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HDTV Chain Letters Save Your Favorites My Pyramid Spam Again? Folder Toolbar on Desktop, Shooting Rubber bands E-mail addresses as Favorites, My computer toolbar, Bubble Fun Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Great Links Back it Up! Prefetch Clutter |
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Have you applied for your $40 credit coupon toward a TV converter box? Within the next year, TV stations will start broadcasting in HDTV only. This means that if you are getting your TV signal through an antenna of some kind (instead of dish, cable, etc.), your TV will be worthless UNLESS you get a converter box. I just got our Magnavox converter at Wal-mart for only $9.95 by using the government $40 credit. You must send to get this $40 coupon (card). Go to: www.digitaltvconverterboxes.com This site gives you all the information you need including where and how to apply for the FREE $40 discount card. When I
hooked up the converter, two things were immediately apparent. The picture
was clearer and sharper. We got more channels than we ever got from the
antenna. Several of our sets are connected to a dish, but our bedroom TV is
still connected to the outdoor antenna tower, so that's where we used the
converter box. REMEMBER, when TV stations switch to HDTV only, any set that
you operate from an antenna will be WORTHLESS, unless you get a converter
box. If you don't get the government discount card, you will pay $49.95 for
the box at Wal-mart, BUT if you get the government card, your cost is only
$9.95. Boxes may also be available from Radio Shack and other stores, but
the price may be higher. Don't delay on this. If you get the government
discount card, you will have only 90 days to use it. Notice: If your set is
connected via dish (satellite) or cable, you do not need the converter. Your
dish or cable company will take care of it and provide the correct signals.
Back To Top Do know about or use Tracfone? It is a low cost cell phone service that seems to not only work, but it works well. The gal at Wal-mart said that the reason they get such good signals is because they use everyone's towers; whereas, companies like AT&T use only their own towers. After our present contract expires, we are going to switch - it will reduce our cell phone bill to about ¼ of what we are paying now. www.tracfone.com Three of
our good friends have used it for quite a while and are enthusiastic about
it. Just a suggestion - you can get phones and minutes cheaper at Wal-mart
than from Tracfone's website. If you do a lot of long distance calling, an
unlimited plan with someone else may be better. A: There are literally tons of chain letter type e-mails floating around the Web these days and it's been going on for years. And while those kinds of e-mails can be rather convincing, they are all just a big hoax. One that quickly came to my mind is about a young child who is terminally ill and needs an operation. The e-mail starts off by telling you about the child and their family. It gives you a poem to read that was supposedly written for the child and it then asks you to forward the e-mail to everyone you know. It goes on to tell you that for every forward, a certain amount of money will be given to the family to help with the cost of the operation. The e-mail usually says that some big company, like AOL, will be donating the money. All I can say is, it's not true! The simple truth to all of this is a forwarded e-mail cannot be tracked. So, even if you forward an e-mail like the one I described above to every single person you know, there's no way a company like AOL could track that to determine how much money they should donate.In fact, there's no way anything like that could ever be possible even if we wanted it to. E-mail services just don't work like that. It's best just to delete the e-mail and move on. There are many resources you can use to check it out before you send it on. One of the most popular is Snopes.com. Snopes does a great job of keeping everything up to date and it covers a wide range of topics.
SAVE YOUR FAVORITES! We all tend to want to get healthier and eat better. With My Pyramid you can figure out where your eating habits already are and start from there. I do not eat healthy. My idea of dieting is eating what I want in the right portions and drinking less pop. I also tend to skip meals (both breakfast and lunch, depending on the day). I’m a picky eater. No fish or fungus need ever cross my plate! I’m also only an occasional exerciser. "One Size Doesn’t Fit All. MyPyramid Plan can help you choose the foods and amounts that are right for you." That really got my attention. Finally, there is someplace that understands that not everyone can do a general diet. To start assessing your diet, click My Pyramid Tracker. It asks you to set up an account name and password, and then you need to give it your age, height, and weight (free to register). Everything else is optional. Then you are given the option of Assessing your Food Intake or Assessing your Physical Activity. You start inputting your information and this site tracks it to show you how you are really living. For the Physical Activity, you choose between standard and condensed. Each is thoroughly explained right on the page. I chose Standard. This lets you search by Activity or Keyword. When you find the one that most resembles what you did click Add Activity. This starts your log. http://mypyramid.gov/ Back To Top
Spam Again? We have been actively engaged in fighting spam for years: unsolicited "junk" e-mail sent to large numbers of people to promote products or services; sexually explicit unsolicited e-mail, called "porn spam"; an inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list is Mass junk e-mail; and Junk mail. When you see the same 'make money fast' message in various newsgroups and in your mailbox, the Net has been spammed. Or news that you can help retrieve lost money at a benefit to you. Or links to cut-rate pharmaceuticals. Many don’t use or recommend programs, free or paid, that you download to control spam. Most of them will also block some legitimate mail that you would really want to receive. There are several ways to control spam: 1) Use an ISP that has its own good spam control program. If your ISP doesn’t have one, find another ISP. www.atlantic.com has excellent spam control. 2) Have an e-mail address that you use only for e-mail with friends and relatives. Never use that address for anything else like downloading, Internet, etc. Have another address for that purpose. 3) Put senders of Spam into your Block Sender’s list in your e-mail program list as follows. 1) Click on the mail to highlight it.2) Click on Message 3) Click on Block Sender. If you get any future mail from that same address, it will go directly into your Deleted Mail file, and you won't see it. NEVER reply to spam mail -- that simply confirms to them that your address is correct. Never write to them asking to be removed -- never! A lot of spam mail is easy to spot because of deliberate oddities in the subject line. They will use a capital O in place of a small one or they will put a space where it shouldn’t be, etc. It may also have a weird looking address. Keep on the lookout for anything that doesn’t seem normal. There is another thing you can try. When you see an
address that looks like spam, do this: 2) Click on File 3) Click on Properties 4) Click on the
Details tab. This shows all the header info 5) Drag your clicker through all
the info to highlight it. 6) RIGHT click on the highlighted material. 7)
Click on Copy. 8) Write to your ISP and paste the copied material onto the
email page. Ask your ISP to put a stop to this kind of spam. There is no way
to control all spam, but the best advice I can give for those who are
getting a lot of spam is to get a new e-address and never use it for the
internet and only give it to your friends and relatives. Then tell them to
never include it in any mail that they forward, or never forward any email
to you, but to create a new email with the information they want to send to
you. Be firm about this. Folder Toolbar on Desktop Drag the desired folder to the top of the screen on your desktop. Surprise! A toolbar appears at the top displaying the contents of the folder. Not all the files are listed, so click the double arrow on the right side. There are the rest of the files. If you right click an empty area of the toolbar and select "Toolbars" you can uncheck the folder name from the list. If you like the toolbar but don't want it showing all the time, you can also choose "auto-hide" for it to appear when you mouse over. Guide to Shooting Rubber Bands Learn how to properly shoot rubber bands. This guide goes through the history of rubber band shooting, the refinement of the art of shooting a rubber band, and the rules to the game. Visit this neat site at: http://hometown.aol.com/morganbolt/index.html?f=fs. Back To Top
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E-mail Addresses
as Favorites www.worldstart.com Have you ever been surfing the web and had a sudden urge to send an e-mail to someone? Maybe you just stumbled upon a really cool page or some awesome information that you just gotta share. Whatever the reason, wouldn't it be cool if you could
compose an e-mail without launching Outlook Express, fiddling around in the
address book, then finally starting the message? Why not put the people you
frequently send e-mail to on your Favorites/Bookmarks? That way, if you see
something you need to tell them about while surfin', you can click their
name in the Favorites/Bookmarks. 1. Hit the Favorites menu, Add to Favorites. Don't worry about the address, we just need to create a new favorite. 2. Now, name the favorite with the person's name. If you were going to add my address, you would type "Steve" in the description box. 3. Hit OK. Now, we need to adjust that "Steve" favorite so it points to my e-mail address and not to whatever page it's currently assigned. So, hit your Favorites menu, and right-click the "Steve" favorite, then select Properties from the resulting menu. 4. A nifty little screen will pop-up. Where it says "URL," delete everything in that box and change it to: mailto:NAME@WEBADDRESS (editor@goldcountrytimes.com, for example). Hit OK and you're finished. Follow the same procedure for any address you want to add. Here's a little trick you can do with the "My Computer" desktop icon to make a very cool "My Computer" toolbar. To create this toolbar, left click and drag your "My Computer" icon to either side of your desktop then release your left mouse button. If you were close enough to the screen you'll get a "My Computer" toolbar. I've found it helps if you drag the "My Computer" icon to the edge until it's partially off screen. Also, you can drag it to the top / bottom as well. Once you have a toolbar up, right-click a blank area to customize it. You can specify large or Small icons, whether you want a description of each item or not (show text), and if you want the title "My Computer" to be visible (Show Title). If you decide you don't want this toolbar, just choose "Close Toolbar". As if that weren't enough, if you hold down your CRTL key while clicking one of the items on your new "My Computer" toolbar, you'll get a list of what's in the folder / drive. Just click to open. More at www.worldstart.com. Remember the fun you had popping Bubble Wrap? Need something to pass the time with? Visit this website and enjoy! http://www.viceking.net/bubblewrap.swf. Pop Pop Pop!
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Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Elder Resources: Visit www.seniornet.org/php/lclist.php; also visit: www.nihseniorhealth.gov; yet another online resource for the elderly--http://www.aarp.org/health/healthguide/ |
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Great
Links
By Steve at worldstart.com "It's always snowing somewhere!" If you'd like to make some snowflakes yourself, click "Create Your Own Snow Flake". Click and Drag with your mouse to cut out your snowflake shape. Then when you're finished, click "Done". Then fill out your name, location (if you want) and a message. You can send it to your friends, or if you don't want to just click no thanks and your flake will be added to those that are falling. The really nice thing is that you can preview what your flake looks like as you make it. I could spend hours just looking at some the snowflakes here. How people get their snowflakes so intricate is beyond me—I just have fun. So if you just want to view some snowflakes, then mouse over the snowflakes falling and enjoy! http://www.popularfront.com/seasonsgreetings/ XC Skiing Information Season - Attention cross country skiers, this site is for you, even beginner's. Here you can find Daily Snow Reports, Resort Guides, Equipment Directory, Ski Racing, and much, much more. I loved the Snow Monsters section—it's the kids ski section. It also has a bunch of neat experiments that they can check out too. Get the Daily Snow Reports; check both by location, and by resort. Put in the State, Region/Country, and get the snow report. A very handy site for those out there who enjoy skiing. http://www.xcski.org/ Car Safety - It's the time of year where in some places the weather is beginning to get crummy. Which in my mind brings up the idea of car safety. With this site you can make sure that your car is safe. Equipment and Safety, Five Star Crash Test and Rollover Ratings, Defects and Recalls. This site is easy to use and it just makes sense to check these kind of things out. Forewarned is forearmed.
By Eva
Dunn
After hearing from a friend who had just experienced a fatal hard drive crash, losing everything on his computer, the first question I asked him was, “Did you have a backup of your files?” No. It is a hard lesson learned when all of a sudden you lose everything on your computer, including e-mail addresses, ftp settings for website access, digital photos, important documents, spreadsheets, and of course, all your programs. Gone, Poof! If you have never backed up your hard drive, the only things you will be able to replace are your operating system and your programs, providing you originally purchased them and have the setup disks. Having important files stored on removable media is a good safety precaution in case you ever get a virus or Trojan horse. I recommend backing up your computer on a regular basis; you should save on some kind of removable memory, so that if and when your computer crashes, everything is saved and not lost. To backup simply means to copy files to another disk, either using a program designed to do backups or making a copy from your computer to a zip disk, DVD or CD-R/CD-RW. The method is not so important as long you have a copy of everything you need. Stay organized by creating a series of labeled folders with your data centralized so you do not have to hunt everywhere for the important files. My Documents is a good folder to start, and you can have explicitly labeled sub-folders within that folder. Try to be diligent about saving your data to its designated folder. For a zip disk, just copy and paste the files you want to save onto the disk. For a CD-R/CD-RW, use your CD burning software. (most CD burning software and Zip drives come with some kind of backup utility you can use if you like). If all your files will fit on a single CD or Zip disk, then you're in good shape just copying your files straight to it. The other way to back up your files is to get one of the new USB flash drive removable memory devices, such as made by Lexar or Fuji and others. They have them at Wal-Mart, Frye’s or Best Buy and similar stores. They hold a tremendous amount of memory and are easy to use. They can hold 128 megabytes of memory -- that's as much as 88 floppy disks. They are small enough to carry in your pocket. So stay safe, preserve those important files, data, and photos, create a backup disk and refresh it monthly. Remember to also test your backups, don't just take the burning software's word for it. After a backup, explore the disk and randomly go through files and open them up to make sure that they're complete and not corrupt. Too late to check once your files are lost and you discover the 'burn' did not preserve your files. Performing backups is essential for protecting your data, especially since more and more information is being stored on computers these days. http://www.elderhostel.org/. If you're 55 or older, you'll find the world's most diverse and affordable selection of learning adventures. This is a great site to plan your next adventure. Do you find that it takes longer and longer for applications to open when you boot Windows XP? One common cause is the Win XP prefetch system. "What's Prefetch?" you ask. It's a way for Windows to pre-load the data needed for running applications before you launch them. It's supposed to make them launch quicker. What actually happens is that programs you hardly ever use take up space and the wrong data gets prefetched. Good news—these PF instructions can safely be deleted making your boot time faster. Go to Start / Run and type in "Prefetch" (or go to C:\WINDOWS\PREFETCH). You'll pro,bably see a big long list. Go ahead and Ctrl+A to select all then hit the Delete key. The next time you boot, XP will rebuild the list according to the applications you actually use. When I did this it reduced my prefetch folder from 127 files down to 62. More speed and more space. Yeah! Here is a great link for the family to enjoy, especially if the children have botany projects. The author of this site and some friends went leaf collecting in the Missouri Botanical Gardens. They found some excellent specimens and identified them. You can view pictures of the leaves two ways: either by clicking on the name of the tree, or by choosing a name of a tree and then clicking the arrow buttons to continue your journey through the leaves. If you click on the leaf pictures themselves you will get a life-sized image of the leaves. And that isn't all this site has to offer. There is also a section of leaf identification and leaf terms. So you can learn all about how to go gather your own leaves and identify them, as well as learn what the different parts of a leaf are. This is a fun and frisky autumn find, enjoy! Go online to check it out. http://mbgnet.mobot.org/sets/temp/leaves. |
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