke emails that you send to all your friends? The spammers love those. In addition to farming your email address from the messages, they can rest assured that all those addresses you forwarded that message to are also legitimate email addresses that they can add to their mailing lists. It annoys the crap out of me every time one of those damn things pass my mailbox. It’s always good not to use your main email address on websites either. Many of them will let your email address wind up on spam lists. I recommend setting up an address that is only used for online stuff, that you only need to check when you sign up for something that requires you to go to your email address and confirm that you set up the account to begin with. Use that account only when you have to confirm something, I recommend G-mail for that since it’s free, and has tons of space.
Now… back to the “meat” of today’s rant (pun intended… again). There are free alternatives out there for those of you who don’t mind a little extra work (way less than deleting tons of spam everyday). MailWasher Free is one of the top ones out there. It’s fairly easy to use, is compatable with most email. Another freebee is SpamBayes. SpamBayes has an Outlook plug-in you can download, or a standalone program. Both are reported to work rather well, though might require just a little more brainpower to use. A third free option is POPFile. POPFile probably requires more work on your part, than the others as it is a Mail Filter rather than a spam filter, but it learns from you. It’s a bit less likely to identify non-spam as spam becuase it learns based on the commands you give it to classify mail. It will also pretty much sort all your mail for you, again, based on your commands. If you spend as much time sorting your messages into special folders as you do deleting spam, this one might be the option for you.
On a side note, keep in mind, that like anti-virus software, you should only run one anti-spam program on your computer as multiple programs will likely conflict, and tie up precious system resources.
You know it’s fall when the Pumpkin Festival starts…. 10/1 thru 10/4 this year!
Oh… Yeah… Spamburgers…. see, even the pretty people like Spamburgers…. Now this is how to enjoy Spam – At the Waikiki Spam Jam! (yep – There is a jamboree dedicated to that most perfect of canned meats, and all the things you can do with it)
Been pretty busy. Not a lot of time to surf the net for new goodies to add. Did find a couple of interesting things though, not because I went looking, so much as other listeners told me about them. Before that though, it occurs to me that I want to see if I can embed video in here….
TESTING… TESTING…
Yeah… I still think Kellie is awesome…. Can’t we till start actually start playing this one. You can make that happen sooner by calling the All Request Round-up and bugging Jeff about it! *evil chuckle* Thanks to CMT for the video, it shall remain until they expire it. (hint – if it’s not there now, it expired)
Now… I think I promised you some web stuff. I’m amazed at what computers and the internet have done for the graphics industry. I’m starting to get hooked on GigaPixel websites. The short of it is that they take millions of high quality images, and piece them together into one giant image. The site I’m sending you too today features the Milky Way. When you go there, you can start zooming in to various stars or other interesting features for a closer look. You can get lost for hours just poking around this one image. Click the image to visit www.gigagalaxyzoom.org yourself. Better have plenty of coffee on hand, you’re not gonna want to leave the computer for awhile.
As long as I’m in a graphics state of mind, I want to share a cool site I was told about that shows you the best time to take out-door photos. It’s kind of cool if you (like me) have a
hard time getting the right lighting for your pictures. If nothing else, it does have some cool mapping elements if you are into that. I haven’t got to try it yet, as both of the times I scheduled for it saw our friendly neighborhood thunder storms in the region. I’ll re-visit this when I get a chance to try it, perhaps even share the photo. Check out www.golden-hour.com/ and see what other uses you can find for it!
Oh yeah… one other website to mention before I go…. do me a favor, drop by www.fox.com/fod/play.php?sh=house and file complaints about the 8 day embargo they place on new episodes of House. If you miss the first episode (like I did) and can never remember to record things (like I cant – besides, my kid pretty much has the DVR filled with his stuff) you get stuck watching the entire season a week behind on Hulu. (I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give the official websites any hits if they wont play nice. Yeah yeah, I already know the official reasons about contractual obligations and stuff. Pretty silly to get themselves stuck that way if you ask me, they make wayyyy more money from the TV ads than the web ads.
Okay… gonna go get ready to do my show now. Remember, call the Crawdawg and tell him to play more Kellie!!!
Been a busy summer… not much time for Blogging – and I kinda feel bad about it, but I’ll work my way through it. First off, let me say that it’s been a good summer overall. At work we’ve managed to pull off multiple concerts on 4th Avenue as part of the Celebrate Huntington series of concets… Dawg Dazzle was a blast on July 4th, The Hieners Summer Concert series at Pullman Square has kept us busy every Thursday, and most recently Ralley on the River in Ironton was really rocking!
Lex, Terry, and Dee from the Lex and Terry show on our sister station, 92.7/98-5 The planet were on hand during ROTR on Saturday to sign autographs and such. We were quite impressed with the turnout, and some of those bikes were so awesomely tricked out that I really don’t know how to describe it. Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to thank Summit RV for the use of the camper during the event – the AC worked great!
On the tech side of things, I do have a new utility to tell you guys about. It’s how I grab most of my web content for images now. It’s a little screen capture program called Jing. It is so easy to use, capture what ever you want, and paste it where ever you want it. You can even easily save the screencaps to image files for later editing if you want.
In other news, Windows 7, the much touted new release of windows is here. If you are thinking of upgrading, be sure to visit microsoft.com and find out if your hardware is supported. Like the release of Vista, Seven doesn’t support a lot of old hardware. You may find that in the long run it’s cheaper to just buy a new machine with Seven already installed. In case you are wondering, yeah, it’s probably a conspiracy to sell new computers.
I just upgraded my phone to a BlackBerry…. this seems to have had the side affect of causing me to get a little more into my FaceBook account. Something that pre-BlackBerry I really only looked at about once every month or two… BlackBerry makes being “connected” just a little too easy.
You can find a hint to locating me on facebook it the picture above…..
Lastly, since it is almost September, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that Marshall Football is in the air, and as of the posting of this blog, the first game is less than 3 weeks away, look for us on the stadium west lot – so far as I know, we are probably in the same spot we’ve been for the past 3 years. On a more depressing football note, The Browns started the season this weekend by getting skunked by Green Bay at Green Bay 0-17. Hopefully they will do better in the first home game this weekend against the Lions.
Wait… I can’t leave yet…. I havent posted any eye candy in this one…. How bout something from one of my new favorite shows…. Royal Pains which airs Thursday Nights on USA (which I later watch on Hulu).
That reminds me…. with the crazy schedule at work this past week and weekend, I still need to catch last weeks episode….
You know when you sit down to blog, and the first thing that pops into your mind is that there probably ought to be a disclaimer on this one, since I do officially do this from work, and someone is probably gonna get a little annoyed. So.. here it is – the disclaimer – opinions expressed in this blog are my own and in no way reflect the opinion of 93.7 The Dawg, or the Kindred communications family of stations. There – nuff said.
Sooooo…. They say that there’s a swine flu epidemic and everyone ought run out into the streets – screaming in panic – wearing nothing but an antibacterial mask. Okay… perhaps I exaggerated just a bit. But that’s pretty much what’s happening. A few cases of Swine flu get reported and everyone goes into a panic. Perhaps justifiably, perhaps not, but I’m here to help you find the info you need. I AM GOING TO PROVIDE YOU WITH USEFUL INFORMATIVE LINKS in this document to either help you control the fear, or to help you be more afraid. That parts up to you. Unlike one of our sister stations I have no desire to tell you how to think – I just want you to think. These links were picked by myself based on whim. For those of you who use information as a shield, it will help you. For those of you who want to be afraid, use ‘em to feed your addiction. Since I neither care about swine flu, nor consider it a threat, the links are ordered by how much they interested me. I picked this subject because it seems popular – and it annoys the crap out of me how the television media blows crap like this out of proportion. Course part of the fault falls on the folks who don’t realize the news is more about ratings than news anymore – and therefore gets a little over zealous with the sensationalism some times. Most of it though falls on irresponsible journalism.
Google Maps Swine Flu Outbreak Maps Okay… the word is that the Swine flu has crossed the boarders and is making a bee-line for your home, family, and quite possibly your self. Well, thanks to the folks at Google Maps you can track the outbreaks. See where the outbreaks are reported. See how close they are too. And see that (if you are reading this locally) you will look really silly running around the Tri-State in a mask. Oh, and I should probably mention that the part earlier about running around in nothing but a mask was NOT intended as advice. Click the blue text above to check it out… some of you not local to me may wanna reach for those masks…. Oh – and kudos to www.freakingnews.com for the photo – loved it! Other than showing where the outbreaks occur, this site is more of an amusement than at tool to keep informed. The next two will better equip you to stay Swine Flu free. A note on reading the maps – the pins are color coded – pink is reported/suspected but not confirmed, purple means reported probable or confirmed, yellow is reported but cleared as a false alarm.
Now on to one of the scarier sites…
Wikipedia Swine Influenza encyclopedia entry. Why is this scarier than a map? Because people like you and me contribute the information. There is a lot of good info there, and as near as I can tell, pretty accurate and complete, and being a “Wiki” it is constantly updated. Unfortunately, also because it’s a “Wiki” I could go in there (yes – I have an editors account on Wikipedia) and say that 3 cases and surfaced in Huntington, and before someone figured out that I had apparently been mis-informed somebody in the media would report it, and there would be a panic. Fortunately Wikipedia does a pretty decent job of weeding out the entries that are maliciously entered. If you are going to read it though, read it – don’t just scan it – scanning it can lead to misunderstandings. Oh, and there were NOT three cases reported in Huntington for those who may just be scanning this. Like I said – a bit scary, but if you pay attention the Wiki folks will show you what still needs to be confirmed, and the sources for what has been confirmed. In fact it has way more links than those I’m including here.
It might be fun though to send Paris and Brittany in to the areas with the biggest outbreaks to test for contagions and as moral support for the afflicted.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has one of the best sites, informationally speaking. You can find out the symptoms, it keeps a running tally of all confirmed outbreaks. Tons of tips for avoiding the virus (note that there is no mention of running into the streets wearing nothing but a mask), warning levels, travel advisories, and even a link to get updates sent right to your inbox (Yes, even the twits - or whatever twitter users call themselves this week - can get their tweets). Had this site not been run and maintained by the government, thus adding a major level of boredom to the readability level, this site would have been at the top of the list. I just hate dry reading. Not a lot of cool images either – but if you like charts and graphs (I don’t) this is your main site for keeping an eye on the swine. You know – after visiting here, I actually almost consider it a threat (to me) since I just noticed one case confirmed in Ohio. Note I said almost – after all I was the guy still eating tomatoes during the great tomato scare a few months back.
and for the really paranoid, I have the following link for you…
HealthMap is a hypochondriac’s dream site. Every outbreak of anything that has broken out for the last 30 days is listed on the maps. If you can figure out the filtering system (it’s not really too complicated) you can get it to show you pretty much whatever you want. For the current Swine Flu watchers they did add a tag at the top of the page (it has red text) that you can click to see just the Swine flu outbreaks (and they too support the twits). In reality it’s just more Google maps, but with more info attached to it. It has nothing to do with the image to the left – I just included that because I thought it was awesome! Thanks again to www.freakingnews.com! (visit them and check out the contest where you have to morph a pig’s head onto another animal or person – look it on the right side of the page!)
Now… if you really wanna get your panties in a bunch… just go to Google and do a search on swine flu. You will find all the sites mentioned here, and much much more. Some of it useful, some of it will be crap, and some just plain irresponsible journalism. Hey… at least I admit my opinions are just that… my opinions. Can’t say the same for some of the folks out there. There lots out there though, from video and newspaper articles to blogs and youtube. If you really wanna be afraid, many of these sites can help you.
edit: This image was just sent to me by the Crawdawg – he says they found out where the Swine Flu came from! Just goes to show you gotta watch what pig you kiss!
UPDATE! SWINE FLU HITS THE RADIO RANCH!! Oh no! Now we know what happens if you get swine flu and live! Guess we will have to call it the Piggy ‘n Hog show instead of Rocky ‘n Rod now….. *LMAO*
It has been a rough week. A week ago, my friend and co-worker Jeff ‘The Crawdawg’ Crawford lost both his wife and his 16 year old daughter in a horrible auto accident. Also lost was one of his daughter’s best friends. Jeff hired me a little over 10 years ago. Back in those days I was one of the Part Timer crew and worked evenings. Jeff often brought the kids into work with him for a while while tying up loose ends and getting things ready for the next day. Some of my fondest early memories working here were taking the kids off his hands and chasing them up and down the halls and otherwise playing with them. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been watching Meaghan and Christopher grow up for the better part of 10 years. I was probably friends with the kids before I was friends with Jeff - after all, they were kids, and he was my boss *chuckle*. Seemed like anytime the kids did anything out and about the community, be it sports, cheerleading, or even theatre, you would pretty much always find Carole there, helping out, and watching over not only her own kids, but pretty much everyone elses too. A rare thing in this “drop your kids off and go out” world we seem to be living in. Thier loss has been pretty tough for all of us here to come to grips with, and its going to take some time. Though I know that I can’t even begin to imagine what Jeff and Christopher have been, and will be going through. I’m gonna miss them both for a long time, especially those dimples of Meaghans. I’ve been trying to think of something to say that would help make sense out of all this, but as I’ve already mentioned repeatedly, there just arn’t any. All I can really offer up is the thoughts and prayers of my family, to Jeff, Chris, thier family, and the family of Kelsey Kuhn, though I didn’t really know her, this is a loss that transends family trees, and touches many many more, than just the immediate families of Carole, Meahgan, and Kelsey. I still don’t know what to do right now, but I’m gonna gather up the good memories, hold them as closely and tightly as I can - as we all start a new life, one that’s emptier than before, one that will always be looked at a little differently now….. oh… and I’ll never eat potato soup again without thinking of the infamous ‘Potato Soup Facial’, and smiling a little smile.
Tis the season for Bracket Madness as you try to wish your team to the top of the NCAA tourney. Well…. After first round I was pretty much on top of the world. By the end of the the weekend’s action though I had dropped to the middle of the rankings on the office bracket. *sigh* Figuring this crap out would probably be easier if I really cared about the NCAA tourney… but no… my main interest was to try to win the office pool. Obviously logic doesn’t help out here when selecting the teams. Anywho – Go Zags!
Soooo…. what else have I been up too since my last post? Well, the growing excitement at home about the release of Sims3 caused us to blow the dust off Sims2 and play that some more, course when me and mini-me play at the same time, we are usually into Warcraft, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, or Wizard101 currently. He’s trying to talk me into World of Warcraft but I’m still undecided on that one. Other than that, works been keeping me busy as a beaver in flooding season – and I see the light at the end of the tunnel on my video project. I’ve also decided I don’t much like the way the page looks within the format on the 93.7 The DAWG site, so I’m gonna pop it out to the actual wordpress site, Then I’ll show Rocky the difference and see if she wants to do the same thing. This of course means we will need to throw some obligatory 93.7 The DAWG logos and images linking back to the main site
A note here for those of you using AVG’s free software. Version 8.5 is out now, and the software is of course insisting that you upgrade to the newer version from whatever version you are currently using. I agree that this is a good idea too, however, apparently a lot of folks feel this is a good idea right now, and many are getting frustrated because they can’t get it to download. This is because their servers are getting overloaded I think. Go to Major Geeks and download it there. Nobody I’ve sent that way to get it has reported back with any complaints yet.
I was hoping to talk tonight about some of the free Windows Live software such as the photo manager and the blog writer… okay… the Blog writer seems to be fine and pretty simple to use so far, but I can’t say much yet because install was a pain. the first 3 times I tried to install the windows live stuff the install would fail on one element or the other. After a couple of days trying, I think I have the mail program working, the Blog Writer seems to be the star so far, the photo manager crashes consistently after about 5 minutes of run time, and the messenger, finally logged into my hotmail account after 2 days of trying. I’m beginning to suspect this cluster of programs might actually want to run under Vista – too bad. If I manage to get everything working right, I’ll provide links next time. If you really want to try it yourself though, just Google it – and good luck!
If you haven’t done so yet, go read Rocky’s blog – it should be updated by now.
-k
ps – look for the video where Portia and NASCAR collide to show up on wdgg.fm sometime this week!!
Happy Birthday to me… Happy Birthday to me… Oh Okay… it’s not my birthday - yet! BUT! My birthday is July 18th, and Taylor Swift is bringing Kellie Pickler (and Gloriana) to the Charleston Civic Center on my birthday. Taylor’s okay, I really don’t have a clue who Gloriana is (other than what I’ve read on the web), But I’ve been a Kellie fan since she released her version of Santa Baby a couple Christmas’ back. Okay… so I have a weird way of pickin favs… sue me! *chuckle* Figured I’d celebrate a little in tonites Blawg with a little photo montage I gathered whilst surfing the web.
Oh yeah… the web… The main reason for the Ken Blawg. Last time I told you about Major Geeks - my one stop shopping site for all the tools I need to get viruses, spyware, and more off the computers when my wonderful co-workers do thier part to keep me employed by infecting thier PC’s. Tonite I’m going to give you 3 MUST downloads from that site. Get them, copy them to a CD or Flash drive for later use, then install them. The first is Spybot Search and Destroy. Install it, but unless you like vista-like nagging don’t let it install tea timer unless you have a regular problem with spyware and malware getting installed on your PC. Tea timer requires your permission before it lets any program write to the system registry. It’s a part of Spybot S&D that I only use on a couple of the more troublesome computers.
Next program is Ad-Aware. Ad-Aware does pretty much the same things as Spybot S&D, though it does a better job of removing some problems. I usually install this one before installing Spybot, but I always run spybot first - dunno why, but it does seem to work better that way.
Number 3 is CCleaner. This utility does a much better job than windows at clearing out temp files, temporary internet files and cookies. I recommend running this one often, as most of the dark files that install themselves on your PC will start out from the Temp folders. Anytime my browser does anything flaky like spaz a few pop-ups running this to clear the temp folders is my first priority.
I recommend running scans with Spybot and Ad-Aware on an alternating weekly schedule (one week run spybot, the next run Ad-Aware) on general principal. When you think you have an infection, or if one program finds one, run both scans.
Some other things from Major Geeks I keep on my Flash Drive are Grisofts AVG Free anti-virus installer, Google Chrome and Firefox browser installers (sometimes when a bug bites IE - the only way to get online to get those helpful tools or updates for them is with another browser). I also keep Malwarebyte’s utility on there too, but it’s just a wee bit less friendly than the other programs, though it will remove a couple of the the hardier bugs that the other two programs have occasional problems with.
And before I go - one note about the Google Chrome browser. If your in the habit of surfing sites that tend to leave bombs in your temp folder, try installing Google Chrome. Then before visting the sites you don’t trust (or don’t want others to know your visiting) you can switch to incognito mode. When it that mode, Chrome will not save cookies or temp files to your hard drive unless you specifically tell it too.
As these progress, you will find I’m a fan of most things Google. Ah… one more picture strip before I go.
edit 3/17/09
Oh…. there is something I’m looking forward too before that…. Coming in June is the latest installment in the massively addicting and world famous The Sims series. The Sims 3 is susposed to be out June 2nd. It’s already all kennytheITguy Jr can think about, he just sits there and goes through the teaser site over and over and over again. Looks like some awesome improvements over The Sims 2. Hope I have a computer that will run it. Here’s a countdown timer for those out there who may know what I’m talking about.
One thing is for sure. An overnight DJ has lots of time to surf the net. As time goes on I’ll mention more and more good sites, but it will be hard to top the first one. This is a site I use all the time - primarily because its a one stop shop for computer care.
The site is MajorGeeks.com - and it is awesome. At MajorGeeks you can find software for saving your computer from many of the perils that comes with surfing the world wide web. Just check out the picture on the left - You can find links for Antivirus software, Spyware removers, even utilities to remove those malicious toolbars that seem to do nothing but add popups to your computer.
At MajorGeeks you have the benefit of being able to read reviews of the programs, the choice of Shareware, Freeware, or even the name brand programs. All in easy to search menus, and you know its spyware/trojan free because the guys at MajorGeeks checks every program before they link it. You can find utilities that do most anything else too, keyloggers to check up on the kids or that new browser you heard about but didn’t know where to find. There are tools to cleanup and organize your hard drive, backup your data, and about anything else you might need to do to your computer. Check it out, I’m sure you will find something you can use. Check it out BEFORE you need it!
Otherwise, not much to say for this blog. OH! I can tell you that last night/Friday Morning (depending on how you listen) I debuted new music from Randy Houser, “Boots On” and Dean Brody’s “Brothers”. Both are decent tunes. Be sure to listen for them, then drop the Crawdawg an email at dawgstudios@gmail.com to let him know what you think.
Be sure and listen to The Dawg next week as we still have more Kellie Pickler tickets… err.. I mean Taylor Swift tickets to give a way, and will will still be registering folks to win the Bristol Prize pack thru March 15th I think. Oh, and if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to check out Rocky’s blog on the Radio Ranch page of www.wdgg.fm for her latest thoughts!
Greetings Y’all. After helping Rocky get her Blog set up, I thought to myself…. Gee self - This looks like it could be mildly entertaining. Self said I was an idiot and went back to surfing the web. Oh well - what does he know anyway.
Lets see now, where to start… We’ll skip the begining since I’m sure nearly a half decade of drivel would likely put you into a coma-like sleep. That might happen anyway. I’m the computer geek/IT guy/Webguy/broadcast engineer-in-training/studio engineer/late nite DJ (temporarily anyway)/etc… the list goes on and on and on (gotta hate the current economic climate) for 93.7 The Dawg, and our family of radio stations. You might have to bear with me a bit whilst I figure out just what it is I’m going to talk about here, but I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually. Meanwhile I’ve gotta go get self off the Flikr site so we can figure out what our first real post is going to be about. Look for that in a day or two. Meanwhile, as I say when I close my show, Have a great day!
That pretty much wraps up the love side of spam… though I may drone on a bit more about spam burgers before I wrap things up today… and then I may not! Anyway, I digressed. Now the word spam brings up images of something far worse than the tasty meat in a can…
POPFile probably requires more work on your part, than the others as it is a Mail Filter rather than a spam filter, but it learns from you. It’s a bit less likely to identify non-spam as spam becuase it learns based on the commands you give it to classify mail. It will also pretty much sort all your mail for you, again, based on your commands. If you spend as much time sorting your messages into special folders as you do deleting spam, this one might be the option for you.
You know it’s fall when the Pumpkin Festival starts…. 10/1 thru 10/4 this year!
