Flush your Apple device

Sadly, Apple has decided that in order to remain competitive and due to the limitations of their own innovative capabilities and lack of willingness to create new, diverse products, patent litigation has become their new business model. At one point, I liked Apple. Now, I am disgusted and have no reason to support or compliment them. I am personally never going to support their products. It's a shame that they won't get off their rears and make a new product, with competitive innovative technology. Blackberry has a plethora of new and diverse devices, android devices are all over the place, each a little different than the next. Apple has such a limited scope of products, and the behavior in the courts?

It's sad, pathetic, and wrong. Microsoft is just as bad, the only difference is that apples products actually function to the larger degree.

The current wallpaper of my phone.

Taken with picplz.

My wife looks so cute!

Taken with picplz.

Doesn't my cigarette smoke look a little like a ghost?

Taken with picplz.

The Story: "How I Got My New Teeth"

Long Long Ago, in January of 2009, I was living happily with my newly wed wife and two stepchildren in a little condo off State Street. We were tight on cash because my job wasn't giving me any hours, but I'd just received a promotion and had been on a special Dell Minuteman team for a week when I got a terrible stomach flu. We All did actually, but I got it and good because the rest of my family wasn't stuck in the rest room the majority of three days straight.

I got better however, and returned to work. That morning my back was just killing me, hurting terribly but I said to myself "It's just because of the stomach flu, sitting on the porcelain throne for three days straight and not enough sleep." As the day moved on, my back started hurting more and more and the strangest weakness in my legs and arms started showing up, it felt like my legs were being sapped of strength. By lunch time I could barely stand and knew I needed to go home before I couldn't stand or drive. So I talked to my supervisor and left.

 

I spent the rest of the day at home and it went from bad to worse. Over the next 10 days, I lost most of my fine coordination motor skills, couldn't type, could barely talk, could barely walk and was extremely sensitive to tactile sensation, light, sound and my sense of smell was up there too. I went from a healthy, strong 30-something year old to a weakling and a gimp. My wife, parents and friends were all concerned, and I had to take a medical leave of absence from my work due to the issue. On February 10th, 2009 I went into the E.R., they did several MRI's and gave me 1 gram of solu-medrol (a steroid IV they use to treat MS attacks). They thought maybe I had M.S. or some other neurological disorder, and I was sent home, high on Steroids and with a follow-up with a neurologist. The Steroids improved but didn't cure my symptoms, and after a few visits with Dr. Foley, he determined it wasn't M.S..

 

I then started a long, pointless search through the neurologist Dr. Elena James (Whom I'll never recommend to anyone) whom after two visits had decided that all the symptoms I was suffering from were "normal" and that the problem must be psychological in nature (she didn't recommend this the first visit because she hadn't seen the psych history from my teenage years). I tried getting a second opinion but he performed the same examination my Primary care physician had performed and decided that it was all in my head. So I was trying Physical Therapy and later started seeing a LCSW to verify/discredit the psychological cause and my wife was saying "Well, it might be your teeth - they're terrible." So we went to a dentist and he agreed my teeth were junk and dentures would probably be in order. I had the first three teeth extracted by the dentist but due to the structure of nerves in my mouth, felt every single thing (which put me into bad shock) - and it perforated my sinus. Shortly after, we had a tragedy in the family and I ended up really messing up my mouth in the process.

 

Once it was all healed, in May I had the rest of the teeth knocked out of my head by an oral surgeon. Low and behold, four hours after my teeth were gone, so were the majority of my symptoms. Apparently, my teeth were the cause of all the high-end pain, weakness, etc that's been plaguing me for the last 2+ years. Sadly, none of those M.D.'s ever considered that my mouth could be the cause. 

 

So, I'm left with a ruined job history, our family is broke, we lost our condo, and I'm currently trying to get myself back to work. I've got pretty new whites which I'm still adjusting to, and a new lease on life. My wife probably saved my life with her suggestions, and the doctors were freaking useless. 

The End

This was all posted by request - Hope you enjoyed Katia, and anyone else who was wondering.

 

:)

 

-Andy-

A waterfall from the Colorado trip, Dad, you remember the name?

Taken with picplz.

Good looking parents! Colorado trip.

Taken with picplz.

My daughters cat - Queen Willow

Taken with picplz.

Ruins in Colorado, taken with my Folks.

Taken with picplz.

Untitled

Taken with picplz.

The canyons event area before the concert

Taken with picplz at Canyons Concert in Park City, UT.

Untitled

Taken with picplz.

Untitled

Taken with picplz.

Photos from my Google+ Posts

Warning: Nasty Virus out there!

So I'm working on a client's machine who picked up a virus in all likelihood from a popup. This thing is NASTY! It's a VERY advanced variation of several older viruses (the whole XP Security 2012) nonsense. This virus has installed Multiple Rootkits, Multiple Trojans and it took his system over COMPLETELY. I managed to remove the most severe of the Rootkits using a specialized tool my friend Dave introduced me to, but it only could do so much. I'm currently running a live scanner to remove more.

 

Just FYI to all you non-geeks:

Rootkits take effect at boot time and can do pretty much anything they want. They can steal your personal data, modify other programs, and do all kinds of fun things.

Trojans are usually used to deploy other viruses. 

 

Suggestions:

Get a Decent Adblock program.

Get a decent AV program - he had Avast, which performs fairly well, but no AV program is fool proof.

MOST IMPORTANT: perform REGULAR BACKUPS of your information, and if possible, use imaging software such as Norton Ghost or Acronis to make an image of your system so you/your computer guy can get you back up and running quickly.

External hard drives are cheap, around $100 or so depending on your needs (they can be as cheap as $50 if you have only a small amount of data). It's much cheaper than all the time/problems you get to deal with when you have a problem like a virus/failing HDD, etc.

 

Anyway,

Watch out kids, the internet's not always friendly.

 

If you're willing, you also might want to try Ubuntu or another Linux variant - you can do pretty much all the things you can on Windows, it's free, the software you install is free and you're much better protected against crap like this.

 

Android: sweeterhome launcher review

So everyone has their own favorite home launcher. Launcherpro, GO launcher EX, ADW, and the plethora of other launchers out there for Android.

I have played with a large number of them, and found sweeterhome to be a great option for those people who want the absolutely most customized launcher out there.

Sweeterhome is still a beta project but already incorporates many nice features as well as stability. It works on the older android devices and the new. I am using it for my Archos as it's home launcher as well. It works great for those folks who have way to many apps installed to know what to do with.

PROS:
* Almost no redraws. It does occasionally restore your session, but this takes only a second or two.
* uniquely different. You can download themes from it's repositories, make your own, or tweak someone else's inside the app.
* No need for app organization programs. I've used folder organizer, Simi folder and a number of other apps similar in nature, but the integrated Tagged Trays removes the need for all of them.
* scrolling logs. You can add scrolling sections for calendar events, contacts, recent calls and recent texts. In addition, your app drawers can be customized to your liking as scrolling lists, horizontal icons, and a number of other options.
* live wallpaper support.
* save your own custom themes online or the SD card.
* upload your own themes and share your creations with everyone.
* your app tags are synced online.
* it's free.

CONS:
* no scrolling widget support
* AT&T users will have to root if they can't enable unknown sources.
* still a beta, there's still going to be a few bugs.
* a little complicated should you choose to build your own custom theme.

I personally find it outstanding. If you pick it up, look for my themes, my username is nokturnihs.

For more information and download links visit http://www.Sweeterhome.com

It's a beautiful morning

At least that's my opinion.