I Pledge

I pledge to hold this hope for me
and you and you and all of us,
a supple hope that
when trampled
will gently bend and breathe
before it slowly, invisibly
rises again to reach upward
(ever, always upward)
toward the blazing possiblity
of generosity toward one another,
compassionate openness one to the other,
liberty to love without asking questions
or requiring answers of each other,
readiness to give where there is need,
freedom to have and to hold
without needing to own and to grasp
each other, me and thee
and you and you
and all of us.

SplashKiller

I got it in my head I didn't want to see splash screens when I started up an application. No reason except contrariness. Wouldn't you know there's a handy little freeware utility that takes care of that very thing.

SplashKiller runs in the system tray and saves you from having to:
1. Find a 'no splash screen' option (if one exists) in the application.
2. Modify your registry to turn off a splash screen.
3. Hack the application itself to remove the splash screen.

If you'd rather the SplashKiller icon not show in the systray, it can do that, too.

Itch -> scratched.

Lifetime Guarantee

Forever does not belong here.

Permanent is a suspended state of
temporary. The gear has got to
circle, engage the next, the next, and click.
Time must move.

Lifetime guarantees do not hold up
forever and a day.

Comodo AntiVirus & Apache on XP

After I installed Comodo AntiVirus today, none of my localhost pages would happen. I typed the URL in the address bar, hit enter and watched the page try to load. Loading, loading, loading, nothing. Just blank page loading.

I restarted Apache and the same thing occurred, which is to say, nothing. Shut down Comodo AntiVirus. Still nothing.

Comodo AntiVirus and Apache 2.2 do not gee-haw. I read in this Comodo forum thread to add "Win32DisableAcceptEx" (without quotes) to httpd.conf and this worked. I now have Apache and Comodo AntiVirus both running and I can get to my localhost pages again.

Found Some Good Freeware

For a couple of days, AVG said it couldn't update because of this error message: @update_result_missing_ctf. "What's a ctf?" was my question and I asked Google to find out for me.

I never did find an explanation but in my wanderings, I came across a recommendation by a satisfied user of another free anti-virus app, Comodo AntiVirus. I uninstalled AVG and installed Comodo AntiVirus and so far so good.

Comodo has nice products, all free. I downloaded and installed i-Vault, a password manager, but uninstalled it when I found it doesn't work with Firefox. Not just Firefox 3 but any Firefox. I can't imagine what kind of super dooper software would inspire me to give up FF for IE. But a password manager is not it.

Comodo AnitSpam uses passcode authentication so I stuck with SpamBayes. I didn't want somebody to have to jump through hoops to send me an email message, just because I forgot to add them to my authencated senders list. And I would forget all the time, definitely.

I briefly considered the firewall software but decided against it. I did install BOCleane Anti Malware. I haven't explored all the settings, etc. but, as far as I can tell, it is sitting there doing a fine job.

I came across another app today that I was tickled to discover. IObit Smart Defrag has an "install it and forget it" feature that defrags your computer in the background. I set it to start up with windows and now I don't have to even think about defragging my computer anymore. IObit Smart Defrag has it covered.