Jasper Jones

Another important computer related item is the Free Antivirus Software you can get from Cyberdefender.

This company is right up there in the big leagues of antivirus protection but they let you download it for free. This company has taken computer security to the next level, with real time security updates and there’s no conflict with other previously installed antivirus or security programs. If you are online a lot and get involved with a lot of high risk surfing, you should probably have more than one antivirus program anyway - just to be safe.

If you need extra features, the same company has more products available for purchase. It is worth checking out - because safe surfing is a must these days. This is true for large companies, small businesses and home computer users.

Hackers have gotten much smarter and more devious in how they design and spread the new viruses. I think most people are already aware that they shouldn’t open attachments to emails that they weren’t expecting or don’t know the sender. But now you can have a problem with just clicking on the wrong web page or link. Its scarey to think that you could lose everything on your computer to a virus, so everyone should take steps to protect themselves.

Every once in a while I check the WordPress sites. I use WordPress for my blog and haven’t seen anything better than that in all this time. They come out with updates once in a while and they are always worth spending the few minutes to do the upgrade and get the new features.

They also changed the way they handle the free themes that change the look of your blog. It used to be that people could upload anything that they designed and if you liked the looks of it you could download it for free. But there were a lot of problems with the free themes. Some of them contained malicious code that allowed hackers to back door your server. Others had a lot of links that you had to leave in but did you harm with the Google page rank bots. Others failed to load or were missing critical functions.

So WordPress revamped the whole thing and deleted all the themes. Now they have a review process and they are slowly uploading the new approved themes that are proven compatible with the latest version of WordPress. This is a great advancement and I can’t tell you how much we appreciate all the work done by the volunteers.

Read about Fibromyalgia last night when we got slow at the hospital. It’s a disease that leaves its victims exhausted all the time, and they suffer from a lot of aches and pains.

There is a new web site for people dealing with Fibromyalgia called FibroCenter.com I’m pretty sure it is sponsored or underwritten by the Pfizer company.

The site has useful facts and practical tips for managing this disease. They also have an action plan you can download. Their support group lets you read other peoples stories about how they cope and you can participate in that by writing your own story to share with others.

I’m still learning about how the pharmaceutical companies participate in the non profits and support groups for different diseases and conditions. I’m not sure it is always a good thing, but as long as they have a disclosure on their sites and their advertising or marketing efforts, I guess it is good to have some help - from whatever the source.

This morning I went to print out the homework for my English class and as soon as I hit the print button a little gray dialogue box popped up and says “You are almost out of ink.” Well, that’s just great. We’ve only been using this printer for maybe 6 weeks and not really doing much printing and I’m already getting a message that we are almost out.

Well, at least we got a warning. It used to be that you just ran out and wouldn’t even know it until you picked up the stack of papers in your report and thumbed through them when you noticed that the printed pages started fading and then disappeared, so all you had was half a pile of blank sheets of paper. Don’t try turning those in for a grade, folks.

With our college student budget, Alex and I are going to have to save money on things like new printer cartridges. We can’t just run down to the drug store and buy brand name ink cartridges and pay top dollar for the privilege of a brand name on the box. What we do is buy compatible cartridges and save about 30% off the cost of a new brand name cartridge.

The best way I’ve found to save money buying compatible inkjet printer suppliesis get online and use the web site called inkjetdeals.info to find a place that sells compatibles for your printer model, like our Epson.

There are brick and mortar stores that carry the different brands and there are online stores, too. If you have time to order your cartridge online and wait just a couple days for it to come in the mail, that’s usually the best way to go for the maximum savings.

But if you are totally out and desperately need to buy an inkjet cartridge to use immediately, sometimes this site has coupons and discount codes you can use at local stores, like BestBuy.

At work last night one of the med techs was telling me that she’s taking classes to become a massage therapist. It started out with a little teasing because my shoulders and neck were really sore from the softball game Wednesday night. She wanted to give me a neck massage but was afraid that if she did that while at work that someone would cause trouble for us. Touching another employee is not a good thing as far as management goes - they don’t want to have a sexual harrassment lawsuit or anything. So I didn’t get the neck massage, but I wanted one!

When she finishes the massage classes she will probably move out of the area and get a job at a resort or large spa. There’s not much of that in Chattanooga.

The closest big city for us is Atlanta. It’s about a two hour drive south of here. I don’t know if there is a lot of demand for massage in Atlanta. We were talking about that possibility and did a search for Atlanta Massage and were surprised to find so many listings. We found these using a special search directory called Clicksmart. This directory lists professional in categories like:

Contractors
Florists
Home & Office Services
Massage Therapists
Mortgage Brokers
Real Estate Agents
Weddings and Events