This One is THE GREATEST

You just can't make this stuff up. I am speechless.

Geometry Lesson

Lets review a little geometry. The hypotenuse of a right triangle is:
a) longer than the sum of the other sides
b) way longer than the sum of the other sides
c) not that much longer than the sum of the other sides
d) not as long as you think

THE GEEK RETURNS

After a notable absence of several months the Geek is back. Sometimes life just gets to complicated to find the couple of hours in the day to be clever and insightful! But I'm back and rededicated, dear reader, to bringing you the best in worthless and dumb information. So let us know what you like and what you don't.

WHY PRIVATE PILOTS PAY HIGHER INSURANCE RATES

Roanoke, Texas has an airport, and that airport has no control tower. Pilots fly in and out of the airport, and carefully watch the run way and the skies to insure that this doesn't happen. According to KFFA TV the plan that landed on top of the red plan was piloted by a...wait for it...student pilot and flight instructor. And believe it or not, the two pilots were neighbors as well. Wow.

HERES MORE

I HATE Customer Service, and So Should You.

Oh how I hate calling customer service, (the VOICE) be it for the computer, to talk to the phone company or to ask a question of the bank. In general, I find myself caught in Voice Mail Tree hell (the VOICE)! Remember when you called your bank and got an operator who actually tied to get you to the right person.

Or call my personal favorite, Directv. These people have developed a very special voice tree designed to keep you from getting to the person who can actually help you (unless you want to buy something, that's pretty quick). The VOICE tells you how valued you are, all the things you can currently subscribe to on Directv, whats coming up, and then connects you to someone who asks you all the information you just told the VOICE about, to pass you on to someone else to tell the same thing to: again and again.

So imagine my delight to find a Web Place dedicated to getting you information on how to actually get a human on the phone. The site is gethuman.com a group dedicated to improving the customer service experience. The site gives you a list of customer service numbers and hints, how to get around the phone tree, how to ignore the VOICE.

Now we need a site that improves the quality of the human you eventually get. I'll settle for someone who actually cares that your a customer. Unfortunately, those are few and far between. I had one last night at Wachovia's Customer Service, someone who really cared that I understood the issues, was happy with the answer, and felt that I had been helped. To tell you the truth, my experience with Wachovia has been pretty exceptional.

Directv, you should take lessons.

Candidate Update

I hate that I have not found the time to keep you up on the current "race for the race for the White House". There are just so many opportunities to find humor in the current group of contenders, regardless of who you may personally feel is the best candidate. The Geek needs to be more aware of your need to know.

In other words, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, these men and women are going out of their way to not say anything that makes any sense. So I will re-double my efforts to search the net for the very best of the election season, and be sure that I present it here, for your enjoyment. Like this delightful piece:


As Obese Population Rises, More Candidates Courting The Fat Vote

A Little Big Book

I just finished Final Rounds, a father, a son, the golf journey of a lifetime, a small but very powerful book. Written by James Dodson, a long time golf writer and regular contributer to Golf magazine, this is a beautifully written story about golf, life and choices made, and about death.

Without being "preachy" or sappy, it is about the nature of fatherhood, and how we influence our children, for good or for bad, by the example we set for them.

I am going to give this book to every young father I know in the hope of a better crop of dads and kids. I will tell you the end is so gloriously crafted that I cried my way through the final 30 or so painfully exquisite pages. I strongly recommend this book.

MicroYawn

Vern, from someplace in Virginia wrote last week to ask why I didn't express an opinion on Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo. I know that everyone is calling this MicroHoo, but to me it's MicroYawn. Who cares?

Now I do not subscribe to the Microsoft is evil, Bill Gates is the spawn of Satan theory of the world. I think Microsoft, while not the greatest developer of software and a really lousy developer of products, has done a tremendous job at bringing technology to the masses. I don't love them, but I don't hate them either.

I keep reading opinion that Microsoft will destroy Yahoo. Yahoo, Geekettes, is not killin' them in the business. Great portal, no idea how to make money at it. Pretty good content, but...

So why does everyone care so much. Because sometimes bigger is not better. Because we hate Microsoft, because Google is good but Bill is bad.

I think that Microsoft looking for another business is good. Let them do for search what they did for operating systems, make them cheap and reasonably accessible. If the develop a good web word processor, great. If not, who cares.

Go for it.

Netflix Drops HD-DVD

Well I guess the battle is lost. Netflix wrote the Geek today to tell him they will no longer be serving up HD-DVD's from their vast cavern of DVD's. This makes the Geek sad, but then again, they seem to only serve up the items at the very end of my queue. Maybe I need to move on to a less random selection process.

So having lost the war, we are left wondering-what did blu-ray have that HD-DVD didn't. Was it just that they were willing to spend the most to convince retailers and content producers to sign on? I think we need a congressional investigation.

But seriously, has anyone noticed that these subscription DVD services are a real crapshoot. I have had the HD-DVD of Bladerunner in my queue since it was released before Christmas. Still haven't seen it. It seem inevitable when every I break down and rent something at Blockbuster, the next day Netflix sends me the item I just rented.

Seems easier to just go down to the corner and rent the DVD there to begin with. Well maybe Netfix's decision to drop HD-DVD format gives me an opportunity to do that.

Surviving A Computer

I was talking to Dr. Bob, the Geek's eye doc. Dr. Bob's a great guy, smart, and can find your eyes in a dark room, but about computers...well he isn't exactly Bill Gates.

Dr. Bob's oldest just got a new computer. Spanking new Dell XPS. Nice machine, although he did ignore my advice about buying a Mac, but more on that later.

Dr. Bob wanted to know what he needed to do to keep that spanking new XPS running like the fairly efficient watch it should be. So, Dr. Bob, here it is. You have to have that hard conversation with Son Dan:

Practice safe computing! Know who your sleeping with (theoretically that is) and don't forget the condom.

• Spyware! It will make you slow and stupid so get a Spyware program (recommendations below)
• Viruses! Take you over and make you a spammer, so get an Anti-Virus program.
  

Safe computing. Know where your going on the internet and in email. Here are two things you need to know:

1. Stephen King has nightmares about the things that lurk out there on the internet. Really Really scary stuff. Things with claws, and long sharp teeth.
2. Free stuff will cost you your hard drive and could get you owned by some network of nasty spammers.
3. (oh yeah there are really 3 things) porn kills.

Scary stuff. Viruses, Spyware, Trojans. Use to be that viruses just wanted to pop up a message on your screen, maybe about the Beetles, or World Peace or the war. Or destroy our hard drive or erase it. Now it is more likely that a virus will sit quietly on your hard drive, giving you no clue it's there. Then late at night going to work for some spammer sending thousands of emails out to the world offering low cost Viagra or letters from Tonya who admires a longer organ. And getting you banned from AOL for life because it gets traced back to you. Or, acting as a porn server, and getting you arrested for child pornography there by ruining your life.

Spyware, that can slow your computer to a crawl as it pops up messages about stopping spam...just click here. So, get a Spyware filter. Install it and keep it updated. The good news is the best ones are free! Microsoft, the very evil empire that brought you software that is susceptible to spyware, makes a free spyware program. Its called Defender, and much as this is a first here, just click for the site. I actually recommend running this and Ad-aware (not the pro version the free one) together. They work by blocking spyware, and you need to keep them updated. Regularly.

Then you need an anti-virus. Generally a virus takes over your computer. Makes it a slave. I recommend a single purpose program, not a suite that loads down your system. AVG makes a free one: FREE for God's sake go down load it. If you really need to buy one, buy one that is only an anti-virus. Update everyday. Everyday. There are always setting, set yours to update.

Now that you have these spyware and anti-virus programs installed, set them for automatic updates. Do it...now...I'll wait.

Now about that free stuff. Do not download free stuff from the internet. I know, all those songs and television shows and movies, and everyone does it, so why shouldn't you down load them too. HAVE YOU NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION? There is no faster way to become infected. A song on iTunes is 99 cents. Your computer was, what, almost $2000. If you are downloading, you will be infected. Period. Sooner of later it will happen, probably sooner. So knock it off. It isn't worth it. Oh, and by the way, the music and movie industry have no sense of humor about this and they do prosecute, and they love to mess with college kids cause they can.

PORN...there I said it. My suggestion, as hard as it is for the young, stay away. There are so many things that you can catch from it, besides the obvious. Its another case of, get them to come to a site, then infect them. There have been several virus infections that infect windows user just by their visiting a site. And guess what, they are porn sites. You go, click a picture and...your sending emails for a spammer to half the world.

I know this is tough stuff, but you got to follow the rules, no downloads from unknown sources, no click here to see pretty girls, no porn sites, wear your spyware protection and always assume its a scam.

Or, if you are scared and afraid, BUY A MAC. At Amazon, right there at the top of the blog.

The Geek Loses

It seems that everyday brings new, worse news for the HD-DVD format. Who's left that's producing HD-DVD content other that Universal? OK, its not over, there is still a chance that HD-DVD will survive. But, frankly, why did there need to be a format war?

Did anybody learn anything from Beta-Max? The real losers in the war are the people that bought the wrong format. That includes the Grey Hair Geek! How could HD-DVD lose? It was cheaper to produce, the sound and video quality were on a par or better than Blu-Ray. The HD-DVD player was cheaper. And Blu-Ray is produced by Sony, the company that brought you the root kit controversy, where they put nasty, potentially dangerous software on your computer.

But, long live money. Just give it to the greedy studios, by the bag full. Give it to the retailers. And pretty soon you got the market and the consumer is screwed. Ah well.

It's the Election Season

It's the Election Season, and as in most cold dark seasons, the facts are hibernating until things warm up. Democrat or Republican, you have to wonder about the use of liberally altered facts by the men and women that would lead our country. From one debate to the next the only real issue is who will look more pissed off, or who will tell the biggest "mis-representation" of the truth.

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for many of the ideas I hear. I just can not believe that people who want our trust can be so full of, well, horse hockey. Maybe it's that they do not want our trust, maybe they believe if they just lie often enough and long enough, it's the truth.

As George Castansa said to Jerry, "Jerry if you believe it, it not a lie"

Thankfully, there is Factcheck.org which will at least try to figure out the truth. If you haven't visited there, please do so. Yes you feel a little disoriented when you realize the bull that is being feed to all. Yes it is a little unfortunate that this is what our politics have become. Isn't time we changed this, it's our government.

Hello Dr. Bob

Always great hearing from you.

The Geek

Something Different

Ran across this on the net tonight, thought it worth sharing.

Backyard Boarding

Living in the mountains has its advantages, especially if you love skiing, or boarding. In December there was a lot of snow, but the wind kept a lot of people off the mountain. Here's one man's attempt to make the best of it, by hiking up the hill at his house and doing a little backyard boarding.



The boarder is Brian Cady who makes his living as a photographer in the South Lake Tahoe area.

Hannah Montana Concert Terror Target

Apparently, a teenager in California planned to commit suicide by taking over a Southwest Airline Plane and crashing it into a Hannah Montana Concert in New Orleans. Apparently. Now I know that tickets are hard to come by and all that. But lets face it, if you take over a plane and fly it into a concert, the people at the concert don't know what the hell you are protesting or why. Bottom line, all we know, and I am really sorry to say this, the only thing we know is that you are totally a loser. Period. And you weren't even good enough to pull it off.

Hannah Montana is a character. Not a real person. So, in summary, you are not even trying to kill a real person.

Apple Needs this Candidate

If there wasn't enough reason to vote Democratic this year, Barack Obama certainly won the Apple User vote on his recent appearance on Dave Letterman. Note item 4 in the Top 10 Campaign Promises.



I guess its up to the real Apple fans to make sure he wins.

Giants Beat Packers in a Nail Biter

It's hard to be a Giant's fan in Southern California. None the less, this week end saw a really terrific battle between the Giants and the ever powerful Packers. It was the game we always hope that the Superbowl will be: hard fought, tough, dirty and close.

But here's the prediction of it all, for your review:

Cell Phones

Are cell phones good or bad? do they improve communication or make it so overwhelming that it becomes non-communication? I don't know. I know that I hate cell phones in restaurants, airplanes, bathrooms and conference rooms. I once very seriously threatened to throw someones cell phone out the window if they didn't stop taking calls while we spoke.

Sorry...sort of.



Bottom line, get some awareness that it is not just you out there, we are all there, and sick of your interruptions.

Bobby Fischer Dies at 64

Bobby Fischer beat the Russians when beating the Russians was a big deal. He was young and sort of good looking in a geek sort of way and he beat Boris Spassky in 1972, was there ever a better name for a Russian bad guy.

He won then quit. Just quit, became a strange recluse. Raving anti-semitic, making no sense. Wanted by the government--our government. He died tonight.

Life is very strange.

Help Me I'm Drowning In Paper

What does your office look like? Can you find your mouse in the morning without moving anything? Can you find last month's bank statement in under one week. Are you a neat-nick stuck in a litterbug's life. How bout going paperless.

Yes I said paperless. No paper. But how, how Geek can this happen?

Well you could hire a professional like John Cushman of Solany Document Management in Denver. If you have an office with a lot of files and need real, professional help, John can help. I had THOUSANDS of plans and documents scanned, and this company was great. John, the founder, has recently become a Mac Addict as well, showing his true intelligent nature.

Lets say you are just a regular human. To go paperless you need a way to get information into your computer. A scanner is good. Most of us now have some sort of scanner, usually associated with a printer or fax machine. Good you can get something in the computer. Not great though. You need to scan it in, dozens of documents a month. Using a slow, clumsy scanner. What's the chance you really will keep it up? About the same as the chance of you winning the Lottery this week. Just about none.

I have two other suggestions. the first is pretty easy, and costs you nothing. It is good in most ways. Go to paperless billing. Almost all credit card companies and utilities let you do it, no paper bills, just an email that you DO NOT PRINT because then you wouldn't be paperless would you?? Must the Geek tell you everything? Just save the pdf file. While your at it, pay the bill on line, save paper and the stamp.

This will not take you paperless, because there are things you can not get paperlessly. Some one sends you a letter telling you that you won the Lottery. If you want that paperlessly you need to scan it then throw it away. Back to that scanner.

A better idea, Fujitsu Snapscan. It is not cheap, but does come with Adobe. It is small, light wait and very fast. You can take a handful of paper, put it the slot and scan it in moments. Moments, its so fast you will not believe your eyes. Then you can easily either file it, or convert it to a text searchable document using your new Adobe program.

The Snapscan folds to a very small footprint so it doesn't eat up your desk space. It is about $425, and a vast improvement over your clunky scanner. Word of warning, there is a Mac version and a PC version, be sure you get the right one. This lets you get bills, letters, Warrants, receipts and whatever else you want to keep in the computer and safe.

Now a warning: if you don't have a file system, and you don't get rid of the paper and you don't back up, you haven't completed the process. I will cover that part of the process soon, dear geekettes.

Play Golf All Winter Long

The Geek knows that its cold there where you live. (Living in Southern California means never having to put your clubs away) The Geek understands and wants you to have a good winter, so the Geek will share with you. Try the World Golf Tour. A free, kind of neat web site that will remind you of the best computer golf games you have played. It is a little easier than, say, playing against Tiger. And you do not need to rent a cart. Just give it a try.

You can play as a guest or sign up and keep track of your score and maybe win a new Taylor Driver. Or perhaps you can beat the Geek son's shot!

If you are the boss, you might want to block this site on your server. I predict that millions of hours of productivity will soon be lost. Meanwhile, those of us lucky--or perhaps stupid enough--to live here in the Southland will go get the clubs and play a few holes.

Yes I Want One, Right Now. No I Am Not Going to Buy One

The MacBook Air, so very slim, so very hot (probably literally as we all know, no one freezes with a MacBook on their lap). This is an amazing looking computer. The Geekess will kill me if I come home with one of these. Leo, are you going to buy one?




I want it, I want it.

Mac Mistakes

We are often accused of being unfair to PC's. In truth, computers are complicated and sometimes do not behave the way we would like them to. So for you Mac haters, a little something for you:

Saving Those Photos

Doctor Bob, who takes care of the Geek's eyes, is worried about his growing digital picture collection. As well he should be! After all, a shoe box of photos is pretty tangible, and I have seen pictures of President Lincoln still viewable. On the other hand, those snaps of Junior's new hair cut, you know just before the jury let him off, I haven't seen those in about two years, and where did I put them anyway?

There are several issues with photo back-up that really are no different than any other back-up of digital media. So lets think about them: where are they, how safe are they and will I be able to see them ten years from now?

Where are they? I know they're on your computer. Yeah and my record collection is out in the garage, but I can't tell you where and it would take me 6 months to dig through everything to find them. You really want to use a software program to keep your pictures ordered and identified. My favorite is (sorry for you pc boys) iPhoto, because it lets me categorize and tag photos. Tags are words that you attach to the photo so you can easily search for them. Junior, Court, Breaking and Entering, that sort of thing.

You want something that makes it easy to find the picture, again, iPhoto lets you sort by date, and "coverflow" makes it really easy to find the picture visually. So what do you do if you don't own a Mac? You could go buy one. The truth is there are numerous photo cataloging programs. Kodak has one, so does HP, just make sure that whatever you use, it isn't a cheap, I may not be around in a year company. You might want to try Adobe Elements, its reasonably inexpensive (less than $100) and Adobe makes good stuff, even if their support of the Apple products...sucks. A good program will find all the pictures on your hard drive and bring them together, then, sort them, tag them and--back them up.

How safe are they? All hard drives fail. Period. If your photos are on your hard drive you will loose them. Sooner or later. It will happen. So it would be nice if that program you just bought lets you back up. To what you say? Well DVD's are the likely spot. They are cheap, easy and almost every computer has one. In iPhoto, pick um and burn um. Anything else, there's something else you need to do. Figure it out and do it. Every month on the 6th of the month, or some other date, back up everything since the month before. Them label them, and store them. Now for the really bad news, no one really knows how long a cd will last. So maybe you need to do more. Read on.

There are three types of back up, on site, like on the machine, archival-you store it someplace away from the machine, and off site, really really off site. So you do the CD's and put them in a closet or safe deposit box. You can hook up a hard drive to your computer and copy all the pictures over to that: on your mac you use the program time machine to do it automatically when ever you make a change. There are ways to do it with Windows and Linux, but not with the same arrogance as a mac person. Time machine just does it.

Remember, a hard drive next to your machine is as likely to burn to a crisp when your house burns down as the computer is. So remote storage works. For $50 bucks a year you can use a service like Mozy or Carbonite to back up your files and store them. In fact, if you have a small number of pictures, you might get away with just their free program. If your wife is like mine, shell out the $50. It is done over the internet, takes a week or so to back up the first time, but then it is painless and quick. Carbonite is for PC users only, Mozy supports the Mac and PC. Mozy gets my vote, and they were really good at trouble shooting a issue I had when they were beta testing.

If you have a Mac, get Leopard, and start time machine and buy a new hard drive every 6 to 8 months when you fill up the back up drive.

Finally will I be able to see them ten years from now? Well who knows. I think that if you store them in jpeg or tiff formates, the kind most cameras use, the answer is probably yes. On the other hand, there are a lot of Zipp Drives in desk drawers (mine included) that no one will ever read again. And think about all the old Kinescope television shows. You will need to be sure that you archive and if necessary convert.

And it doesn't hurt to print a few of the best shots and put them in a shoe box.