Thor's Archive
St. Hugo of the Hills School in Bloomfield, MI, has enacted a policy that specifically prohibits any student enrolled in the private school from maintaining a MySpace.com web page.
The Schools website states that students may not send or display offensive messages or pictures on or off the St. Hugo network. In addition their website states:
"The �myspace.com� sites of many of the students violate these rules. Therefore, it is the RULE of St. Hugo School that NO ENROLLED STUDENT SHALL have a �myspace.com� web page or any similar type personal Internet site. Students were informed on March 20, 2007 that they must delete their �myspace.com� accounts if they wish to continue to attend school at St. Hugo. If a family chooses to allow their children to continue their �myspace.com� account, they will not be allowed to continue as students at St. Hugo."
This story made it into the top 10 most popular articles on digg.com and has created quite a stir among those posting comments.
I am not an attorney, but I believe that since the school is a private institution, that it enjoys freedom of association and can set any restrictions on its students that is sees fit. Now that doesn't mean I agree with the school's position. In fact, if I was a student there I would take down my MySpace page and put up a FaceBook page just to show how short sighted this rule is.
If anyone out there has experience with matters like this, post a comment and let me know if I am off base on this one.
OK, so this post has nothing to do with technology at all. With that said, I found this blog while surfing online this morning and was astonished that any "service business would do something like this to a little girl. This is one of those stories that makes you happy to live in Nebraska and not New York.
A Manhattan mother posted a tale on her blog of an interaction between her little six year old girl and a Manhattan American Girl Doll Hair stylist (yes, you read that right - someone who makes a living styling plastic hair on dolls).
American Girl dolls sell for about $90 each, without any accessories at all. This little girl wanted one because everyone else at her public school had one, but her mother warned her that if she wanted accessories should would not have much money left after buying the doll.
So the little girl managed to save up $30 of her own money and choose to buy a more reasonably priced doll named Gracie at Target that came with tons of accessories in the package. A smart move, in my opinion - especially for a six year old. Until she was confronted by a plastic-hair dresser about her fake baby.
A little later, one of her daughter's friends invited the little girl to come to a hair styling session for their dolls at American Girl in Manhattan, NY. She was thrilled and brought her doll to the "Doll Salon." what happened next was horrible:
Quoting from the Mom's blog:
Shell never forget the feeling of waiting in line at the salon. The anticipation, the special feelings welling up in her body. Shed spent extra time in the morning dressing Gracie for the outing. Etta dressed extra-pretty too. Well, sort of thrift-store pretty. Hand-me-down pretty. Not expensive pretty. But she went off with her head held high. Feeling pretty and important and deserving. Courageous little girl.
When she got to the front of the line she was shown a menu of hairstyles to choose from for her doll. Her friends mom was surprised that the price had gone up from $10 a doll to $20, but Julie had earned this reward (and, as luck would have it, Etta really needed to learn a lesson), so it would be worth it.
This isnt a real doll! the stylist exclaimed. (Thank your stylist!--we never would have had the heart to explain it that way!). And to prove that a fake doll isnt worth the plastic shes molded out of, she refused to do the dolls hair.
Can you imagine how crushed this little girl felt when she was embarrassed in front of all of her fiends? what in the world was this stylist thinking?
Quoting from the mom's blog:
And she cried and cried and cried, and your stylist held her ground. That was a good lesson for her too. That feelings dont have a place in "the heart of Manhattans prestigious shopping neighborhood" (another quote from your website).
And did you realize how loyal to you all the other mommies in line were? Youd have been proud of them.
One chided Etta for not knowing she couldnt bring a fake doll to the store. Tsk tsk. Shes in first grade now and can read by herself (taught herself, in fact). She probably should have done the research. Theres another great lesson for her. (Thanks mom in line!)
One mom muttered to another that Etta probably couldn't afford a real one. Great hunch! She's six!
One mom just smiled and said "Well, American Girl Dolls arent for everyone, you know. A sentence cleverly crafted to make Etta feel like someone cared about her but also to be aware that she really didnt belong there in your fancy store with the other, richer, better girls. How compassionate!
So, another little girl had a life-changing experience at The American Girl Place!
I don't really think there is anything left to be said except thank God I live in Nebraska. Showing tact, the mother in this story has not revealed the name, home address, phone number, and email address of the stylist in question. I don't think I would have been so kind to someone who felt they needed to teach my daughter a "lesson" like this.
With all of the anti-piracy devices on today's software programs it is easy to forget the "good 'ol days" when programmers were good enough to make neat programs and games, but could not devise ways to protect them from being pirated.
In the days before online activations, serial numbers, and telephone activations, some developers relied on a simple 10 minute public service announcement to protect their work. This is genuinely funny - Don't Copy That Floppy!
Schrock Innovations has aquired a number of new website development customers over the past few months and we need to hire another HTML developer to keep up with demand!
Schrock Innovations has an IMMEDIATE opening for an HTML developer in our Omaha Service Center. The position is hourly, with benefits including 401K/Roth retirement package with company match, flexible scheduling, free web hosting space, and frequent bonuses for work completed on time.
Candidates should have at least 2 years of HTML experience and be familiar with the industry's terms and software packages. While not required, experience with PHP, MySQL, AJAX and the .Net Framework are also helpful qualifications.
Candidates can apply by emailing hr@schrockinnovations.com. Please do not call or mail your resume - email only. I personally review all resumes and will respond to let you know I received yours. For more information, visit our employment page at www.schrockinnovations.com/employment.
Schrock Innovations is an equal opportunity employer.
I have been privately warning politicians locally that they need to be aware of the impact that anonymous online activity can have on a political campaign. It seems that politicians, at least on a national level, are starting to wake up about the threats and opportunities posed by the Internet and websites like www.youtube.com.
I like to keep on top of the political scene, and while I certainly have NO dog in the Democratic presidential race, there is an interesting spat developing between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
This video below showed up on YouTube earlier this month. It is a parody of Apple Computer's 1984 Super Bowl commercial which positioned Apple's new computer - the Macintosh - against a charachacher of "Big Brother" from George Orwell's book 1984. At the time, Big Brother was supposed to represent IBM.
This spot was supposed to poke fun at the reported my-way-or-the-highway Big Brother-like approach that Hillary Clinton and her supporters attempted to use to quash the Obama campaign and its encroachment on fertile Clinton fundraising circles. It probably cost less than a few hundred dollars (if anything) to produce. Yet this little anonymous video garnered the attention of CNN, Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh, and hundreds of other commentators and bloggers around the country. This video is guerilla campaigning at its finest.
However, Mrs. Clinton's supporters were quick to respond with their own YouTube video. This video looks a lot rougher than the anti-Clinton video does, which leads me to believe it was hastily put together and posted under similar tags at YouTube to help deaden the impact to the Clinton campaign.
No matter where you stand in the political spectrum, this anonymous cyber campaign proves that political campaigns can use the Internet to create a buzz that would have cost thousands to produce in the past. It is only a matter of time until effective cyber campaign tactics such as these videos make their way into the mainstream of the local politics. If you are thinking of running for office, you might want to make certain you have a good cyber guru on your staff before you find yourself in "Big Brother's" cross-hairs yourself.
The latest Compute This show has been posted on our Compute This page.
This week's show was a little longer than usual, about an hour an a half. The extra time allowed us to take a lot more callers than usual and dish out a ton of help.
As usual, we talked about the Schrock Innovations Website and this blog. A caller called into the show to ask me if there was anything I could do to make the blog more accessible to the visually impaired.
We have been working hard to make all of our software and websites accessible to ALL computer users, but on this blog if you want to post a comment you are presented with a visual challenge puzzle called a captcha. A captcha requires a visitor to look at the image and type the letters in to a box to complete your comment. These devices are used to slow the torrent of spam that is auto generated by computers attempting to post on the blog. Without the captcha, we would be receiving about 12 spam comments a day on the blog.
The down side is that if you are visually impaired, you can't look at the captcha, and therefore can not comment. I have investigated audio captcha and while there are none available for the Nucleus CMS at this time, we may actually design one and release it as an open source plug in. Until then, I do have a work around that will allow visually impaired users to post on this blog.
I can create an account for each individual user that allows you to log in before posting a comment. The log in box is off to the right of the screen. Once you have logged in, the captcha requirement is removed from the comments box and you can freely comment on any post. My contact information is in the right sidebar of this blog. If you are visually impaired, please email me or call our service center and we will get the information required to set up an account and email you a user name and password.
In other news, another major update was released for the MCHE V2 software. This update resolves multiple problems that our beta testers experienced with the Home Edition over the last week. There are a couple more fixes in the pipeline, but the software is coming along nicely, albeit behind schedule.
I also answered questions from callers about the Ultimate Upgrade computer sale, getting high speed Internet in a rural area, and more.
Next week's show will be the standard one hour program, and I am looking forward to talking with you then! You can listen on Saturday morning from 10-11am in Lincoln, NE at 1240 on your AM dial, or if you are outside of Lincoln, you can listen online live. If you can't listen live, you can always listen to the show once it is in the archives.
I caught a report today the the CompUSA store in Omaha, NE was going out of business. I did some investigating and found that the Omaha location is in fact closing, along with about 50% of the chain's other stores nation-wide.
All merchandise in the store is 10-30% off, including all computers, accessories, and other items. Although the company's website states that the sale only applies to in-stock items, after a weekend of heavy sales, a local CompUSA employee confirmed off the record that another truck of merchandise was arriving some time tomorrow.
CompUSA has one store in Nebraska, at 151 North 78th Street in Omaha. Ironically, the home page of the company's website is touting a 23rd anniversary sale at the same time half of their stores are going out of business. When I called, I asked the CompUSA employee how the company planned to service the warranties on the computers they had sold. I was told that the store was not going out of business, but that CompUSA was "closing this location" and that warranties will need to be serviced through the manufacturers.
I thought his point of differentiation was humorous. What was not funny however was that anyone who bought a PC or notebook through this company will need to contact the manufacturers to have their warranties serviced. Companies like Toshiba specifically prohibit direct-from-the-customer warranty repair requests.
A call to Toshiba today revealed that a Toshiba user would need to take their computer to an Authorized Service Center for repair. I asked where I should take a broken Toshiba, and they told me CompUSA. I informed the operator at Toshiba that they were going out of... er, I mean "closing that location." She did not have any additional information to help me.
Some of you might be wondering right now why I have chosen to promote a competitor's sale on my blog. I can not count the number of times we have been in the process of configuring a new Modular PC for a customer when they ask, "How do I know you will be around to service the warranty on this thing?"
Over time it has gotten easier to answer that question as I can point to years and years of customers who have purchased from us and been satisfied with our service. However, this is just another example of a multi-million dollar big box store that just decides to leave their customers in a lurch and walk away. The same thing happened when Gateway advertised the fact that they had a local presence in the community, only to close those local stores and take away the local support that was so influential in their customers' purchase decisions.
There will always be some people who believe that you are better off with a national brand computer from a box store. While nothing I could say will change that for some people, perhaps another multi-million dollar operation ditching its Nebraska following will convince a few people that offering local support from trustworthy people is so important in our industry.
The weather has been so good for the past few days that My wife and I decided to do some spring cleaning. I found myself wondering why we even bought some of the things we were now throwing away. A perfect example is our Mr. Sticky.
Mr. Sticky was advertised in a home and garden expo as the lint roller that never needs to be refilled. We have hard wood floors, a cat and a dog, so a never-ending sticky lint roller on a broomstick sounded like a great idea at the time.
The man doing the demonstration used his Mr. Sticky to pick up all sorts of dirt, hair, and other unmentionables on his hard-wood demo set. He would pick things up, rinse it off, and like magic, it was clean again and ready for action. After watching it work wonders in front of the crowd, we decided to make Mr. Sticky a part of our home for the low, low price of $29.99.
So how did this wonderful piece of 21st century cleaning technology find its way into the trash this weekend? For starters, Mr. Sticky is a 1.5" diameter roller coated with a sticky silly-putty-like substance. Just like in the demo, it worked great for picking up pet hair and the like, but after a couple rotations of the roller, its surface was covered and could not pick up anything else.
We then rinsed Mr. Stick off, and sure enough, all of the debris came right off. But Mr. Sticky was hard to dry. When you try to dry it with a paper towel of even a cloth towel, it would pull the lint from the towel, coating the surface again. If you attempted to use Mr. Sticky without drying him off first, it would not pick up anything.
Mr. Sticky quickly found a place far in the back of our broom closet, right beside the Roomba Robotic vacuum cleaner that was supposed to make our lives so much easier (it clogged so often it was more work to clean its brushes than it was to just vacuum yourself).
So as you clean your closets and cabinets out this spring, stop for a second to take a look at what you are throwing out. Every piece of technology has a story, and some are worth telling!
Service is what Schrock Innovations relies on to keep our customer loyal and ensure the ongoing success of our business. We always strive to make certain that our customers leave our doors happy, and if they don't we try to figure out what happened and how we can prevent it from happening again.
I literally LIVE this motto day in and day out, so it came as a pretty big shock to me to experience the bipolar opposite of good service myself. My refrigerator stopped cooling properly, and as knowledgeable as I am with computers, I don't know squat about refrigeration.
Never having called a refrigerator repair company in the past, my wife and I opened up the yellow pages and called a repair company to come out and work on it.
After waiting a week for our appointment, the repair man called at 11:45 to make certain we were home for our 12:00 appointment. They had my wife's phone number incorrect, so they called my cell phone, which was listed as a back up number. I was in a meeting, so I let the caller go to voice mail.
Literally two minutes later - 11:47 am - I checked my voice mail and called back to confirm that my wife was at home and waiting for the repair company. The operator told me that since no one answered when they called both numbers, they simply skipped our appointment and could not come out for another week. Needless to say, we did not have them out at all after that.
The second company we called was quick to come out - same day service in fact. But then I found out why they were so "available." Their repair guy didn't speak in complete sentences. He mumbled something about a sealed system and told us he would get back to us that day about the warranty status on the fridge. He collected a $65 service fee for "diagnosing our problem" and then left.
At about 7:30 that night the same mumbling technician called us back to say that our fridge might be under warranty. I was excited at the idea of a free repair, but that excitement faded quickly when he told us that we would need to call another company because they did not service Maytag appliances (yes the ones that are never supposed to break down).
We were both a little dumbfounded as to why this company would charge us $65 to come out and work on an appliance that they know was under warranty when they did not service Maytag warranties. We emailed the owner about the charge and he gave us a canned response (obviously he has answered this question before). So the next day I called and spoke with the manager. I asked her why her company did not simply refer us to the authorized repair center in the first place. I suggested that the company had ripped my wife off and asked for a refund of our $65.00.
After refusing the request for a refund, she responded with "we saved you a ton of money by referring you to a company that handles Maytag warranties."
I sat on the phone silent for a moment as the shock of what she had just said moved through me. With a new touch of annoyance in my voice I repeated what she had just said back to me to make certain I understood what she meant.
"So you are saying that you could have just fixed the problem even though it was in warranty and charged us a boatload of money to do the repair," I said. "I am supposed to feel good that you did not take advantage of us while you had the chance?"
The conversation went downhill from there, and needless to say, we are not getting our $65.00 back.
The next morning we called another repair company. We described the problem to them, they diagnosed it over the phone, got here the same day. The problem (a bad compressor) was fixed by mid-afternoon and it turns out it was covered under warranty. However, there was an additional $65 service fee for their trip out to our house.
After this whole ordeal, I found myself asking how I would have handled the situation if I was the second repair company. If a Schrock customer came in with a Dell that was under warranty and asked us to put it on the bench and diagnose a problem, we would charge them the minimum bench charge for the technician's time. We would check the warranty status of the PC, and if the problem they were experiencing was covered under warranty, we would let our customer know that Dell would fix the problem for free.
So up to this point, both of our companies would have done EXACTLTLY the same thing. But this is where Schrock's added value service would have kicked in.
We would have offered to handle the RMA process with Dell for the customer. We would have called, waited on hold, put up with the horrible accents, got the right parts shipped, installed, and then return shipped the defective part back for our customer. When that computer left our Service Center it would have been working again, and all it would have cost was the minimum bench cost. We would not have handed the PC back to the customer and said call Dell - That will be $80, please (oh and by the way, we could have screwed you but we didn't).
It has been quite a while since I was burned by the bad service of a company, and it reminded me just how important it is to our continued success that Schrock Innovations continue to be Lincoln's service leader in the computer repair business.
The latest Computer This show has been posted on our Compute This page.
You might notice that we are now archiving three weeks of shows on the website instead of the usual two weeks. I received a request from a listener to keep more audio on the website for a longer period of time, so we are!
This week's show had a TON of callers. Petro from Georgia joined us with some questions about the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition, and I answered questions from callers about the Ultimate Upgrade computer sale, windows Vista, and more.
Next week's show is going to be a little longer than usual, as we will be going for 1.5 hours! We lost a couple shows during the Husker football season, so KFOR has given us a little extra time to make up for it.
I am looking forward to talking with you then! You can listen on Saturday morning from 10-11am in Lincoln, NE at 1240 on your AM dial, or if you are outside of Lincoln, you can listen online live. If you can't listen live, you can always listen to the show once it is in the archives.
Now that the most over-hyped digital event since Y2K has passed, I am interested to see how my readers handles the early time change.
All of my Windows Vista and Windows XP computers switched perfectly, advancing by one hour overnight. All of my Outlook appointments are fine, and from what I can tell, most public and government websites are working fine.
I am interested to hear if any of you had problems with the early switch to Daylight Savings Time. Click on the comments link to tell me what (if anything) happened to your technology.
Microsoft released its Office 2007 product in February, and it seems to be taking pretty well with our customers (better than Vista is anyway). A couple weeks ago we received our first shipment of OEM Office 2007 software for installation on new Modular computers.
We were shocked to find that Microsoft is shipping Office 2007 OEM in an empty amaray case! When you crack it open to install the software, all that is present is a small cardboard card with an activation code - a license. OEM installers are now required to download the trial software from the Microsoft website, install the trial, and then activate it using the provided code.
In the past, we have always told customers that when you buy software, you are buying a license to use that software, not the disc it comes on. We were also able to tell customers that in most cases, if you do not get a disc when you buy software, you should be suspect of the license's validity.
Microsoft helped reinforce that concept when they started their Genuine Advantage program that touted security features that included fancy holographic discs. It seemed a bit odd that the software giant would depart from what was once a staple in their Genuine Advantage program.
Looking for a way to simplify the process, we purchased a retail copy of Office 2007 and then attempted to make copies of the CD for use in our office to make installations easier in our systembuilder environment. We When we tried to install from the disks however, we received an error message that we were not installing from a genuine software disk! So which way does Microsoft want it? Disk or no disk?
Let me just say, it certainly cheapens the perceived value of their software when a customer spends $400 for Office 2007 Professional and receives a piece of cardboard in an empty amaray case. "Here is your $400 software code, have a great day."
Last Saturday on Compute This I announced that we will be launching our Ultimate Upgrade sale one month early this year.
We had planned on running a sale this month on upgrading to Windows Vista, but the problems I experienced upgrading my own PC have given me pause about subjecting our customers to that headache. So instead, we moved the Ultimate Upgrade sale up by a month to give Microsoft another months to work out some additional Vista kinks.
Aside from our Holiday Sale, the Ultimate Upgrade sale is our most popular computer sale of the year. During the sale, you can trade in your old, tired PC for a hefty discount on a brand new Schrock Innovations Modular PC.
With your trade, the new Modular system is only $499 and includes a DVD-RW drive, Windows Vista or Windows XP (your choice), a 200 GB hard drive, 1 GB or DDR2 memory, and an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor. Typically our tower-only system costs $800, so when you trade in an old PC for recycling, it is almost like getting a $400 discount on the new PC!
For more information about the Ultimate Upgrade sale, visit our computer sale website.
I was interviewed today by KFOR 1240, a local AM radio station in Lincoln Nebraska about the new daylight savings time change and its expected impact.
The bottom line is that the sun will come up tomorrow and life will move on. If you are running Windows XP or Vista, chances are everything has already been taken care of by your automatic updates. (If you disabled auto-updating, you might want to visit www.windowsupdate.com now to get critical updates.)
If you are running Windows 95, 98, or ME, life will go on, all be it an hour off schedule for a few weeks. These operating systems no longer receive Microsoft patches, and therefore remain unprotected against the daylight savings time changes imposed by Congress. Thanks to Dave Lucas, there is now a patch that Windows 9x users can install that will bring their systems into compliance.
Click "Read More" for a link to the patch and installation instructions for Windows 95, 98 and ME users only.
You can download the Windows 9x daylight savings time 2007 patch here. This patch will give your Windows 9x systems all of the information needed to accurately behave in accordance with the new DST rules.
To install the patch:
- Click on the link above and SAVE the file to your DESKTOP (the location IS important - DO NOT click run)
- Double left click on the file you just saved to import it into your Windows registry
- Click Yes to any security warnings that pop up (there should be 2 of them)
That's all there is to it! Your Windows 9x computer should now be good to go!
I received an alert yesterday morning that the website http://www.crlincoln.com/ had expired and was no longer serving information.
I contacted the local Lincoln Computer Renaissance store and confirmed that they are still open and conducting business. I asked if they had a website anymore, and their employee answered that they "just have the national one" now.
A quick check of the national website found that there were a number of links to obtain information about the Lincoln franchise, but all of them were dead and redirected me to the www.compren.com homepage.
Computer Renaissance is a nation-wide franchise with locations in multiple states. In the past, the Lincoln franchise has maintained its own website.
**UPDATE 3:59 PM CST**
The FBI has been contacted by NOAA according to their Public Affairs Office. The statement I received is that NOAA is aware of the breech and is following its internal procedures. Thor Schrock and Schrock Innovations, Inc. have offered the NOAA and the FBI assistance by providing technical information that was intentionally not publicised on this blog.
**END UPDATE**
Now that news of the infiltration of the NOAA server has reached ZDNet, it appears that the NOAA is now responding to an unauthorized user accessing their website. The pages about Soma have been removed and the entire sub domain for the Global Monitoring Division is now down.
At the time of this post, http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ is offline. No content whatsoever is being served on the sub domain, which carried legitimate data from the NOAA as recently as this morning. The NOAA.gov main website is still operational.
The webmaster for the domain happens to be out sick today, and I have had difficulties reaching other NOAA or Public Affairs officials for comment.
Tonight I received a spam post on our customer support forum that I normally would have deleted and forgotten about, but this one was different. It was the usual pill-pushing post with a couple dozen links. But these links went back to a .gov website - a highly unusual occurrence for this kind of scheme.
The U.S. government might have a serious security breech on the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website.
It appears that either an authorized agent of the NOAA or a hacker has infiltrated the website and used that access to plant more than 70 pages about the prescription drug Soma - a muscle relaxer.
The pages can be found at http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/hotitems/soma/.
All of the pages are interlinked to cross promote each other and reap the benefits that a .gov backlink offers to those trying to come out on top of search results in search engines like Google.
The pages are also littered with pay-per-click ads. The ad banners appear to be coming from http://wizardrules.com, a London-based advertising network. The advertisements appear to have Russian (or at least what appears to be Russian to my untrained linguistic eye) text on them.
The advertisement script is viewable in the source code, and could be used as a method to track the webpages back to the individual expecting payment for clicks on the advertisements.
The var ad_key in the page source code may be a publisher ID that could be used by the ad network to ensure that clicks on the advertisement are credited to the individual responsible for them. It is conceivable that the ad network would be able to identify the party responsible for the advertisements on these pages using that ID.
In the world of search engine optimization, the fastest way to elevate your website's ranking in search engines like Google is to obtain as many "backlinks" as possible. A backlink is a link to your website that is posted on another website. These links have varying degrees of value, based on where they appear, how long they have been there, and how they are formed.
Backlinks from .gov websites are highly coveted, as it is rumored that Google treats these links as "solid gold" because only official government websites located within the U.S. are allowed to have a .gov suffix.
In case the pages are removed after this post, you can view screen shots here:
Screen Shot of NOAA Soma Pages
Screen Shot of NOAA Soma Page Source Code
Screen Shot of NOAA Soma Web Page
The March 3rd edition of Compute This is posted on the Schrock Innovations website.
This week I talked about the release delays with the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition and asked for additional beta testers. I also announced the launch of the 2007 Ultimate Upgrade sale. Aside from our Holiday Sale, this is our most popular computer event of the year.
During the Ultimate Upgrade sale you can trade in your old, tired PC for a brand new Schrock Innovations Modular PC at a significant discount over our normal prices. You can learn more about the Ultimate Sale by visiting the Computer Sale website.
Yesterday I was looking through the statistics form February on the Schrock Innovations website when suddenly my Internet Explorer browser popped up an alert that the site I was viewing could possibly be a phishing website.
Phishing (pronounced 'fishing') websites look like a legitimate website, but in fact attempt to steal personal information from you. For example, a phishing website might look like your bank's website, but when you try to log in using your online banking password you inadvertently give your credentials to an online crook.
Obviously, the Schrock Innovations statistics page is not trying to steal and information from anyone, so this was a false detection! I had never seen a false detection before in Internet Explorer's Phishing detection engine, so I was naturally curious why Microsoft thought my web page was a phishing website.
As I read Microsoft's report, I found a link to a form allowed me to contest their designation for the detected web page. I filled out the form and clicked submit. I figured I would never hear back, so I just continued to go about my business. I was wrong.
Less than 40 minutes later, I received the following email response from Microsoft:
We have reviewed the information you provided regarding this website and removed the incorrect designation. We thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
Please note that although we have removed the incorrect designation, it may take up to 24 hours for you to see this change reflected.
In the event that the incorrect designation persists beyond 24 hours from the receipt of this e-mail message, please let us know by replying directly to this message. Please do not reply unless the problem persists.
Thank you,
Microsoft Phishing Filter Support
Needless to say I was impressed with the turn around time from Microsoft's support staff. I was never able to find out why my statistics page was detected as a Phishing website, but at least I won't see that message again.
Last week I appeared before the committee discussing LB583 - a bill that would attempt to increase the recycling of E-waste at the expense of local businesses like Schrock Innovations.
Despite my efforts to reach out to many of my competitors in Lincoln and Omaha, I was the only individual who appeared to testify in opposition of LB583.
There were however, three other national groups who submitted letters of opposition. The proponents were represented by Senator Priester, WasteCap Nebraska, CP Recovery, The Sierra Club, and others.
I thought my testimony went well, and the issues I raised spawned several questions that may not have been asked by the committee. Below is a transcript of my testimony:
[BEGIN TRANSSCRIPT]
Chairman Louden , members of the Natural Resources committee my name is Thor Schrock, S-C-H-R-O-C-K. I represent Schrock Innovations, Inc. and appear before you to testify in opposition to LB 583.
The intentions behind LB583 are noble and strive to create a cleaner environment for all Nebraskans. The intent behind LB583 is to shift the costs of recycling E-waste from the shoulders of the consumer and place it on the shoulders of the manufacturers who produce electronic equipment such as computers, televisions, portable DVD players, GPS navigation systems and the like.
Unfortunately, I do not believe that LB583 will achieve its objectives for several key reasons:
1) LB583 is will disadvantage Nebraskas small businesses
This point is best illustrated by an example. Lets take a look at Dell. Under the definitions of who a manufacture is, it is apparent that Dell is considered a manufacturer because it distributes goods through a distribution network that includes wholesalers.
However, Dell also sells computers directly to consumers without using a distribution network. I am certain that LB583 was intended to cover all of the computers that Dell might ship into Nebraska, not just the ones from wholesalers. Therefore you can assume that any company that sells computers direct to the public local companies like Schrock Innovations included will be required to register as a manufacturer and pay a tax based on the tonnage of computers delivered in Nebraska.
While Dell might just decide to comply and pay the tax, their economies of scale make Nebraskas new taxes under LB583 look like an afterthought. But for Schrock Innovations those taxes may just make us think twice before we sell our custom built computers in Nebraska. We have a hard enough time competing against the national giants and local box stores. I think I can speak on behalf of the local computer builders in Nebraska when I say that the last thing we need is another barrier to entry in the marketplace.
2) The bills base assumption is flawed It is incorrect to assume that the majority of manufacturers especially those with no physical presence in the state of Nebraska - will comply with the new regulations.
Continuing with our example of Dell, what happens if Dell does not comply with the states new registration requirements? I am certain that some Nebraskans will still go online to Dells website or call them from a catalogue and order a new PC.
I am equally certain that Dell will ship that PC to Nebraska, registered or not.
So now under LB583 the state has an OBLIGATION to pay for the recycling of that PC even thought Dell was never registered, never paid the tonnage tax, and did not kick any money into the fund that is supposed to pay for the recycling.
But for Schrock Innovations, its a different story. If we do not register, report, and pay, we subject ourselves to unspecified consequences under LB583. So in a way, LB583 really shifts the burden of funding recycling from consumers who buy from national mail-order companies to the shoulders of responsible local companies like Schrock Innovations.
3) LB583 will decrease the selection of electronic goods in Nebraska while increasing the prices of the goods that remain on the shelves.
Many of the least expensive electronic goods that are available in Nebraska come from overseas. Many of these overseas manufacturers establish a legal entity on one of the coasts so they can import their goods to the US and sell them to wholesalers, who in turn, sell them to us.
I love Nebraska, and the life I have here, but Nebraska is simply not a heavily populated state like California or New York. If we were, these manufacturers would comply with a bill like LB583 without blinking. But we are not. And they would not.
So the Nebraska retailer that wants to offer low cost high quality goods may have to remove some selections from their shelves since the companies who manufactured the goods refuse to comply with LB583. Nebraska is an afterthought to them, and they would not cry for very long if their product was not sold here.
Now the goods produced by manufacturers who DO comply will still be on the shelves, but their prices will be higher to cover the taxes, fees, and administrative expense involved in getting their product through Nebraskas supply chain.
If you go to the Omaha Best Buy and find that a PC that costs $1000 there can be purchased in council Bluffs Iowa for $50 less, would you drive the 15 minutes to save $50. Maybe I am a stinge, but I would, and I believe a lot of other consumers would as well.
4) LB583 will not effectively shift any e-waste burden away from consumers
Perhaps the single greatest flaw in LB583 is that it does not achieve its intent. The costs of recycling e-waste in Nebraska will not be shifted away from Nebraska consumers.
While I am certain that consumers would appreciate being able to recycle their e-waste for free, I am equally certain that they will not appreciate paying more for the goods that they buy.
I am sure that Nebraskas taxpayers will not appreciate having to appropriate money in future budgets because LB583 has no provision for paying the cost to recycle the estimated 1 million PCs that are in storage now in Nebraska.
And in addition, LB583 does not detail how the recycling of electronics that are purchased outside Nebraska or through mail-order or Internet channels will be funded.
If nothing else, the introduction of LB583 raises awareness of the need for local companies to help create some kind of recycling program for their customers. I believe the answer to this situation lies in the private sector, and passage of LB583 into law would only slow the adoption of private sector programs while it would also render existing recycling programs obsolete.
LB583 is not ready to be advanced to the floor for debate. If LB583 should become law, the unintended consequences on the state, its taxpayers, and small businesses would be irreparable.
Thank you Mr. Chairman for the opportunity to appear before you today. I would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have at this time.
[END TRANSSCRIPT]
I handled a situation in my Lincoln Service Center last week that is becoming more and more common in the computer repair industry. Every business has its cycles, and in the computer industry companies that offer more service at slightly higher prices are always competing against companies that offer less service and slightly lower prices.
In this particular case, Schrock Innovations shared a customer with a national-chain big box store in town. This customer had purchased her HP Pavilion from the box store, but always choose Schrock Innovations to work on her PC because of our higher levels of customer service.
Our customer's computer had a "blue screen of death" that read unmountable boot volume. We diagnosed the problem as a bad hard drive, and as we would always do, we ran our stabilization software to move the customer's data out of the bad sectors on the drive and into safe areas. The drive was still not bootable, but at least we could recover all of her data if she wished.
When we called her to tell her she was going to need a new hard drive, she told us that she had an extended hardware warranty with the box store. We all agreed that she should take advantage of the warranty, so she took her PC back to the box store.
After waiting around for quite a while at the box store, the repair desk shift supervisor there told her that her hard drive tested perfectly fine and that she probably had an adware infection that was causing the problem and it would cost $200 to remove.
Obviously, the customer was concerned. She believed us when we told her the hard drive was going bad, but the box store repair center supervisor (not just a lowly technician) insisted that her hardware was perfectly fine and that her computer had a "Windows problem."
Before I step up on my soap box, I will sympathize with the box store repair staff... Schrock Innovations runs some pretty heavy duty hard disk repair software, and it masks bad sectors on the hard drive so data can be copied to a new drive without a problem. If you ran the freebie diagnostic software available from the drive manufacturers after we had serviced the drive with our software, it would report that the drive was clean. Evidently, Schrock Innovations runs more advanced software than this multi-billion dollar box store does, so I could see how a technician could make this mistake. Its forgivable, and could happen to any company out there.
However, there is NO MALWARE ANYWHERE that would cause an unmountable boot volume blue screen error message. This was a complete cop-out diagnosis that frustrated and concerned our customer-in-common.
Needless to say, the customer returned to our Lincoln Service Center to make a second go at getting the system repaired. After she showed us the printout of what they did and told us what they had said, it was obvious that someone needed to step in the middle of the problem and resolve it.
I volunteered to call the technicians at the box store and explain what our software does when it scans a hard drive, and how that might have skewed the results of their freeware hard drive scanning utility. I reassured the box store technician that the drive WAS bad and that it did need to be replaced. He agreed and thanked me for calling him.
Almost as an afterthought, I asked the technician if transferring the customer's data is covered by their extended hardware warranty. he told me it was not. I thanked him for his time and the conversation ended.
I then turned to report to our customer that the box store would replace her hard drive, but would also erase all of her data. I offered to take an image of her hard drive for her at no additional cost so that when her repaired computer was returned to her she could bring it back in to us and have her data restored exactly as it was before the blue screen error.
Sometimes people ask me how we can possibly compete against the box stores, and the answer can be summarized in this story. We know that if we want to succeed and continue to grow, we have to exceed our customers' expectations whenever possible. So even though our customer will be taking her computer back to the box store to cash in on her extended warranty, I think it would be safe to say that we are going to be her go-to tech guys when push comes to shove in the future.
There are two new Compute This shows posted on the Schrock Innovations website today.
Special thanks to Petro in Georgia for providing us with some audio we lost due to a technical "difficulties" (read the Windows Vista Woes post). Petro calls the show frequently and listens every week via KFOR's online feed.
The majority of the two shows deal with our Maintenance Checkup Home Edition software release, but there were also some outstanding calls. The lovely Kimberly had a great PC Pizazz segment, and as usual, Chris sang along with some of the bumper music. All-in-all, they are a couple of GREAT shows, so if you missed them, take the opportunity to listen online!
Due to a technical difficulty with our new web server, we were forced to push the planned release of the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition computer maintenance software from this past weekend to today.
For those of you who want the "inside baseball" on what happened, we upgraded to a brand new web server to help us handle the demands that the new Home Edition software will place on our online infrastructure. We took the opportunity to upgrade to the latest versions of PHP, Apache, and Free BSD.
Somewhere along the line, some file paths were adjusted which temporarily disabled the updating function in our 2005 version of the Home Edition that all of our current subscribers are using. We were unable to transmit the new update over the weekend as planned, but the problem has been corrected this morning and the update to Version 2 of the MCHE will transmit to existing Home Edition users today.
If you are not a current Home Edition subscriber, you can download and install a FREE 90-day fully functional trial of the beta software. to download a copy, please visit http://mche.schrockinnovations.com/downloadtrial.php.
If you experience a problem with the new Home Edition, please visit our support website at http://mche.schrockinnovations.com/support.php
The International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Organization for Standardization have proposed a symbol change so that you will be able to know when you are in the presence of a severe radiation danger.
The new symbol, pictured left, was in development for 5 years and tested in more than 11 countries to ensure it would equally scare people of all ages and ethnicities. The funny thing is that when I looked at the new symbol and tried to put it into words, the first thing that came to my mind was that I could run away from death, but the radiation will get me anyway. That's a pretty hopeless message!
This new, scarier symbol will be used to identify only the most dangerous sources of radiation such as food irradiators, cancer treatment equipment and industrial radiography machines. You will not see this terrifying symbol on the side of a semi-truck however.
The symbol won't be on the sides of cancer treatment machines either (oh my gosh could you image!). However the world will be safe in knowing that if anyone attempts to take the cancer treatment machine apart, the symbol will suddenly appear inside the machine to inspire terror and fear.
So in the future, if you see this symbol you should probably move in an expeditious manner to the nearest exit. We don't make this stuff up, folks. I don't think I could if I tried.
This post is the last in a 10-post series about the all-new version 2 of the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) computer maintenance software from Schrock Innovations. You can win a FREE 2-year subscription by simply posting a comment on any of the MCHE posts. Only one free subscription will be given away, so post multiple comments or questions with your valid email address to increase your odds of winning!
Now that you have read all about the great things the all-new version 2 of the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) can do to keep your computer safe, we thought you might want to take it for a test drive before you buy it.
If you dont win the 2 year free subscription by commenting here on my blog, you can download, install and use a fully-functional 90-day trial. Go ahead and use the MCHE free for three months and see how much safer your computer is. After the 90-day trial you can purchase it if you like, or just uninstall it. There is no commitment and no obligation.
As you use the MCHE, please take the time to visit our forum at www.mche.schrockinnovations.com and let us know what you think of the program. Almost all of the improvements in version 2 were made based on customer feedback from the 2005 version. We already have some exciting enhancements in the pipeline that should increase the functionality of the MCHE even further.
Listen to Compute This at 10:00 on KFOR 1240 in Lincoln Nebraska to find out who won, or check back here tomorrow when I will post the winners name, city and state.
This of you who read my blog regularly might remember a post from a couple weeks ago where I told the story of an angry customer that disputed their credit card charge after we had to call the police to have their daughter removed from our Service Center.
Today we received a notice in the mail that after reviewing the incident, our merchant card processing company sided with us and reversed the charge-back!
That means that our customer's credit card was debited again for the transaction and the money from that debit was deposited back into our bank account.
I can honestly say that I was SHOCKED to win this. Even when businesses have all of the proper documentation - a signed receipt, a copy of the return policy, and a signed delivery receipt - only about 30% of properly documented charge-backs are reversed.
I genuinely hope our customer contacts us now so we can get them the computer they paid for. Even though there has been a lot of back and forth throughout this process, we still have an obligation to provide them with a computer and the remainder of their one year warranty. I guess I will wait to see what happens!
Yesterday I was on the closing segment of Drive Time Lincoln, hosted by Coby Mach on 1400 KLIN. I had about 6 minutes to explain what LB583 was all about and why I believe it is a bill that should be opposed. If you missed my original post, you can find my original post on it here.
In case you missed the appearance, we recorded the audio so we could post it on my blog. You can listen to the audio here.
This post is the ninth in a 10-post series about the all-new version 2 of the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) computer maintenance software from Schrock Innovations. You can win a FREE 2-year subscription by simply posting a comment on any of the MCHE posts. Only one free subscription will be given away, so post multiple comments or questions with your valid email address to increase your odds of winning!
There were 2 forms of support available for the 2005 version of the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) the forum and email. There was never an official telephone support for the 2005 version of the MCHE, and this posed a problem for us.
On one hand, our local Lincoln and Omaha customers have become accustomed to calling our Service Centers and getting the help they need quickly and efficiently. But because more than 20,000 people world-wide have downloaded and installed the 2005 version of the MCHE, offering telephone support for those individuals would have been a daunting and expensive task.
While there is still no official telephone based support available for version 2 of the MCHE, we have recognized the need for more responsive support options for our subscribers. To help deliver this support, we have added another support professional to the MCHE support team and we have designed numerous automated tools to diagnose and repair potential problems with the MCHE for you.
As before, we will have a forum available where MCHE users can ask questions, help each other, and get assistance from our support professionals. We will have a FAQ section, as well as a searchable knowledgebase of articles detailing known situations and their causes and resolutions. In addition, our support professional will be available by email and will return all email messages within 24 hours.
We will be implementing some new technology that allows our support team to directly connect to our subscribers computers via remote support software. This will allow us to resolve problems as if we are right in front of the customers computer. We will be extending our support hours into the evenings as well, so our customers are at home when we attempt to contact them, not at work.
While we are modifying the way we handle our support workload to better meet the needs of our subscribers, we have also built new support options into version 2 of the MCHE that will help solve most problems with ease.
First, a complete backup of all of the MCHEs settings, file versions, and the date of last update are stored on our server. This allows our support personnel to determine which version of the MCHE you are using and when you updated last. In the event that your local installation of the MCHE becomes corrupted or stops working properly, our all-new worst case scenario support tool kicks in. This new tool deletes the entire MCHE local database and then connects to our update server to relearn how to do everything again. As the name implies, this is a last resort tool, primarily because it could take hours to install a complete database through an update.
Check back tomorrow to learn about how you can try the MCHE free for 90 days even if you dont win this contest!
About an hour from now I will be going on the air with Coby Mach on 1400 KLIN to discuss LB583 which I posted about earlier this week.
There is a public committee meeting on Thursday in the State Capitol regarding the bill, and I would encourage anyone with opinions to be there to testify. I know I will be!
This post is the eigth in a 10-post series about the all-new version 2 of the Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) computer maintenance software from Schrock Innovations. You can win a FREE 2-year subscription by simply posting a comment on any of the MCHE posts. Only one free subscription will be given away, so post multiple comments or questions with your valid email address to increase your odds of winning!
A major strength of the 2005 Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) was its ability to strip away all unnecessary files from your hard drive in order to maximize your available disk space. The all-new version 2 of the MCHE does the same thorough job that its predecessor did, although it is a bit smarter about when it deletes the temporary files from your hard drive.
The 2005 version of the MCHE deleted your cookies, temporary files, Windows patch uninstall files, and in some cases more every time it was executed. The all-new MCHE version 2 deletes the same items once they have expired.
For example, some customers reported that the MCHE would delete temporary files needed by other running programs. With the 2005 MCHE if you ran it along side of a Lavasoft Ad-Aware scan, the Ad-Aware results would be missing at the end of the scan because they are stored in a temporary file that the MCHE had since deleted.
Version 2 of the MCHE looks at the last date you accessed a particular file before it works with it. If the file has not been accessed in more than 48 hours, it deletes it. If you have accessed it in the last 48 hours, it leaves it alone. This resolves a number of issues where a customer might be inconvenienced by the MCHE continually deleting a frequently needed temporary file, such as a website cookie for example.
Check back tomorrow to learn how the new MCHE website will offer easier support options and faster problem resolutions.