Randomized

Another Hardware/OS Audit

Nessa — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:49:42 +0000

1)
AMD Athlon X2 4000 AM2 (2.10GHz)
Emaxx MCP61S-AVL
2GB Geil DDR800
GeForce 7300GT 512MB
160 GB HDD
*Windows XP

2)
AMD Sempron 2200+ (1.60GHz)
Asrock K7VM3
1GB DDR400
GeForce FX5200
Seagate 160GB IDE HDD
Samsung 80GB
Maxtor 40GB
*Windows XP & Ubuntu on separate HDD

3)
Sony Vaio VGN-CR35G
Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 (2.10GHz)
14.1″ WGA Display
Wireless 4965 AGN
Mobility Radeon X2300
2GB SODIMM
Toshiba MK2546GS 200GB HDD
*Windows 7 Ultimate

4)
HP Pavilion dv1000
Intel Pentium M (1.50GHz)
13.1″ Widescreen
Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Shared video memory (UMA)
512MB RAM
80GB HDD
*Dual boot: Windows XP & Linux Mint

Western Digital Scorpio External Drive 80GB
*Linux Mint 12 “Lisa”

Twitter @azzenfrost

Nessa — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:00:17 +0000

So, yeah. I got curious and finally signed up. Just looking around for now.

Bad KFC Experience

Nessa — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:35:22 +0000

We ate at KFC and got the streetwise bucket meal at around 4 in afternoon. It was good. I ate the mash side dish while my kid sister finished off two servings of the coleslaw. We walked around the mall and bought a laptop bag. Then parted ways before her next class which was at 6 pm.

A few hours later, she complains about her head and has been puking ever since. It is now 2:33 am and she’s sitting in the chair closest to the bathroom. Still puking. Just bought her Gatorade so she doesn’t get dehydrated. Glad that our brother is an RN and is looking after her. Not going back to KFC again.

Is there a gaming ultraportable laptop out there?

Nessa — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:22:32 +0000

I own and still use an old HP Pavilion dv1000. Yes, I have a couple of high powered desktops but I still prefer the mobility that a laptop offers. Obviously, my current one is outdated. So my search has begun. My usual places to go to for browsing the latest and the greatest are Cnet and Bestbuy. What is it that I want in my next laptop? I would have to say between 11 and 14 inches for the screen size. At the very least, 4 GB of RAM. Not really fussing about the hard drive size. I definitely want dedicated graphics, Nvidia or ATI. It also has to be thin and light. I haven’t decided yet if I want an optical drive or not. It depends how thin it is I guess. At the moment, there are a few that fit all of those, but not something I would buy and use. I will post again when my search gives me something with potential.

The X’s and Y’s of Health Problems Associated With Obesity

Nessa — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:02:27 +0000

You have seen countless video clips, heard numerous stories and even read a myriad of articles about health problems associated with obesity. You know what most people do. Obesity, simply put, is a physical condition where your body weight is significantly higher than what is normal and healthy. The risk is contributed to by several factors. The first that you remember is almost always diet and activity. You eat more calories than you burn in your current lifestyle. Second is genetics. Although some could argue that it is a combination of nature and nurture, such as a low metabolic rate coupled with having rich foods available at your fingertips. There are also cases that point to it being a social problem. Much of the blame is on the popularity of fast and tasty foods. They are the high fat, high calorie, low cost and fast way to health problems associated with obesity.

With all of the information readily available, be it print, web or social media, you would not be surprised to find out what people don’t know obesity. One fact about obesity that is not widely know is that it currently tops the list of causes of death that are preventable. Health problems associated with obesity have been and will take more lives. It is not a statistic that is limited to one country or demographic. It is everywhere. The health problems associated with obesity affect your heart, liver, blood and your state of mind. Think of heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, osteoarthritis, stroke, depression and many more. You get the picture. Most of the time, one leads to another and creates a chain of problems.

It is easy to say diet and exercise to stay fit. In managing health problems associated with obesity, a lot of it has to do with motivation. While it is true that access to health insurance, competent healthcare and money help, they are not the be all and end all when it comes to managing your issues. There are also weight loss medication available to supplement your diet and exercise routines. In extreme cases, surgery is also an option. The primary downside of that is the cost. Another is that you cannot go back to your previous diet after the operation.

How many times have you heard of the line, “I would rather eat what I want and do what I want for a few years than bother with diets and exercise for decades more”? Do you find this fatalistic attitude uncharacteristic of the person you hear it from? Do you say this to friends and family who ask about your plans? I would wager that it is a case of health problems associated with obesity winning the mental battle. The failed attempts and the complications add to the feelings of anger and depression and lowered self worth. Look at the people around you. If your family and friends are affected by your issues as well, make them part of your reason to change your habits. More likely than not, they are your immediate support for financial and emotional needs.

Exhaust all the possibilities for you to motivate yourself. The only failure there is not realizing that life is worth it. Health problems associated with obesity are not reasons to stop living.

Remove Unused Grub2 Entries

Nessa — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 01:18:04 +0000

I had to reinstall my Linux Mint 9 Isadora after messing with a new copy of Windows XP. Once the whole thing was complete. I ended up with two extra kernel versions that weren’t really installed but were still listed in the boot menu. I ignored it for the longest time until I asked myself today.

I looked around the web and found that most sites say the same thing. I did not want to manually edit the Grub2 configuration file because that would still leave the headers in my system. And I’m a bit OC when it comes to my toys. So I played around with it a bit and found a simple solution.

1) Find out the current kernel version by opening the Terminal and running: uname -r
2) Take note of the result. This command gave me “2.6.32-25-generic”.
3) Open Synaptic and then search for the 4 digits. For example, “2.6.32″.
4) Install the “ghost” kernel versions : Check the “Mark for Installation” box and hit “Apply”.
5) Opened terminal and run: sudo update-grub2
6) Uninstall the kernel versions : Check the “Mark for Complete Removal” box and hit “Apply”.
7) Go back to the Terminal and ran: sudo update-grub2

Linux Mint 9 Isadora is based on Linux Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. I am pretty sure that the same set of instructions can be used for it too. Using these steps, I’ve removed everything from the Grub2 menu except the two latest kernel versions, the Memtest and the Windows entry. I hope this works for anyone else with the same issue.

Making Java Work On Firefox and Mint 9

Nessa — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:47:25 +0000

I play a browser based online game and after installing Mint 9 Isadora, it stopped working. One part of the said game uses Javascript so I decided to check on that first. The following code is what I used to fix the issue:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

After running that in the terminal, i just opened my game again and it went through without a hitch!

How I Stopped That Nagging WGA Notification

Nessa — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:33:25 +0000

I finally got sick of that useless notification on my desktop telling me that my copy is not authentic. Armed with internet, I searched for a way to kill that annoyance. I got to a WikiHow page that provided, in detail, what I needed to do. Long story short, it worked. I no longer have to suffer a black desktop and the occasional reminder that I need to contact Microsoft. Below are the steps that I did:

1. Open Notepad.
2. Paste the code from below, including one empty line in the end to represent the enter key.
3. Copy again.
4. Open the Command Prompt by clicking Start, then Run, typing CMD then hitting the enter key.
5. Right click on the black screen and select the Paste command.

CD %systemroot%\system32 rename wgatray.exe wgatray.exe.bak rename wgalogon.dll wgalogon.dll.bak rename LegitCheckControl.dll LegitCheckControl.dll.bak taskkill /F /T /IM wgatray.exe del wgatray.exe.bak del wgalogon.dll.bak del LegitCheckControl.dll.bak

* There should be an extra line when you paste. *

Resources:

http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-Windows-Genuine-Advantage-Notifications

How I Removed Windows XP Malware Blocking Antivirus Websites

Nessa — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:00:53 +0000

I have an old desktop with an AMD Sempron processor that runs Windows XP. It is mostly unused except for times when it is needed for downloading large chunks of data that takes hours or days. My brother had been using it to download themes for his PSP (PlayStation Portable) when I noticed that the trial version of some anti virus that I installed long ago had already expired. Not wanting to spread any unwanted snippets of code to and through our gaming consoles, I opted to download another trial of another AV software. I tried pulling up the usual security websites but all told me that the pages could not be displayed. The odd thing was that all the other websites were loaded just fine. I even tried pulling up the pages on my laptop and it worked without a hitch. The first thing I checked was for proxy servers on the browser itself. There weren’t any. I did ping tests and checked which ports were open and I came up with nothing. I then proceeded to uninstall all the software on it that I was not familiar with, leaving only the basic ones. The results were the same. I hopped over to my laptop and searched for the keywords “virus blocking antivirus websites”. The very first article that came up had the answer I was looking for. I did the first option under malware.

1. Go to Start.
2. Click Run.
3. Type “mrt.exe” and hit enter.
4. Choose “Full Scan”.
5. Restart once done.

The culprit was found and eradicated. After restarting the old box, I immediately tried going to one of the most popular anti virus software websites. Lo and behold, it opened without any issues. I downloaded a free copy of the AV that they were offering, did the updates, scanned and ran the anti rootkit feature. It’s clean for now. My brother still swears that he wasn’t the one who downloaded the nuisance.

Resources:

http://www.antihacksecurity.com/the-news/124-virus-blocking-web-sites-unable-to-download-antivirus

How I recovered my corrupted partition

Nessa — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:23:14 +0000

I have a Western Digital USB Drive that I use for data and testing new Linux releases. It had one NTFS partition for files I could share with Windows systems, one big data partition that I use to designate /home and several smaller partitions where I install varied Linux distributions. I had just deleted a couple of partitions that contained older Linux Mint versions and moved my /home partition to the outside of the disk using Gparted when an error occurred. After refreshing the application, it showed that my /home partition was unreadable. If I had been using Windows XP or Vista, my first instinct would be to wipe out the corrupted data and start from scratch. Not so in this case, I searched for a recovery utility that worked with EXT3 filesystems and discovered Testdisk.

The creator of this nifty tool provided sufficient information for me to install, operate and succeed in my task. I only used two commands in the terminal: sudo apt-get install testdisk and testdisk. It did not even take 5 minutes for the program to be installed. In a few keystrokes, Testdisk was able to fix my partition table and I got all of my data back. There are no guarantees in recovery. The best course of action is still to back up your data before you move or make big changes.