The PC Improvement News
Issue 60
November 31, 1999
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 1999
There are only 2 ways to get on the subscriber list. You have
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To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcimprovements.com/pcin/
Note 1: If any of the links are too long to fit on one line,
you may have to
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Note 2: You can only win one contest every 30 days.
Welcome to the 60th edition of the PC Improvement News. In
this newsletter,
I combine news, tips, thoughts, and contests. There is something
for
everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there
will be something
for you. I am willing to discuss any computer topics in this
newsletter.
Email me at pcinews@pcimprovements.com
with your suggestions.
If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come
back for more!
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SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
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Thanks to everyone who sent in their thoughts on the domain
name. I decided
to go for it, so there is now a PCIN.net that you can visit.
Not much is
there though and hardly anything works. For now, keep using
the
http://www.pcimprovements.com/pcin/
link to manage your subscription. I
will let you know of updates to the new site in this newsletter
and
hopefully within a few weeks it will be ready to go.
John Hills suggested that if people try the answers given
in the "I Need
Help" section, they should send in their results. Did
the suggestions work
or not? This is a good suggestion, so I encourage you
if you try a
suggestion to let me know how it is doing at pcinews@pcimprovements.com
Speaking of I Need Help. People must be busy getting ready
for the Holiday
season as I had very few people email me this week.
There were no responses
to last week's questions. No problem, it gave me some
time to do other
things.
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THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
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I have heard it said that the first ingredient of success
- the earliest
spark in the dreaming youth - is this: dream a great dream.
- John
A. Appleman
Thought courtesy of http://www.HappyPublishing.com/
To subscribe to the FREE "Aspire to Something Higher"
Thought-Of-The-Day
list, send a blank email to HappyQuotes-subscribe@listbot.com
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THE NEWS
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Get to Cooperstown via the WWW
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As I've mentioned before, I am a baseball fan. I'm too young
to remember
Pete Rose's glory days, but I still know he was a great player.
Well, as
most people know, he can't get into the Hall of Fame because
he gambled on
baseball. This week he announced that he is backing
a web site that will
try to get people to sign a digital petition to get baseball
to reinstate
him. He his hoping to get 1 million people to support
him. You can visit
the site and cast your vote either way.
For more info:
http://www.nypost.com/news/18802.htm
http://www.sportscut.com/PeteRose/default.asp
The Beer Pager
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I am not a drinker, but I think most people would have to
admit that this
seems a little unnecessary. Miller Brewing Company has come
out with a pager
that lets users enter a list of email addresses, favorite
places, and other
information, which can be sent to friends notifying them of
upcoming
parties.
For more info:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,32791,00.html
Bush Doesn't Like Cartoon
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George Bush, a US Presidential candidate, is taking legal
action against a
man who put a fake image of Bush with a straw up his nose
snorting cocaine.
The image references the fact that Bush hasn't been clear
on whether he did
cocaine when he was younger. The man, Zack Exley, claims
that it the image
is so absurd that it is obviously a joke, and that if it had
been printed in
traditional media, he wouldn't be having any problems.
For more info:
http://www.detnews.com/1999/nation/9911/14/11140092.htm
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I NEED HELP
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As many of you know, I offer a free help service via email.
If you have a
question, you can email me and I will try my best to answer
them. I can
answer about half of them. Those are things that I do regularly
or have
experience with. There are other things that I have never
tired or
experienced so I don't have an answer. I hope to post those
questions here
and see if any of the readers have any suggestions. I will
include all
reasonable suggestions with credit to you. These are NOT my
own questions
and they are NOT my answers. I will NOT check the validity
of these
comments. That is up to you.
Previous Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have a ZIP drive as a back up medium. This takes care of
the physical
requirement but managing backups is still a nuisance and the
only way I can
be sure I'm doing it is to back up everything each time. I've
heard of
software that manages backups, tracking what needs to be saved
and managing
restores, but the one I investigated is pretty expensive.
Does anyone have a
good way to deal with this or know of a cheap/free application
that will
make it easier?
Answers to Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
None Given.
Previous Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Does anyone know of an email client or an add-in for any of
the usual email
suspects (we use Eudora and MS Outlook) that will selectively
apply a
process like zipping attachments depending on the characteristics
of the
mail (e.g. The size of the attachments or the who it's going
to)? I would
like to automate the process.
Answers to Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
None Given.
New Question
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) I cannot get to some web sites using internet explorer
while the same
ISP will work using AOL browser, e.g. http://www.microsoft.com and
http://www.angelfire.com
I have checked explorers settings and can't figure
it out. Most web sites I can access. I have Shiva remote access
installed
for my dial-up to work and can access the sites there but
not with my ISP.
Any ideas? I get "Internet Explorer could not open the
search page".
Q2) I have a problem with the color on my monitor. There is
no red or green.
I went to the control panel and tried to change the settings
but the color
is wrong there also.
If you have an answer to these questions or have a question
of your own,
please email me at freehelp@pcimprovements.com
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NO NEW CONTEST
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No new contest, but there will be one for sure next week.
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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Cheap Trick of the Week
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**Recall your Web site passwords**
Are too many Web sites requiring passwords for you to remember
them all?
A solution could be to make a Web site's password appear automatically
whenever you go to that site.
In Netscape, start by bookmarking the site whose password
you want to
remember. Then under the Bookmarks menu, select Edit Bookmarks.
Right-click
on the appropriate bookmark and select Bookmark Properties.
Click in the
Location field and go to the end of the address. In most cases
you can
simply add a question mark (?) followed by your password or
any other
information you would like to append, all without any spaces.
When you next
use this bookmark to go to the Web site, the additional information
will
appear on the address bar. The browser will ignore everything
from the
question mark on, but you can read it to pick up your password.
If the bookmarked address is one of those long, complicated
ones with equal
signs, pluses or other strange characters, you may have to
use an ampersand
(&) instead of the question mark.
In Internet Explorer, the process is almost identical. Mark
the site as a
Favorite, look under Favorites for Organize Favorites, right-click
the item,
select Properties and add your info with a question mark or
ampersand to the
URL field.
Buy the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks for only $9.95 Cdn
(about $7.00
US)
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/cheaptricks.shtml
A Subscriber Recommendation
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Subscriber Judy Wilson recommends the following programs:
Download Wonder is a program that keeps all the downloads
that you do from
the Internet located in one file that you set up on your hard
drive. It is
great for people that see things on the internet and download
them and then
wonder what they were, where they came from and even worse
I didn't remember
what that file was.
This program allows you to put a description and even key
words that will
remind you what and why you needed it. Example of course is
ZDNet which
gives you tons of Utilities and interesting things to download
and if you
get confused then Download Wonder is the program for you,
and install it
from there even if it is zipped up.
Note Wonder: Another nice program for people that work at
home as I do. If
you get a phone call there is a template there that you just
click and write
it down rather then having all these papers on your desk.
Or your friend
tells you about something on a URL and you don't want to write
a note to
remind yourself on a piece of paper, just click and do it
right then and
there on the computer. There is a time reminder too for those
really
important dates LOL
I just think these are great programs I use them a lot.
Ode to the Computer age
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A friend of mine, Betsy Dobbie forwarded this to me.
Remember when ...
A computer was something on TV
from a science fiction show of note
A window was something you hated to clean
and ram was the cousin of a goat
Meg was the name of my girlfriend
and gig was a job for the nights
now they all mean different things
and that really mega bytes.
An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano
Memory was something you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3 inch floppy
you hoped nobody found out.
Compress was something you did to the garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
you'd be in jail for awhile
Log on was adding wood to the fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened in your commode
Cut you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web site was a spider's home
and a virus was the flu
I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead.
Acronym Finder
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Some of the most useful sites on the Internet are dictionaries
and
encyclopedia. They are reliable sources and can be very
helpful. A very
useful site is the Acronym Finder site that allows you to
type in an acronym
(short form like ASAP) and it will tell you what it means.
Just in case you
were wondering, PCIN isn't there.
Check it out at http://www.acronymfinder.com/
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Well, that's all for this week. If there is anything that
you want to learn
about, let me know. You can also send in your comments and
suggestions.
PCIN is brought to you by PC Improvements. The opinions expressed
are those
of the editor, Graham Wing. PC Improvements and Graham Wing
accept no
responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips
in this
newsletter.
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Editor: Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1999, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights
reserved. This
publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long
as the author is
notified and the newsletter is presented as is.