I’m trying my best to make sure I blog as much as I can, about anything and everything. I’m also making an effort to take more photos even if it with the phone; which in all reality are not that bad. Maybe someday when I’m not that broke financially challenged I will buy a nice pocket camera to carry around.

Anyway, I went ahead an upload Kayley’s Easter photos from this year to the photo section of the site. You might also catch a few on the right hand side, depending on when you’re reading this. Also, yesterday afternoon, Amber, Kayley, and I put up Kayley’s swing. She enjoyed it.

-Bryan

Seems like it must be the time of the year or something. I go though these phases where I think, gee-willigers it would be nice to blog more often, not that anyone is reading. Well damn it, I’m committing this time, although since no one reads I won’t have anyone to hold me to it, I’m going to blog at the very least every other day.

At first this may be a little bit random but I should have plenty to write about. I have making tons of, from scratch, food. Plus the are kinds of interesting things happening online a can rant about. I just need to find that groove.

Also check out the Google Picasa widget and digg RSS feeds I added. The Picasa widget gets 3 random photos form the latest, or chosen, galleries from our web albums. The digg RSS feed is just the last five stories, videos or pictures I found to be interesting on digg.com. So until next year around this time, no, no I will blog again this week!

-Bryan

Alright, its been a fun week. I have been having some problems with an item I ordered off Ebay and still have yet to receive. Now, this morning, I wake up check my email and check my RSS feeds. Bam. SunRocket closes its doors and cancels 200,000 users’ service. So, still in shock, I reach over and pick-up my phone. Dead, no dial tone, nothing. Great! So I start reading comments, on various stories, to see what other users are doing. Mostly just everyone complaining and wining about how they are not going to be able to get their money back.

The part the makes me the most upset, is there wasn’t a warning. I can’t complain about the service Sun Rocket always worked when I needed it to. I was on the monthly plan so I didn’t have to worry about $200 down the drain.

Next came more fun. Trying to find a decent VoIP provider that will port my number from Sun Rocket. Lingo seem to have the most positive reviews. So I’m going to give them a Go, and I’ll report back once I have had the service for a while. Wish me luck.

-Bryan

It has been a slow month. Not much happening:

• $800 phone with fruit stamped on it. iPhone
• $10,000 PC with nothing useful. Microsoft Surface
• T-Mobile @Home Service, Launch

Thats about it. nothing new. Same stuff different day.

-Bryan

Today while browsing I happen to run across a site talking about offline blog posting. One users recommendation was to try Windows Live Writer. It integrates with most blogs and is straight forward to use. If you blog often you may want to check this out.

-Bryan

Found a couple if free tools I thought I would share with you. The first would come in handy if you where supporting friends, family and customers. CrossLoop is a small free desktop sharing application. It will allow you to host and share desktops from the same 2MB download. It requires no changes to you or your users firewall.

The second is a free program which allows you to recover files that have been deleted, both through the Recycle Bin and with the by-pass method. Undelete Plus works under Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 and all supported formats. It will also work on Floppy Disks, Compact Flash cards and USB drives. Remember though you will need to recover the files before new data overwrites them; so stop using your PC ASAP and get this program.

Don’t forget we offer support services for you PC for pricing and contact information click on the Services button under navigation.
-Bryan

Do you realize how much value is packed into each and every distribution of Linux? Nothing short of phenomenal. A Linux machine can help you solve problems that simply are too time consuming, complex, or expensive to solve with other operating systems. All you have to do is add your own special ingredient. We’ll review that in a minute.

So, Mr. Small- and Medium-Businessman, what’s holding you up?

Don’t you need to run a Web site, be able to transfer files around your office, or automate some processes so they run 24/7? Wouldn’t you like to put the worry of a virus wiping out your valuable data out of your mind? Have you ever thought about how nice it would be to buy one DVD and be able to load it on all the machines in your company?

Click Here for the rest. 

Lately I have had some friends tell me about the ridiculous repair and installation services offered by the Squad of Geeks. Two recent examples come to mind, one a coworker’s son spilt milk on the laptop and the Squad of Geeks quoted her $900 to repair. I was able to properly diagnose and repair the laptop for under $150. Another example, I had a friend’s husband drop his laptop and crack the screen again came a hefty $700 diagnoses, and that was without even looking at the device. I was able to complete the repair for $350, half the price! Moral of this is, please call around before you get ripped off. Also check out the services I’m able to offer under the navigate option of the site or click the link. I offer drop-off or pick-up repairs and cleanups, network installation, routers, wireless, and switches. As well as small business solutions.

-Bryan

Last week I talked about being able to keep your customer (and your own) data safe. The current program I’m using is KeePass Password Safe. It has an amazing encryption algorithm, tons of features and a few nice plug-ins. Another big plus with this particular application is that is can run on all operating systems. This is a very good feature to have, and will allow you to access a single password, information database across multiple OSes. Last but not least, its free and open source. Check out some features below:

• KeePass supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, Rijndael) and the Twofish algorithms to encrypt its password databases.
• Both of these ciphers are regarded as very secure by the cryptography community. Banks are using these algorithms for example, too.
• Even if you would use all computers in the world to attack one database, decrypting it would take longer than the age of the universe.
• Even quantum computers won’t help that much. The algorithms are symmetric so its complexity would be reduced a bit, anyway, the sun will go nova before you have decrypted the database.
• The complete database is encrypted, not only the password fields. So your usernames, notes, etc. are protected, too.
• SHA-256 is used as password hash. SHA-256 is a 256-bit cryptographically secure one-way hash function. Your master password is hashed using this algorithm and its output is used as key for the encryption algorithms.
• In contrast to many other hashing algorithms, no attacks are known yet against SHA-256.
• In-Memory Passwords Protection: Your passwords are encrypted while KeePass is running, so even if Windows caches the KeePass process to disk, this wouldn’t reveal your passwords anyway.
• [2.x] Protected In-Memory Streams: When loading the inner XML format, passwords are encrypted using a session key.
• Security-Enhanced Password Edit Controls: KeePass is the first password manager that features security-enhanced password edit controls. None of the available password edit control spies work against these controls. The passwords entered in those controls aren’t even visible in the process memory of KeePass.

Lately I have been using a new burning application; InfraRecorder is an open source cd burning application. This application doesn’t have all the bells and whistles but if gets the job done. Plus its cheaper then lets say Nero or EasyCD Creator; FREE. Check out the website to get a copy and/or donate time/money to the project. Below you’ll find a feature list:

• Create custom data, audio and mixed-mode projects and record them to physical discs as well as disc images.
• Supports recording to dual-layer DVDs.
  
• Blank (erase) rewritable discs using four different methods.
• Record disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE).
  
• Fixate discs (write lead-out information to prevent further data from beeing added to the disc).
• Scan the SCSI/IDE bus for devices and collect information about their capabilities.
  
• Create disc copies, on the fly and using a temporary disc image.
• Import session data from multi-session discs and add more sessions to them.
• Display disc information.
• Save audio and data tracks to files (.wav, .wma, .ogg, .mp3 and .iso).