smart computer use?

Each day, at least on the weekdays, I pack up my laptop and put it in my backpack to either take it to or from work. This is a pretty standard procedure and goes well. I’ve never destroyed my laptop in the process of transporation (yet).

This process of transporting my laptop to and from work has led to a near laptop horror story that I almost carried through with. I guess you could call it a laptop close-call.

An overheating laptop is not a good thing

I’ve written in the past about keeping a laptop cool, it’s a subject near to my heart (ha, not that important, but still important to me). This is because I’ve battled with overheating laptops much in the past and present. Not so much in the present since my current laptop computer seems to handle itself quite well and doesn’t overheat, but it’s still a topic on my mind frequently.

There are many things that can cause a laptop to overheat. One of those things is neglect, or not paying attention to your laptop when it’s pleading to be cooled. But that is for another day.

What I did to my laptop to cause near-meltdown

I closed the lid one morning on my laptop, preparing to pack it up and head to work. I unplugged all the cables and then stuffed the laptop computer into my backpack.

I was in a hurry.

I usually look at the led lights on the front of the laptop to make sure that it is actually in hibernation. This day I did not. I just stuffed it into my backpack and took off for work.

At some point later in the morning I needed to gain access to my laptop for something. It was probably to chat with my fellow developers who are not in-office, or something, as I only run my IM application of choice (Trillian) on my laptop since it’s mobile and I always have it with me.

I reached in the backpack to pull out the laptop and the computer was HOT AS HELL (almost literally). I immediately realized that the computer hadn’t actually hibernated and was running at full clip inside of my backpack. It had been in there for a couple hours.

Nuts! (oven-roasted peanuts… mmm)

I immediately opened it up and put it in a location with good air flow, then I shut it down.

This could have easily melted down something in the computer. I would hope that the computer would turn off automatically before something overheated… but to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever felt a laptop that was this hot in any situation. It was like I just pulled it out of the oven!

I lucked out…

Lucky for me, nothing happened. I got to chalk this one up to experience with no repercussions. The laptop has been working fine since then, but I definitely make sure to look at the front of the machine to make sure it’s in hibernation before I put it in my backpack anymore.

Kinda like when you crash a bicycle… how a person is a little more wary of curbs and bumps in the road afterwards.

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I guess I can’t really speak from experience… I just have never searched for Brad Pitt online. Don’t get me wrong, I guess he’s a decent actor and I have found him entertaining in certain movies: Fight Club, Ocean’s 11, etc.

But… according to Showbiz Tonight on CNN Headline News, Brad Pitt searches on the Internet have an 18% chance of delivering to you a nice virus, spyware or other harmful Internet gremlin.

HA!

Good thing I haven’t downloaded any stuff that claims to be about Brad Pitt on the Internet. If I was to ever now become a rabid Brad Pitt fan… I’d have to choose between search/download peril or not looking up anything about him on the Internet at all.

Let’s take a quick gander… for Brad Pitt

I just searched for Brad Pitt on Google. Yeah! Now I’m part of the online celebrity fan-club crowd. Or something.

All that I see are a bunch of fan sites, Wikipedia, and other legit looking sites… nice work Google! You have appeared to have protected me from the virtual wrath of Brad Pitt.

I would then venture to guess that this news story about 18% of all stuff on the Internet about Brad Pitt to be vicious must be referring to SPAM emails and file sharing networks. That has to be it.

Let’s take a look at my SPAM folder in Gmail. It contains 2387 messages right now from the last 30 days. There has to be something about Brad Pitt in there. And if I’m lucky it might have a sweet attachment that is representative of the Internet gremlin that I’m seeking.

What!

CableOne is once again having internet connection problems at my residence again (10th time tonight the connection has dropped, probably). Son of a ******.

Ok, CableOne is back

I see that I have 3 emails in my SPAM folder that have some keywords regarding Brad Pitt. Jackpot. I found no attachments though.

I guess I can’t find the 18% myself but it must be out there.

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I’ve been relying on the internet now for a while for both my career as a web developer and also as a source of information and entertainment. Good times…

Average Internet Usage

I probably spend a lot more time online than an “average” internet user… but that could all be relative. What is average internet usage? Hard to say probably. I’ve seen polls and studies that eluded to the fact that average Internet users use the Internet from maybe 2-3 hours per day.

That’s not too bad. Plenty of time to read some news, check email, maybe browse around a bit, and so on.

Now… I look at how long I am online each day… at least 8 hrs on most days, mainly due to work and extra-curricular Internet activities… but mostly from work.

Anyways, all this time online has given me a pretty focused list of the top things that annoy Internet users. This list might be tilted towards my own usage and experience, so feel free to comment and add anything that you might feel annoys you about Internet use.

Ok, Here’s My “Top 5 Things That Annoy Internet Users”

#5 - Email SPAM

I’m starting this off at #5 because SPAM can be addressed somewhat easily these days with some of the better SPAM filtering services that are available. But it’s still out there.

SPAM is something that I have to deal with every day. My clients SPAM problems even get to work their way into my life as they seek me out for info on how to stop SPAM.

Luckily I’ve found Gmail to be rather good at helping me filter my SPAM. The SPAM folder in my Gmail account, which pulls in email for around 10 of my email accounts, hovers between 2,000 and 2,500 SPAM emails that have been filtered out on average over the 30 span that Gmail keeps SPAM in the SPAM folder.

Good stuff. Glad I’m not manually trying to handle all that SPAM anymore.

#4 - Pop-up or Annoying Ads

I don’t think ads are bad as a whole. People need to make money on the Internet and ads help do that.

What I don’t like is the highly obtrusive ads that either pop-up or have other highly annoying behaviors. The wrong type of ad implementation, even on a good web site, can just flat out kill the user experience.

I would guess that you probably feel the same!

#3 - Hard-to-use Online Forms

How many times have you tried to fill out a form on a web site to register for something, only to commit a validation error somehow (not putting enough characters in your username, forgetting to fill a required field) and end up having to either re-fill a bunch of fields or somehow manage to erase all the stuff you just entered?

Many web sites have horrible form usability. Some forms don’t tell you what is required or what is valid data to enter. Some do but it might be unclear as to the specifics. Some forms have wacky tab ordering, so that when you hit the tab key the cursor doesn’t jump to the next logical field. Some forms somehow manage to erase data that you took 5-10 minutes to fill out if you don’t correctly hit the back button or something.

I don’t know how many times I’ve become frustrated with the usability of a web form. Usually it’s the larger forms that kill me when they don’t work right, but any size form can set me off if it’s unusable. Granted, there are many sites that handle forms great… but there are way more that will do something to test your patience.

#2 - Too Many User Accounts and Passwords

I have a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet) to manage my various Internet accounts and passwords. This spreadsheet probably houses over a hundred different username/password combos that I need to remember for various web sites… online banking, eBay, blog site admins, forum accounts… and the list goes on and on.

Google kinda helps me out by letting me use the same username/password combo for all their services such as Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and the like. But that is a very small chunk of my total password collection. I’m sure there are people out there that have user account collections that dwarf my measly 100 row + spreadsheet.

#1 - Connection interruptions and outages!

There really is nothing more annoying than your Internet connection dropping when you are needing it to work. Considering the short attention span of most Internet users, I would say that even 5 minutes of downtime on an Internet connection is enough to drive somebody insane and crazy. Especially when you are trying to do something urgent or are feeling very little patience on the day as a whole.

As I type this I’m even battling with a spotty Cable One internet connection. “We love to make you smile” I think is their slogan. Yeah right. If a bad Internet connection makes me smile than good job CableOne… but it doesn’t.

A bonus CableOne rant…

Plus, while I’m on my CableOne rant… I don’t even feel like calling support anymore because they always make me un-plug and re-plug the modem and also disconnect all my cabling to the modem and then reconnect it (huge pain in the ass).

They make me do this each time I call in, even when I call in repeatedly over several days due to something that is not my problem. It’s like they don’t even have a log that says I called a few times and they already made me unplug my modem and take all my cabling apart a few times over the last few days. Cripes.

But, I guess I’m not the only person who is dissatisfied with their Internet provider. CableOne probably works good for some folks too. But not me.

Peace.

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My primary computer at work is running Windows XP. It is a workhorse machine. If it goes down, my billable hrs drop instantly and my workflow is horribly interrupted.

I need to make certain decisions to make sure that this machine keeps running at optimal levels at all times.

Today, I was prompted to install Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3). I declined.

Why did I decline this particular Windows update?

The first and foremost reason that I declined this update is because about 2 weeks ago a client called me. He asked me if I was able to help him get his computer working (I’m not a computer tech, I’m web developer, so people think that I am a computer tech sometimes… common mistake I guess).

I really didn’t have any insight, and considering that he lives about 1 hr away, there really is nothing I could do. When a computer doesn’t start, there could be any myriad of problems, none of which can be solved over the phone by a busy web developer in a short amount of time.

But, I figured I’d at least give it a quick run, seeing if maybe I could help him out, planning to quickly tell him to find a local computer tech if it sounded like I was going to get nowhere.

I first asked “Did you do anything recently install anything new on your computer?”.

“Yes, I installed that new Service Pack 3 update this morning… and when I re-started my computer it wouldn’t start!”, is what he said.

Nuts.

I knew right away I wasn’t going to be able to help him. But, I still asked “When you boot your computer, does anything show on the screen at all? Does it prompt to go into safe mode or anything?”

“Nope, I just get a black screen, nothing…” he said.

And that was about the point where I proceeded to explain that I wouldn’t be able to provide him with an effective solution to his problem over the phone. I explained that he should get in contact with a computer tech to see what they can figure out.

Now, back to my decline of Service Pack 3…

So yeah, that is the first thing that popped into my head when I got prompted for Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

Then, when I clicked the Windows Update icon I got a prompt that says “Back up all files… blah blah blah”…

The first thing I told myself was “I don’t need to go through with this… my machine works fine and is up to date other than SP3″.

And I hit cancel.

I don’t need any troubles from a Windows Update, especially when it has a bit of a bad reputation on the internet:

“My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up,” complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. “After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t,” said ‘Doug W’.

Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. “I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals,” wrote ‘Paul’. “Now I can’t get the computer to boot.”

It’s actually pretty easy to find more comments like these.

Maybe another day

I still might consider eventually running the Windows XP Service Pack 3 update, but it’ll need to be a day when I have time to do a complete Windows backup (not just my files) and then also have extra time to kill just in case the update fails or crashes my computer.

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Haha. I don’t know why this one made me laugh. Once I noticed it, I thought it was quite hilarious.

The funny thing is this:

• I am first told that the message is exactly 2148991 characters long. This is a very specific and large number. This computer is showing me that it knows insane details that a mere mortal human should not care about.
• I am then told that a certain amount of characters from the beginning of the message are being shown to me. 106496 to be exact. So exact, that the computer adds “or so…” to the estimation of characters that are being shown.

Come on.

Don’t think that I don’t know what you are up to, you program. You are a lot smarter than you lead us to believe… you can’t play it off.

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