Hoskins

Sitting down to pee is the only logical solution. But not in the urinal if you can help it.

Pro tip: laser printer.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Alexanders-Choice-Edmund-Marlowe-ebook/dp/B00AR3MTIQ/ref=tmm_kin_title_0

Try opening Skype as an administrator. Right click the Skype icon, and select "run as administrator". That elevates the program above normal privileges (even if you are an administrator already, your privs are still not truly top dog) and may allow more options to show up.

Gabriel Morgan's stuff is at gayauthors: http://www.gayauthors.org/author/gabriel-morgan '52 panhead is the second story listed.

I love this story because Lucas becomes a better hockey player as he becomes more comfortable with himself and with Chris - he's not a "a third-line grinder on a middling triple-A team" at all, and coming to terms with himself lets him really let go and play the game he wants to play without the crap. Having played hockey (although for a very short time and very poorly) a long time ago. you NAILED it. Just a great little story. I've read it a few times and recommended it some, too.

System check and quite a few others get into your system via a Java exploit. You know that little orange icon that tells you a new version of Java is available - the one you always ignore? Yeah, update that and keep it updated. It's one of the most common vectors of infection on your PC. Java updates are, in my opinion, equally as important as windows update and much easier to ignore. Microsoft will get a report of a vulnerability that Java can exploit and take weeks to patch it. The Java boys patch the exploit often much sooner than Microsoft does, usually making the Microsoft patch irrelevant.

The clip is from the movie Orgazmo, from 1997. Trey Parker directed it, and its the story of a young Mormon (Elder Young, in the video, who is played by Trey Parker himself) who gets into porn to pay for his wedding (he has the lead role as Orgazmo, the sex superhero with the Orgazmorator, along with his trusty sidekick Chodaboy). It is every bit as out there as it sounds. The movie is not kind to Mormonism, nor is it kind to porn. I think that is kind of the point. Trey Parker and Matt Stone created South Park, and are currently running a play, The Book of Mormon, which is actually quite an affectionate look at the religion while bashing it at the same time. Their humor is not for everyone, that's for sure.

She's begun serializing the 4th book on her site, it started again November 10th with a flashback or two, here: http://daron.ceciliatan.com/archives/1173 It really is a great story.

Here is an interesting thread on Metafilter about OSC and the Hamlet thing. Lots of interesting commentary from all over the internet. Included within it are two old essays (also linked here) written some time ago about Card, specifically the bizarre-once-you-think-about-it mirroring of Hitler's life in the Ender saga, and even questioning whether or not Card actually wrote Ender's Game. I tend to think Ender reads differently than Card's other work, but that could be simple reinterpretation on my part. And then there's the crazy that is Card's response to the writer. I re-read Ender's Game not that long ago, and found it was a pretty flat read, obviously targeting a younger audience of which I'm not a part. And I've read and re-read the Maker stories several times - they are great too, although the Mormonite moralizing is a little tiring after a while. Anyway, Card is nuts, I'm not buying any more of his books, and I sincerely hope that once he comes to terms with his own closet, he'll become a better man and maybe a better writer. But he'll need to be dragged from that closet kicking and screaming, I think.

Questions: - What operating system: XP, Vista, or 7? - What email client are you expecting to open? Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, or Windows Live Mail? The issue is that Internet Explorer has forgotten which program you use for mail. You need to tell it which program to open. The place where you set this will vary slightly based on which program you use, but the essence of it is to locate the "default programs" control panel and make sure that the proper program is listed for opening links. As an example, here's Microsoft's article about Outlook Express: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=306098

I have one of those, I use it to recover customer files AND it is GREAT for keeping multiple hard drives in sync. I have two hard drives I use for backup. I work at home a lot but have an office in another town. One drive is with me in my truck, the other one is at my other office. I swap them once a week. I back up to the thermaltake, take that backup to the office, bring the other one back from the office, and back it up too. Two backups, same data. And, for duplicate files, I like this: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,...escription.html Also, if you use the dropbox application, and not just the website, you are synchronizing your files to the machines that have dropbox installed. I have it on three different machines, meaning my dropbox data exists in 4 locations (and if you uninstall the dropbox application, the local dropbox folder isn't deleted, it just stops synchronizing to the cloud).

Hi Des, Well, the concept of third party tools to supplement an operating system - whatever it is - isn't anything new. We've all been doing that for years. Libraries are nothing but virtual folders, i.e. an indexed list of everything in the locations included in it. In my case, the libraries are invaluable. I multitask, constantly (three computers on my desk, multiple monitors, etc). Since a library is virtual, i.e. it's just a set of pointers to folders and is really just an index, I create and delete them constantly, and I generally have a library for each project I'm working on along with several other core libraries. I own a company and I have clients. The client folders are within the documents library but are actually not stored in the documents folder in the file system. They are kept on a different drive. When I save a file to a client folder, it is available to me in the Documents library, the Company library, and the Clients library, even though it's only stored in one spot. This keeps me from having the shortcuts I needed under Windows XP. It also means that the file is cross-referenced in different search results. Windows search is based on libraries, it's all a big extension of the windows indexing service (which is what Windows XP search uses), so if search isn't working, it's probably because the indexing services is jacked up somehow. Anyway, if you really hate libraries, banish them: http://lifehacker.com/5354879/disable-the-...re-on-windows-7 The libraries will be gone after a restart. Second, download and install Everything from Voidtools: www.voidtools.com. It's a replacement for windows search and its blindingly fast and finds, uh, everything. And it's free.

Windows updates are handled in the Control Panel and the browser isn't involved. I use both Chrome and Firefox, I find Chrome is faster but Firefox has better add-ins for blocking ads and so forth. But, Windows Update is now a separate application than the web browser. Don't even think of mentioning IE8. Now, I have installed and have been running Windows 7 in various flavors on probably 15 machines since last summer (I've installed probably a hundred copies on client computers by now). Des, I am very surprised that your experience has been so bad. Mine hasn't been anything close to that, in fact it's been a huge improvement over Fista and XPoo. The clients where I've installed it are very, very happy with it. I can only conclude that you have some kind of configuration or hardware issue that's causing problems. Do you have an IT guy/girl, and NOT some counter in an electronics store? You need a go-to person, a schlub like me, that can come to your house, sit with you on your computer, and help you address the issues you're having. I think a number of them could be solved by (1) training you in how to use things like search and libraries (or help you find ways to make the system operate the way you want) and (2) fixing some of the obvious configuration problems on your computer. Case in point: Readyboost is bad on Windows 7. You should have no need to use it at all and in fact I strongly discourage it. Instead, spend the money you would have spent on the USB stick on some more RAM for your computer. Its cheap, really easy to install and will make the biggest single difference you can make in a memory starved computer. A gigabyte goes for about 40 bucks, and all you need are 2 or 3 of them. In fact, Windows 7 pretty much demands no less than 2 GB. You can run it on less, but it will not be a pleasant experience. Readyboost is a workaround for bad memory management in Vista. Those memory management issues were fixed in Windows 7. I'd suggest having a qualified IT person look your system over for problems/hardware concerns. Specifically, whether or not your machine is compatible with the recommended, not required, minimum system requirements, and if your hardware drivers are not causing issues with Windows 7. And I'd get that person to help you find good ways to make the system work the way you want it to. For anyone interested, here's why Readyboost stinks. It's designed to allow very old machines to utilize a memory stick as RAM on machines running Vista. Vista uses a lot of RAM. It grabs all free memory and then refuses to give it back to the system if other programs need it. It uses so much that if it runs out of physical RAM it will start to use your hard drive as a substitute. When this happens your system becomes very, very slow. ReadyBoost is designed to allow Windows to use a (supposedly faster) USB stick as RAM instead of the hard drive, which, on an older computer, does make it run faster under Vista. What usually happens, though, is that if it's not properly configured (and it hardly ever is), Windows will use the USB stick even if it doesn't need it, and that will slow your machine down quite a lot. If the hardware is bad, then it's even worse. Windows 7 handles memory much differently. It still grabs all free memory, but then dumps it into a pool that programs can use as needed, and Windows handles that process in a very efficient way. So even on slower computers, Windows 7 is faster without Readyboost than with it. The short version is that you are far better off purchasing additional memory or adding a faster hard drive to your machine than using ReadyBoost with Windows 7. H

I've been using dropbox for about 6 months now. Its so useful that I use it to share files across the three PCs and a Mac at my desk. It integrates right into Windows and the Mac, so you see a dropbox folder in Explorer and in the Finder. I have, on many occasions, opened, edited and saved files from and to dropbox instead of the PC. Not that I recommend doing that, but that's how seamless it is. TLDR version: dropbox is cool.

Hi Ricky: Awesomedude is closing down on you because of the scrolling banner, which is Java based. I had the same issue, running Windows 7 (but Java is the same across XP or Vista or 7). My solution was to go into add/remove programs and uninstall the entries related to "java", "java runtime", or "java update x" (my terminology may be a bit off, but basically, uninstall Java). You should then be able to open AD, but you won't see the banner. You can then go to java.com, install the latest version, and you should be good to go. My guess is that the worm nuked a critical part of Java and that's why it keeps dying on you. P.S. I resent google too, but mainly because I truly believe they have too much knowledge about too many people in one place. Smells too "governmenty" to me. H

Hello! Long time lurker/reader here - I've liked AD forever, never really engaged in it until recently though. I like all you writer types and your stories, for sure. I popped in here to make a suggestion for Des, about libraries. I hate them in some ways, too (and like them in others). But here's how I got around the problems that libraries create, by creating a library with only one folder in it. Open the Explorer by clicking the Explorer button on the taskbar. Create a library. Call it "My Documents", or whatever you'd like to call it. Now, add a folder to the library. The folder I've added to mine is the "personal folder" for my user account - which is named Hoskins. I picked it because it's the top level view of all my stuff. Don't add any other folders to the library and click OK. Open the library if it's not already. From the View menu, arrange "By Folder". This is a very standard view of the physical folders within that top folder, and I'm now back to storing things in the folders of my choosing. That's all you need to do to circumvent libraries. Make them work against themselves. For more fun, close the My Documents folder and open Libraries from the Explorer button on the taskbar. Grab the My Documents library and drag it on top of the Explorer button and drop it. This will "pin" it to the top of the Explorer jump menu. Now, close the libraries window, click and hold the left mouse over the Explorer button again, and drag up. This will pop the jump menu. Anyway, I hope this helps. By the way, I remember PC Tools for Windows, from Central Point Software. I used to spend HOURS trying to optimize memory use and get that extra .5k out of my much needed 640k of accessible RAM...