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Riding Shotgun with Adam

A week without a stylus

I lost the little pointer stylus for my Treo 650 last Friday. I am going crazy trying to get around in my PDA.

So far I have used my pinky nail, a toy sword from one of my kids action figures, the end of a USB cord, a plastic fork, a toothpick, and a ballpoint pen as a stylus.

I ordered a three-pack of new styli, but they won’t be here until the middle of next week.

For those that aren’t familiar with PDAs, being without a stylus is as debilitating as operating your TV without a remote.

On the positive side, I have setup a couple of people with Cloudmark Desktop over the past couple of days.

A good mechanic always has parts left over

It is time that I come clean and confess that I steal screws. I don’t intend to steal them, but while I am working on a computer, I tend to put the screws in my pockets so that I don’t lose them.

When I get home at the end of the day, I always find a computer screw or two. To my defense, I always put the computer completely back together.

I place the blame on the computer manufacturer. Today’s computers have way too many screws. Some computers have two thumb screws to hold the side on and two screws in each side of the CD-ROM drive to hold it in place. These screws are in addition to other types of securing mechanisms like clips and grooves.

Find black single christians in your area!

Ya gotta love spam sometimes. The above title was the subject line of a spam email sent to an elderly white client of mine who has been happily married to her husband for decades.

With a straight face, I told her not to judge the company that sent the spam until she had tried the service. She didn’t think that was funny. 

I can get on Yahoo! but I can’t connect to the Internet

Let me begin by saying that it is never the purpose of our Shotgun articles to make fun our clients or make anyone feel ignorant. We often use examples from our daily adventures simply to point out common problems, misconceptions or new problems to watch out for.

Today I had a client who told me she couldn’t get on the Internet, she could only read her Yahoo! email.

When I hear something like this, I know that the client has a misunderstanding about something or I don’t understand the problem.

Since Yahoo! is on the Internet, you have to be able to connect to the Internet to use their services. When I got to her house I discovered that her computer helpers at home had put shortcuts to Yahoo!, Google and one that just opened the browser to a home page.

Norton may slow computers down

ALERT!!

Today I saw a client with a slow computer. I removed Norton Antivirus and the computer instantly regained the speed of its youth.

Later in the day I saw another client with a slow computer. I removed Norton Antivirus and the computer instantly regained the speed of its youth.

There seems to be a trend here because over the past two years I have seen dozens of computers with slowness problems. After removing Norton Antivirus the computer instantly regained the speed of its youth.

I love PayPal

I have been raising a little money by selling stuff on eBay so I can buy my wife a Ferrari for Mothers day. As it turns out, the items I sold only went for about $50, so I will have to find her something else.

EBay is amazing, but PayPal is amazing-er (a little Bushism).

Both items closed yesterday and by this morning I had the money in my PayPal account. I took the items to the post office and I used my PayPal debit card to pay for the shipping.

When I got home I took a look at my PayPal balanced and saw that I was earning 4.62% on my PayPal money market account which requires no minimum balance and has no limits on withdrawls.

Troubleshooting sound problems

"I’m not getting any sound," is a very common problem I hear. While there are a few technical issues that can prevent the sound from working on your computer, typically the problem is one of three things:

1. The speakers aren’t plugged in – either to the electricity or to the correct jack on the back of the computer. There are at least 3 jacks where you can plug the speakers in, but only one of them will allow you to hear sound.

2. The volume isn’t turned up or on. There are a number of places you need to check for this problem.

First, check to see if the speakers have a volume control, often a friend or family member will turn the speakers all the way down or off.

I have my own website

I have felt like a kid with a new toy all day.

Last night Rick and I stayed up late (until a little after midnight) experimenting with my website.

Since we don’t like to experiment with the show site, we often use my site to play around with ideas.

All day I have been wanting to come home and play with the new features we setup on my site. I must say that I am giddy.

While we can’t say how soom HelpMeRick.com will have these features implemented, I think you will see some of the cool features that may be in store for the show site. When you look around my site, please take note that I have only had it up and running with the new changes for about 16 hours so there is still a lot of tweaking to do. However, I am very excited about the possibilities this new system gives us. 

Is this computer good enough?

I get a lot of calls from people who are planning on purchasing a new computer. I really enjoy these calls because I am typically able to help people keep from making some big mistakes based on the advice of their teenage children.

Today I had a call from a client who had purchased a computer but wanted to make sure she got the right thing. She had asked my advice about a week ago and I told her to set a $700-800 budget and anything she found should work great.

She called me to tell me about her decision. She chose to go with an HP, she didn’t know all of the details, but she said it had 1024 "of something" and 160 "of something" and "two processors or something" and a 19-inch flat panel monitor.

Do your parents a favor, follow through with your favors

Most of my clients are over 50 and a good portion of them are over 65. I have learned that age has nothing to with computer aptitude. Computer aptitude is determined 99 percent by computer attitude. Those who are not afraid or intimidated by their computer are the ones who learn the fastest, no matter their age, gender or religious background.

One of my primary goals with my business, with the show and with the newsletter is to convey the message that you don’t have to be a computer wiz to use a computer.

I have many clients who do nothing but email on their computers and I don’t in any way feel that they are under utilizing their computer. If your life is made easier in any way because of your computer, then you are using it for its intended purpose.