i’m back bitches…..

well that sucked.  i was sidelined while my laptop was being repaired.  that being said, i’m back and should have some new content soon.

-the rabbit

tips from a computer geek

happy monday to you all. i thought i would share a few tips that are sure fire and come straight from the mouth of the guy you call when things go wrong with your pc (this does apply to all family friends or relatives that you call when things go wrong):

• before you even call me: turn the pc off and turn it back on again, this will more than likely fix what is wrong. yep, thank billy gates and steve ballmer for that.
• your computer is slow: face it, if it’s older than 2 years and you haven’t done a thing to maintain it, tough, you’re toast. it’s like a car, it needs oil changes and whatnot. try maxing out your ram (memory) to improve performance.
• your system tray: all those icons in the bottom right hand corner are running programs. you allowed those to be installed when you installed some software. shame on you. start by shutting them down and possibly uninstall the software all together.
• you bought new hardware: that’s great, don’t use the disc that came with it. go straight to the website and get new drivers or download the latest software. then you won’t have to call me in the first place.
• error messages: these are helpful. don’t call me and only say ‘it won’t work’. tell me what’s up and, seriously, if you get an error message write down the details. if i don’t pickup, type the error into google and you’ll probably find your answer.
• send the horse to the glue factory: if it’s not working right, or is going costing you over $300 to fix; get rid of your computer and buy a new one. don’t pay someone $300 to repair a 4 year old pc when you can pay that much money to buy a new pc without a keyboard, monitor and mouse since you already have those.
• don’t open forwarded emails: it’s an electronic chain letter people. be smart, no harm will come to you if you decide to not forward an email and potentially infect hundreds of your friends with a virus. no bad luck will haunt you or baby pandas will be killed. actually that’s good karma.
• unclutter your desktop: i know you like all those icons there for ‘easy access’ but it’s like carrying all the makeup you own, all the cds in their cases, all the dvds in their cases and a stackful of books with you all the time. it’s just gonna unnecessarily weigh you down. delete them. oh and by deleting them you won’t actually remove the programs.
• the internet is a scary place: the only things you need to surf the web are: internet explorer or mozilla firefox, adobe flash, and java from sun. other than that you don’t need anything else. any prompt telling you that you need something is crap. just don’t do it.
• wireless networking: thanks for all the money. i mean it, this is the number one money maker for me. it’s complicated; it’s not always easy, but seriously buy a decent piece of hardware from linksys or netgear for under $100 and manage it yourself. they have fairly simple user interfaces and for godsakes: password protect your network.
• uninstall useless programs: if you don’t use it; uninstall it. if you don’t know what it is and want to uninstall it: google it and you should know what is up and whether or not you can. other than that, just slim your system down. it’s like nutrisystem for your pc.
• the most important one of all: google your problem. because that’s what i do. i’m not that smart but i pretend to be to impress drunken women at nightclubs. do what i do: just search for your problem and your answer is not far away.

i feel better now that we talked. glad i was able to get some things off my chest. and if your question doesn’t fall into one of the above categories then call me. if you own a mac, then you seemingly won’t ever need to call me, so when we do talk we can discuss the weather and general topics.

taste test: archer farms smoky bacon and cheddar crisps

that’s chips to us on this side of the big pond. well i guess in a marketing effort to distinguish fried potato chips from baked potato chips they are calling the baked variety ‘crisps’. in any case these are baked and are purported to be low-fat. let the games begin.

piclens: why i heart my browser even more

actually it’s really flickr and picasa and google and facebook (no, i still hate facebook) that i heart even more these days. piclens is an addon to your browser of choice, be it windows or mac/i.e. or firefox or safari, that shows pictures in a wickedly cool way. it takes the pictures and displays them in a 3d effect that makes them look like a wall of artwork.

here’s what happens, you are surfing flickr you move your mouse over a photo and you click the piclens icon that appears. next the window fades out and you are immersed in a 3d world of photos. you can view more photos by moving your mouse side to side and zoom in on photos easily.

taste test: quisp cereal

every now and again some weird product comes by the trixareforkids offices that we just aren’t sure what to do with besides eat. i’ve reviewed quite a few odd products but i have to say that i was surprised by this one. for those of you who don’t know, a group which included me up until about an hour ago, quisp is the ‘quazy energy cereal’ from quaker oats company (read: loaded with sugar). originally introduced in 1965, he had a brother named quake (get it?, quisp and quake) who had his own cereal. after 5 years of sibling rivalry the feud had to end. in 1970 quaker held a contest to see which was the more popular cereal and quisp won.

in a bit of what we would now call bad marketing, the quisp character was a pink alien with a ray gun, or at least back then had a ray gun. you can find more deets about this whole saga online somewhere. all in all the cereal is in very, very limited distribution and you really can’t find it anywhere. i was most apprehensive because the box looked as though not much changed since the 1970 introduction so i was worried this was a really old box. alas, it was not and thus began my tasting journey.

is the commercial jingle dead?

you know the jingle; it told you what name your bologna had and it helped you realize that if you were a wiener, what kind of wiener you would like to be. these days i’m noticing a trend: the death of the jingle. let’s start first to define what i believe the jingle to be, “a short song encapsulated in a commercial that defines a product, what a product offers, or whom the product is tailored for”. it also has a sticking-factor that embedded it into your brain and bugged you when you were trying to sleep. you might have other ideas of what a jingle is, but i don’t care. well i do, but for consistency-sake we’ll just stick with my definition.

when growing up the jingle was a staple of the advertising world. it made me want to buy, no, need to buy something. it made me need something so bad that i would nag my mother incessantly until i got said product. nowadays the jingle seems to have gone the way of the dodo in advertising, with the exception of a few ‘old world’ products from conglomerate companies.

taste test: gabbiano rosato toscano wine

seriously, it was $3. here was my exact thought process:

hmmm, $3, how bad can it be? it is pink so that doesn’t really bode well, but it is $3. i can always turn it into sangria

and that’s what i did; i turned it into sangria. but first i actually sampled the wine to decipher if it was a good purchase.

taste test: trader joe’s 100% pure florida orange juice

no pulp and ‘not from concentrate’; can i buy a dozen? wow, sorry for the cheap humor. that was bad even for me. anywho, today we are talking orange juice. the winter season is coming to an end and that means a series of hot days, then cold days. that means i’m going to get sick. in preparation, i am bulking up on orange juice and anything with vitamin c. on that last trip to tj’s i decided to give their offering a go.

now before we begin let me state that for as long as i can remember i have been a tropicana oj drinker. this does not mean i am biased; i have tried many kinds but i always seem to go back to tropicana. accordingly it has raised the bar for what i consider to be orange juice. for me orange juice means: 100% pure, never from concentrate, it can either be low pulp or no pulp and it must be from florida (unless i am traveling overseas). since it’s oj it lives a double life, much like a super villain. during the day he is a mild mannered day trader and at night he is a coke sniffing party animal. my evil side of oj likes vodka, and lots of it, but more on that later.

taste test: trader joe’s nonfat organic vanilla yogurt

i have been looking for a lower cost solution for my yogurt needs since i realized that my monthly spending on stoneyfield farms banilla yogurt (no that’s not a typo, it’s vanilla and banana) had gotten rather excessive. on a recent binge shopping spree to tj’s i decided i would try something new. i made a purchase of trader joe’s organic nonfat french vanilla yogurt (goddamn that’s a long name). to be objective i decided i would evaluate it on a couple of different levels: by itself and with granola. seeing as how the majority of us eat it with something i though this was beneficial.

update: the ipod survived the washing machine

and the spin cycle at that.  yes folks it did.  i am absolutely amazed to say the least.  okay, we were here before.  the ipod came out after the spin cycle after everything had completed.  the original film was still on the face of the nano, thankfully, and probably saved the whole deal.

we placed it on the top of a heating vent and let it sit overnight.  in the morning i hooked it up to my mac and sure as shit, it mounted and was recognized in itunes.  it didn’t even lose any details in the ipod info screen. i was seriously amazed.  we both had thought this was a lost cause, but somehow this actually worked.

the final test was to see if it would play a track and whether or not it had audio still (seeing as how the audio jack took a bunch of water to it).  i transferred a track from dropkick murphys to it and fired it up.  goddamn if it didn’t work.  we were jamming out to music afterall.   there was honestly no adverse side effects.  i am not lying, there were no effects.

i have to say this was a crazy experience.  at under $200 the idea is that the ipod is technically almost disposable should something happen to it.  however it’s nice to see that some luck and ‘designed by apple in california, assembled in china’ quality actually saved us.  the scoreboard btw: ipod - 1; washing machine - 0.