News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

December 21, 2008

Short Day

Filed under: Computers, Tech & Science — Daryl @ 8:45 pm

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.

On the equator the day is 12 hours long, any day of the year.
In Tempe, Dallas and Pasadena, today is about 10 hours long.
In Boise, Idaho it’s about 9 hours long.
In Anchorage it’s 5 1/2 hours long.
In Fairbanks it’s a little less than 4 hours (from about 11:00am to about 2:40pm).
At the north pole, there is only one day and it’s 6 months long, but today the day is zero hours long.

Thanks to the US Navy for the data.

December 15, 2008

Cheating Banks

Filed under: Opinion — Daryl @ 10:32 am

Derek had a checking account with Chase a few weeks ago that he decided to close out. He had just $5.59 in the account, and by accident he withdrew $5.60.

For that one cent overdraft, Chase charged him a $25 fee. Jocelyn may argue that this is justified, but you can’t convince me that it costs the bank $25 to process this. I went in and talked to the branch manager about it, but she was adamant and unsympathetic. She told me “Other teenagers have checking accounts without overdrawing them”. Nice attitude.

Maybe Chase should set up a virtual “Take a penny, leave a penny” dish on their website for situations like this. Their current policy surely doesn’t breed good will.

December 14, 2008

Malware Bytes!

Filed under: Computers, Tech & Science — Daryl @ 2:05 pm

“It sure does”, you must be thinking. Viruses, trojans, spyware, adware, rootkits, all this malicious software sneaking on to your computer really bites.

My current favorite malware remover is “Malwarebytes“. It finds and removes things that other programs have trouble with. I’ve even used it to remove the Vundo trojan, which is one of the most difficult.

Where I used to recommend that people install and frequently run Spybot or AdAware, I am now recommending that they run Malwarebytes instead. The free version is all I’ve used. They have a version you can buy that runs continually in the background scanning files, just like AVG, McAfee or Norton do, but I haven’t tried it and so cannot recommend it.

Go to their web site and click on the ‘Download Now” link on the left side of the screen.

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