I travel a lot for work.  I've gone from Washington DC to Wisconsin to Kolkata, India.  I can and have lived out of a suitcase for 6 months.  When you travel like I do, you learn quickly that the are some serious essentials.  If you've got a travel geek on your Christmas list, here are some awesome gifts to consider.

With the economy crunching, airlines are scrimping as much as they can.  This means things like food, and even entertainment is going away.  Even if you have entertainment, it might not be what you're looking for.  Mp3 players with video, netbooks and even laptops can all have video capabilities.  Who wants to hold a iPhone or Creative Zen for a two and a half hour movie?  That's where the Gorillamobile comes in.  The Gorillamobile by Joby is a flexible tripod that can attach to smart phones, iPods and mp3 players.  This is great as it means you can hook your mp3 player to just the right spot in order to get the best viewing angle to catch up on The Big Bang Theory.

Lots of people talk about noise reducing headphones.  They work awesome, but are extremely expensive and often don't work if your battery dies mid flight.  I've found that a set of in ear headphones can have the same effect, minus the batteries.  Especially Skullcandy earbuds .  These things work so much better than the expensive Sony's I bought a few years ago at filtering out the noise.  Best yet?  The Ink'd are only 21.99.

Western Europe and North America is gifted with good clean water that can be drank for free right out of the tap.  Unfortunately, the rest of the world isn't so blessed.  This is where the Katadyn Water Filtration Bottle comes into play.  As someone that's had giardia and other water born nasties, this is perfect for both business and pleasure, taking out 99% of the nasties that can make any trip painful.

Pashminas were all the rage back in the early '00s and there have been a plethora of knock offs.  While a 100% pashmina wool shawl is close to 400 dollars, you can get imitations that work just as well.  The point is to have something that doubles as a blanket and is light and easy to pack.  A Pashmina shawl is large, folds down to easily be put into a carry on or laptop bag and will keep the travel warm and fashionable at the same time.

Last but not least are two gifts that work both inside and outside an airport.  Power is a the bane of most travellers existence.  No matter what TV would have you believe, laptop aren't powered but nuclear fission and therefore need to be plugged in from time to time.  If you're lucky enough to have power in economy (and seatguru.com is an awesome place to go to find out if you will or not) you'll more than likely need an adapter.  Which is something else to stuff in your already overfilled carry-on.  If you don't have power?  You're relying on your laptop battery to last long enough to stay caught up on Being Erica.  So, I offer two last gifts.  One is a ThermaPAK laptop cooling pad that is self cooling, takes no power, and will prolong battery life by keeping the battery cool with the rest of your laptop.  The other is a universal power adapter.  Just in case you get one of those coveted seats in economy or are lucky to fly business.  Bonus is that most of them will work in a car as well for those long car trips.

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The Holiday Season is upon us.  As the decorations come out and the food is prepared, there are a few things to remember when it comes to that special furry person in your life:

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

There are a surprising number of holiday plants that are poisonous to animals.  Two of the worst are poinsettias and holly.  Both can cause diarrhea, coma and death.  Not exactly the way anyone wants to spend the holidays.  Another plant common in homes is mistletoe which can also cause heartbreak and tears instead of fun and excitement this holiday season.  If you still want plants, because why not they've been know to boost moods and make everything festive, think about getting a pet friendly bouquet from ASPCA.org or get silk or plastic plants.

Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

Who doesn't have stories of cats and Christmas trees?  I know I do and my two don't even climb it.  Cats especially, love the bright, shiny and it's important to remember a few things.  First?  Dude, take it from me and put only the ornaments you never want to see again on the bottom of the tree.  Cats and dogs, love to investigate and aren't above making just about anything into a toy.  In the same vein, careful with the breakable ornaments as when they break they could cut little paws that are investigating what just happened.  Tinsel is another thing to be careful of, especially if you have cats.  They love batting around and carrying they're toys and tinsel can get stuck in their throats and intestines.  Always watch the tree to make sure your little darlings haven't decided to use it as a ladder.

Sugarplums and Candycanes

Pretty much everybody knows not to give our furry loved ones chocolate or anything sweetened with xylitol.  Of course, that doesn't stop dogs and cats a like from finding ways to eat what they shouldn't.  The most surprising was onions, chives and garlic.  Things that are found in just about everything.  Now before you panic, especially if you see it on your animal's food, this is a cumulative thing.  The tiny amount that's found in pet food won't do harm, but you should try and avoid giving them table scraps.  I know, trust me, it's hard to say no when you have a very determined cat between you and the fork, determined to say I can haz dat, rite?  

In the long run, it's better to have them abstain.

Though it's been said, many times many ways...

One last piece of advice.  Don't step on your ferret.  It always ends badly.

Happy Holidays!

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Over the last week or so I've had to investigate many different Linux distributions.  The reason is because there are hardly any operating systems that will run on a eeepc 4G Surf anymore.  This all started when I misheard some advice and installed the newest version of Ubuntu 9.10 NBR.  While I'd love to give you a review, it did nothing but blow up my netbook.  To my credit, I've been using one version or another of Linux for about 7 years now.  So I'm not exactly a n00b and will put up with a lot of crap from an OS if I like it.  Since I had to reload my OS anyway I thought I'd do a little digging and a little shopping around.  Get out of my comfortable Ubuntu/eeebuntu zone and see what's out there. 

Boy, did I find stuff!  Mostly what I found is that Linux distributions are like women's shoes.  There are an infinite number of brands, styles and colors to choose from but a lot of them are going to hurt.  So without much further ado, my quick and dirty run down of different Linux distributions experiences on my Asus eeepc 4G Surf (BTW, this is by no means an exhaustive list):

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It's almost November and between the fun and excitement in the US over Halloween, people are quietly scribbling down notes and whispering furtively to each other.  Why?  Because it's almost time for NaNoWriMo!

So what's the deal?  Why is it so popular?  Why would anyone in their right mind even contemplate such a thing?  Well, I'm not sure you can be in your right mind to do NaNo, but you should be in your write mind.  Get it?  Yeah ok, I'll lay off the jokes.  The point is that novel writing is one of those things you thought only Stephen King or Ursela LeGuin could do.  Or maybe you keep thinking "well, when the kids are out of school.  Or when I retire."  The problem with both those thoughts?  You're not writing!  You're making excuses for why you're not writing.

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Remember The Invisible Boy from the movie Mystery Men?  You know, the kid that was only invisible when no one was looking at him?  Yeah, that's not so much a new and exciting superpower, women who love sci-fi have long known that power and we keep trying to get rid of it! 

On the off chance you missed a certain article that has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, women are destroying science fiction.  Women and our girl cooties are forcing the manly men who love science fiction to think about their feeeeeeeelings.  And relaaationships and oh my god the fact manly men doing manly things doesn't always help.  Oh noes!  I mean my god, man the fact that boys might actually like other boys is preposterous and obviously the work of those evil manipulative women that are banging on the door of our guys only club!  The horror!  The madness!  It's the death of science fiction as we know it!!  Pretty soon they'll be doing things like calling it SyFy!

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The show chronicles the lives of Dr. Sheldon Cooper, a verifiable genius with more than a few quirks, and his long suffering roommate Dr. Leonard Hoffstader. 

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While wandering around the different sites and looking for just the perfect centerpiece and crucifix for my friend, I discovered something.  Something that, while I had noticed when making prayer beads for my pagan friend, I hadn't really had much time to research.  The Rosary is not the be all and end all of prayer beads.  Prayer beads in general have one thing in common.  They are used as a focus on prayer or meditation.  Most often to keep track of the number of prayers you are saying.

The Muslim prayer beads, called Misbaha, are often in sets of 33, or 99, are a tool used during a dhikr or a glorification of God after regular prayer.  They are most often made of wood, but can be made from just about anything, including olive wood, stone, plastic, metal, etc.  In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, one would use a Chotki, which is a prayer rope knotted in 33, 50 or 100 knots, often with a bead marking 25 knots if it's length is longer than 33 knots, although you can find them made with beads instead of knots.  One would use them in conjunction with the Jesus Prayer. Prayer beads are not used exclusively with Abrahamic religions, either.  Buddhists also use a set of beads called Mala to help them keep track of their chants, much like the common Roman Catholic Dominican Rosary is to help keep track of the Ave Maria and Pater Noster said during it's recitation.

Possibly the coolest variation of a traditional rosary that I found was called the Irish Penal rosary.  Designed so that the Rosary could be said in secret, it is a single decade rosary that is not round but straight.  The cross is long and narrow, perfect for hiding up a sleeve and there's a ring at the end, so that you can slide it from finger to finger to make sure you didn't lose track as you went about your day.  There have been many variations on the original concept, and they're just super cool design-wise with the large, simple ring and the long, unusual cross.

The one that fascinated me the most was the Rosary of the Dead.  This Rosary looks similar to it's Dominican sister but with a wholly different purpose.  The Rosary for the Dead is just what it claims, it's a meditation and prayer for those who have died that they may enter heaven.  When I was researching it, I discovered that I had been doing this rosary for years and not even known it.  I have had the unfortunate experience of going to quite a few funerals, and at the grave site there was always the priest that led the prayers and everyone responding "And let the perpetual light (mumble, something, mumble)"  Ok, they knew what they were saying but I had no clue and mumbled along.  Having found the actual prayers that go along with the rosary, I now know they were saying "And let the perpetual light shine upon him/her."  The belief behind it is that the 40 beads, as this rosary is made with 4 decades instead of the usual 5, represents the 40 hours that Jesus spent in purgatory or limbo. 

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Pirate.  Depending on you look it brings up images of Jack Sparrow and Captain Hook or four dorky looking guys in Sweden.  Or maybe bands of murderers in Somalia.  Either way the point is that piracy exists and it's illegal, but is it the end of the world as we know it, like the media conglomerates would have us believe?

The answer is yes and no.  Certainly the large pirate systems like in Russia and China aren't helping and they should be the real targets of the MPAA and the RIAA.  Unfortunately, due to the obvious fact that those operations are in Russia and China and not in the US where the RIAA and MPAA have bought off enough politicians can force them to shut down, the piracy continues.  It's definitely hurting their bottom line and anything that hurts the bottom line of the mega media conglomerates usually ends up being bad for us geeks.

But wait, didn't I say yes and no? 

I did, and it's the no that I really want to talk about.  Here's the thing, what most companies want is viral marketing.  The whole word of mouth phenomenon that made My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The Sixth Sense such a run away hits at the box office.  They want everyone and their sister talking about movies, music and all the things, that lets face it, we'd be talking about anyway.  This usually isn't a problem for mainstream shows.  Shows like Grey's Anatomy and Law and Order already have a good fanbase and people talk about them all the time.  Hell, the industry talks about them all the time.  Someone in Grey's sneezed, we totally have to talk about it.  That's a great thing, since that means that those shows get advertisers and time and bigger budgets and better writers and well, you see where I'm going with this, even if you happen to hate the show. 

Where this is a problem are what the networks and the industry call "genre shows."  Those a the ones like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Files, and Firefly.  They're the quirky shows that are awesome but probably are not going to generate mainstream appeal.  Unfortunately for us geeks, that's most of the shows we watch.  This is a problem as networks that create the shows, not to be confused with the networks that air them as they're two totally different entities, are leery of genre shows in an already iffy market.  If a show has been "green lighted" so to speak it might only get twelve episodes to prove itself worthy.  That can be difficult when the creator doesn't know if they'll be getting another season or hell even another four or five episodes to create.  So how do you generate a buzz when you have a production company that's leery, a television network that's leery, but the creator thinks this is the next greatest thing since sliced bread?

That's where the piracy comes into play.  Back when Dr. Who and Battlestar Galatica were resurrected and brought back to the small screen, it was only being shown in England.  This is because of marketing and rights and all that.  Fans of the show in England were raving about them, about how awesome and cool they were and like all good fangirls, the fangirls in the US and else where in the world said "gimme!"  The English fangirls did just that, bless their fangirl hearts, using technology like bittorrent, sendspace and plain old DVD creation.  They send over the product so the fangirls overseas could salivate. 

 And what happened when those shows finally did air in the US?  They had the highest ratings of any show on the Sci-Fi channel ever.  They were huge hits because the fangirls knew what the product was, but instead of watching in on their computer screens this time they could watch it on their huge (or not so huge -- that entirely seems to depend on if there's a man present in a house) television screens.  They wanted to support the show that they already loved and so watched and made sure the ratings were good.  Dr. Who and Battlestar Galatica are only the start of this phenomenon.  Torchwood had similar results as well.  Going the other direction, Supernatural has had some stellar ratings when it's finally aired overseas because of US fangirls sharing out the content.

All of this is great, but there is a definite danger to downloading content off the Internet.  The production companies right now don't seem to be correlating the data between downloads and ratings.  Or if they are, they're not saying anything.  Why?  Mostly because of how trademark and copyright is in the US.  They have to fight to protect their copyright and trademark or lose them.  That would be bad on many different levels, no matter what the average fangirl thinks.  So of course, they're going to go after piracy.  Also, don't forget there are very very large operations outside the US, where copyright laws are vastly different and it's much more of a gray area.  By going after the users, they're hoping to stop the producers.  Which is all well and good but not helpful.

Still, things are looking up.  There's been a rash of legal sites going up over the last few years that give access to shows and extra content.  Right now most of them seem to be country specific, meaning that the CW doesn't allow you to come into their site without an US based IP address.  This also pertains to Amazon.com and iTunes.  Both of those companies, while they allow you to download your fix, won't allowed you to do so if you're overseas.  Which, coming from someone that's a US citizen that usually works overseas, sucks big donkey balls.  The reason is pretty basic.  Overseas downloads don't count toward ratings and it's ratings that advertisers like to see.  More advertisers, more money from the network that's airing it, which means more money for the production company that's producing it.  Since advertisers are usually different overseas, the US advertisers don't really care how popular Chuck is in Spain.

Chin up though, this is a step up from where we were just four years ago.  With the economy spinning, we might just see more innovation as the major production companies and networks struggle to keep their businesses alive.  Here's hoping to the day that everyone can get the show they want, when they want it, regardless of the country.

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That might be harsh, but the events going on up in Bozeman, Montana lead me to think that the shirt isn't that far off.  For anyone that hasn't heard, Bozeman, Montana decided they were going to hire only those people with the highest moral fiber.  This is important to remember, highest moral fiber.  But how can you possibly know if someone has high moral fiber?  Do you ask them how much fiber is in their diet?  Do you call references on their resumes?  How do you really know, in this day and age, if someone is truly a moral person or not?  Their answer?  Ask all applicants that had received job offers conditional on a successful background check for the username and password of all, and I quote, "current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."1

Here's the problem, I don't buy it.  Demanding people give up their passwords is bullying plain and simple.  I would feel outraged about the idiots that gave up their username and passwords, but then again most people will give up their passwords for chocolate.2  It's a hard economy, and government jobs are usually a safe bet.  Bozeman bullied people into giving them info they had no business knowing or having and that isn't the work of someone with the highest moral fiber.

It's none of their business what you say on the Internet.  It's no different than bitching to your girlfriends or boyfriends about your job.  Yes, you can't tell confidential information, but here's the thing, if you're out in the open?  They don't need your passwords.  They wanted the back end, the part you don't put out to the public.  They weren't saying what they were looking for, but it obviously wasn't good. 

For the record, you should never, never, never, give out your passwords to anyone.  System Administrators or your IT department shouldn't need your account to do any maintenance on the system, a banking system should never need to you reconfirm your information (if they do, dump them as they have no system security or backup policy).  Ideally, you should change all your passwords online every six months at a minimum and not use one or two passwords for everything.  Practically speaking, have one password group that you don't use anywhere else for anything to do with your money and another group you use for facebook, myspace, geekachicas, etc.  Change those as often as you can remember, at the very least once a year.  You should always change them if you think someone's managed to get it.  The faster the better and yes, it's a pain but better that than having your information or really embarrassing pictures out on the Internet for all to see.

If you're not harboring state secrets, you can write passwords down on a spreadsheet and lock that down to just you, or print it out and keep it in a lock box.  Best yet, pick something you'll remember but is hard for others to guess.  What does that mean?  Don't use words in the dictionary.  If your online site allows special characters, use them.  Pick a sentence, take out the spaces and exchange some of the letters for numbers.  ex: 1h@vetEnf15h$ (I have 10 fishs).  Starting a password with a number or a special character makes it a helluva lot harder to guess or password cracker programs to figure it out. 

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It's starting.  Spouses, siblings, friends and parents are starting to eye you up.  Not for anything nefarious, or at least nothing more than the usual nefarious things they eye you up for, but because they're trying to figure out how to get you away from that computer and into a plane/train/automobile for some "vacation."  Now I don't know about you, but a week off of work with nothing but some good tunes, my cats and a brand new operating system to play with *is* vacation.  Ok, well, if I could manage not to have to deal with their litterbox it would be.  Unfortunately, the n00bs in my family just don't understand that the sun is trying to kill me!!  Or they're in on teh evil plot!

I'm not afraid to say that I'm an occasional reader of Cosmo, Vogue and very rarely Martha Stewart.  What?  I'm making sure I know what the other girls are thinking and yes, this is so that I don't completely make an ass of myself when out with non-geeks.  The one thing I notice, is that their penultimate travel guide never EVER has a single thing that I would bring with me.  Seriously, they don't even mention computers, cameras, and mp3 players.  Do they really expect me to leave all my tech at home?  You're kidding right?

So without any further ado, the geek girl's guide to travelling!!

I'm not really going to talk about clothing, because really I can barely dress myself let alone anyone else.  Besides, Cosmo, Vogue and all the rest have all that stuff already covered.  But!  If you're in need of new geeky shirts, my favorite place is Jinx and FBod Studios as they're just awesome and have something for the geek in all of us.  Seriously, though, clothing is usually not optional and you do want to remember some.

If you're like me and you have to have your computer pried away from your cold dead hands, this is just the thing.  Netbooks are all the rage right now, and with the introduction of HP and Dell into the market you can tell they're more than a fad.  These are perfect for travel as they're small, light and can easily fit into a purse or carry on bag.  They've got a 3 hour battery and with a price tag of $180 dollars for a brand new low end model, you really can't beat it.  Especially if you just need to indulge in your Facebook obsession and chat about the latest Star Trek Movie.

Now if you're like me, you'd love to have tunes at the beach but don't like sharing.  It's the way to block out the world, pretend that you're in your den of geek and forget all about that evil sun that's trying to do you harm.  These sunglasses are a great way to look cool and still have your tunes.  They're bluetooth enabled headphones, so totally wirefree and awesome looking, as long as your ipod or cell phone has bluetooth.  If you're strapped for cash , and who isn't right now, or don't have bluetooth enabled music there's also these cool looking sunglasses as well, though they have the mp3 player built into the glasses instead of bluetooth.  Still, a 1g mp3 player might be a better choice than of potential damage to the ipod.

 

 

Of course, if you're a bit old school like me and enjoy headphones with wires, or you're just anti-batteries, there's much love for skullcandy headphones.  These are the most comfortable headphones I've ever owned and I've owned plenty.  They have high fidelity headphones for every person, plus they come in awesome colors.  Hot pink?  Rastafarian stripes?  They have them, no doubt.  Plus?  My low end ink'd earbuds work a helluva lot better on an airplane than my 70 dollar noise reduction Sony headphones.  And starting at 19.95 for the ink'd they're a fantastic steal. (Actually, Amazon has several varieties of skullcandy earbuds (like those shown to the right) for $12.95 on sale. ~ the Manegement)

 

Cameras are another great thing for vacations.  If you're low on storage or going on that vacation of epic proportions you'll probably want to buy a new camera card, and if you have kids or really annoying family that just can't wait for you to upload your pictures an EYE-FI card is a great little gadget.  Retailing at $49.99 for the very basic 2G card, this little card allows your camera to upload it's photos on it's own.  The way it works, is that the Eye-Fi card has a small wireless device in the card, and if it can connect to the internet it'll upload your pictures.  If your home computer is on?  Well, then it'll go ahead and download your pictures from the Eye-FI servers, meaning that you have your pictures safely on your drive at home, away from accidental sunscreen damage.

Now that we've got our tunes, our camera, and our computer the question is, where the heck are we gonna put it all?  This is gonna sound a little controversial but bear with me here.  I have found the coolest thing ever for taking all the goodies on the plane.  You know those boxes that our sisters and moms carry?  You know the ones, that they swear by that have all their cosmetics and such?  They go by the usual name of vanity case.  They're usually hard cases and come with a nifty shoulder strap.  Well, the one thing that our moms and sisters failed to mention is that they've got a bunch of pockets and elastic straps to keep all their little bottles upright.  Well, we've got a bunch of wires and cords and small techy items that will fit perfectly in all those little things.  Plus my netbook fits perfectly into it and so all my geektastic fun is in one place and actually organized.

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How often has this happened to you?  You've decided you're buying something new.  You've been good, you deserve a little treat.  So you go down to the Best Buy (I totally only pick on them because they're the only ones left) and you're just overwhelmed.  There are all sorts of cameras.  Cameras that can do optical zoom and flashes and digital and what the heck is that megapixel thing for except that everyone says more is better?  You're confused and frustrated because dammit, you're an intelligent woman!  This really shouldn't be that hard!  Just as you're getting dizzy from all the choices, the salesperson swoops in. 

Ah, yes, you think.  He can totally help me find the perfect camera.  He shows you a lot of stuff and lists off things that you're pretty sure should be on the space shuttle not a little point and shoot camera that you can fit in your purse.  By the end of it, you have a camera that you're pretty sure fits absolutely none of your requirements, costs about double your price range but you were assured was absolutely essential.  Don't be embarrassed, it's happened to all of us.  All of us smart, shopping savvy women have been hoodwinked at least once in our lives.  None of us are really sure how it happens, but it does.  And usually?  It always seems to happen when it comes to tech.

How do you do that?  First is deciding what you need your tech to do.  Now, this doesn't mean you shouldn't buy tech you don't need.  Oh no, not at all.  I'm just saying that even something you want, needs to do things for you.  So instead of letting the device dictate how you use it, decide how you, the smart woman, want to use the device.  Let's take an example here.  Digital Audio Players.  You want a new one.  Now, what do you, yourself, need it to do?  Do you need it to be able to play iTunes songs?  Do you need it to work with Linux?  Do you have a bunch of songs from Walmart that you need to play?  Do you need to be able to put videos on it?  How much do you want to spend?  Does it need to be a certain color?  Yes, I'm being serious about the color because we are women, and we do like a certain sense of style and won't use it if it's ugly.  So finding something that does all your requirements but is butt ugly means that it doesn't fit all your requirements. 

The other thing is to ask questions.  Look up words and terms you don't understand.  Don't be afraid to say "ok, now seriously what exactly is a Megabyte and why do I care about it?"  My favorite friend is Google, but when you're looking at certain ubiquitous terms it can be annoying.  This site, geek.com, is like a geek dictionary.  The best part is that it's searchable.  So you can look up that term you don't understand and get an answer that's in English.  If you have a geek you can ask, go ahead and ask those terms.  Keep asking until you do understand.  I'm constantly asking my sister for clarification on fashion things because it's all over my head.  Geek shirts and jeans are my typical wardrobe.

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On May 7, just two days after it was released I downloaded and installed Windows 7 RC 1.  This would be the mostly almost finished version of Windows 7, the successor of the horribly inefficient Windows Vista.  While some might say that I'm unfit to review a Windows product after my thrashing of Windows over the years (I was happily Windows free for years until the iTouch forced me back.  How's that for irony) I think this makes me an excellent candidate for testing it.  Because I'm not a Gates fangirl.  In fact, I'm starting to think Gates is the Anti-Christ, oh wait, that's Sam Winchester.  Sorry, I get confused sometimes.  The point is, against my better judgment?  I'm impressed.

I did have some issues installing but I can't even blame those on Microsoft.  No, that had everything to do with the fun and exciting Libyan power we have here.  So in the middle of my first attempt to install Windows 7, my laptop fried it's motherboard.  Apparently Vista was feeling the heat and figured it was it or Win 7 and it was going to make sure neither of them survived.  Or my HP committed suicide because of it's desperate, star-crossed love of Vista.  Either way?  She's dead, Jim.  Which presented a problem. 

Windows themselves will tell you not to install Windows 7 on your main machine.  That's not because they don't believe in the operating system, but because there are bugs in it.  Big bugs that they haven't found, hence why they're releasing it as a Release Candidate.  Think of it as your most finale draft that you send off to the beta reader right before you're gonna post your fiction.  You want them to find any and all glaring errors you missed.  This is the same thing.  Heeding their advice, I tried to figure out what I could put it on as I was down a test machine.  I ended up installing it on Virtualbox, which is a virtualization program that means you can have many many different computers on one set of hardware.  It's pretty cool, and I'll explain more in detail in another post.  The basics is that this program creates a pretend computer for you to install another operating system and use.  This would be perfect as I can test it out without touching my actual hardware.  (Plus, it's awesome for viruses as it never actually touches your "bare metal")

I created a virtual computer with 512 megs of RAM and a 20 gig hard drive.  Then I loaded Windows 7.  The install process was a breeze and this was the first Windows install I didn't have to sit and babysit.  Very easy and intuitive.    The only trick was the product code, but it wasn't required to install, which I thought it was odd and I have a feeling that will definitely be fixed by the final release.  Still after a few minutes of cursing and grumbling it was interesting to see that I didn't need it.  There is however a product code, which is given to you in a text file that comes with the download.  But as I didn't get the text file I was at a bit of a loss.

I had a lot of trepidation about the specs on my pretend machine.  Windows 7 minimum install requirements are 1Ghz processor, 1Ghz of RAM and at least 16 gigs of hard drive space.  That said, Microsoft has swore left, right and center that Windows 7 will be able to work on a netbook, those really tiny laptops that are great for travel, email, and Internet.  Those have at most 512 megs of RAM in most of them, so I thought what the hell, at least I can see if Microsoft is a lying liar who lies.

I will say this, the Windows designers have out done themselves on the pretty.  The artwork is stunning and someone over there in Redmond either is a huge fan of Hiyao Miyazaki or smokes the really good stuff.  Or both.  This version of Windows has bundled with 37 different wallpapers right out of the box.  They range from the default, which is a beta fish swimming in open water (anyone else see that as slightly defensive of Microsoft) to my personal favorite, the aptly named img20, which is very Russian looking and has matrioshka dolls and honey bears wearing clothing.  Before this trial ends I'm totally snagging the wallpapers because they are just that cracktastic.  When you right click on the desktop you can personalize it, which includes the ability to change your desktop every 30 minutes.  So far I haven't seen much of a slow down on my processor, but the night is young and I'm just starting to break things.  *grin*  Indeed the entire look of the OS has a shiny new feel to it.  It's hard to say, but this looks like what Aero, which is what Microsoft called their video effects program, is supposed to look like.  It's shiny, it's new and it's gorgeous.  Sometimes shiny silver is exactly the color to go with.  There are also many different sound themes.  Yes, remember way back to Win98SE and when we all had themes for every single day of the week?  Well, while not quite so garish, this is similar.  Unfortunately, I can't review the sound themes as, surprise!  I'm having sound issues.

The other thing is Java.  While yes, Microsoft it was really nice of you to pre-install Java on your machine, something tells me you have yet to let go of your grudge with Sun over Java and installed something that resembles Java but really isn't.  Perhaps your MS Java Virtual Machine?  Which...is not Java and my attempt at depositing a check online (greatest invention EVAH by the way) and also trying to check and see how my work email runs with Windows 7 tells me so.  Because both of them come up with the Java logo but then give me a big ol' X on actually doing anything.  Thanks a lot Microsoft.  You failed there, as Java is steadily becoming more and more prevalent in society as a whole and you really do need to let go of this grudge.  You stole Java and you got caught.  End of story man, let it go.

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Finally!  After almost two years of weird tics and random freezing, I finally had it.  The solution, or so I hoped, to all my woes on my desktop computer.  The newest version of Ubuntu had come out and I had it in my grubby little hands.  YES!  I took the .iso file (which is an image of what a DVD or CD will be when it's burned.  Think of it as a winzip file for disks.) and dropped it onto my desktop.  I had a new program that I wanted to try out.  A new way of installing operating systems that didn't involve a CD/DVD rom drive.  Which, if you've ever tried to reinstall an operating system on a netbook or an ultralight Toshiba, you know why this is a good and wonderful thing!  So I copied the disk to my hard drive and let the new program go to town.  When it was doing that, I carefully made sure everything I had on the desktop was moved over to either my 1 terabyte drive or my 250 gig external.  I didn't want to lose anything, so anything of value went over. 

When that was all done, I unplugged my external drives and away I went.  I plugged the USB drive I was put the installation CD on into my USB port and rebooted the computer.  Nothing...wait what?  Oh yeah, I forgot that I had make my computer boot from USB drive first.  If you used the CD this wouldn't have happened as that's the default for almost any computer under the sun.  Except maybe HP, but they're kinda evil anyway.  Try it again, and BAM!  It starts loading...the new operating system. 

Yes, Ubuntu installs via a Live CD.  What is this you ask?  Well, it's a great way to play with the operating system and not have to commit.  I'm sure men thought this up, but it's great.  While it's slower than it would be if you installed it on an actual hard drive, you can do anything you want to it.  Check it out, take it for a test drive, all while not touching anything on your computer's actual hard drive.  Can you do that with Windows I ask?  The answer is NO!  I played around with it for a few minutes, just checking out all the new pretty of the artwork and then I clicked on the button that says "Install."

I've gone through more OS installs than I care to remember.  From Win 3.11 to Vista, I've done most of them at least once.  In college I swear I was reloading about every semester as I broke something or as another component on my old 486x mutant Gateway died.  Man, that was an awesome time.  I don't know, let's try this!  That didn't work?  Um...let's try opening it up and reseating it!  Yeah, that'll totally work.  I was a bit of a Dr. Frankenstein in college.  At least when it came to computers.  The bottom line is, I know OS install procedures.  From simple to pain in the ass and the Ubuntu install?  As easy as they come.  It's all graphical, point and click, and as long as you don't want to do something, like say change your default file system from ext3 to ext4, it's a breeze.  Of course, I can't manage to do anything simple, so yes, I went looking for the ext4 file system.  It's there, if hiding in the manual partitions.  I actually had to ask another geek where it was, which...sigh, probably means my geek cred has gone down.  But I finally got it, gave my machine a bit of extra room, swearing the entire way, and sent it on it's way.

The best time to install any Operating System, unless it starts with the word Windows, is right after release.  Especially if you're on dial-up or any other type of limited weebage.  This is because when install you'll have to get updates.  Every operating system under the sun has bugs in it.  It's just impossible to find them all before release.  The longer you wait, the more updates you'll have to install right after your install.  If you have good Internet, it's not a problem, if you have crappy internet that's capped and they shut you down, it can be a problem.  Needless to say, I had very few updates that needed to be installed. 

It finished installing and told me to reboot.  This is my first chance to really get a look at the artwork.  Now, Ubuntu really does have issues on that part.  It's not exactly the sexiest looking operating system out there.  Especially with their determination to use company colors of brown and orange.  There's just not much you can do with brown and orange.  But they tried, and I have to say the splash screen is a definite improvement.  They obviously decided to capitalize on the whole Battlestar Galactica craze as it now has a very Cylon feel to it.  Of course, we won't mention that the Cylons are the bad guys.  Still, with the yellow dot sliding back and forth across a red line, it's definitely channeling the old school Cylon look and I for one really like it.  It's head and shoulders above the old yellow bar that was filled up in increments.

 
Speaking of splash screens and boot times, did I mention the newest version of Ubuntu boots in 35.8 seconds?  No?  Oh yeah, it boots in 35.8 seconds.  This is a huge improvement over even the eeebuntu on my netbook that boots in 1 minute 35 seconds and Vista's boot time of a cup of coffee and three Supernatural magazine articles.  *glares at the Vista laptop*  I do like the fact that this version of Ubuntu gives you the option of having a log in screen or logging in automatically.  Currently I have it set to logging in automatically but with the lock on the screen saver.  Because I'm only a little paranoid, not completely.  Unfortunately, this means that I cannot evaluate the artwork of the login screen, but you can change it if you hate it.

I'm now logged in and this is one of the biggest differences between Windows and Linux.  Unlike Windows, where if you do a clean install you only get whatever is part of the Windows operating system, with Linux and Ubuntu specifically, you get a fully working computer out of the box.  What does that mean?  I means that I get an email reader, firefox, a media player, Office equivalent, games, PDA sync ability, and more without having to install more programs.  That isn't to say I won't, as I don't like some of the default programs, but point is I don't have to.  Yes, I understand that Linux and Windows have two very different ways of doing this and that Windows is a for profit operating system and that an entire ecosystem has been built around people buying and installing programs they need.  I'm just saying, I like the ability to be able to use my computer after just install and not spend days installing other programs to make it useful.

Of course, that's not to say there aren't things that need to be tweaked.  I do this regardless of the OS I'm using.  With Linux, I'm changing out the defaults for programs I actually like.  For example, I always install Thunderbird with the lightning extension instead of using Evolution, the Outlook equivalent in Linux.  I usually add mplayer or VLC instead of using Totem.  (Though this time I haven't done it as I'm kinda digging the ability put in the DVD and see the menu on it) However, this is quite easy with Ubuntu.  The program Synaptic Package Manager has over 26,000 packages that can be installed on Ubuntu.  Some are simply libraries needed to run other much more cooler programs, but they're there.  Right in a program that's tied to the OS, and waiting to be installed.  These are specially tuned to your system.  No more going "dammit but it said it worked in Vista and now it doesn't and I can't take it back and dammit Jim, I'm a gamer not a computer geek!"  And if you're old school like me?  You can absolutely use the command prompt to type out what you want.  Which, awesome! 

This brings me to my main point.  Just about everything you would need to do in this OS?  You can now do with a point and click.  No more command line unless you want to use it.  Want to put in pretty animation a la Aero in Vista?  Right click on the desktop and go to visual effects.  It will install the necessary drivers and then add it.  Need to add a printer?  Go to System, Preferences, Printer.  Not only is it probably already installed, but right there you can add it and make it default.  How sweet is that?

I will say that I love the fact that Ubuntu now recognizes my sound card and hey!  I didn't have sound issues, except for the fact that the sound system really really wants to use my SoundBlaster card instead of my built in sound card.  Which wouldn't be a bad thing except I think there's an issue with the mic port on the SoundBlaster.  But hey, I only use the mic for Skype and Gizmo.  This was a simple fix, just telling Gizmo to use the built in sound card instead of the default.  HA! 

I'm an expert in sound now.  Really truly, after fighting with it in every other Linux distribution I've ever installed, I know sound.  I even have friends that say if I ever write a tech book or a memoir, the title should be "Surprise, I'm having sound issues."  So it really was a nice surprise that my only sound issue was that I plugged the speaker cord into the wrong sound card.

The wireless also worked flawlessly.  Wireless, traditionally, has always been a sticky wicket with Linux.  Considering very few wireless manufacturers build Linux drivers for their cards they all have to be reverse engineered.  This takes time and means that Linux usually lags behind Windows and Apple.  Well, can I just say, this is usually involves manually fix the wireless and is such a headache!  With this new version I didn't have to do anything with the wireless.  It saw the card, saw my network and said "Oh hey!  This is WPA2 encryption, would you like to put in the password?"  Yes, it's that simple and it. just. works!  Not only does it work?  These new drivers have fantastic range.  OMG, I can totally see my neighbor's completely unsecured wireless network on my desktop.  Something that until now, I could only see on the netbook with it pressed right up against our adjoining foot thick concrete wall.  And even then it'd be maybe a 5% signal.  I'm easily getting 20 or 30 percent on the desktop which is across the room from the adjoining wall.  Hallelujah!  Praise St. Isidore! 

Bottom line?  If you've been toying with the idea of Linux for a while, this distribution is the one to finally take that plunge.  You won't be disappointed.

*The distribution is free to home users and can be found at Ubuntu.com

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I am a serial fitness starter.  One of those that isn't really happy with the way my body looks in the mirror without clothing on but too lazy to really do anything about it.  My hobbies all involve sitting on my rear and staring at something.  Either the computer screen, beads, or well, the TV.  Every six months or so I sort of go, "let's try and get rid of the tire."  And so I start something, either the gym, or a class but it never lasts.  I don't have the patience and it's always the same routine.  The gym intimidates me because I see all the gym bunnies there and I'm well, not.  Not to mention I'd really rather be sitting in front of the computer screen.  I thought damn, if they could just combine my love of tech with fitness this would rock!  And I thought they had, with the Wii Fit.

I was salivating over the Wii Fit.  I thought, this is it, this is the thing that's going to get me in shape.  I mean come on!  It's a video game, with fitness!  Surely if anything would get me off the couch it would be that.  So I bought it and after three weeks, in which I was annoying everyone I saw with the news that I had ordered a Wii Fit, it arrived.  I took it home, changed into work-out clothing and opened the box.  The setup is pretty easy, just follow the instructions and then I got into the game.  The first thing it does is want to make a profile.  Ok, I thought, this isn't bad.  Just wants to take the measurements that just about every gym wants to take.  So I check yes, I want to do the body test.  It tells me to step off the board and then step back on.  It then makes some kind of concerned noise because apparently if you step with your right foot first it thinks you're all crazy balanced.  The voice, which is really high and perky, then announces that it's finished analyzing me. 

Awesome I thought, then I can go do some boxing.  I could use some cathartic boxing.  Well, not quite.  The board, no seriously the board is animated on this game and is 1st person, says that based on my BMI*, I'm overweight.  No shit, Sherlock, why do you think I bought you?  It also, to add insult to injury takes my little mii and makes her overweight.  That?  That was just not right.  But ok, I'm not that sensitive, we're good.  Then we have to go through all these tests and the big reveal is your Wii Fit age.  In real life, I'm 30 and a geek, so physically I'm 30 and mentally I'm like 5.  That should factor in there, really it should.  Sadly, it does not and after all the tests the Fit tells me that I'm 42.  o.O  Ooookay that was a little harder to swallow but whatever.  Boxing!!!

 
Finally, I managed to get into the meat of the game.  The actual fitness games.  There are 4 different types, Aerobic, Strength, Yoga and Balance.  By far, my favorite are the balance games.  They're fun and remind me of the puzzle games I like so much.  The one with the penguin is particularly cute and deceptively hard.  Your mii is dressed up as a penguin with all the other little penguins surrounding you on their own pieces of ice.  The point is to pick up as many fish as you jump by as you can in 80 seconds.  The catch?  You're on a wiggly piece of ice that rocks back and forth as your weight shifts.  It takes a few tries to get used to it, and I'm still not a master.  The best I can get is three stars, which makes me a professional but not an expert, or whatever is after professional.  I'm also a fan of the ski jump.  Probably the closest I'd ever get to ski jumping in real life you have to crouch on the board and then raise up at just the right moment.  If your balance is off you go rolling down the jump instead, which...is kinda embarrassing. 

The strength exercises are good, but I think this is the weakest part of the game.  I have to pick one exercise and then go through the reps.  That's all fine and dandy, it starts you off slow, with something like 6 reps and the more you do the exercise the more reps you unlock.  All well and good, but then after the exercise, I have the option to retry or quit.  In order to go another exercise I have to quit out of the exercise I'm in, go back to the strength section and pick another one.  That to me is a waste of work out time.  I've done enough time in the actual gym that I'd like to be able to just pick a few exercises tell it how many times to go through them and just go smoothly from one to the other.  I did like the part where after you did an strength or yoga move the game offers another exercise which compliments the one you just finished.  That was excellent, only they didn't bother to tell you where in the game you can find it or give you the option to right to it.  That is a big ol' fail for me.

The Yoga is better, as usually you don't do an exercise over and over in Yoga.  Unless you have my old yoga instructor where we weren't interested in inner peace so much as kick ass abs.  Again you go through the instructions, by the way, you can pick your trainer, either a woman or a man.  Both are Barbie doll perfect, and say the same thing over and over and over again, but they're not that bad.  Actually, I really like the fact that they have the demo first and that you have to go through it before you do the exercise.  That was nice.  Most of the strength exercises also have matching yoga component and vice versa.  So which ever you hit first you give that is the one that will then trigger the "this is a great workout" screen that says the other you should do.  Ok, and the yoga is all about balance which is nice.  If you can hold the pose, you get more points.  And yes, there is the couch potato for no points, which I keep getting on the damn plank and man I am not a couch potato!  I think there's something wrong with how that one's set up or something, dammit.

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Just as there's three different types of ice cream there are three major types of Operating Systems. First there's soft serve. At some point in your life, you've had it. Every place under the sun has it and it shows up every where. Even here in Libya. It's what everyone knows, so it's the default if you're not sure what to get. Usually you don't get a lot of choice on flavors, but there's vanilla and chocolate and almost everyone can decide on one of those two. Soft serve? Is Windows. It's the comfy familiar.

Then you have frozen yogurt. It's trendy, it's cool. It's what you get when you're trying to lose weight or just be environmentally friendly. It's the hip and cool thing. Might have flavors, might not and you can't always find it everywhere. Which is part of the fun right? It's a bit more expensive but you're always happy with the product. That my friends? Is Mac. More expensive but worth the money and hey, it's the in thing right now.

Finally we come to frozen custard. No one's heard of it or if you have, you have no idea what it is. Is it even ice cream? The name itself brings confusion sounds like something those weirdos up in Wisconsin would like. Something you have to have grown up with to understand. An in joke, possibly. Not something normal people could try. You can't find it everywhere, and yet it pops up in the strangest places. It comes in so many different flavors when you do find it, you're just flummoxed and flabbergasted at what to choose so you end up going back to what you know, soft serve or frozen yogurt. Here's the rub, the part that no one tells you. Once you've had frozen custard? You never want to go back. It's just that damn good. And that my friends, is Linux.

So what is Linux? Linux is an operating system, much like Windows and Mac. It's built to run on most PCs. The main difference between Windows and Linux is that it's free. Legally free for home users and not only is the operating system free but over 40,000 different applications that you could use are also free. There's also one other main difference. It's open source.

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Due to a very sad set of circumstances, I've gone through not one, but three digital audio players in the last two years. Two were Creative and one was an Apple. The latest, when my Creative Zen ran away from home on the night of the Inauguration, gave me the opportunity to buy what I had been drooling and wanting for over a year. An iTouch.

First, I will say that unless you are willing to jailbreak your iTouch, if you have Linux this is not the device for you.

Due to the new encrypted database that the iTouch uses, it's now incompatible with Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox and all those other iTunes like programs out there for Linux. This gave me serious cause for reservation, as up until now I had been happily Windows-free, and loving it, for over 3 years. There was that blip where I got my new HP and was forced due to the less than optimal Libyan, we-will-cut-you-off-if-you-even-think-about-going over-your-allowed-bandwidth, Internet service to use Vista until some sweet soul could send me the newest Ubuntu install, but I don't like to talk about that. However, as my good friend Kim mentioned, I use a virtual machine for my banking as it was, so there should be no problem putting the iTunes on that. Yeah...that was a good thought anyway and got me over my reservations on not being able to use it at all.

After two weeks of having to listen to either staticy Arabic music on the radio or the one lone CD I had in my car, I received my iTouch. Oh it was just as glorious as I remember my brother's being. It was shiny and pretty and I couldn't wait to just look at all the games on it. Only to find, that in order to even turn it on, I had to plug it into iTunes. So I trudged through the rest of my day, staring at the clock and demanding that it hurry up and make it to five only to remember it was Sunday. Pilates class. D'oh, but then I discovered that Apple was joining with all the other manufacturers that apparently couldn't afford the 5 cents it cost to burn a CD. I was going to have to download iTunes, a 200M file on my less than optimal Libyan internet.

Once I managed to install iTunes, after accidentally downloading the 64 bit version and having to start over, I managed to get the iTouch running. I started loading music on it. I set up my mail to sync with the iTouch and my calendar and contacts to sync with Google calendar and contacts instead of the default Outlook.

Then I discovered the app store.

Oh yes, this is where my life took a startling change for the better. Now, don't get me wrong Libya is in the dark ages when it comes to wireless hotspots and whatnot. But, it was the possibility that intrigued me! The thought that maybe, just maybe, this slick pretty little device could finally be the all in one I had been dreaming of since I got my first PDA all those years ago.

I browsed; I talked; I listened. Now I'm from the dark ages of the internet, when freeware was really free and didn't have any sort of virii or spyware attached. Since that was my first introduction to software download, I have a big problem paying for tiny apps that I haven't had a chance to try out. Low and behold, apparently a lot app programs feel the same way. There are loads and loads of "lite" versions for most of the programs. They'll give you some of the functionality, or all the functionality but are ad-based.

Programs that I currently have installed almost all utilized the built in wifi in the iTouch. I installed the Facebook and Myspace programs that give me access to what's going on with those pages. Myspace, and my resistance and confusion by it, is a blog for another day. I installed the free version of Twitterific, a twitter client that allows me to send tweets anywhere I have wifi access.

I've also managed to find an ebook reader, ereader pro, that allows me to download books from fictionwise.com, ereader.com, and manybooks.net. Manybooks.net is a great substitute to Google Books, especially since a lot of their public domain books have all disappeared since their recent settlement with the Authors. eReader Pro downloads the books right to your device so you don't have to be dependent on Internet access, which is a must for me. Now if I could manage to figure out how to load my own content on the thing it'd be perfect.

Of course, all of that is good to go, but to be the go-to device in my own personal arsenal of tech it had to have one more thing. GAMES. Boy, howdy does it have games. There's just about every game you could think of to play on this thing. My favorites right now are Texas Hold'em and CroMag Rally. CroMag is fantastic but I have yet to figure out the pause button. Which makes it not the best for using whlie waiting for my officers to finish their paperwork so I can close the office up at night, as my officers tend to have questions and not understand that I've just got 2 more laps and then I can unlock a new level!

The best part of all, is that Apple has designed all of this without compromising the basic function of the device. Music! When you start music going it will continue to play in the background as you browse through your other apps. Double click the single button on the device and it will bring up the music menu no matter what you're also doing with the iTouch. So very cool and a great step up from PDAs that will stop if you close the program to go do something else.

There are a few things I'm quite annoyed with. The first being that they're no longer bundling the CD with the iTouch. Granted, their software updates on a regular basis and you don't want to be stuck with an old management system, but not everyone has high speed internet. There are still a bunch of people that have dial up and the 200 plus megabyte file is large enough that would it could take hours if not days to download. It really would be good they bundled the software, even if it was out of date, with the iTouch.

Another thing that peeved me was the fact that apparently all my fancy docks, I had an iPod before that died a horrible death in December of 2007, no longer charge the new iPods. This is simply total crap, in my not so humble opinion. It's not like the iTouch has a radically different plug. In fact, it looks like the same plug it always has been, just slightly smaller in width. I'm not about to spend hundreds of dollars on new speakers when I have perfectly good speakers that simply no longer charge my iTouch. For this Apple gets a big ol'Fail from me. The fact that the iTouch has to continually tell me that it won't charge on this device, like I didn't see that the first time, is also quite irritating. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn off those notifications and in fact they build up, like reminders on Outlook, that every time it turns on it felt the need to tell you that it can't charge on this device. Once would have been more than enough, kthxbye.

In conclusion, I still love my iTouch. It's a great little gadget even in the Great Jam where Internet is pretty much limited to houses. I can't wait to get back to the land of Internet Everywhere and see exactly what I can do with this little thing. Until then, I'll just be over here, jamming to my tunes.

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I'm a software geek. My bachelor's degree is in information systems and I'm currently working as a system administrator for the US Embassies around the world. I play with a lot of different computer systems. I like it. It's a hobby and it's fun. I poke and prod at it, see what makes it tick and why won't my iTunes play on Linux? You know what I found? I've found that the more you play, the more willing you are to be ruthless and fearless, the more control you have over your computer. The mystique and awe-inspiring terror simply starts melting away until you glance at the computer and go, "Well, d'uh, that would be why it wouldn't work."

Because here's the thing. Those Geek Squad guys? They want you to live in fear. They want you to think this box you've purchased is so mythical and magical that you can't touch it without a Ph.D in engineering. They want you to think that because then you'll go to them to install your wicked awesome WOW expansion pack instead of just doing it yourself. This is their bread and butter, so yeah, they want all of you intelligent women out there to quiver in fear before the magical box. Well, screw them! Let me tell you, I make it a point to stump those Geek Squad guys whenever I see them, so I can tell you a little secret:

They aren't any smarter than us. They're just less afraid of the box.

There are some basic things you want to remember before you start on your new path of a fearless computer geek girl. The first and most important thing to remember is to back up. Anything that's worth value to you, which could be anything from your bank statements to every episode to Star Trek:TGN, should be in more than one place. External harddrives are getting cheaper and cheaper these days and CDs and DVDs are getting to be pennies per disk. At the very least a monthly backup is totally worth it. Even if you don't start playing around with programs, there are virii, malware, all sorts of evil doers that will take advantage and make you reload. Not to mention that it's Microsoft's position that you should reload Windows XP every six months. Yeah, that's a rant for another time.

There are a lot of backup programs out there; Mac and Windows even comes with their own backup software installed into the OS. If you run Windows XP here's a great easy to use tutorial on how to use NTBackup here. Mac also comes with it's own backup service in OSX 10.05 and there's a good tutorial here If you want that external drive just for backup purposes Maxtor makes a one touch drive that will do all the work for you. But, if you want it to do all the work for you, then this really isn't the article for you.

So, now that we've backed up, the second step is to make sure you have a copy of all your essential programs. Nowadays most computers you buy off the shelf come with a CD that has an image of your computer from just before you bought it. Which, really won't help you as you've added WoW and Second Life and that really awesome cooking CD that has recipes from around the world. So drag out that image CD and make sure you have the CDs from all the programs you've installed. If you've downloaded them from the internet, well, make sure you add that folder to your backups or even better burn a CD of all those little programs. That way? You've got them all at your finger tips.

All right, we locked and loaded and are ready for battle! We've done our backups and we know where all our programs are. Do you know what time it is now? It's time to banish that fear. That's right, you heard me. Banish it forever. How do you do that you say? Well, for example, start playing. Computer not saving your document? Try the save as command. That email's just not sending, try cutting the size of it or check on your internet settings. Got a new fancy wireless router? Take a look at the directions, try it out! See if you can't get it up and running by yourself and remember, don't panic if things go wrong. Just ask yourself:

What's the worst that could happen?

Hardware is rarely affected by software. Yes, the software tells the hardware what to do. Yes, there are some horrendously bad virii out there that can and will destroy a system, but just reloading the operating system? Usually doesn't do a darn thing, and in fact, a lot of times will fix any sort of fiddly problems that you might be having with your hardware. Video game not responding like it used to? Try uninstalling it, reboot the computer and then reinstall it. Give it a clean fresh start and see what happens. Really pissed that you can't get that stupid cooking software to run without a bunch of piddly steps that totally aren't in the user's guide? Play around, don't be scare of pushing buttons. Just like you have to suffer to be beautiful and break a few eggs to make an omelette, sometimes you have to be willing to break things in order to understand and fix them.

Need a concrete example of someone learning to break things? A woman that's not a geek, but has managed to banish that fear? Let's talk about my mom. She's just your typical average user. Uses her machine for photos, finances and catching those episodes of Grey's and Lost that she missed. Yes, she's lived in a house full of geeks for most of her life but she, herself, would not be classified as a geek. But you know what? She's lost her fear of that magical box.

My mother installs her own programs, deletes her programs, updates her virus software and makes sure she backs up on a regular basis. Heck my mother has even installed her own RAM.

Why does she do this? Well, mainly because I'm usually at least one continent away from her and she doesn't want to wait until I might be home to play sudoku or spider solitare. She's done it out of necessity and because she knows that those Geek Squad guys are not the computer gods they would have you believe. Because she's seen how easy it can be to fix things on your own and the power that comes with it. She's broken that mystique and in doing so has gained her independence. Learning to install programs was the first step. She's now starting to research her computer, see what she needs and wants from it instead of simply allowing the sales clerks tell her what she needs.

So go ahead, play around, break it! Just remember, don't be afraid to fix it.

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