Kaspersky Beats McAfee

Back in December Staples had a deal where you could get McAfee Total Protection anti-virus suite for free after mail-in rebates. Susan and I each got a copy and Susan also wound up getting a copy for her mom. I told my mom about the deal and she bought a copy as well. Mom uninstalled hers within a couple of days because it was slowing her computer down so much. I hung on for a few months until I had trouble with iTunes being blocked. Then a few weeks ago I was at Susan’s and her computer was so slow you couldn’t even have a menu drop down in Internet Explorer. I uninstalled McAfee and it was off to the races again.

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Balloon Flower

I planted some balloon flowers several years ago. Though they don’t always come back, in general they will in Atlanta at least. Mom has some by her mailbox that have done great and Susan planted some at her house that have come back strong this year. Unfortunately I had some mums and lamb’s ear that overtook where I planted my balloon flowers, so they have gone away for the most part. But I got a couple of stalks that came up this year (the mum having obligingly died, and therefore no longer in the way) and I noticed they were a perfect example of why they are called balloon flowers. On the left is one that is puffed up and the other has already burst open. They are also called by their scientific name platycodon (or platycodon grandiflorus) and Chinese bellflower (on wikipedia).

Grant’s New Computer

Last Thursday Grant sent me an e-mail and said he would like some help in buying a new desktop computer that he could use for e-mail, internet, and QuickBooks. I asked him if he wanted a monitor and he said it should include that. So I went to Dell and priced out a pretty decent system. I had to add a couple of small extras to get it over $600 and get free shipping.

It arrived earlier this week. It still needed a few things. One was some way of getting on Grant’s wireless network. His router is tucked away and he didn’t want to run a cable to the new computer (I don’t blame him). Dell doesn’t seem to offer internal wireless cards for desktop computers. Fortunately Mom had given me her wireless USB thumb drive when Fry’s replaced her laptop with one that already had wireless installed. Also I told Grant I could give him some speakers which saved a few dollars.

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Fixing the Movies

I’ve spent a chunk of the last two weekends going through all of my movie reviews and fixing them up. A lot of times when I write a review, I might reference another movie I’ve reviewed and I’m too lazy at the time to put in a hyperlink reference. Also, because I usually write these on AMUG and then just copy them into a separate file for my web page, I don’t italicize movie titles like I’m supposed to. So I went through all of my reviews (I’m up to 238 movies reviewed over the last 10 years) and fixed them up. It took a lot of time, but at least this weekend I was doing it while I was encoding new episodes from Seinfeld Seasons 3 and 7 DVD’s (which I got a good deal on at Fry’s yesterday; now I have everything through Season 7 and will wait to buy the just-released Season 8 when the price comes down).

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