I have to say that I like the concept of the PayPal Plugin. (While in Beta, this was formerly called the PayPal Virtual Debit Card.) This tool allows you to create a one-time or a one-site Debit Card for shopping on-line. The one-site feature is particularly nice because it allows for recurring charges, but still protects from fraud as the charges can come from only one website.
Encryption and Thumb Drives
Recently my wife ran into a situation where she had misplaced her new thumb drive (thankfully, she found it), but it got me to thinking about securing mine. These flash drives are a great way to carry around information, but they are also quite small and obviously, easy to lose.
Electrical Outlet with a Toggle Switch
A while back, a friend sent me a link to this picture of an Australian electrical outlet with a On/Off switch (have to scroll down past the kangaroos). I need to find a similar outlet that works in the US.
Security Questions
Folks need to start choosing better security questions for web accounts. I keep running into situations where I do not want to share the information the site is asking for. Or, I am creating a web account that is likely to be used by multiple people (at work, etc.) , but I am prompted to choose a series of very personalized security questions to go along with the login ID that I am creating.
Taking a Look at the Cable Bill
Our Comcast cable bill came today. For a change I sat down and read it, instead of just paying it. It turns out that along with their 6Mbps internet access and “Digital Starter” cable tv service, we are paying $10.95/mo for their “Digital Classic” package.
Printing from Acrobat Pro 8.1
I recently purchased and installed a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0 (well, 8.1). I have been mostly pleased with this application, but while using it I have discovered that I have a new pet peeve.
When I go to print a document from Acrobat, a Print window is displayed and there are a number of choices that I can make regarding my print job. The vast majority of the time I am just looking to print one copy of the file, so I click the OK button and my file prints out. Every once in a while I need more than one copy, so when the Print window is displayed, I go to the Page Handling area and enter a larger number in the Copies option and click the OK button to have my job print out.
The Joy of Patching
For the last couple of months I have read various reports saying Windows XP SP3 will be released in the near future and I have to say that it is none to soon.
This week I helped a co-worker setup a new Dell D630 laptop that thankfully arrived with XP, not Vista. I found that Dell is still building these machines with aging image, which includes IE 6 and Windows Media Player 9.
Connecting a Second Router
I currently have one Linksys WRT54G wireless router located on the first floor of my house. My primary desktop is currently connected to it via Cat5. I am trying to extend the coverage of the wireless signal in my home.
Final Frontier
At work, I receive the mail from a couple of public email addresses and these addresses have a habit of getting hammered with Spam. As a practical matter, I cannot filter spam on the server level because I need to be able to see what getting flagged as Spam and isolate it into a separate folder in Outlook.
World Computer Exchange
Yesterday I spent the day with the folks from the World Computer Exchange. We tested and packaged up quite a large number of Pentium III and newer computers. These used computers were donated by various organizations in the metro-Boston area and they are being shipped out to people in need throughout the world.
