Category: Computers

For a company that touts their anti-spam stuff as much as Comcast does, they sure let a lot get through. I have a Comcast email account, which I’ve never given to anyone. Yet I get spam on it every day.

A few months ago, I found an email address on Comcast’s web site that would let me report spam in order to help prevent it. You basically forward the email as an attachment to them. So I figured why not. I was getting one or two a day, so it wasn’t that annoying, but I thought it might help.

Funny thing is, after I started forwarding these emails to Comcast, I started getting more spam. I’d get as many as 10 a day. I kind of thought that was a little odd (about as odd as getting email on an account I’d never publicized).

Then I stopped forwarding to their spam reporting email. My spam email dropped back to one or two a day. I don’t know what’s going on, but Comcast seems to be a party to the spamming; I don’t know how else to explain it.

I know they have the power to shun an email address; they’ve shunned mine (my regular email address) a couple of times, after I’ve forwarded messages to my wife. I had to go through there web page to tell them that I wasn’t a spammer. It’s a real hassle, especially when you consider that they’re not really stopping spammers.

What I should do is just stop checking that email address. Maybe when Comcast’s email server fills up with spam, they’ll really tackle the problem.

Apple has announced that they will no longer accept cash from people wanting to buy an iPhone. They’re also limiting the number of iPhones a person can buy to two.

While I agree that they have the right to limit the number of phones a customer can buy, I have to wonder if it’s legal for them to not accept cash for the phone?

On all the bills I have it says “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” This policy would seem to discriminate against people who don’t have or won’t get a credit card.

I used to like Apple, but they kind of got weird after the Lisa came out. My second computer was an Apple ][+ (which is still in the garage somewhere; I wonder if it still boots up?).

But over the years they’ve copped an attitude that seems so indicate that they look down on people who don’t have the decency to buy their products. And to some extent, a lot of Apple buyers have this same attitude.

Personally, I like being able to work on my own computer. If the power supply goes out, it’s nice to hop over to the local computer store and get a replacement. You can’t do that with Apple products because of their proprietary nature.

Microsoft gets a lot of heat for being a “monopoly”. Seems to me that Apple’s a monopoly too, but they haven’t been under government investigation for over 10 years.

I’ve had internet service through cable for quite a few years now. When it started out, it was actually called @HOME. Then Comcast bought them out.

I created an email account with the Comcast service, primarily so I could send myself stuff. But my main email address is at the harness.us domain. My wife’s main email address is at Comcast.net.

Twice, in the last year, I’ve sent her email from my harness.us account, only to have it bounced back saying that my email matched the profile of a spammer and that  they were blocking all email from harness.us. I’ve had to go to their silly form on their web site and beg to be reinstated.

Their purpose, supposedly, is to lessen or eliminate spam to their customers. OK, that’s more or less a noble cause.

But here’s my question: Why, Comcast, do I get about a dozen spam emails a week on my own Comcast.net email account? The one that I’ve never published, never given to anyone, and should be unknown to anyone? Seems like their spam filters return too many false positives and not enough true positives.

A few months ago, I got a new computer at work. Since I’m a computer tech, I had to install Windows and all the software on it myself.

Shortly after I got all the stuff installed, I was looking at the monitor when I saw the mouse cursor just take off on its own. I thought at first I might have been moving the mouse cord with my leg, but that wasn’t the case. The cursor would just start moving, generally to the up and to the left.

I never had time to research it and find a fix, but it finally got to the point that it was really annoying. So I did a Google search and found a few suggestions.

The fix actually turned out to be a default setting in the mouse control panel applet. Under the “Pointer Options” tab, there’s a section titled “Motion”. In that section is a check box labled “Enhance pointer precision”. When you install Windows, that’s checked by default. But for some mouse hardware (actually, just about every mouse I’ve seen), it causes the mouse pointer to start moving on its own.

The help text associated with that setting says it’s supposed to give you more control of the pointer. I guess that’s true; turning it off gave me complete control of the pointer.

A few days ago, I went to my main computer at home and saw that it had blue screened. I hit the reset key and figured it’d go ahead and boot up. But it didn’t.

It came up with an error I’ve seen (and fixed) before, which indicated that it couldn’t find the boot files. No big deal. You just boot from the CD, go into the Recovery console, and type fixboot and fixmbr. That’s worked every time.

Except this time.

The Windows logo would show up but then it’d crap out with an error. Some research on the net suggested that I do a chkdsk /r, which I did (at this point I was beginning to think I had a hard drive issue). Chkdsk got to about 35% and crapped out. I ran it again and it completed, showing that it had repaired a few sectors.

Time to bring out the big gun in drive repair I figure. So I booted my Spinrite disk and had it go over the drive. Sure enough, it found a few sectors that were bad, but it was able to recover them. Wish I’d run Spinrite before chkdsk.

Anyway, I restart the computer and it still comes up with the error. The error indicates that the registry is corrupted. I Google “repair corrupt registry” and come up with a Microsoft page. As I scanned the page it looks like exactly what I need.

I also saw this little deal called “Guided Help.” Here’s an excerpt from the paragraph about Guided Help:

Guided Help is available to help recover a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting. Guided Help can automatically perform the steps for you.

Great. That’ll save me some time. Then I read further:

Requirements to install and to use this Guided Help

• You must be logged on to Windows by using a computer administrator account to install and to use this Guided Help.
• You must be running Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Media Center Edition, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition to install and to use this Guided Help.

Huh? My computer won’t boot into Windows, and Microsoft helpfully has a “guided help” utility that will fix it, but I’ve got to be logged into Windows to use it?

Who checks these things at Microsoft?

I’ve yet to try the solution (either manually or using the “guided help”) as I write this. I’ll update this post (hopefully from the fixed computer) with the outcome.

UPDATE: Well, I tried Microsoft’s solution for this problem. No joy. I tried running the Guided Help version from the recovery console, and surprise! It wouldn’t run. Using the manual version, I was at least able to log into the computer. Now it’s time to move everything to the new computer I built a couple of months ago, and wipe this one (I guess it’s about time; it still has remnants of Windows 98 on it).