# Get APP!

With APP, you can be sure you are making the right choices. Our friendly APP will let you know when you are staying focused, and will give you a gentle reminder when you stray off task.

Willpower and concentration are sometimes not enough, but with APP, you'll act with confidence, knowing that APP is there to guide you on your journey.

Click to learn more. Our APP will track your activity. It is your day-to-day activity that counts, and APP is there to guide you on your way.

Your goals are our goals, and our goals can be your goals, with APP.

Simply attach the NR* collar, download APP, and you will be guided and controlled by our machines. You will follow a simple program that will make decision-making a snap.

APP tracks every part of your day, and modifies your behavior to make sure nothing is wasted. Productivity is key, and that's where APP comes in. When you stray, lose focus, or engage in unhealthy or illegal activity (we've all been there, right?) APP is there to set you right again.

And it isn't just activity. Attitude is everything, and that's where APP really shines. Unhealthy thinking, unorthodoxy, and thinking that might conflict with conventional philosophy are all discouraged through a series of increasingly powerful electric reminders.

Get with the Program. Let a Machine take over. Thinking is difficult, let APP do it.

APP: In Control.

*Non-Removable™

#80 THESE OLD CDs ARE STACKING UP

Windows 95 disk,
Why are you still there?
I should throw you out but for some reason, 
I don't dare.

Parental Controls for 41 Year old Man . . .

Today I had to put parental controls on my own World of Warcraft account to keep myself from playing it constantly. Not sure if it will work or not, but so far I've stayed off it.

Returned 1 machine, picked another one up and fixed a network due to sweet, sweet spring lightning, the very act of God that puts money in my pocket. Go Nature!

Sunday: The day of Easter Bla Bla

The sky is clear, but the air is cold. And that cold air busted me up when I tried to run today. Friggin' winter, go away already. It hangs around like a visitor that has overstayed its welcome. Deb was in Flint Friday and Saturday. We held the fort down reasonably well. Today she got home. It's Easter, so we went out to eat at Johnny Carino's. I had spaghetti.

I finished reading On Writing, by Stephen King. Damn good book. It gave clear advice from a guy who has made a boat-load of money writing books.

I bought a new machine for work. I'm starting to get SATA drives, and my 400MHZ Gateway with the IDE controllers can't cut the mustard. I have a converter that works half the time but the transfer rate is for shit and it takes forever to rescue a client's first season of "Desperate Housewives" iTunes files. So I got a new machine.

My March Madness bracket is in the can already, but as of this writing, Brian is on top by three points.

I keep telling myself, spring warm-up is just around the corner, but I'm starting to have my doubts.

I'm still working on my newest bestseller. I'm 90 typewritten pages in and counting.

Rush's "The Fountain of Lamneth" from "Caress of Steel" is a mere 19:58 minutes of geeky fantasy-rock goofiness, but it is still pretty good. I got the iTunes on shuffle.

Well, if you've read this far, I've got to give you credit for hanging in there. This is a hefty blog post, and I appreciate you reading this last sentence.

Oh yeah, Billy Thorp's "Children of the Sun" just came on. I must stop typing now and commence air-guitar. There is nothing more pathetic than a 41 year old man doing air-guitar in his tiny office.

really long blog post about stuff

Today I did many things. I installed AV software. I exported contacts and calendars. I taught basic networking and backup procedures. I uninstalled bad software. I uninstalled bad software that had cost this company a lot of money. I replaced that software with .CSV files. The RFC dealing with Comma Separated Values is RFC 4180 and is found at this address: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180. All of this makes me sound like a smarty-pants, but those of you in the know know better. a CSV file is a text file. Text files are cool.

Then I networked network printing goodness, which, as all of you know, makes its own gravy. Then I had two hamburgers and a regular order of fries at a new place I've discovered, McDonalds. Then I drove home. Then I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill and did some sit-ups and lifted a few weights.

Later I'm going to drink wine and watch TV with the missus. Before I do that, I'm going to work on my bestselling novel. After all that I'm probably going to go to sleep. While I'm asleep I'm probably going to dream about stuff, but I won't remember that stuff when I wake up because I rarely remember my dreams, and that's too bad, because I probably dream all kinds of cool stuff, like I have super powers or something. If I had super powers, I'd fly around and right wrongs. I'd fly around in my 2002 Ford Taurus, ending wars and bringing down a healthy can of whoop-ass on a lot of rich bastards. ("waterboarding isn't torture? then you don't mind trying it out for yourself huh?") I'd cure cancer and grow limbs back on all the people, and fuse spines and cause corn to grow in places like Darfur. I'd turn all land-mines into pumpkins and all automatic weapons into those plastic tubes you spin around, and they whistle? You know, those orange and green flexible tubes, and the only reason they are there so kids can spin them around and they whistle? The problem with those, at least when I was a kid, is that eventually we'd get bored and start wailing on each other with them, and that hurts. Almost as much as hot-wheel tracks. Ever get beat with a hot-wheel track? Those orange pieces of plastic about a yard long? That hurts like a m0thrfckr.

My friggin' dog is outside barking. Ginger is a beautiful dog, but she's the last friggin' dog we'll ever own because I'm getting semi-old and I'm sick of messing around with the dog, but of course, whenever I see her I immediately start baby-talking to her, and I'm pretty sure if anyone hears me they'll think I'm a crazy person.

I downloaded the movie NETWORK on the tivo, and I'm looking forward to seeing it. I saw this crazy paranoid video called THE ZEITGUIST on Google Video and now I'm all conspiracy theory in the head. But not really. I still don't buy the "911 was an inside job" theory, even though it is true the neocon fascists used it to invade Iraq. That's okay, I'm so tired of being outraged I'm not outraged anymore.

Well anywhoo, nothing happened today. Goodnight and good luck

unfrickinbelievable photo synth demonstration

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

found at zefrank.com

the Harry Potter movie marathon

Today I fixed a scan.msi problem, some HP printer update jagged up a computer in a law office. Then I showed them how to do a backup, since the last backup they had was dated somewhere in 2005.

After that, a new Vista laptop with docking station. I hate docking stations. A docking station on a laptop is like an airplane drink-cart duct-taped to an Olympic sprinter. It’s a big, stupid Steven-Hawking-Wheelchair on a ballet dancer. They are stupid, I hate them, and that’s all there is to it. But I will gladly set them up for money.

And then we enjoyed the Harry Potter movie marathon. We got the last two DVDs in today, and we watched them both, back to back. Those movies are LOOOOONG.

Oh yeah, and Karl Rove quit today. That fat bastard.

after having a thrombo . . .

Today I installed a wireless network at an accounting office downtown, dropped an ancient HP pavilion with windows 98 goodness off at a welding shop, fixed a PC in a JCPenny’s heating and ventilation area (you wouldn’t believe the air-handling units they need at a mall anchor store), the guy at the Apple store told my my mac-mini is pretty much crashed, when I got home I managed to crash my bench server with a client’s files on it, recovered same files after having a thrombo, put the files back on the client’s laptop, and returned it no problem. I cut the weeds and grass growing between the cracks on the driveway, rebuilt my bench server with an additional HD to back up the backups and now I’m trying to unwind.

morphage!

at least I wasn't water-boarded. . .

Today I got a call and spent over two hours extracting Norton Internet Security Evil from a PC. The entire time, the woman to whom the PC belonged asked me personal questions to which I gave one-word answers. (When I say personal questions, I mean questions like, “How old are your kids,” and “What are you and your family doing for Memorial Day weekend,” and “How long were you in the Military,” and “Did you grow up in Michigan.”) She was nosy, but she also handles the checks for the company, so I answered her questions, while we listened to her PC grind furiously, trying to void itself of Norton Internet Security, which had rendered the machine useless.

Finally, after forty minutes, NIS failed to uninstall and I had to download the “Norton Removal Tool.” From Norton’s site. It really says something when software is so bloated that the software’s website has to offer a special tool to perform an exorcism in order to rid a machine of the very software they spewed in the first place.

After that, another half-hour removing Norton System Works, another work of pure genius.

When everything was done, the machine running again and I had endured 2 hours of mind-numbing interrogation.

I dropped off a PC to a nice couple with a pit-bull. They said it wasn’t a pit bull, but I think it was.

Otherwise, I worked on my short story, which is finally coming together, what with a satanic pregnancy, a talking wall mural, and a reclusive artist with an effeminate man-servant.

R.I.P. DanOfGrandR (2005-2007)

So I started playing World of Warcraft again. But only for about a week and a half this time. I told myself I’d play in moderation, but that shit never works. Today I sold all my level 60 warrior’s crap, donated the money to my guild, and signed off forever. And I deleted Danofgrandr off the face of the virtual planet. And I uninstalled the software. I swear, I never learn . . .

wednesday bla bla

What a difference a couple of weeks make. I was worried about it being SLOW, and now I’m changing motherboards, hard-drives, operating systems, networks, cutting off Internet access, cleaning out computer junk, and being busy. I finally have an evening with no PCs on the bench, and I’m too tired to do anything.

Not complaining; work is work, and that’s a good thing. It looks like a giant robot threw up in my office, there are computer parts strewn everywhere. I have to do some cleaning soon.

I spent the weekend cutting firewood, and that's about all I did. It is stacked so nicely. Sometimes I just go out back and gaze at my ultimate firewood stacks.

ten most common passwords

from PC magazine, (who got it from inTechnology.com)

ten most common passwords:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (your first name)

See yours in here? Might wanna change it.

the blog post I posted on Saturday discussing Friday

Yesterday I spent the morning deleting porn froma customer’s PC after recovering his files after the customer's daughter accidentally formatted the machine. Can’t very well transport porn back to the customer, even though he’s the one who put it there in the first place. If it ever came down to it, the customer might not appreciate it despite that little fact.

It was fifty degrees out Friday, that’s really warm compared to the last few months. Deb and I took a walk aroundthe block. It was sunny, and snow was melting like crazy. I told “Big Head Steve” that his days were numbered. “Big Head Steve” is a snowman we built last week.

I set up computer faxing for one of my better clients. He had no modem, the phone jack in his office for the fax line had no dial tone, but I set it up and tested it just the same.

At the Hideout, I talked to this dude who works for IBM. Ken played my Motorhead CD, a lady from OSHA was snooping around in a surprise visit, and I kept it down to two beers.

Me and the girls watched “Hellboy”. Meh, it was watchable I guess.