Recent Posts

26

General Software Discussion / Re: Monster Cables- The World should know!

« Last post by oldfart on March 29, 2008, 10:16 AM »

I just found this reference in a news story about a new wine scandal:  "Citing the Giscours affair, several French wine commentators noted that when one property is accused of fraud, suspicion quickly falls on the entire region. They recalled the scandals of 1972 and 1973 in which one of the most famous exporters, the Cruse firm, was found guilty of offenses similar to those with which Giscours is charged. In the aftermath, the entire Bordeaux market collapsed. Chateaus were shuttered or sold, and the wine business did not recover until the end of the decade."  It is from an article in the NY Times.  Here's the headline:  " Bordeaux Winemaker Is Charged With Fraud Over Contents of Its Products"

27

General Software Discussion / Re: Monster Cables- The World should know!

« Last post by oldfart on March 29, 2008, 05:54 AM »

In response to Hirudin:  The wine fiasco happened some time back in the Seventies.  Sadly, my memory is like a mirror and I cannot recall the label that used bulk wine but it was a major scandal in France and I suspect there would me a mention of it if I could figure out what to look for where. 
It reminds me of a story my dad told.  In the late Thirties he worked at a grocery during high school.  There were two milk suppliers in the area, Amboy Milk and Lawton Milk.  The two companies had a marketing agreement and while the grocery got all it's milk from the Amboy dairy, the store had two rubber stamps, one for each dairy.  People would come in and order the brand of milk they wanted and dad would go back to the cooler, grab a bottle of milk and stamp the cork with either Amboy's or Lawton's logo.  People swore by one brand or the other and wouldn't drink the opposite brand.  They never knew that it all came out of the same cows. 

28

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: on sale: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

« Last post by oldfart on March 26, 2008, 11:02 PM »

My only problem with the concept of reincarnation is that I can never make up my mind.  Should I come back as Calvin or Hobbes?

29

Living Room / Re: the award for most clueless pc user ever - my candidate.

« Last post by oldfart on March 23, 2008, 03:44 PM »

In response to nudone, I worked at a Chevy dealership in the parts department.  Just last Spring we had two service calls in two days from ladies who called from a parking lot asking for assistance because the battery went out of their keyfob transmitters and they couldn't unlock the car door.  I took the first call and it took me several questions before I could get my mind around exactly what the lady was telling me. 
Finally I understood her transmitter wouldn't unlock the car so I asked the lady what she had done with her key.  She said it was right there on the keyring with the transmitter. 
"Then why don't you just use the key to unlock the door manually?"
"Do you mean I can do that?"
"Yes Maam, just like in the days before transmitters, just put the key in the lock and turn it."
"Oh my God!  You're not going to tell anybody about this are you?"
"Of course I am.  This is too good to keep to myself."
Click.
Naturally, I told everyone in the shop so the next day when another lady called in with the same problem, the service manager thought I had put somebody up to it and it took a bit for him to realize that it was an honest call and the lady was just as clueless as the one the previous day. 

30

General Software Discussion / Re: Monster Cables- The World should know!

« Last post by oldfart on March 23, 2008, 03:22 PM »

This conversation reminds me of my days around wine connoisseurs.  An old line French winery ran into difficulties and lost a bunch of grape vines.  For the three years it took them to grow new vines they simply bought bulk wine from wholesalers and bottled it under their label. 
The truth came out finally and there was a great deal of trouble about it.  It seems that the winery had won a number of awards and high praise for their vintage when they were bottling the bulk stuff.  The funny thing about this is that even though this experience proved that the so called ''experts'' couldn't tell bulk wine from vintage wine, the experts continued grading wines and the connoisseurs kept listening to them. 

31

Living Room / Re: the award for most clueless pc user ever - my candidate.

« Last post by oldfart on March 07, 2008, 05:43 AM »

I got into computers about thirteen years ago, just a few years ahead of the general public.  A few years later folks started coming to me for suggestions on getting a computer for their home.  After a few unpleasant experiences I started asking people if they had a VCR at home and if so, what time the clock was displaying.  If they said it was flashing 12:00 because they had never set it, I told them they didn't want a computer. 

32

Official Announcements / Re: The site is now back online (March 6th, 2008)

« Last post by oldfart on March 07, 2008, 05:25 AM »

Having been a member for only a couple of months, I was surprised at how much I missed the site while it was down.  I am disabled and don't get to take walks anymore [Besides, early March in central Illinois isn't all that conducive to long walks.] but even if I could, I would have missed this site.  I appreciate all the hard work involved and offer my thanks for the quick recovery.  Its too bad that you were too busy fixing problems to put a stat-counter on the replacement page to see how many of us checked in hourly to see if things were back up. 

33

Living Room / Re: USB Flash Drives: What to look for or avoid.

« Last post by oldfart on February 27, 2008, 08:20 AM »

Just this morning I found a free download at PC World called HD Tach.  It is designed to test the speed of USB flash drives.  You can find it here:  http://www.pcworld.c...ads/description.html

34

Living Room / Re: Cool Composter

« Last post by oldfart on February 23, 2008, 08:09 PM »

I think I saw that device on This Old House on PBS.  They showed three or four different composting devices.  I believe the one you show was the smallest one of the bunch.  They recommended different composters for different size gardens.   

35

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you testing XP SP3 RC ??

« Last post by oldfart on February 22, 2008, 05:54 PM »

Greetings,
I just got an email from a friend who just upgraded to SP3 and afterward Windows refused to install any other updates.  Here's what he says:  Once you install SP3 it IGNORES all updates needed to be installed! THEN if you uninstall SP3 and go back to SP2 the updates will re-appear. Only problem is they will not install!!
 
He says he checked the forums and found many having this problem.  He tried to remove the SP3 upgrade but it also removed IE7 and all his drivers and would not reinstall them.  Fortunately its just a test machine so he will format and reload XP. 

36

Living Room / Re: Windows Live Skydrive: Tried Anyone?

« Last post by oldfart on February 22, 2008, 12:35 PM »

Howdy Mahesh2k, I just read a review of the site on Ars Technica last night.  Here's the url: http://arstechnica.c...-a-bit-of-paint.html  I went to Skydrive and set up an account but it was too late in the evening to start playing with it.  I do like that there are three categories; private, share by invitation and public.  I'll be interested in seeing upload speed.

37

General Software Discussion / Video Accelerator

« Last post by oldfart on February 18, 2008, 09:41 PM »

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this site:   http://www.videoaccelerator.com/ 


I've searched the forums and found no mention but perhaps one of you are familiar with the product.  Apparently it is from the folks who developed DAP, which I used back in the dial-up days.  They say it will speed up broadband so that streaming video plays much smoother, with no hiccups or skips.  They also keep a record of your video viewing so you can return to a video easily.  If nobody has any experience with it, perhaps I'll give it a go.  They also offer a Pro version that they say will do the same for your iTunes downloads--for a fee.

38

Living Room / Re: Looking for a good bartenders guide

« Last post by oldfart on February 17, 2008, 11:01 PM »

Greetings Josh,
My fifteen plus years tending bar tells me you are playing with dynamite here.  There are quite a few very good mixed drinks and If you use quality ingredients in proper proportion you will have a well made cocktail.  Its just that drinking one or maybe two is enjoyable, once you get to the fifth one you are going to be seriously messed up.  Worse, the next day can be a killer.  Its the sugar that gets you the next day.  Avoid it at all costs if you are going to drink a lot.
If you plan on drinking in quantities, choose a good whiskey, bourbon or just about any other grain alcohol and drink it straight or perhaps with water or seltzer.  You'll wake with a clean head. 
As for the recipe books, I never used one other than a copy of Mr. Boston that sat on the back bar of every place I ever worked.  Perhaps the other folks here have had personal experience with one of the guides or programs.  Good luck and here's looking at you.   

39

Best Weather Monitor Tool / Re: some comments after using some of the programs

« Last post by oldfart on February 17, 2008, 02:30 PM »

Greetings,
My comment isn't really about a weather program per se, it is to mention my favorite weather site.  Many years ago I found the University of Michigan's weather site.  Its called "Weather Underground" and has a ton of weather-related information as well as access to just about any kind of weather map as well as the ability to show storm movement over the past hour, two hours or longer.  Merely type in your zip code and it will show your current weather as well as a five day forecast that you can break down to hourly forecasts.  I have it as one of my start pages and in thirteen years of surfing I've never found a better site.  Best yet, for a small fee you can join Weather Underground and never see an ad.  Here's the site: http://www.wunderground.com    One other thing, if you visit the site and like what you see, I can give you a year's free membership.  Just leave me a message with your email address and I'll send you a membership.

40

Living Room / Re: about to switch to a Widescreen LCD.

« Last post by oldfart on February 17, 2008, 08:12 AM »

Sorry to bother you folks, I've found my answer, DVI-D to DVI-D cable will work just fine. 

41

Living Room / Re: about to switch to a Widescreen LCD.

« Last post by oldfart on February 16, 2008, 09:23 PM »

I don't know if this is related or not but I'm having a problem with an LCD monitor and perhaps one of you folks will have an answer for me.  I've been using a Samsung LCD for several months now and really like it.  My wife's CRT monitor shot craps so I picked up a better graphic card, one that had a DVI port and she chose an LG brand LCD monitor.  When I got it home I was chagrined to find that only a power cord was supplied so I hooked it up with the old analog cord fr om the CRT as the graphics card supported either and the monitor had ports for either.
I then went to Geeks.com and bought a DVI cable.  It came today and I learned a new lesson, there  are several forms of DVI.  The graphics card port is DVI-I while the monitor takes a DVI-D.  From what I've learned, the difference between I and D is that the 'I' supports both digital and analog while the 'D' is digital only.  'I' has four pins that 'D' doesn't have.  I've found that you cannot plug an 'I' into a 'D' but you can apparently plug a 'D' into an 'I', you just don't have connections for the four pins that carry analog. 
I have also found a place that sells a DVI-I to DVI-D adapter.  Do any of you know if I need the adapter or can I merely buy a DVI-D cable and forget about the four pins?   

42

Living Room / Re: Would anyone want a free DonationCoder.com bumper sticker?

« Last post by oldfart on February 14, 2008, 07:45 AM »

I'm in.  I also prefer the cling stickers for windows but I'll slap a bumper sticker on my old wreck if that's what you get.

43

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by oldfart on February 06, 2008, 07:31 AM »

Greetings one and all.  My name is Denny Garland and I have no idea how I stumbled upon DonationCoder although I suspect one of your programs was highlighted on one of the computer RSS feeds I have.  I am a 59 year old man living in Chatham, Illinois, about 90 miles NE of St. Louis. 
I picked up a used IBM SX-2[?] 75MHz computer back in '94 and played with it until I could upgrade no further [Mobo couldn't handle a CD ROM].  I then bought a Gateway 200MHz machine in January of '95 and immediately started futzing with it.  The absolutely huge 2.5GB hard drive that I couldn't foresee ever filling lasted less than two years before I upgraded to a 10GB drive.  I built my first machine in '99.
While I loved messing with hardware and playing with software, I never got in to coding.  I taught myself enough to become the tech support for a large family and most of my friends, which kept me busy learning about bugs, viruses, hardware conflicts and software. 
I picked up a job running the parts department for a small Chevy dealership and soon became their IT manager also.  I taught most of the staff how to use their computer, set up our first network and handled all updates, upgrades and email for the dealership. 
A genetic problem with my spine forced me to have surgery two years ago and soon afterward it was discovered that I have compressive neuropathy, a disease usually found in diabetics and AIDS sufferers but every once in a while it strikes someone in the general population and I was the lucky fellow.
The disability and the medications I have to take for pain management [morphine at this point] finally forced me to leave my job and go on disability last July.
At first the drugs left me pretty much null and void but I've become somewhat used to them lately and started getting back into computing.  It was at this point that I stumbled upon your site, downloaded a program [ Clipboard Help and Spell], started reading the forum and decided to join up.  I've been a member for just a few weeks but I've already gotten more value than I paid for. 
I really enjoy the forum and am trying to catch up by reading all the posts.  I haven't been in a chat room for twelve years or so and I had even quit reading message boards, mostly because they seemed to be populated by vulgar adolescents who can't spell. [I don't mind vulgar that much and I don't mind youth but bad spelling sends me round the bend] I'm so happy I found you folks.   
In just a few weeks I've downloaded at least two dozen program [haven't installed them all yet] and added dozens of bookmarks, all suggested or reviewed by you folks.  Thanks.

44

General Software Discussion / Re: Apple software recommendations?

« Last post by oldfart on February 02, 2008, 09:27 PM »

Boy am I embarrassed.  I use Picasa all the time.  I've got an older program that I use for conversion purposes and never even thought to check Picasa.  Thanks for the advice.

45

General Software Discussion / Re: Apple software recommendations?

« Last post by oldfart on February 02, 2008, 03:05 PM »

Thanks for the quick response folks.  I copied your suggestions and sent them along to my sister.  I too was surprised that there wasn't an excellent image manager built in to the OS.  For all I know, there is and my sister just never found it.  She's a lovely lady with intelligence and wit, not to mention a beautiful singer but she's not real swift when it comes to computers.  She says the reason they bought a Mac is that its supposed to be stable and not crash as much as Windows.  Her last computer had Win98 so she's never tried XP.  [Her husband is a Mac addict.]
Hopefully this will solve her problem and I thank you once again.

46

General Software Discussion / Apple software recommendations?

« Last post by oldfart on February 02, 2008, 11:13 AM »

Greetings,
I'm quite new to the forum and have been trying to read all the forum posts to catch up with things but I've come up with a question and can't find anything related in the forums.  My sister owns a Mac and a digital camera.  She likes to send around pictures she's taken but she sends the original image that is usually a meg or more in size, which isn't real convenient for some in the family that are still in dial-up mode.  I wrote her and suggested she convert the image to a more manageable size.  She said she doesn't have a program that will do that for her.  I went to Tucows and found a couple of free programs that got good user reviews but I thought I'd ask you folks that use Macs and see if you had some suggestions for her. 
She needs something fairly user friendly as she's not real computer literate.
Thanks for your help.

47

Living Room / Re: Mini How-To: How to make your PC go to silent standby (S3 mode)

« Last post by oldfart on January 28, 2008, 08:44 AM »

Sorry to get out of line F0dder.  I'm new and haven't read all the posts yet.  I don't remember when the energy star power settings were added to Windows [98?] but every review I read for several years all said to shut off the power options in Windows because they would do nothing but mess up your system.  I happened to stumble upon Local Cooling, the program was free and it worked so I was pleased with it.  I didn't look at it as a money making scheme because they haven't gotten a dime from me and I haven't been back to their web site since I installed the program a couple of months ago. 

48

Official Announcements / Re: January 2008 Software Drawing Winners

« Last post by oldfart on January 27, 2008, 08:36 AM »

My thanks to you folks at DC for GoodSync.  I really appreciate the opportunity to win a much needed program and I am very pleased with what I won.  Now that I'll be in the small chance to win pool for the next few months, I wish good luck to all the other entrants.  Thanks again.

49

Living Room / Re: Mini How-To: How to make your PC go to silent standby (S3 mode)

« Last post by oldfart on January 26, 2008, 06:52 PM »

I suppose you folks would consider it cheating or at the very least laziness but I found a neat little program called http://Local Cooling that not only regulates when and how my system closes down and hibernates, it tells me how many trees, gallons or kilowatt hours I have saved.  They even have an on line community but I've not yet explored that part of the program.  The only drawback is that you don't get to hack the registry or play with the bios in any fun and creative ways, you just install it.

50

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« Last post by oldfart on January 16, 2008, 03:47 PM »

You people don't know the troubles you cause.  I am a very new member of DC and just getting started with my search for software.  Yesterday I read the Best of 2007 and found myself checking out and/or downloading several neat little programs, only one of which I've installed so far.  You see, I have developed a doozy of a disability that requires me to take a basket-load of meds each day, most of which cut my IQ exponentially.  Today I stumbled upon your thread and because I've been searching for a decent music and video player, I very much appreciated all the great suggestions. 
Many moons ago I was signed up with Music Match Jukebox for the excellent reason that it came installed on this Dell.  I purchased a number of albums and singles, mostly sixties and seventies stuff [hence the name oldfart].  I haven't been listening to music much this past year due to my difficulties but I've gotten somewhat used to all the damn meds and have begun to play with the computer more and listening to music was one of my first desires. 
I had quit MMJ [I had purchased PLUS and had a subscription to their library at one time]  Anywho, I first downloaded 1by1 and then read about JRiver having a free version and grabbed it.  I installed the program and imported my library, none of which would play.  After fumbling around for a bit I noticed that it was a DRM problem, they could not verify my license.     I finally woke up and Googled MMJ but it kept taking me to Yahoo.  Eventually I figured out that MMJ was apparently absorbed by Yahoo so I downloaded and installed Yahoo's player.  Sure enough, when I tried to play my music it had the same DRM problem but it did bring up a window asking me for my MMJ user name and password.  Thankfully I was able to go to my password keeper [see thread concerning password managers] and find my old MMJ info. 
I imported my library once again and was pleased to see it find my license and play the song.  I then opened JRiver and it played the tune also.  Unfortunately it would only play that song.  I am going to have to play each song on Yahoo first to  obtain my license before I can use any other player. 
I think I read something about the importance of backing up you license somewhere upstream of this post and I plan to find that post and dutifully follow its suggestion. 
Thanks to all you nice folks for providing me with both excellent knowledge about media players but also giving me a whole afternoon's activity.