San Jose Earthquake - What does this have to do with my computer?

Is your computer a Halloween "trick or a treat"?

The Fires in San Diego and the 5.6 magnitude earthquake in The Bay Area should remind us to preform regular back-ups of our disk drives.

I am a big believer of creating a disk image as it is not only the data that you should be concerned with but the operating system and the application programs that are also stored on disk. Consider the time and expense of reloading your computer with windows, your virus scanner, programs, all of your program preferences, your shortcuts, as well as the data. It could take 1-2 days full time to get back to the pre-disk crash status.

Coincidentally my daughter just had a disk crash it took her:

• Lost the use of her computer for 2 weeks
• Looked for the original recovery disks (4 hours no luck)
• Took 4 hours to reload data (at least she had a back up of the data!)
• Took 4 trips to the compute store for warranty repair (disk replacement)

Subscribe to this blog as future posts will provide easy to use information on:

• What software to use
• Back up media
• Back-up strategy (RAID, external disk drives, use your second computer etc.)

Boston World Series Parade - MLB.com and your business!

The Boston World Series sweep of the Rockies, and the obligatory parade, is painful for a Padre fan who saw the Rockies advance to the post season at the expense of the Padres. As a Yankee fan I see the domination of the American League by the Yankees is over and the 28 World series win may be a long time in coming.

Could the Padres achieve a would series appearance and not get sweeped in 4 games? Could we sign A-Rod, 2 other big bats, use our "wavier wire skills" to build the rest of the team? Oh well I can dream!

The Web and Your Business

For the entrepreneur baseball is a good example for what a web site can do for a business. http://www.mlb.com/ has most content available for free yet the revenue stream it generated for MLB is getting significant. The revenue stream includes Internet TV and radio coverage of the games, classic games, MLB paraphernalia, and tickets for any team any game. It is one of the most comprehensive example of a web site complementing and enhancing a customer experience. Can you use this as an example for your business?

In contrast look at the San Diego tribune today. This is an example of a business going the wrong way! The paper as a whole is publishing less average pages per day, the sports section is thinner than Paris Hilton! There was no story about the Rockies side of the series. The Football coverage remains strong at the expense of local sports coverage. The web site is a mass of advertising and does not seem to enhance the daily newspaper content.

In the future I will develop these thoughts into more actionable content.

Windows XP event 1517

Back to computer "stuff"

Does your XP windows PC take a long time to shut down after logging off? Do you have event number 1517 in your event viewer (application)?

"Windows saved user ComputerName\UserName registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use. This is caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account. "

Although there may be many causes of long log off and shut down time if you get the 1517 error a good bet is to try is a fix offered by Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837115

I just installed it on my XP machine. Check back and I will report what impact this fix has.

Fires Still burning in Orange County / Clean-up starts in San Diego

Well, it has been sad and tense week for may folks in San Diego. I had to take some time to get some work done as well as gain some emotional distance from all of the tragedy.

In summary here are resources for fire news:

BEST and OFFICIAL FIRE NEWS : http://fire.ca.gov/ - This site has the status of each fire.

San Diego Channel 8 has the best "Portal" for fire related resources. Link: http://www.cbs8.com/misc/fires_oct_07/index.php

FIRE CLEAN-UP TIPS

• Do not use leaf blowers, vacuums to remove ash
• Avoid washing ash into storm drains
• Wear gloves, long-sleeved shirts and pants Wash ash off skin immediately
• Wear dust masks (preferably rated N-95, P-100)
• Lightly mist ash before cleaning Dispose of ash in trash bags

EVACUATION ORDER LIFTED FOR OLIVENHAIN AREA

The mandatory evacuation for portions of the community of Olivenhain in the City of Encinitas has been lifted as of 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, October 23, 2007. The mandatory evacuation was issued the evening of October 22nd for the area east of Rancho Santa Fe Road and north of El Camino del Norte in the city limits. No other evacuation orders for Encinitas residents were established. The lifting of the mandatory evacuation order will allow residents to return to their homes.

There appears to be no immediate wild fire threat within the city limits at this time, but Encinitas Fire personnel continue to monitor the situation and the Encinitas EOC will remain open throughout the evening.

The temporary shelter at the Encinitas Senior and Community Center at 1140 Oakcrest Park Drive will remain open until evacuees have left the site.

Information on other fires in San Diego County and other fire related information are posted on the San Diego County Emergency Homepage at: www.sdcountyemergency.com.

(http://ci.encinitas.ca.us/NR/rdonlyres/2FB87910-D69F-41D4-9006-BD1212ABA155/0/Media_Release_10_23_07_1730.pdf)

Latest fire map: http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/newsreleases/10232007_1515hrs_Evac_FirePerem.pdf

Tuesday - satellite image 0530 fire map update

LATEST FIRE MAP: : http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/newsreleases/102307_0530_Evac_FirePerim.pdf

This is as of 0530. The fire has reached Thomas Maps grid 1168 (4.25 miles South of my location). More light and less smoke today due to the slight westerly wind from the ocean. This will end tonight and the forcast is that tomorrow will be the most smokey day yet.

Fire Map as of 19:30 Monday

http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/newsreleases/10222007_1930hrs_EvacuationArea_AllFires_County.pdf

FYI: ENCINITAS MANDATORY EVACUATIONS The Encinitas Fire Department has ordered the mandatory evacuation of the area east of Rancho Santa Fe Road and north of El Camino del Norte. Evacuees can go to the Encinitas Senior and Community Center at 1140 Oak Crest Park Drive. (From http://www.cbs8.com/ )

Monday II Latest Fire Map and Links

Link to Fire map as of 1630: http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/dmpr/emer/newsreleases/102207_1630_allfires.pdf

Link to THE CAL FIRE Incident Website: http://fire.ca.gov/

Best media web site for fire info: http://www.cbs8.com/

Monday - FIRE! San Diego County

We will be recovering from this catastrophic fire in San Diego County for some time.

Here is a link to the latest map of the fire from the County as of 1300 10/22/2007
http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/dmpr/emer/newsreleases/102207_1300_allfires.pdf

I made a presentation to a business group last Tuesday. I had 1 slide devoted to Business continuation and disaster recovery. Little did I know how much we dealing with these issues this week!.

If you are evacuating and have NO OFF SITE BACKUPS!

• Take your laptop.
• If you have room take your desktop (don't bother with the monitor printers etc.)
• If you are short of space and have the skill take out you hard drive(s).
• Absolute minimum is to save your Address book (burn a dvd or cd)

Saturday

Saturday: "S" is frustrated by his computer having the following intermittent problems:

• No boot to post
• Sound card not working
• Connection to the Internet

This is a P4 1.6 hz PC 4 years old and running XP. The history of the PC is that "S" is very interested in trying new software by downloading if from some pretty questionable sites. In addition not all of his software would pass a review from the Software Publishers Association (LOL).

The plan:

• Re-seat all cards and memory
• Check the clock battery
• Use task manager and autorun to see what processes and programs are running (eliminate those not required or are "problem" processes"
• Virus and malware scan
• Make sure MS fixes are current
• Defrag drive
• Check bios are current
• Check voltage on power supply

All of the above will take 1-2 hours with no guarantee of a fix.

"S" preferred plan is get a new computer. What do you think is best?

What was the solution?

We went to the computer super store (the name starts with a "F"). We found a HP with 1 meg of memory and 320 gig drive for $299. We added another gig of memory- problem solved.

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Yes, Geek I am, San Diego CA.

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