Tech Tip Tuesday - Fix Your Hot Laptop

Although desktop computers can get hot themselves, laptops are much more prone to this problem. There are several reasons that this is the case. For one, laptops are much more compact meaning  heat generating components are stuffed into a relatively small case. Less space equals less airflow equals more heat. Engineers know this so laptops are designed to maximize airflow with specialized components and placement to prevent overheating. Despite this design and construction, laptops can still get dangerously hot. Some things that defeat this design are:

• Using the laptop on a surface that prevents good airflow such as carpet or a bed or blanket
• Accumulated dust
• Non-functioning fans

When you use a laptop on the carpet or on your bed some of the vents that air flows through become blocked and air cannot circulate. This is the easiest (and perhaps the most common) cause of overheating to fix. Avoid using your laptop on carpeted floors, your bed, or even . . . well your lap. All of these things block airflow. The small rubber feet on the bottom of your laptop are completely unused (as is when you use it on your lap) or cannot raise the computer high enough to clear the nap of the carpet, etc. There are a few things you can do if you have to use your laptop on anything other than a table or desk:

• Use a thick hardback book or a couple of paperbacks to prop the rear of the computer up when using it on carpet.
• When using it on your lap or on the bed try to find a hard flat surface that you can place the laptop on. I personally use a lap desk (http://bit.ly/T1pw3i), which is a flat tray with a beanbag bottom. You can use it both on your lap or other surfaces, like a bed.
• There are also laptop cooling units (http://bit.ly/T1pBUL) that you can purchase. These not only provide good circulation, but also use fans of their own to increase airflow. These can actually help laptops with fans that are beginning to or have completely failed.

Accumulated dust can cause a laptop to heat up too. One might wonder how this could be, but once you consider that some areas that air has to flow through in a laptop has a clearance of less than a millimeter, it is easy to see how even a thin layer of dust can disrupt circulation. Another way that that dust becomes a nuisance in this respect is that it can gather on fan spindles slowing the fan down and also collect in vents obstructing them. Dust is the second easiest overheating problem to cure. There are basically two approaches that you can take.

1. Buy a can of compressed air (http://bit.ly/MXYcQP). Stand your laptop on it's edge and blast all of the vents on the bottom with the compressed air. You will likely see dust shooting out of other vents, so you might want to do this outside. Also blast the fan (usually located on the side or the back). This will not only blow out and loosen dust bunnies it will free up and blow out anything that might be obstructing your fan. Keep blowing out the vents until the dust stops flying. You should see a noticeable difference in temperature the next time you run your laptop.
2. The second option involves using compressed air as well but is a little more advanced. If you are comfortable taking things apart and putting them together again, you can take apart your laptop and use the compressed air to clean out the dust even more thoroughly. This is what I would do to your laptop if you gave it to me with overheating issues. There are a couple of cautions here though. First, be sure that you keep track of where all the screws go. I have yet to encounter a laptop that didn't use at least 5 or more different sizes of screws. Second, use care when blowing components. Some circuitry can be delicate and if you have the nozzle of the air can too close you could potentially blow a delicate piece off. I have not encountered this myself, but it is within the realm of possibility, so be careful. All laptops are different, so I am not going to go in depth as to how to take apart your laptop since it's going to be different for everyone.

Finally, fans can break or become stuck, which prevents air circulation causing the laptop to quickly heat up. You can tell if you have a broken fan if you cannot feel any hot air blowing out of your computer's back or sides. Now it is possible if this is the case that your fan is obstructed so before attempting a fan fix, use the compressed air method to see if you can dislodge anything that might be blocking the fan from spinning. If you are still  having trouble, you can either take your laptop to a tech to have the fan replaced or you can do it yourself. Again, computers are different so I'm not going to go into detail here, but you should be able to Google your model and find all the information that you need to fix the fan including the part number for the fan replacement. Replacing the fan yourself is not hard, but it does involve partially disassembling your laptop to get to the fan, so use your own judgement to decide whether you are up to the task or not.

This covers the most common overheating problems that you will encounter with laptops. There are some very rare things that can cause a laptop to overheat, but these are instances when a tech's expertise would be best anyway, so if the methods above don't fix your problem, take your laptop to a tech to get it properly diagnosed and repaired. 

I do not endorse any of the products that I have provided links for in this post. The links were simply provided to show you examples and to allow you a place to start your own shopping. I urge you to read reviews on products before purchasing.

— EICAR Antivirus Test – Speed Post — — Tech goodness in under 5 seconds! —

Antivirus Test

Have you ever wondered if your antivirus software was really working? Well so has the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR), which is why they created a standard antivirus testing file. The file can be run by Microsoft operating systems except for 64-bit versions. To see your antivirus in action open Notepad and type or paste in: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
Then save the file as eicar.com

Almost immediately you should see a message from your virus program that says something to the effect of "Blocked EICAR test string. Your computer is secure." Even if you are sure that your virus program is working, seeing this message fills you with a great sense of confidence and security, so I recommend trying it just for this reason.

THIS FILE WILL NOT, I REPEAT WILL NOT HARM YOUR COMPUTER IN ANY WAY. IT IS NOT A VIRUS IT IS ONLY A TEST FILE. DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. GOOGLE EICAR TEST AND READ UP ON IT YOURSELF.

— Windows Notepad Log – Speed Post — — Tech goodness in under 5 seconds! —

The Notepad Log Function

Windows Notepad has a function that a lot of people are unaware of. If you open up Notepad and type .LOG on the first line then save and close, every time you open that note Windows will insert a time and date stamp. This is useful if you want to track the progress of something like the testing phase of a software application, customer service follow up calls, or anything else you need to keep an accurate log of. Combine this function with the Tech Tip on hidden files to create a secure personal diary or journal.

Tech Tip Tuesday - Hide Your Files

Disclaimer: I do not suggest or condone using the following tips in an illegal manner. If you do chose to do something with the information that follows, I take no responsibility for the consequences.

The vast majority of us have files on our computers that we would not like anyone to see. Whether it's a Word document containing all your account passwords, plans and drawings for an invention, or those personal pictures that you took last summer for your spouse, aside from the rare gem that only uses their computer for Facebook games, we all have files we would like to keep private. There are many ways to protect these files, but today I'm going to discuss one of the simpler methods that requires no special software or monetary investment, all it will cost you is your time. Now, for anybody that has been around Windows for some time, it is no surprise or secret that you can hide files and folders. For those of you that did not know this, here is how you do it:

Right-click on any file or folder that you want to hide and click Properties. In the Properties window under the General tab, put a check mark in the box that says Hidden, then click Okay. If it is a file the icon will disappear. If it is a folder you will first be asked if you want all the files and folders within that folder to be hidden or just the folder. Usually you will want to click All Files and Folders, that way all of the pictures or what ever you are hiding are hidden too.

Now, there are several ways to access files you have hidden this way. One way is to enter the file's path in the address bar. For example, let's say you hid a picture in the My Documents folder called "lucky.jpg". From any open folder window you could enter:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\luck.jpg
and the picture would open. Note: as long as you know what folder the file is hidden in, you don't have to manually enter the whole path. Just navigate to the folder (in this case My Documents) put the cursor at the end of the address that is in the address bar and add "\filename.extention" without the quotes (in this case \lucky.jpg).

There are several other ways to access hidden files as long as you know where they are. This method of hiding files is effective for keeping files out of sight, but they are quite easy to find for anyone with even a small working knowledge of Windows. This is because Windows has a Show Hidden Files check box in Folder Options that makes all files that have been marked "hidden" visible (they will appear as semi-transparent icons). To get to Folder options just click on the Tools button in any open folder window, then select Folder Options (alternately you could enter "folder options" in the Start Menu search box then click enter). Click the View tab at the top and then scroll down until you see Hidden Files and Folders. Under that there will be two options Select the Show option and all the files that you have hidden will be visible.

Now what a lot of people don't know, even those who have been using Windows for a long time, is that there is a way to hide your files in such a way that even with the Show Hidden Files option selected, your files will still not be visible. This is a much more effective way of hiding those top secret files that are just for your eyes only. Here is how:

Let's say you want to hide a folder called "Inventions" on your C: drive containing invention idea documents. To make this folder completely invisible to others:
1) Press the Windows key+R (the windows key is the one with the Windows logo on it). This opens a Run Dialog
2) In the box in the Run Dialog type: cmd and then hit enter. This opens a Command Prompt.
3) Now in the Command Prompt type: attrib +s +h "C:\Inventions" (Don't leave out the quotes around your path)
4) Press enter and this file will be hidden even if the folder options are set to show hidden files.

To reverse this, in other words, make the folder visible again, just do exactly the same steps as above, only replace the + signs with - signs (attrib -s -h "C:\Inventions"). Excuse me for a second while I go into geek speak for a second to explain what is happening here. The letters "s" and "h" are file attributes. When you use the attrib command letters with a plus mean add that attribute to the file and letters with a minus in front mean remove that attribute from the file. The "h" obviously stands for hidden so +h means: give this file the hidden attribute or make this file hidden. The "s" stands for system or system file. Giving the file the system file attribute makes Windows treat it like an operating system essential file. This means that you cannot change it or its place on the disk by conventional means, which is why you have to change it back through the command line. If you were to open the properties of a folder hidden this way, you would find the hidden check box is grayed out.

Now the thing about this is that the files in the folder that you hid this way are still visible even though the folder isn't, so this is not very useful when implemented this way since someone could potentially run a file search for say *.doc and see all the .doc files on the computer including the ones in the hidden folder. To make this more useful do this: Before going through the above steps, hide the folder with the Properties menu as I explained earlier, but hit Apply instead of Okay. Then agree to hide all files and subfolders when prompted. Then in the same Properties box uncheck Hidden and this time click Okay. Now when it asks if you want to un-hide the files and subfolders select only the folder. This will give you and unhidden Inventions folder full of hidden files and folders. Now just hide the Inventions folder using the Command Prompt method. See this way, the Inventions folder will not be visible when Show Hidden is selected and even though all of it's contents will be semi-visible, you have to actually be in the Inventions folder to see them. Unless someone knows the Inventions folder is there AND knows it's path, they will never find your stuff. You on the other hand only have to navigate to the hidden Inventions folder and use the Show Hidden option to access all your stuff.

There is one caveat. If the person looking sets Folder Options to Show Hidden and then they do a search for *.doc, the .doc files in the hidden Inventions folder will show up in that search. So, if you really need a certain file hidden, hide it with the Command Prompt method to be safe. So if the entire contents of the folder must be hidden this way it becomes too time consuming unless you know how to write a batch file. Therefore, if you have a lot of files to hide, you would be better off using another method to secure them. But remember, simply setting all the files in the folder to hidden when prompted is in most cases to keep the average user from finding the files. Someone has to really be digging for dirt to even bother trying to find files hidden in this way.

Now the uses for this tip are numerous and can range from completely innocent (hiding your diary or journal files) to completely illegal (hiding bootlegged copies of movies), hence the legal disclaimer at the beginning of this post. However, a word of warning to those who might choose to use this tip to hide illegal files. The FBI forensics department are not your average user and neither is your average IT guy like me. They and we have tools and know ways to extract files from your hard drive no matter how well they are hidden, EVEN if you deleted them. So I advise you that this will not keep away prying eyes that know what they are doing.

If you are having trouble getting this or any other tip to work for you, just leave me a note in the comments section of the tip in question. I read all comments, so rest assured I will respond to your concern whether I can help you or not.

Hack Any Webpage Content – Speed Post — Tech goodness in under 5 seconds! —

Hack the Content of Any Webpage

Here is another JavaScript browser hack for you. Type or copy and paste:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

into your browser's address bar. If the "javascript:" at the beginning disappears, replace it manually. The webpage that you are on will now be editable. You can delete text or images or even add your own. Like the moving images hack, this trick is mostly novel, but it can be useful if you want censor a webpage's content before showing it to someone. Do not worry. There is nothing illegal about this hack. It does not alter the actual website. It only makes it editable within YOUR browser.

BONUS USAGE: Prank someone into thinking that the local (or national) newspaper or news station did a story about you.

BONUS BONUS USAGE: Prank the OpenStudy developers into thinking I found a way to hack the OS site. Sorry guys! :D

Hack Images on Any Website – Speed Post — Tech goodness in under 5 seconds! —

Hack the Images on Any Website 

With a very short JavaScript you can make the images on any webpage do your bidding.  Here's how:

Go to any website that has images on it or simply do a Google images search (or you could just use this blog page although there are only a few images being used). Once the browser is on the site with the images type or copy and paste this into the browser address bar:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img"); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+"px"; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+"px"}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

The results should surprise you.

Note: If you copy and paste and it doesn't work. Click in the address bar, press Ctrl+A (command+A for Mac users), then press the left arrow key, then type "javascript:" without the quotes and press enter.

Tech Tip Tuesday - Windows 7 God Mode

This week's tip is uber-useful. I know that I have shared this tip before. I shared it with either my Facebook friends, or with my classmates in college. In either case, it is a tip that is worth repeating for any who may have missed it. However, I do feel that it is necessary for a mild disclaimer.

Normally Tuesday's are geared toward the novice user. This week I would say this tip is more for the power user. That is not to say that a novice cannot use it or activate it. I will make it very easy and painless, but this tip is very powerful and unleashes some functions that you can play with that if you don't know what you are doing you can mess things up royally. Don't let this scare you though. Even if you are a novice this tip has things that you can use. Just use caution messing with things that you are unfamiliar with.

In addition, I have three bonus tips for those of you that I have already shared Godmode with. The first bonus tip is why you should not use your desktop as a catchall for files, downloads, and other minutiae. The second bonus tip stems from a question I got about Windows moving icons around and not allowing the user to place a shortcut icon where desired. This tip will allow you place icons on your desktop wherever you wish. The third bonus tip is for my Mac users. In this one I will explain how to change the defaults for screen shots.

While it may be a bit lengthy, this Tech Tip Tuesday has a little something for everyone. Let's get to it . . .


Windows 7 God Mode

This post is not called Windows 7 God Mode just because it is powerful, it's not called God Mode because it makes you feel like a god, although it does both of those things. It is called Windows 7 God Mode because that is literally what it is called. Let me tell you how to activate it and then I will tell you what it does.

1) Right click on your desktop and select Create Folder.
2) Now name it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
3) Copy and paste that name to make it easier for you.
4) The folder icon will change to what kind of looks like a control panel.

Now inside this folder you will find all manner of settings and tweakable goodness. There are 45 categories of settings for you to mess with. Far too many for me to list here let alone tell you what settings are within each category (one category has as many as 26 settings), so you will just have to explore to discover for yourself. However, I can list a few of the more useful categories and settings:

- In the category Action Center the setting heading "Restore your computer to an earlier time" will open the System Restore dialog.
- Date and Time category is useful as a whole.
- Many settings in the Display category are useful.
- Under Folder Options the "Show or hide file extensions" is handy. So is "Show hidden files and folders", but more on this one in a future Tech Tip Tuesday.
- Everything under Getting Started is helpful especially for the beginner user or those new to Windows 7.

There are many, many more hidden gems that you will find in this useful folder. Just be careful to only mess with those options that are familiar to you. If you have any questions about any of the options in the GodMode folder, post them here as comments and I'll address them as soon as possible.


Bonus Tip One

The desktop of our computers is a very convenient place to put items that you use frequently or to temporarily place a file that you might need right away. After all, even a real-life desktop is designed for a very similar purpose. However, just like real-life desktops, our computer desktops can quickly become a cluttered mess. Not only does this slow down productively by forcing us to look for something that we even just recently placed there, it also slows down the computer itself.

Every time you boot your computer, regardless of what operating system you use, it goes through a booting process which loads a bunch of stuff into the operating system. One the the things that gets loaded is your desktop. This is something that most of us never really think about. We tend to think that the desktop is just there, but it's not. It has to be loaded into the RAM every time you boot up or even wake your computer from hibernation. Every time the desktop loads, each icon on it has to be rendered (rendered is just a fancy term for drawn). Rendering takes computer cycles. Some icons such as simple folder icons only take a couple of cycles and load quickly, but other icons, for example, picture icons that show a preview of the picture, can take much longer. So the more icons you have sitting on your desktop, the longer your boot-up time. The RAM consumed by your icons is not normally a consideration, but if you have a lower end computer that consistently uses most of it's RAM, removing desktop icons may not help, but cannot hurt.

So here's what you do. First, anything that has been sitting on your desktop unused for more than a month, either delete it it put it in a folder some where. Even if you have to create a folder on your desktop and put a bunch of unused icons there, that is better than having them lying all over the place. If you have picture icons on your desktop, put them in your pictures folder. The same goes for documents, videos, songs, or any other file that has another logical location to reside.

Second, the desktop is a very convenient place to temporarily place downloads. In fact, often when I am remote troubleshooting for someone and I need them to download a file, I will have them save it to the desktop so that we don't have to spend anytime trying to find it. However, these downloads should be deleted when done or at least moved to the downloads folder. Minimize the icons on your desk to these three things (listed in order of importance):

1) Shortcut icons to applications that you use everyday.
2) Folders (as few as possible) containing files or shortcuts to files that you use frequently.
3) Files or icons that you need to have temporary access to that you will remove before shutting down your computer.

These things will give you a variable pick up on boot time depending on your system and how much you have on the desktop, but most of all you will be much more capable of find what you need when you need it without scanning every icon on your desktop. Of course, me being the big fat cheater that I am have a shortcut for you so you don't have to worry about all of this. Right-click your desktop and under "View" uncheck "Show desktop icons". All of your icons will disappear leaving you with a nice clean desktop that has nothing to render on boot except your wallpaper. When you want to show the icons again, just recheck this option. You of course lose the benefit of having a nice clean desktop that is easy to navigate, but you still gain the small bonus in start up time.


Bonus Tip Two

A reader asked, "how do I keep Windows from moving my desktop icons? I create a shortcut and put it where I want it, but it keeps snapping back in line with all the other icons. I don't want this." This is a good question and can be quite puzzling if you don't know what is happening, but it is quite simple to fix.

There are two Windows desktop setting that you will want to become familiar with: "Auto arrange icons" (Auto Arrange) and "Arrange icons to grid" (Grid Arrange). Both of these options are located under the "View" menu when you right-click the desktop.

Auto Arrange will arrange all your icons in nice neat columns acording to what is selected under the "Sort" menu. By default Sort is set to Name which means that with Auto Arrange your icons will be placed in alphabetical order (columnwise) to the left of the desktop. Sort can also be set to arrange by date, size, or type as well. So with only Auto Arrange selected, no mater where you drag and drop or create a new file, it will snap in to the location that it belongs according to the Sort option you have set.

Grid Arrange makes sure all your icons are lined up horizontally and vertically, but the icons can be placed anywhere you wish. So with only Grid Arrange checked, you can place icons to the right side, bottom, top, whatever, it doesn't matter, but wherever you place it Windows will snap it to the closest grid location. This keeps all your icons neatly aligned, but allows you to have them wherever you want them on the entire desktop. This is how I usually have it set.

You can also have both Auto and Grid Arrange checked. What this does is place all the icons in columns on the left of the desktop, but allows you to place the icons in any order you wish. In other words, it automatically arranges them so you don't have stray icons way off to the right side of the screen, but it ignores the Sort setting.

Finally, you can have both unchecked and this allows completely unfettered icon placement. You can place icons absolutely anywhere you want, even on top of each other. This tends to lead to a pretty messy desktop, so I don't care to have it set up this way, but to each his own. As you can see, this tip somewhat tied into the first tip about keeping a tidy desktop and you will see that the Mac tip also ties into the first bonus tip.


Bonus Tip Three

A while back I did a Tech Tip on Facebook regarding the versatility of the OS X screen capture (believe me when I say that it blows Windows "Prt Sc" out of the water although Windows 7 Snipping Tool is much better than Prt Sc). I'm not going to rehash that Tech Tip here unless someone requests it. However, there is one aspect of screen captures that I did not get into with that Tech Tip because I felt it was maybe a little on the advanced side. But with all this talk of keeping tidy desktops I really thought that explaining how to change the default file type and especially the default save location of screen captures was appropriate. Do not worry that I said this tip is more advanced. It is only so because you have to use the terminal to execute it, but I will make this painless, simple, and safe.

When you do a screen capture using any method in OS X, by default that cap is in the Portable Network Graphics (.png) format. In addition, when you use one of the screen capture methods that saves the .png, the default location to save it is the desktop. Now if you do a lot of screen captures, which I do, your desktop can become filled with these picture files. In OS X picture files on the desktop are by default rendered as previews, so you can see where I'm going with this. After a while all those caps slow down the boot process unless you move them to a folder, but why can't you just have them saved to a folder to begin with? And what if you would rather the caps be saved in Joint Photographic Experts Group (jpeg or .jpg) or Graphics Interchange Format (.gif)? Well, I'll tell you how you can change these defaults with just a couple of terminal commands. So of course the first thing that you have to do for this tip is open a terminal session. You can think of the terminal as the stuff going on behind the pretty graphics, or if you are familiar with Windows' command line, it is basically the same thing. To start a terminal session from the dock click on Applications->Utilities->Terminal.

Changing the Default Format
To change the format that OS X saves screen captures in, type the following commands into the terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png 
killall SystemUIServer

Of course you will want to replace the png with whatever format you want the screen captures to be saved in (jpg, gif, tiff, etc).

Changing the Default Save Location
To change the location where screen captures are stored type the following commands into the terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/STiBoy/Documents/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer


And of course in this case you would replace /Users/STiBoy/Documents/Screenshots with the path to the folder you want to save them in.

Simple as that. I hope you enjoyed this week's Tech Tips. As always if you have any questions or comments, please leave them. I screen comments for spam so be assured that if you have a question I will most certainly read it and try to answer it.

— File Sharing Made Easy – Speed Post — — Tech goodness in under 5 seconds! —

File Sharing Made Easy

Need to transfer files between multiple computers or need to have documents always in sync between your work computer and home computer? Want to quickly and easily share photos or any other file with family and friends? One word. Dropbox! Go here now: http://db.tt/RzQxDfP

With Dropbox you can create a folder on multiple computers an then drop files that you want to share in that folder. The file will magically appear on the other computers. Super easy and super convenient. 

OS X Alternate Characters — Speed Post — Tech goodness in under 5 seconds! —

Alternate Character Sets in OS X

Have you every run into a situation where you needed an alternate letter for say foreign words such as niña or exposé? Those special letters can be a pain in the butt to get into your document or email or whatever, that is unless you are a OS X Lion user. In Lion simply hold down the letter in question for a few seconds and a context menu will appear over the letter with the alternate forms. Just pick the one you need and viola! It works in just about everything. I even used this feature when typing this post.

Tech Tip Tuesday - Keyboard Shortcuts

As promised I have a blog post for you all today that is actually tech related. Since it is Tuesday I am calling this post Tech Tip Tuesday in honor of a little post I used to always do on Facebook. In keeping with the tradition of Tech Tip Tuesdays on Facebook, I will try to keep these tips entertaining or at least useful without getting overly technical. The most technical I would get on Tuesdays was maybe a brief tutorial. I will try to do the same here.

This week I have a pretty cool tip that has a lot of uses. Some readers may know all about this already, but I have always geared Tuesdays toward the novice or basic user. So apologies to those who were hoping for something they didn't already know. This tip is for Windows users. I personally prefer using OS X or Linux rather than Windows, but I know a lot of people still use Windows, so this is for them. If you do use Windows, but not 7, What are you waiting for? Even though this tip works in Vista and XP, Vista is a huge hunk of crap and XP is out of long term support, so switch already, unless your computer is a dinosaur, in which case, stick with XP. On with the tip . . .

Are there certain programs that you always start up immediately after booting up your computer? I'm not talking about start-up programs that usually run down in your task bar or in the background like your virus screening software. I mean programs like your browser or photo editor that you always use, but don't start up when you boot. Now you could put these programs in your startup folder and they would start on boot, but I don't like doing this because it just slows down the booting process because all those programs are jousting for positions in the RAM plus you have no control over what gets started. Windows just starts everything in the folder. There is a better alternative for these frequently used programs that gives you full control over what you want to load.

What you want to do is assign a keyboard shortcut to the program or programs that you use most frequently. Then when your computer is fully booted you can just hit the keyboard shortcut to start the program rather than finding it's shortcut with the mouse and double clicking it. Believe me keyboard shortcuts are way faster. Here's how you do it:

1) Find the shortcut icon for the program you want to create the shortcut for. Note: This has to be a shortcut icon for the program and not the actual program or exe icon. If you don't know the difference leave a note in the comments and I will explain the difference and how to get a shortcut icon for your program if you do not have one.
2) Right-click the icon and select properties.
3) Click on the shortcut tab at the top of the properties window.
4) About halfway down the properties window you will see a box labeled "Shortcut Key". Click in that box.
5) Now simply assign any key you want to that program.
6) Click Okay or Apply to set it.

By default it gives you a "Ctrl+Alt+" combination. In other words, if you click on the box and press F your keyboard shortcut will be Ctrl+Alt+F. However, you can change the short cut to "Ctrl+Shift+" or even "Ctrl+Shift+Alt+" you just have to hold those keys in while you push the letter, number, or symbol key that you want in the shortcut. A shortcut combination I like is Ctrl+Shift+Z because the keys are all close together and I can quickly hit the combination with one hand. I use this shortcut for firing up Chrome. If you decide that you do not want to have a keyboard shortcut anymore then just press and release the Ctrl key and it will put "None" in the Shortcut Key box and then just click Okay or Apply and there will no longer be a keyboard shortcut for that program.

Now since this trick is using shortcut icons it can be very versatile if you wish it to be. I'll give you a couple of examples.

Example one: Say you are a student and everyday you start up your computer and the first thing you do is open your browser window to your student website and another to your email. Let's look at the stps this entails.

1) Start the computer.
2) Double click your browser shortcut.
3) Either enter your student website in the URL box or click a bookmark to it.
4) Either open another instance of your browser by double clicking it's shortcut again, or open a tab in the current browser window.
5) Either enter the URL for your email, or click a bookmark.

Pretty straightforward, but it can be quickened with a little preparation. The first thing that you need to do is create shortcuts to these two websites. There are several ways to do this, but the simplest one in my opinion is to open your browser to the website that you want to create the shortcut for, then re-size the browser so that you can see at least part of your desktop behind it. In the address bar to the very left you will see what is called a favicon. It is usually, but not always, a logo of the website that you are visiting. Drag that favicon and drop it on your desktop. Presto! Instant shortcut to that site. Do this with each website and then assign keyboard shortcuts to each using the method I described. Now let's look at the steps.

1) Start the computer.
2) Hit the keyboard shortcut for the student website.
3) Hit the keyboard shortcut for the email website.

Done! If you don't like having the shortcut icons on your desktop put them in a folder of your choosing. The keyboard shortcuts will still work. If you are a more advanced user, you can even hide the folder or the shortcut icons themselves.

But it's not just for browser instances. Any program that is capable of running multiple instances can be set up in the same way. Look at example 2. Let's say you are writing a paper for school and you have your rough draft and your outline that you are working with. Since you can create a shortcut to any file all you have to do is create shortcuts to these two files regardless of what word processor you use and then assign keyboard shortcuts to them. You could have it set up so that Ctrl+Shift+D opens your draft and Ctrl+Shift+O opens your outline. Cool! Furthermore, once you have finished your paper you can simply delete the shortcut icons for the draft and outline and the keyboard shortcuts go away and are ready for you to assign them to your next paper's draft and outline. Just imagine throwing in another keyboard shortcut that opens up a browser to your research for your paper. You have just created a way to open everything your need to write your paper with 3 keystroke combinations.

I Hope you enjoyed this week's Tech Tip Tuesday. I have another cool trick planned for next week that will make you a god, so stay tuned.

— Windows 7 Aero Peek – Speed Post — — Tech goodness in under 5 seconds! —

Aero Peek

Did you know that in Windows holding Windows+Spacebar will show you the desktop and releasing it will return you to the application you were in?

Note: The Windows key is that one with the Windows logo on it near the spacebar.

Good Grief I'm Depressed!

I've had a revelation since my last grief post. I was not and am not in the anger phase of my grief. I'm in the depression phase. Let me explain:

After posting that last post I started reflecting on my emotions and what I was feeling. I started analyzing what I was currently feeling and going through and what I had already felt and gone through since my mother's passing. This is when I had a moment of clarity. I have already been through most of the stages of grief already, well at least the first three.

I already explained how and when I went through denial and while I thought I was in the anger stage in my last post, I realized that I had already exhibited this stage several weeks ago. I remember feeling angry about a lot of stuff. I was mad that my dad had not called me or contacted me in any other way (well he did call my girlfriend and told her to tell me he was sorry to hear about my mom, but that just made me more angry). I was mad that I felt like I was not getting any emotional support from my girlfriend. In hindsight I don't think this was intentional, I think that I simply was not communicating my needs to her. I was mad that my sister was too busy being a basket case that she couldn't be there for me either. I was generally mad about a lot of stuff, but I held it all in. I held it in for days and then one night I lashed out at my girlfriend for no good reason, over something so unimportant that I can't even remember what it was. I had no right and she got mad at me. She told me she was leaving me and that quickly sent me into the next stage . . . bargaining.

The most obvious bargaining I was doing was with her, not to leave me. I'm sorry, please don't leave, etc, etc. She was mad and not even talking to me. I curled up on the floor in a fetal position crying for about an hour. the whole time I was thinking that I would do anything for things to be different, not just between my girlfriend and myself, but with my mom. I wished that I could change things, turn back the clock somehow. I even went as far as to beg god to let me have my mom back. "Please," I said through sobs. "I will do anything." Over and over I said this and I'm sure that my girlfriend thought the begging was directed at her, but it wasn't. I wanted my mom back at that moment more than I wanted anything in my entire life.

The bargaining phase was short-lived. It was over as soon as I got up off the floor. I knew there was nothing that would bring her back so I gave up begging. I knew there was no way that I could get my mom back, but I knew that there had to be a way to get my girlfriend back. I called a friend who is a grief counselor. Crying uncontrollably, I explained what was going on and he helped me to calm down and find the words to say to get back into my girlfriend's good graces. He also made me realize that I needed to tell her what I was feeling and what I needed from her. She was really my only support through this and I need her to be there for me because no one else would be.

We did make up after that, but I had already started the depression stage. Again I did what I do best . . . escape. I went back to the video games (and sometimes movies) to avoid dealing with my depression. Well not so much to avoid dealing with it as to just not feel it. I bottled it up. I still am bottling it up somewhat, but I'm getting better. I'm at least writing about it, but that led me to wonder what was that anger I was recently feeling? Why was I chastising myself (even if I did deserve it) if I had already gone through the anger stage.

What I have come to realize is that the anger I was feeling a few days ago was not stemming from being in the anger stage of my grief, it was stemming from the fact that I was simply mad at myself for not dealing with my grief. I was mad that I was putting off the healing process and putting off my friends just so that I didn't have to feel the depression. Obviously I'm over my anger about that, but I am not over my depression. I am still very sad that my mother is gone. In fact, I just had to take a little break right now while typing this because I was getting overwhelmed with emotion.

To me it seems like I should have moved into acceptance by now. After all, it has been weeks since her passing, but it doesn't hurt any less. Sure I can cope, but just like in that last paragraph, it hurts to think about her and I think about her everyday. I wonder, am I going to be like this forever? I know that I'm not, but I feel like I am. I will keep you posted, and don't worry, I have not forgotten about getting a tech post out by Tuesday.

Until then . . . peace.


Final Thoughts on Kübler-Ross: Anger, Bargaining, and Depression:

As I said, the anger phase of my grief struck me much longer ago that I had thought. My more recent anger was not so much a part of my grief as it was a part of not dealing with my grief. The way I dealt with the anger stage of my grief was not constructive, but I also don't think that it is uncommon. I bottled up my anger and just let it simmer. I think it likely that a lot of people do this especially when dealing with grief because we feel that expressing anger during these times is inappropriate. I think if I would have just accepted it as a part of the grieving process I would have moved through it quicker and perhaps may not have had that blow out with my girlfriend. Instead I chose to escape and hide from my anger, which led to the events that I described.

The bargaining was a weird thing. It seems almost silly looking back. I was actually bargaining for something that I knew was impossible to have. In On Death and Dying, Kübler-Ross was describing the stages of grief from mostly the point of view of a terminally ill patient rather than from someone dealing with the loss of a loved one and from that point of view I can see where bargaining could come into play in a sensible manner [1]. "Please God. Please let me have one more year. I will do anything." This is sensible because there is still a life to be bargained for, but bargaining for a life that is already lost is just insane. She is gone. There is nothing that can bring her back. Bargaining is a waste of time and makes no sense, yet despite this I bargained just the same. I, in my grief, irrationally thought that begging and promising whatever would somehow miraculously bring my mom back to life. I don't think that there was any better way to deal with this stage. It just is what it is and it was, at least in my experience, very short-lived. I imagine in other situations this stage could go on longer, but for what I was dealing with, this stage ended when the super heavy emotions subsided.

The depression has been going on for sometime now. As I have said, I have been avoiding it just like I did the anger. I've been bottling it up. It's starting to come out though. Fortunately in a more constructive way than the anger did. I don't think I've moved on to acceptance yet, Kübler-Ross says that acceptance is when the griever takes an attitude of "It's going to be okay" or "There is nothing I can do about it so I might as well prepare for it" [1]. I don't think I'm there yet. I don't think it's going to be okay. As I said, I feel like I'm going to feel this way forever. Somewhere in tha back of my mind I know that this isn't true, but I cannot come to grips with it. When I think of my mom it hurts. It hurts like hell and I don't see it ever not hurting. Until that sting goes away, I don't think I can move on to acceptance. I'll let you know when (if?) I do.

[1] Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy and their own families. Abingdon, Oxon, England: Routledge.

Good Grief I'm Angry!

I'm mad! I'm very mad! At whom you ask? At myself. Why? Well first I have to give you the backlog.

Even if you don't know me or frequent this blog, you can probably tell by the date gap from my last post to this one that I have not been active in this blog. And if you are one of my OpenStudy friends . . .


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. . . I'm sure you have noticed that I have not been hanging out there as well. There are several reasons for this the main one simply being lack of time. However, lack of time is a lame excuse in my opinion because I have time for other useless endeavors such as Facebook and other games.

The problem is that I have been practicing escapism for the last several months. See, my mother fell ill in February and had to be hospitalized. The hospital stay was lengthy and difficult with a lot of pain and discomfort. Finally in April she passed away. Along with that came several complications regarding her final arrangements, which I will not get into. It was a very stressful time and situation and we (myself and the rest of the family) were not really allowed to grieve at the time due to the worry and energy put into the funeral home fiasco.

So to cope with my grief I have been doing everything in my power NOT to  cope with it, primarily by escaping into video games. So I have not really dealt with my grief at all. I thought that I had, but I was fooling myself and I did not realize it until this morning driving to work.

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance [1]. The denial stage I know I dealt with right off the bat. As soon as I found out that she was in the hospital I started the denial process. "She's going to be okay", "She'll pull through." Other people are great at helping you in this stage telling you that everything is going to be alright when you know very well that it is not. Even with her doctor telling me that that her prognosis was very bad (even he avoided saying it was terminal), I denied it and told myself that she would be okay. I knew very well that she wouldn't be okay even without the doctor's prognosis. She had a stoke in 2000 and ever since that time her health had been declining. There were a lot of other reasons that I knew that she would not recover, but the point is that I knew this and yet still told myself that she would be okay.

However, that is where my grief ended. I never got angry. Even when my sister told me that they were not giving her water in the hospital and that she was dehydrated and desperately begging for water did I get mad. (Side note: Some hospitals when dealing with terminally ill patients will deny them water so that they slip into a coma rather than staying hospitalized indefinitely. This is considered humane and the hospital that I was dealing with even had a name for it; Comfort Care.) Oh I expressed my disagreement with the situation, but I would not say I got angry.

So this morning, on the way to work I got angry. I was angry at myself for a number of things. One being that I have chosen to spend (read: waste) all this time not dealing with my grief. As I thought about it, I tried to rationalize my behavior by saying that there was nothing that I could do, but I knew that was BS. I love to write and I know that writing can be very cathartic and "I HAVE A BLOG FOR CHRIST SAKE!" Again I tried to rationalize my behavior by telling myself that I have a tech blog, that it would not be appropriate that I write about my mom's death on it. Then I got really mad and actually started yelling at myself in the car. It kind of went something like this (pardon me if I get a bit schizophrenic, that happens when I'm torn on a subject or upset):

"Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that you you took the time out of your busy day back on October 6, 2011, while you were still busy with school and wrote a 600 word memorial for Steve Jobs, but you cannot bear to do the same for, or even mention your mother!?"

"Yeah, but Jobs was a giant in the tech industry. His death was relevant to the blog."

"You're an asshole!"

"Why?"

"Because your mother gave birth to you. She raised you, loved you, nurtured you, and made you the man you are today. And you mean to tell me that you can't even mention her in your blog because she had nothing to do with the tech industry? Bullshit! If it were not for her, this blog would not even exist. If you consider yourself important in the tech world, which apparently you do since you have a tech blog, then your mom WAS a giant in the tech world, at least the little tech world that you have created for yourself because she CREATED YOU! Not only that, she was and always had been your biggest fan/admirer and your number one follower. Even if she never even read your blog, she has been a follower and a fan of yours in whatever you have chosen to do for your whole life. She deserves to be remembered in your blog just as much as Steve Jobs does, but you, 'Mr. Tech', can't even mention her in your self-righteous blog. That is why you are an asshole!"

So everything I said to myself made sense. There is really no reason that I cannot write about my mom in this blog. It's my blog. Sure you may not be wanting to read it and it may be and probably is depressing to most of you, but maybe there can be some learning from it as well or perhaps it may help someone else going through a similar situation. Perhaps if you all bear with me through this, we can see if Kübler-Ross' theory on grief really holds true and if so what I do to overcome each stage. If you would prefer not to read these entries in my blog just skip any that have "Good Grief" in the title. As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and questions to this or any of my blog posts.

To the question, "will you have any new tech posts anytime soon?" I have to say I don't know. I hope to and perhaps that would also be a good way for me to deal with my grief, but we will have to see. As I said before, I had not made an entry in a while because of always having other things on my plate even before Mom's passing, but we shall see. I really do need to get a tech post up soon and preferably one that you can use since the last several have been more or less a dissertation on communication. Let me say this: I will make a concerted effort to get a Tech Tip out on Tuesday. This should bring back memories to my Facebook friends who always looked forward to Tech Tip Tuesdays.

So until then . . . peace.

[1] Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy and their own families. Abingdon, Oxon, England: Routledge.


Final Thoughts on Kübler-Ross: Denial and Anger:

In regard to denial, I fell right into the Kübler-Ross model. I both consciously and unconsciously refused to accept the reality of the situation, but I cannot say for sure how long this lasted. Perhaps I was in denial all the way until this morning when I got angry. Even though this seems irrational since so much time has passed since her death,Kübler-Ross says that some people can get stuck in this stage. I think that it is more likely that I got through the denial and then put off anger by escaping in to games, but I can't really say for sure. Even thinking clearly about it now, the last couple of months have been a muddled mess emotionally, so it is hard to tell what I was thinking or feeling at any given time.

Anger definitely reared it's ugly head this morning. I think that the ass chewing that I gave myself in the car did a lot to alleviate much of the anger and writing this blog post did a lot as well. If there is some more anger within me, I don't feel it right now. It may come out later or I may be done with the anger altogether. What I can say is that I have not done any bargaining, which is supposed to be the next stage. I will definitely add to this post if I go through some more anger processing and I will create a new post if I do in fact recognize myself moving into bargaining or depression.