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Everything is not always as it seems

I received this seemingly lovely email from Anne today.The whole story at below, but essentially it’s a lovely heart-warming story about a dog who saved close to 1,000 lives leading them to safety from one of the Towers on 9/11.

When I read it I had a tear in my eye.

Then I got to thinking… Really?

Why haven’t I heard about this? Then of course I realised… there was no story, at least that I know of.

They said there was a medal, so I was going to check that, then I thought “no!”   Save time – go straight to Hoax Slayer and see if it is a true email. Here is the site:  www.hoax-slayer.com 

I clicked on the true emails link first, hoping it was a wonderful true story. Scanned down the list – no mention of Daisy. So, with heavier fingers, typed in Daisy 9/11 and clicked Search – sure enough – the results showed – a hoax emai..

Here is the link to the page where Brett explains about this email. http://www.hoax-slayer.com/daisy-dog-wtc.shtml

I simply don’t understand these people. Somehow they derive some perverse pleasure from knowing people will send these emails on to someone, and all these emails help to clog up cyberspace. What is in it for them???? Except for the fact that they know they’re mischievous… too much time on their hands, I suspect.

As I’ve often said:  why can’t they use their genius for good? If they spent the same amount of time doing something worthwhile, or something good for someone else, we’d all be a lot better off.

So, if a message seems a little suspect, or if you’d simply like to verify something is true before you hit the Forward button, please visit one of these sites. www.hoax-slayer.com   www.snopes.com   or  http://urbanlegends.about.com/ 

 

BELOW IS WHAT THE EMAIL LOOKS LIKE:

All the best,

Viv

 

HOAX EMAIL – Daisy

 

James Crane worked on the 101st floor of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center .. He is blind so he has a golden retriever named Daisy.

After the plane hit 20 stories below, James knew that he was doomed, so he let Daisy go, out of an act of love. She darted away into the darkened hallway.

Choking on the fumes of the jet fuel and the smoke James was just waiting to die. About 30 minutes later, Daisy comes back along with James’ boss, who Daisy just happened to pick up on floor 112.

On her first run of the building, she leads James, James’ boss, and about 300 more people out of the doomed building.
But she wasn’t through yet, she knew there were others who were trapped. So, highly against James’ wishes she ran back in the building.

On her second run, she saved 392 lives. Again she went back in. During this run, the building collapses. James hears about this and falls on his knees into tears.
Against all known odds, Daisy makes it out alive, but this time she is carried by a firefighter. “She led us right to the people, before she got injured” the fireman explained.

Her final run saved another 273 lives. She suffered acute smoke inhalation, severe burns on all four paws, and a broken leg, but she saved 967 lives. Daisy is the first civilian Canine to win the Medal of Honor of New York City.

I hope you enjoyed this story. As a animal lover I thought it was terrific.

 

As we remember 9/11, here is a remembrance that will touch your heart.

 

 

Have you had days when numbers seem to feature more frequently than usual?

For instance – you glance at a clock  -  it says:   11:11

You look down at the odometer  -  it is just about to tick over a nice round number – for instance mine
is on 19,985 – so soon it will be ticking over the 20,000 k mark.

I’ve also seen on there 12321 and 14441, some numbers are just nice to look at.

What about the numbers that occur in the dates of this year?

Did you know:

 

This year, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens
once every 823 years.

This year we’re going to experience four unusual dates.

1/1/11, 11/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/11/11 and that’s not all…

Take the last two digits of the year in which you were born – now add
the age you will be this year,

The results will be 111 for everyone in whole world. This is the year of
the Money!!!

Personally my current age is the same number as the house where I grew up.

Oh and what do you know!?… yesterday, my odometer ticked over 20,000:

 

Now all this number talk isn’t really important. I just wanted to remind you that numbers are integrated into our lives  - and that includes our computers!!! All the information comes to us courtesy of ones and zeros. And if a one or zero isn’t where it’s supposed to be, well then things go wrong.

So next time something doesn’t work quite right with your computer – blame a number! Remember, it’s not always you .

Cheers for now!

Viv

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the newsletter for July.

We have:

• WOW News
• Online Shopping Vouchers
• and our bit of humour – How To Start A Fight

You will just need to click on the link below, and the newsletter will display on your screen.

Enjoy!

 

Newsletter 2011 July.pub

This is great – the Muppets together with the Beastie Boys!

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Well it’s almost here.

There will be the usual hype around the release of the new iPad.

But boy, am I excited.

It will have the long awaited cameras in it – front and rear-facing.

And this is what I’ve been waiting five years for…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video conferencing, made easy and comfortable. The possibilities for The Web on Wheels, are truly amazing. We will finally be able to roll out the services we’ve been getting ready for years.

Bringing the Internet to You! We usually come with our laptop, which is great – and it’s a bigger screen, than the iPad.

But with the iPad being such a beautiful piece of equipment, it feels SOOO GOOD to hold, and use – the improvement with the new model with make it even more impressive.

The iPad 2 will be a full 33% thinner than the original model – it’s hard to believe they can fit more features into a smaller unit. Fast graphics mean that what we see on the screen will be even more beautiful – and imagine seeing your loved on one this gorgeous screen – cradling that person – it’s almost like being there!

So I for one – well one million – can’t wait for the release date here in Australia – March 25.

MIKE TO THE RESCUE

This last week, has brought me close to throwing my office computer out of the window. (on top of yours, Anne J ) Well, that was until Mike from MJR came to the rescue. You see since my laptop was disposed of because a part couldn’t be sourced to repair it, I have been using my office computer, which I share with my husband.

Somehow we got some malware on it, (a nasty little bug) and it created havoc for us. I spent a total of about 6 hours trying to fix it, but the problem didn’t quite resolve 100% – until Mike gave me the clue – 90 seconds later, problem fixed! If you want to read the whole sorry saga, please click here:

Apparently, for several weeks John had noticed there was an update message from a program called ‘Internet Security Suite’. He finally mentioned it to me, and I immediately got suspicious. The message he was seeing didn’t look quite right, the alerts that he was seeing certainly didn’t look like they came from a reputable company. For instance he was seeing alert messages, with flashing words saying things like ‘you have 14 infected files. Click here to correct’.  And when he did click the link he went to a website with 3 options to purchase their so-called Internet Security Suite. Three options to pay between $19.95 and $89.95.  But immediately you could tell it wasn’t a reputable company.  The grammar had mistakes, the site looked really dodgy.  So of course, we didn’t go ahead and purchase, and tried to uninstall the program.

Well, that’s where the frustration started. There was no program to uninstall. There was a shortcut on the All Programs menu, which could be deleted…- but it kept coming back each time the computer was re-started. The alert messages kept appearing.  My Avast! Internet Security had intercepted some instances where this Internet Security Suite was trying to activate something, but it couldn’t seem to get rid of it. I then used a really good program called Malware Bytes. I did a deep scan – which took 4 hours to complete. It did pick up the rogue program, and removed it.  And then I used a great little program called CC Cleaner to fix up the computer’s registry. (just means it tidies up little lost files and things that aren’t quite right)

But, that Internet Security Suite program had effectively disabled Internet Explorer which my husband uses to go on to the Internet, and is also used by iTunes. (I use Firefox, so was blissfully unaware of any problem).  I looked all around the Internet Options, and found a strange item that had been added to a section concerning how the computer connects to the internet, which I removed. However, it still wasn’t working. So I called trusty Mike. I explained what was going on, he was familiar with this problem. And as I have mentioned previously – sometimes there’s just a little tick somewhere that causes a problem … and sure enough. Going into one more section of the Internet Options – that awful program had put a tick in the option:  Proxy Server … un-ticked that and no more problems.

All that agonising all gone!  So how that program got onto our computer is anyone’s guess. Even though my hubby is pretty aware when downloading things from the internet, because of the generic name of Internet Security Suite, he may not have been alerted to anything sinister and might have allowed the program to be downloaded. Or it might have been something hidden in a program’s Terms and Conditions  – which nobody reads. Who knows, but I wanted to share this long story with you, to remind you, keep vigilant. Keep alert. And maybe you’ll avoid the hassles we’ve had this week. And always, remember, our members are encouraged to call or email me if you’re suspicious of something, a couple of minutes checking on something might save HOURS of agonising!

I mentioned a couple of programs in this story, here are the links to these free programs, if you’d care to have them on your computer too. Oh, and don’t worry, there’s no adware, or spyware or anything hidden.

Use these links, to download the programs from the cNet website; it’s free and you won’t be prompted to pay. Just use the Download Now buttons, don’t be tempted to add any other programs, which you don’t need just now.

CC Cleaner:     http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/

Malware Bytes:  http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html

If you’re not sure how to do this, I’ll summarise the steps here.  In a nutshell you get the program from the Internet, install it onto your computer, then open the Program and scan your computer. Let it find any problems, then allow the program to fix the problems.  Here are the steps to get the programs.

1.       Click one of the links above.

2.       Click the Download Now button to get the file from the cNet website onto your computer.

3.       NOTE:   If using Internet Explorer, you will probably need to do a couple of extra steps. It’s most likely not going to allow you to get the file straight away. As part of Internet Explorer’s security, it checks first to be sure it’s okay to get the file from the Internet.

4.       When you click on the Download Now button, in most cases an ‘Information Bar’ will be displayed towards the top of the page. (it’s just a narrow little message, so look carefully for the words starting with… To help protect your security ….. when you’ve found that, you’ve found the Information Bar.

5.       Click on that Information Bar, then click on Download File.

6.       A new window will display.

7.       Click on Run – the file will then be downloaded on to your computer.

8.       On the next window that displays, click on Run (yes a second time).

9.       Your program is ready for you to Scan your Computer.

I hope that helps get rid of any little gremlins lurking in your machine.

Q and A session – November 2010

Today we’ll be looking at (well listening, actually) to four problems, members have had in the last month.

These are basic problems, nothing technical or tricky here. Just a couple of little problems that have tripped up some people.

Even though they’re basic problems, it’s still a problem if you don’t yet know how to get around things like:

• How to re-send an email message;
• Why a website address didn’t work;
• Why the screen for the Internet kept getting smaller;
• What is the right-click for.

Please click the play button below to listen in. (the grey right pointing arrow. Press it again to pause).

It’s about 15 minutes long.
Hope you enjoy, I’ll be bringing more of these little tidbits to our member’ site soon.

Well … more, we’re in the News section in our Local Leader newspaper.

Lily from the Leader interviewed me last week, and the article appears this week. It’s mostly talking about our Tech Terms Untangled book, but it also tells a little about how I believe computers can really enhance an older person’s life.

So woohoo!!

And there must have been a few people who noticed the article, because I’ve had lots of calls from some very lovely people who really do want to get on top of their computer woes.

I’ve put a pic of the article below, in case you’re interested in seeing it.

Big smiles and best wishes

Viv

Hi there,

Are you like me, and sitting glued to a television set at the moment, watching the 33 miners and their rescuers being lifted one by one to the fresh air above??

Hasn’t it been just great to see everything that’s going on? Even 2000 feet below the surface.

And we see all this, by technology. The good side of technology.

Using video conferencing technolopy, you see and indeed feel what’s going on. Feel the emotion.

That is exactly the same feelinbg I want you to get when you have a video conversation with your friends and family. A nice, private conversation, not shared with the world, just shared with your loved one.

Can’t you jus imagine seeing your gorgeous grandchild for the first time, in their mother’s arms? What about watching that same grandchild grow up. Instead of just seeing photos from time to time.

See them going to sleep, watch them learning to walk, share the opening of presents.

Be proud of them when they show you their homework.

Or when they display their artistic skills.

Use a little camera, and a computer and you can ‘be there’.

Ah, when we use things for good, computers really can make a difference to our lives.

This is part Three of our series.

This time we look inside the computer, at the main parts. At the parts that people might have heard the name of, but don’t know what they are.

We find out what those main parts are, what they do, and how they help us.

Please click on the following link to view – oh, and don’t worry, there’s nothing high-brow or technical.  Just a plain English explanation of the main bits.

Getting To Know My Computer Part Three – Under The Bonnet

Enjoy!
Viv