A Geek and Proud of It !

I admit it; I'm a Geek. Of course if you ask my children, I've been a Geek for much longer than I've owned a computer. Before I was a Geek, I believe I was a Dork, or a Nerd, or a Dweeb - but not necessarily in that order. The message there being that it was social suicide to be seen out in public with me. But hey, in my book, this only means I'm doing my job.

Nowadays, I am a bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool Computer Geek. (who else would take the time to establish a Blog?) and I taught myself everything I know, thank you very much. I've told my family that when I'm too old to take care of myself to put me in a home with a hamster and a computer, and I'll be just fine. My daughter indignantly requests that I stop talking like that; my son says nothing, but I suspect he's thinking that it can't happen soon enough! Fact of the matter is, he's just like me: a full-blown Computer Geek, only he's a Major Gamer Geek.

I get a lot of my information from the Computer Guru herself, Kim Komando. I subscribe to her Cool Site of the Day, Computer Tip of the Day, News of the Day, and weekly newsletter. She offers a vast amount of information and new sites to check out. She also has a radio program, but I never have the radio on, so I miss that. You can subscribe to any or all of the above by going to her website: http://www.komando.com I promise you won't regret it.

One thing Ms. Komando is adamant about, and to which I couldn't agree more, is protecting one's computer. A good anti-virus program and firewall are absolute necessities. I subscribe yearly to all of McAfee's services. There is a free anti-virus program, AVG by Grisoft, available if you don't want to pay for McAfee or Norton. You can also run a scan to check your computer for spyware and other pests before downloading a free firewall from ZoneAlarm by Zone Labs.

I have a real problem with the notion that someone is monitoring my computer and surfing habits. Ms. Komando recommends, and I also use Spybot Search & Destroy, a free Spyware prevention tool by Patrick M. Kolla. Keep this updated to eliminate potentially dangerous spyware from infiltrating your computer. She also recommends AdAware by Lavasoft, another tool to prevent unwanted data miners, aggressive advertising, browser hijacks, and more. It, too, is free. Additionally, I use 2 other programs to protect my computer against browser hijacking, malicious software, potential trojans, and parasites: WinPatrol by BillP Studios and SpywareBlaster by Javacool Software. All of these programs can be downloaded and installed for free on your computer. In addition to your Anti-virus software and firewall, your computer should be impenetrable -- as long as you keep all the programs updated and regularly run scans.
I use our computer for everything: paying bills, balancing my checkbook, cashing in frequent flier mileage, checking hotel reservations, printing out boarding passes, printing Christmas card labels, buying Christmas presents, ordering prescriptions, printing photos, and on and on and on. There is a program available for anything you want to do, and much of the time, it's free.

You can buy music for $0.88 a song on Walmart.com or for $0.99 a song from iTunes.com. iTunes probably has a larger selection, but Walmart is good. Just download the songs directly to your My Music folder in My Documents. Then you can burn your CD.

You can share photographs with friends and family with Kodak's Ofoto.com (soon to be changed to the Kodak EasyShare Gallery). If you have a scanner or a digital camera, you can get the photos into your My Pictures folder in My Documents, upload them into Ofoto.com, tell it which email addresses to send the pictures to, and off they go. You'll have to register with Ofoto first, but that doesn't obligate you to anything at all. Ofoto users and recipients also have the opportunity to buy prints online for as little as $0.29 a print. Our family uses this all the time.

If you have more than one email address, even if they're on different servers (i.e.: aol and yahoo and hotmail), you can check them all at once with this great little tool: ePrompter.com by Tiburon Technology. It even flashes different colored circles on your taskbar to show you how many new emails you have in each mailbox. I love this one!

Want to synchronize your desktop clock to THE official time as set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology? Download Atomic TimeSync by AnalogX.

Are you as proud of your pets as I am? Upload their pictures and bio info to Dogster.com and Catster.com These are also a fun sites just to browse.

You can search bridal registries by going to the individual stores' websites and following the links to find the bride. Even if you don't know at which stores she's registered, a quick check will most likely turn up a registry or two. A good place to start is TheWeddingChannel.com to which a number of national department stores subscribe.

Do you get a lot of email forwards about missing children, warnings about kidnappers & thieves, health risks, political misdeeds, prayer requests, or other pleas for help? Check out the validity of these urban legends at TruthorFiction.com You may find that they are nothing more than hoaxes, a good thing to know before you blindly forward them further along.

eBay is my best friend. I rarely pay retail for things I need these days. It especially came in handy at Christmas time. Be sure to check out the seller's rating: don't buy from anyone with less than a 99.0% (I usually don't even look at those under 99.3%). Then read the buyers' comments. Beware of unusually high shipping charges -- some sellers up the shipping cost to cover the fees charged by eBay, or to compensate for a low auction price. I'll flag an item to be watched in MyEbay, and I'll decide during the final hours of auction whether or not I want to bid on it. If it's important to me, I'll enter a substantial bid; if it's not, I'll enter only what I'm willing to spend. There is no charge to eBay to purchase, but the buyer pays the shipping costs. Be careful, though, it's addictive.

Perhaps I'll enter another post at another time about other sites I find particularly interesting. I do recommend Kim Komando. She knows far more about computers and the internet than I could ever hope to know. I'm learning more about it everyday. I expect there will come a day when retail businesses are challenged by Internet purchasing, and when much of our services will be established through the Internet. What a tool!

A true Geek, to the bone, and I'm loving it.