F. Y. I.
On this page I hope to provide you with some helpful information: something that you might not have realized.
Topics:
In Memoriam
In November, 2001 a long time friend of mine passed away. Among other
things, she was an independent writer at a number of online publications. The
main one was Women's Village, where she was a Contributing Editor, and
they have had a page with a link to a memorial they wrote about her, as well
as links to the last articles she wrote for them. You can read about Deborah
Prussel and her articles at
Women's Village. You may also search the web for her name, she
is the only Deborah Prussel on it.
Orianna Fallaci, a famed Italian journalist, interviewer, and author, has
written a powerful essay that condemns Europe (and the world) for how they
are treating Israel. The English translation could be titled "I Find It
Shameful". It is well worth a read by everyone. The main point about her
writing this, for me, is that she was a liberal who favored the Palestinian
cause; but at least after 9/11, she has realized what the Islamic world is
attempting to do. I have found the unofficial English translation at many
web sites. Rather than repeat it here, I have provided a link to one
of these pages:
I Find It
Shameful. You can get a bio here of Orianna Fallaci.
Everyone in the nation can now get free credit reports once a year. There
are 3 ways that you can order them: online, phone, and mail. If you do it
online, your report is supplied online. You have to print it for a hard
copy. If you order by mail, you apparently need a form that you get online.
By phone, you request it from an automated service, no human, but you'll get
it in the mail.
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I Find It Shameful
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Free Credit Reports
The web site is at
Annual Credit
Report
The phone number is 1-877-322-8228.
By mail:
Annual Credit Report Request Service
P.O. Box 105281
Atlanta, GA 30348-5281
The web site provides you with the following information:
You are entitled to receive one free credit file disclosure every 12 months
from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies through the
Central Source. It is entirely your choice whether you order all three credit
file disclosures at the same time or order one now and others later.
The advantage of ordering all three at the same time is that you can
compare them. (However, you will not be eligible for another free credit
file disclosure from the Central Source for 12 months.) On the other hand,
the advantage of ordering one now and others later (for example,
one credit file disclosure every four months) is that you can keep
track of any changes or new information that may appear on your credit
file disclosure. Remember, you are entitled to receive one free credit
file disclosure through the Central Source every 12 months from each of
the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies – Equifax, Experian
and TransUnion – so if you order from only one company today you can
still order from the other two companies at a later date.
Do NOT use another site for your free credit report. If you read other sites
carefully, even though they might use the word 'free', they are NOT.
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Opt Out
These credit bureaus also sell your name to banks, etc. so thay can mail
you advertising. To have your name and address removed from all
mailing lists offered by the main consumer credit reporting agencies: Trans
Union, Experian, Equifax and Innovis, call 888-5OPTOUT (888-567-8688).
This is not about my privacy policies, as I do not gather any personal
information. I am sure you have been swamped with privacy statements from
every credit card and financial institution you deal with. Probably from
some that you didn't even remember.
They tell you how they share
everything they know about you, and how you can tell them to
stop sharing some of it. All the information has already been shared, so I
don't know how much good it does to opt-out. It will also take several
months for them to stop sharing, even if you ask them to opt-out.
But
from what can you opt-out? Not all are the same. Some don't even let you
opt out of anything. Most do not let you opt out of sharing data about you
with their affiliates. What they let you opt out of is the sharing of non-public information with unaffiliated third parties. Some even state that you can
opt-out of sharing information except for that which is permitted by law. If
not permitted by law, why are they sharing it? Some do let you opt out of
information sharing within their family of companies.
But they all
should be like The Vanguard Group. They only share with third parties
information needed to provide a service you have requested. Within the
company, information is shared to let you know of other services they offer.
Online Travel Arrangements
1. Almost anything that starts with or says 'ad' or 'ads' or
'advertising' or in some other way says 'ad'. This means that 'adweb'
is to be deleted, but 'adobe' is OK.
This isn't hard to do since programs that
let you delete cookies should display them alphabetically. If not, try
another one. Anti-spyware programs will find these if you use Internet
Explorer. There are many, many more, but these are the ones that I get.
If you want a program to see and delete the cookies in Internet Explorer,
then see my Tools page.
Quote
If the Arabs laid down their weapons today,
there would be no more violence.
If the Israelis laid down their weapons today,
there would be no more Israel.
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Twelve Tribes of Israel
The 12 tribes of Israel is really a puzzlement. It seems that most
knowledgeable people, including rabbis, probably are a little confused,
without knowing it. Well, the Bible does refer to the 12 tribes. The common
statement is that the 12 sons of Jacob are the 12 tribes. But lets look a
little deeper.
Jacob's 12 sons are Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,
Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Joseph, and Benjamin. But
there are three ways in which we can define what the 12 tribes are: the
sons, the families or clans of these sons, and the territories that each
family obtained. Now comes the confusion. What is the definition of the
tribes? All 3 are used.
Joseph's children Manasseh and Ephraim, each got a territory for their clan.
That makes 13 territories and 13 clans,
since Joseph's family became 2 families and territories.
Levi's family did not get a territory. That may bring it back to 12
(which is how some define it), except,
that the Levites were spread out over all the
territories as the priestly clan. Thus, even though there was no territory
for the Levi clan, they were still a clan.
In conclusion, we have 12
sons, 12 territories, and 13 clans. How many tribes? Are we going to say
the Levites are not a tribe? Actually, they were not included in the census
since because of their sacred duties.
One further note, the Dan tribe moved from their territory to an area much
further to the north. Maps show their original area, but they later lived
in a different area. Do we now have 13 territories (2 for Dan)?
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New Computer
July 25, 2006
Well, I've gone and done it. I've been a hold out. I've gotten along with
Windows 95a since 1996. It was a great system, a Gateway P-166 with 2.1 GB.
It still works fine. I've only had to replace the floppy drive and the
CD drive. I also had upgraded its RAM to the max 128KB. I'm told that when
I found software to be able to burn CD (music and data) on a W95a system,
that was not common. There seems to be only one type of printer left that
handles a parallel port.
Yeah, I've caved in. I bought an upgraded Dell E510: 1 GB RAM, 250 GB disk.
I called one night and it was shipped by noon the next day. I then
ordered DSL. We'll see how this goes.
Going to DSL, I'm also switching ISPs. My old ISP charges too much for DSL,
and they just dropped their 800 number. All those newsletters and sites I'm
registered at, where I'll have to change my e-mail address. I have no idea
who they all are. Then, of course, is notifying those people who e-mail me.
At least I'll have a few weeks left on my last quarterly payment at my
old ISP. Plus, I'll have to move this website, and set up automatic
forwarding for the remainder of my time. Hopefully, Google will find me
soon. And I try to spend very little time at the computer. That's what
will make it even harder.
Why have I waited so long, skipping W98 and all those years of XP? If it
ain't broke, why fix it. I always found ways around things to do what I
want. That in itself is a challenge. I don't like all these constant
changes forcing people to keep buying, so I just refuse to go along with it.
I don't want to start over so often learning a new system; it slows down
my productivity. And then, viruses go after XP, not W95.
Why have I finally given in, when I may have even a few more years on my
old computer? First, I want to have a good computer to take my data and
programs from, even though I have backup. I prefer being able to use a
proven and relatively stable XP rather than getting caught with an unproven
and unstable Vista. Some things might interest me that I can't do on my
W95 over dial-up, so I might as well take advantage of them. I've listened
to podcasts, but it's a tough thing to do over dial-up. Some websites that
I make strong use of are changing in ways that I might be locked out
without current software. I've been able to handle it so far, but maybe
not soon. I have liked the challenge to show I can still do it on W95.
July 26, 2006
I ordered DSL from Verizon. The information on their website tells you that
you need DSL filters on your phone lines that are included in a kit they
send, and they show how to install them. It says that you need them for wall
mount phones also, but that you have to purchase them at your local computer
store. Elsewhere, Verizon says that you can't go out and buy the DSL
filters, they won't be compatible, use theirs. So, I call a Verizon DSL rep,
who says she will send me the wall mount filter. This is great. A few
minutes later, less than 24 hours after I placed my order, the installation
kit arrives. It includes the wall mount filter. I guess they have to update
their website. I understand they used to require you to get it on your own.
I called to cancel the sending of the new filter, 20 minutes after the order
was placed, and was told it was too late to stop the order. Boy, are they
fast, too.
If you get DSL and you have a meter that is read over your phone lines, you
need to take care of that. It is mentioned in the details on the Verizon
site. The Verizon rep I spoke to knew nothing about it. I called my water
utility, who reads the meters by phone. They said they'd send someone to
replace the equipment they use. That will be done tomorrow. Fast.
July 27, 2006
The PC arrived today, via UPS. It took about 40 minutes to make room, slowly
unpack, and put it together. It took about 20 more minutes to initialize
the system, deleting some of the crap that I don't want (AOL and Trial
programs), initialize the internet interface, and get online. I found that
even though the system did not include security software, they had put
McAfee on the system anyway. I guess I can use it until I get up-to-date
with the free security programs that I use. I got 15 months, I guess, if
McAfee is not too annoying.
Now comes the long process of installing the software I will be using from
my old PC, going through the new software, and seeing how new versions of
programs handle the data files from old versions, considering that the old
versions are 10 years old.
A week later I got my notice that Verizon has my DSL line ready. First
thing I notice is that the speed of my 56Kbps dial-up connection is up to
50Kbps. Thus, preparing my line for DSL has also improved it. Anyway, it
was not time to connect the DSL modem and run the installation CD. Running
the installation CD did not go well. I got script errors (on a flash.Play
statement), and eventually the instructions stopped on an incomplete screen.
This was still in the initial instructions to install the DSL filters. What
I needed was the ending part, to make system changes, install any software
and program the modem. I saw that if I said I already had DSL, any early
question, then the installation procedure would skip to the final part,
which is what I wanted, almost. I still would have to have an account
setup. It seemed the only way to set up the account was with the CD. I
took the CD to another PC (even without DSL on it), and stepped through it
until I set up the account. Then I went back to my PC, could enter my
account ID and password, and I was on my way. Now it worked smoothly.
As a backup, I had chatted with a Verizon rep online, who gave me the manual
steps to program my DSL modem, just in case the CD did not work. I didn't
need them, but it was good to have.
Well, I've had my system now for almost a year. Most things went pretty
smooth after the initial traumas. Six months later I had a problem with my
mouse. It would double click when I only single clicked. I contacted Dell
and they sent me a new mouse. Then, with 3 weeks left on my one year
warranty, it seemed that the system died. I had turned the power off, and a
little later when I turned it on, all I got was the power light blinking. I
contacted Dell, and they had me disconnect all the peripherals and reboot.
The system came to life. After a number of tests that I had made, turning
the power off for 15 minutes or more, and removing or adding USB cables, I
discovered that it was my speakers. These speakers, Dell A225, use the USB
port for power. Apparently, in an unusual situation, they were drawing too
much power. This put the PC into standby rather than coming up. If there
speakers were connected with only the mouse and keyboard, it still went into
standby, but pushing the power button again would bring it up. With more
USB devices attached, it stayed in standby. After Dell verified my claims
by taking me through various tests over the phone, they said they'd send me
new speakers. It only took about 30 minutes on the first call, and an hour
on the second call. There were only seconds of wait time before a
technician answered. I had e-mailed them the results of my tests between
calls so that they would know my conclusion and how I came to it.
A little bit about the method I used to determine it was the speakers. The
speakers were the main culprit because I was told they draw the most power of
the devices attached: mouse, keyboard, printer, and floppy drive. The
determining tests for me were that I connected the mouse and keyboard and the
system came up. I added the speakers, and it caused a partial problem: it
went into standby (power light blinking green), but came up when I pushed
power button again. I then tried all devices except speakers and it came up.
Then, added the speakers, and it would not come up (just stayed in standby).
The new speakers arrived in 2 days, but unfortunately, they did not change
anything. It's a minor problem, since I rarely shut down the system. And if
I do, all I have to do is disconnect the cable, which I now connect in
the front of PC, before turning the power back on.
Well, things soon deteriorated further. A few days later it took 10 to 15
seconds of holding the power button to start the PC. Otherwise the button
would just blink amber. This means there is power, but power is not on.
Dell had me disconnecting internal cables and the CMOS battery to see what
happens in order to determine what part is not working properly: power
button, power supply, or motherboard. No conclusion, so they will send a
technician to install all 3 new parts. Ten days left on my warranty. Three
days later the technician called early in morning and scheduled a
time for later in the day. He arrived as scheduled, and it took 45 minutes.
No conclusion as to which part, but we know that power supplies used are not
as good as they used to be, even though you can buy a better one. The
annoyances with this is that the parts are not new, but refurbished, and
there is no additional warranty on the parts.
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New New Disk Drive
Feb 27, 2010
My disk drive has been clicking for awhile. This generally means that the
disk is going bad. It clicks when it cannot find what it is looking for.
The worst time was on power up. It would click like crazy and be a very
slow startup. I'd have to restart the system for it to come up properly.
I finally got a new disk drive. I decided on a slightly larger Seagate.
With Seagate I also can use their downloadable Disk Wizard, which is Acronis
True Image.
Instructions say you need to screw the disk in, but with my Dell that is not
the case. It has a bracket that is removed from the slot. The disk drive
is inserted in the bracket, and the bracket is slid back into place. An
extension of the power cable exists for the second drive. I only needed to
obtain a S.A.T.A. cable. A 19" cable worked. The other end is plugged in
to the connector next to the main drive. Main and secondary are determined
by which connector is used.
Once connected, I closed the case and restarted the system. The drive was
not recognized. I restarted and entered Setup (BIOS/CMOS) and found that I
had to enable the second drive. After a restart, the system said it
recongnized new hardware, but no new drive letter appeared. Using the Disc
Wizard (which only works if it finds a Seagate drive), I added a drive,
specifying a single partition. The new disc drive now had a drive letter
assigned. I then used the Disc Wizard to clone my main disc drive to the new
one. It said there would be 5 steps, but it only carried out the first 2.
The steps were to clean the disc of data, copy a FAT16 area (the System
Volume Information), the NTFS partition (my main drive files), another FAT,
and the MBR (master boot record). It took about a minute, said it was done,
and all I had was The System Volume Information. The way the copy is done,
is that it restarts the system and brings up just the Wizard to do the copy.
When it is done, it shuts down the system so you can reconfigure your
cables, if you want to.
I researched on the internet, and found that Acronis said that if I have a
USB external drive connected, the copy will not work. I had to disconnect
my USB external backup drive. Lo and Behold, a new attempt at using the
Disc Wizard worked completely. It took less than an hour to do the actual
cloning. I switched the cable connections between the 2 drives so that my
new disc drive would be the primary and brought up my system. YAY!!! I've
got my complete system now on my new disc drive.
When I disconnected my old drive and brought the system up, it would not
come up. It said my second drive (the original one) was missing. I went
back into Setup and disabled Drive 1 (drive 0 is the main drive) and
restarted. So remember to do that too.
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Cookies
Cookies have a bad reputation. But, mostly, they are good for you. I'm
talking about the cookies on your PC. Browsers have options to challenge
every cookie. I can't imagine anyone using that, except to see how
frequently cookies arrive. To deny all cookies, will kill your ability
to surf, so that's crazy too. Some people wipe out their cookies regularly,
and maybe saving a few of them. It's too much to come up with a list, and
maintain it, of all the cookies I'd keep. Since many cookies are desirable,
and most are meaningless, I even copy them to new versions of my browser, or
to a new system.
But, there are cookies you don't want to keep around.
These are third party cookies. That is, cookies that don't deal directly
with the site you are at, but are from sites that they use; mostly for
advertising purposes. I had set Opera, my browser, to only accept third
party cookies only if they are set to the server itself. Thus, I wouldn't
have cookies on my system that can track me across websites. But, more and
more sites use third party software, that save the cookies under their own
server, in order to let you log onto the site. They are also used by sites,
like Yahoo, when you want to control any of your settings. Thus, it becomes
desirable to accept all cookies. So I go through, occasionally, and delete
some cookies. Which ones? Here is my list:
2. Almost anything that includes the word 'click', like 'fastclick' and
'doubleclick'.
3. Anything that has an IP address in its name. That is,
numbers, rather than just a site name. The IP address can be the whole name,
or added to the name of the site it services. In either case, get rid of
it. If they use an IP address, they are hiding recognition.
4. 2o7 (used with many common sites)
5. abmr
6. apmebf
7. atdmt
8. atwola
9. bfast
10. bravenet
11. casalemedia
12. chtah
13. edge.ru4
14. hitbox
15. revsci
16, scorecardresearch
17. tacoda
18. trafficmp
19. tribalfusion
20. voicefive
21. zedo
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Response
I received one e-mail from a visitor to my site who said:
'If you were really interested in eradicating terrorism, you would remove the Israeli flag from your website.
Many of us find it offensive flying alongside of the American flag. And , in my opinion, Israelis are the major terrorists
in the world'
Of course he wrote it anonymously, via an anonymous e-mail address,
so that I could not answer directly. So I respond here, coward. If
you love the United States, and are against terrorism, how can you
favor what the Palestinians do in response to being offered their own
state? Palestinians who want peace are afraid of speaking because
they will be killed by the terroristic Palestinians. And of course
the same goes many times over for Islamists around the world. Even
in the US, they want it to be under Sharia rule. As to Israel being
terrorists, you are completely blind as to what is going on. You are
the type who would believe that the US government was behind 9/11 and
not some Muslims. Israel is no different than the US, except that it
lives in the middle of an Arab world that denies them the right to
exist. Most of these Arab countries don't allow any other religion
to be practiced in their countries and don't want them in the Middle
East. Israel does not go around attacking other countries, they only
try to stop others from attacking them. For you, and your ilk,
Israel either needs to disappear or they need to let others kill
them. Israel was attacked by the Arabs before 1967 because they
exist in the Middle East. It is not because of their controlling
land they won from Jordan and Syria in 1967. They took no land from
the Palestinians, because the Palestinians did not control the land.
They may have lived on the land, but it was never theirs.
And while I am here, let me respond to this talk of peace talks. How
can Israel have peace talks with the Palestinians. The
majority of Palestinians don't want peace with Israel. They teach
their children to kill Jewish Israelis. They cheer when Jewish
Israelis are killed. They want to control the entire area and kill
or expel the Jews. There are no Palestinian leaders who want peace.
Peace talks is only one means in their battle to take the land from
the Jews. They were given Gaza, and they use it as a means to
attack Israel, rather than try to make a country. They make up history
and killings by the Jews to try to get the world on their side. Look
at the Jenin hoax, look at the Al Dura hoax. I'm sure there are some
good Palestinians, some who want peace, some who are fed up with their
leadership, but they are a small minority, and they do not lead the
people. All the westerners who back peace talks are blind to the
real situation. They ignore it, hoping that an agreement would
change the Palestinian desire, rather than increase their hope to
destroy Israel.
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Security Data Breaches
Security breaches are constantly occurring. Companies, schools,
and governments are so lax in securing our data. A lot happens
because they keep data on laptops, which get stolen. Anything secure
should never be put on a laptop by such entities.
This website provides a chronology of all these
data breaches. It's scary to know how much this
happens.
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Publisher Could Not Be Verified
After IE 7 was installed on my computer I started receiving a warning
'Publisher Could Not Be Verified' when trying to run a program that was on
another system on a local network - intranet. I did some research on the
internet and came up with several ways that were supposed to fix the
problem, but did not.
One was to use a Windows supplied program gpedit.msc. This is not on my PC,
which runs Windows XP SP2. This might work, but I could
not use it. I believe it might be for XP Pro, not XP Home.
Another method was in Internet Explorer go to Tools - Internet Options -
Security - Local Intranet zone. Then click the sites button and then
Advanced. Add the name of the server where the application is located,
something like \\server. I tried this, but it did not work, even though I
must admit, I may have entered the wrong name or it may have been on the
wrong computer.
Another popular answer was in Internet Explorer to go to Tools -
Internet Options - Advanced. Scroll down to Browsing and to have 'Disable
Script Debugging' checked and 'Display a script notification about every
script error' unchecked. Everyone who got this answer already had the
settings this way - it's the default. Same for me.
Solution I Found: In Internet Explorer go to Tools - Internet Options
- Security - Local Intranet zone. Then click the sites button. You will
find 'Automatically detect intranet network' checked. Uncheck it.
You may wonder why it involves Internet Explorer if you don't use it. A
number of programs, etc. use software associated with Internet Explorer to
handle security.
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TCP Receive Window
When watching You Tube, some videos play fine while others have many pauses,
especially during the early part of the video. The problem has nothing to
do with my download speed, even though it might only be relevant to DSL.
Some places on the internet you'll find advice like using the SpeedBit
Video Accelerator, or to use programs like CableNut or TCP Optimizer to
optimize TCP.
I used Ethereal (Wireshark) to study what is happening. This program
provides a trace of the internet communications. In this communication, my
PC is called the 'client', and I get the video from a 'server'. The client
receives frames and acknowledges them, allowing more frames to be sent to it.
There are sequence numbers within the frames. Basically I'd receeive 2 frames
and then acknowledge them both. But occasionally there'd be some missing
frames, as seen by skipped sequence numbers. In an acknowledge, the client
would also inform the server that these frames are missing. The server would
then go back and retransmit the missing frames. The acknowledge continues
to indicate the missing frames until all of them are finally
received.
Why would there be missing frames? This cannot be known.
It's definitely not the fault of the client. It could be the server or any
node in between the server and the client.
The missing frames are
not the problem, directly, because they are discovered quickly, and they are
retransmitted by the server. The problem is that the server slows down its
transmissions when sending retransmissions. It does not send them as
frequently. This causes the pauses in the video. It slows down because it
assumes the traffic is heavy and thus they get lost. If every server is
slowing down retransmissions, I guess the nodes will be able to keep up with
the less traffic and not drop frames.
My goal is to stop the server
from sending these frames that get lost, so that it won't have to send the
less frequent retransmissions. Windows XP default setting for TCP does not
set the Receive Window. This window is used by the client to tell the server
how many bytes it should send without being acknowledged. In DSL, which uses
PPPoE, the maximum frame is 1500 bytes, which comes to 1492 bytes of TCP (the
MTU). I determined from the Ethereal trace that each frame did have 1492
bytes and there were generally 2 frames sent by the server before the client
(my PC) sent an acknowledgment. It also had a Receive Window of 65535. I
decided to set the Receive Window to 3000 (for 2 frames).
I used TCP Optimizer
to set the Receive Window. Under General Settings, near the bottom are 3 option.
Choose 'Custom Settings'. This will allow you to change certain settings
while using your current settings for everything else. I changed 'TCP
Receive Window' to 3000. I also checked on PPPoE, even though that probably
wasn't necessary. Then I clicked 'Apply Changes' and restart the system
(needed to let the changes be used). Using TCP Optimizer lets the program
set all the settings in the registry that are needed for the Receive Window
change. The resultant Ethereal trace showed the Receive Window was
greater than 3000, so I guess it is adjusted to a more usable value.
I didn't use 'Optimal Settings' in TCP Optimizer because it makes changes
that are unneeded,
and might be bad for my system. I tried it, and it sets a huge Receive Window,
even larger than the default.
By the way, my change made a world of difference!!
UPDATE: Well, at some point I found things slowed down again with You Tube.
I determined that the server only prepared enough blocks to send based
on my receive window. Thus, every other set of 2 frames, the server
took longer to send the next frames because they weren't ready to be
sent. Since I no longer had errors on the line, causing
retransmissions, this delay by the server was significant. So I
restored the settings back to the default settings and now things
worked well again. Crazy!!
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Google Voice Problem
At the end of August 2010, Google made their phone chat free to any phone in
the US. I started using it. Then I obtained a Google Voice phone number so
that if someone saw the number on their Caller ID, it would be me and not
Google in California. I set up my home phone as the forwarding number so
that if they called back the number, it would be forwarded to my home phone.
Prior to setting up a forwarding number, I was able to call my home
phone from Google Voice. But once it became my forwarding number, calling
my home phone from Google Voice would never ring the phone and Google Voice
showed me an error code. And apparently this caused my home phone to be busy
to anyone calling it. I could make phone calls from my home phone, but it
was always busy. In other words, Google had my home phone number tied up.
I resolved it by calling my Google Voice phone number. Google
forwarded the call to my home phone and it rang. After hanging up that call,
Google released my home phone and now it could be called directly again.
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Turbo Tax Problems
I did my taxes in 2011 with both TaxAct Deluxe and TurboTax Deluxe. Here
are some problems with TurboTax besides it being so slow to load and being
so large.
1. The date problem. This may be a problem with just Windows XP.
TurboTax only accepts the date in the mm/dd/yyyy format. But, even though
you enter the date in that format it still rejects it. This did not occur in
previous years. You need to change the Windows setting for your date
format. Go to the Regional and Language options in the Control Panel.
Click on Customize in the Regional Options tab. On the Date tab change the
'short date format'.
2. If you download financial data and you have US obligations for some
mutual fund dividends or municipal bond fund dividends, it is a good chance
that your financial institution has not separated these funds into 2 parts.
The parts of the investments may be exempt for your state taxes and they
have to be reported properly to get the state taxes right. So don't just
accept the download, you have to adjust it. This may also apply to a fund
sale that has short-term and long-term parts. This would apply to TaxAct
also if you used their support for financial download, but that is handled
differently, and I didn't use it.
3. TurboTax uses some 'unknown' worksheet for state tax refunds. This
worksheet is not in the 1040 instructions and it allocates only part of your
refund towards income and deductions. The worksheet has a box that allows
you to tell TurboTax not to use it. Using the worksheet will cost you
money.
4. When you enter your medical expenses for federal taxes, it does not save
it for the state taxes. It might not be deductible for your federal taxes,
but it might be deductible for your state. You have to re-enter it for the
state. These tax programs are not supposed to work that way. You should
only have to enter it once.
5. My state has 3 small wage taxes besides for the state income tax. One
was new last year, but had to be treated as an 'other tax' then. So this is
the first year it is known by the tax programs. TurboTax has 3 columns for
entering these taxes: abbreviation, amount, and full name (or classification
as TurboTax calls it). I entered the new tax in columns 1 and 2, and the
3rd column I left blank. TurboTax did not include that tax in deductions.
I discovered that because its total deductions were different from TaxAct.
The TurboTax error check did show it was not included. When I went back to
that entry I found the 3rd column now said 'not classified'. I also found
that the 3rd column had a drop down menu of classifications to choose from.
After correcting that, I later found that the classifications for the first 2
taxes disappeared. After entering them again, they stayed. They were
originally there due to importing last year's taxes.
6. This disappearance of something entered is another plague I found in
TurboTax. When I entered a investment for dividends, later I found that
it disappeared. After re-entering it, it stayed. This happened a lot last
year, but only a little this year, maybe because most of the investments were
imported from last year.
In conclusion, TurboTax had a number of problems, all correctable, so be
careful if you use it. I didn't have any with TaxAct. In the reviews I've
read TaxAct is finally getting rated highly, and TurboTax now includes
its files as ones it will import from last year. but I think that reviewers
of TurboTax should be more rigorous in their use of TurboTax so that they
can find and report these problems. None I saw even reported the date
problem, just users.
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Anti-Virus Problems
I had used Avast Free Anti-Virus for many years. A couple of times a new
update caused serious problems, but I overcame them. The last time a new
update did this I decided not to chase it and try another AV. AVG would not
load because I used Online Armor as my firewall. It wanted me to remove
Online Armor first. Avira AntiVir would not install with XP SP2. It
required SP3 with XP. Same with Microsoft Security Essentials. I don't
want an Anti-Virus that works in the cloud, and that's Panda. Besides, even
though it is supposed to provide good security, I read that it slows down
your system.
So I tried Comodo. I disabled all the features I did
not want. I tried it for several weeks, even putting up with the annoyance
in how it would continue to find certain files as viruses and not remember
them when I put them in the exclusion list. But it slowed down my
night-time backups so that a full image backup would still be running in
the morning.
So I gave PC Tools a try. After allowing it to do the
quick and full scan, I got rid of doing those scans. The quick scan would
find cookies, and just cookies, and that was annoying. The full scan took
too long and would find files as viruses that were OK. My system is clean,
and scans are unnecessary as long as the AV runs real-time. After an update
I found that it interfered with the Opera browser accessing e-mail. Requests
for more mail stopped. I'd disable PC Tools for 15 minutes whenever I
requested e-mail. Then, a new update of PC Tools caused everything to run
excruciatingly slow. Good-bye PC Tools.
Now What!!??
I found a free anti-virus called FortiClient. It's supposed to be pretty
good and light on slowing down the system. When I tried to start its
real-time protection it said that Windows Security had an active real-time
anti-virus program already. Windows Security didn't show that, but
FortiClient would not start its real-time protection. I stopped the Windows
Management Instrumentation (WMI) service, deleted the WBEM\Repository folder
in Windows\System32, and then re-started WMI. Then I was able to start
FortiClient real-time protection. I then had to restart my PC. After
restart, the Repository folder was rebuilt, and Windows Security indicated
that FortiClient was my real-time anti-virus program. FortiClient didn't
like four exe files, so I added them to its exclusion list, and then it
didn't squawk anymore.
Well, after all that work to get
FortiClient to have real-time protection I had to disable it. It caused a
long delay in starting my e-mail client. I guess it was scanning all the
old e-mails, even though it did not show heavy CPU usage.
About
deleting the Repository folder: there's a side effect. WMI provides the
time since startup, and that is lost. You can still get it with a routine
from Microsoft called uptime.exe.
I found that to fix WMI run these 2 commands:
WINMGMT.EXE /CLEARADAP
WINMGMT.EXE /RESYNCPERF
My next step was to upgrade to XP SP3. First, I did it at work, where I had
the support of our company guru. It was a simple procedure, involving just
one trick. The install operation nicely said what it was doing. But its
final stage, continued for close to 2 hours with a lot of disk action. My
guru felt this was unnecessary and too long. The update involved 3
processes. I killed them in the order in which they were started and then
restarted the system. Lots of new security updates among others were then
done. After a couple of days of no problems I then did the update at home.
That allowed me to install Avira as my anti-virus. It found 5 false
positives which I added to its 2 exclusion lists. The only annoying thing
after that was its occasional ads to upgrade. These usually occur overnight,
so its no problem: I have to close my backup log in the morning, so the ad is
just another thing to close.
After a couple of months with Avira, I noticed that Avira had stopped
updating its virus files 2 weeks before. It continued to get errors whenever
and whatever I tried. Well, Avast had been through a couple of updates, and
was now on version 8. I removed Avira and went back to Avast. It's now 8
months since I removed Avast. The only problem was that after the install it
wouldn't register nor start working. It did not indicate the system needed a
restart, but it did. And whether it needed it or not, before the restart, I
played with the WMI service as I described earlier. After the system restart
all was well.
A half-year after I returned to Avast my backups would no longer complete.
I'd get a timeout. There seemed to be two problems. One was that my
external disk drive seemed to have a stiction problem, so I replaced it. The
new one had the same problem, but it was not stiction. With Avast disabled,
it worked fine. There was a new Avast version out, so I updated. My system
would not restart after the update. I went into Safe Mode and wiped out
Avast. That was its last chance. Without it, programs start so much faster.
While deciding on my next anti-virus, I'm running Hazard Shield in real-time.
Eventually I retried a newer version of Avast and have been using it ever
since.
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Google Chrome
In 2015, Google Chrome started having problems when the browser is opened. It
took a long time before it would open the first tab(s) with whatever web
page(s) was(were) supposed to be there. I tried clearing history and cache
and had hardware accelerated disabled. I disabled all plugins. I had no
extensions. It still had same problem. Usually it would display the page
unresponsive pop-up, asking if it should wait for or kill the pages.
Since Chrome had recently been updated, I thought I'd find an older
version and install it. Every website that lists older versions now links to
Google for the download. Thus you can only download the current version.
Well, I have 8 weeks of backup images. I extracted the Chrome folders in
Program Files and for the profile of the 2 previous versions. The most recent
previous version (the same high level version number as the current version)
had the same problem. The older version would not open any web page other
than the Google home page (without the delay problem). When I tried a search
and clicked on a link, it would open that page and then jump back to the
Google page. I'd say, Google was preventing me from using an older version.
I returned to the current version. I found out how to disable the
page unresponsive pop-up. Add -disable-hang-monitor after the call to start
chrome by right-clicking chrome and selecting properties. But I still have a
long wait for the initial web page to open, even if it is just the Google
page. It seems to be that Google is not requesting the page for a long time.
This happens even if I disable my anti-virus, and it only happens with
the Chrome browser, no other browsers.
Well, thanks to
zenverse.net, that pointed out that the DNS Pre-Fetching Feature is the
actual cause. I unchecked "Predict network actions to improve page load
performance" under Chrome's Privacy settings and it seems to work normally
again. And then I found an explanation.
Remote Desktop Wallpaper
I started finding that my PC would occasionally lose its wallpaper (desktop
background). Finally I realized this happened whenever I logged into the
system remotely. It didn't used to happen with LogMeIn, but now I use
RemotePC. I like RemotePC much better and there's more you can do with it,
but it kills the wallpaper. I believe this happens with many Remote Desktop
programs. I can easily restore it, even remotely, but it is annoying. I
finally found how to fix it. Note that I am still using Windows XP, but it
may be similar with the newer Windows OS.
On the remote system, the one losing the wallpaper, on your program list, go
to Accessories, and find Remote Desktop Connection. On mine, it is the bottom
of the list. Click on it and when the program starts, click on the Options
button. Then click on the Experience tab. At the top of a list of items under
"Allow the following" is Desktop background. It is probably unchecked. Check
it. Then click on the General tab. Under Connection settings, click on the
Save button. Then you can click the 'X' on top right corner to close the
program. When you access this PC remotely the wallpaper should no longer
disappear.
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