Today we embark on a very exciting now format/program for SIIT. In the coming months we plan on releasing videos and new blog entries focusing on the recycling of old, used and broken tech items. We will show you how to take an item mean’t for one purpose and use it for another. Stay tuned for more info.

A couple of weeks ago, while sitting in wireless class, I made a comment that
generalized how I didn’t feel connected to many in my class because I don’t
yearn to rush home and work on computers. I need to define that the work I am
talking about would be any task associated with computers outside the scope of
your main income producing job. However, I do recognize the second income
potential of a home based computer/network shop and will not include this in
my discussion. What I AM talking about is the countless hours spent at the
computer at home after having spent 8 hours at a computer at work. This would
include all the tweaking, upgrading, and yes, even gaming.

To call it work may be over emphasizing what computer people are actually
doing at home for entertainment. Nevertheless, I have chosen to use the
word “work” due to the active nature of the interaction between the Techie and
their computer. My reason for this is provided in the following example. Take
for instance the television repair man. He may go home after working on
televisions all day and actually watch television. This is very passive in
nature, and in most cases, the only true interaction is the use of the remote.
This differs dramatically from the Techie playing games, tweaking, and
upgrading. There is an element of activity involved with the computer person. And let’s
remember, many of these Techies have been looking at computers screens for
hours at work.

Very few areas of employment have the work follow the employee home. In fact,
in almost no job, with the exception of the mechanic who loves working on hot
rods, will you see employees working at home on the tools they used at work.
You won’t see the Heating and Air Conditioning man tweaking his heater night
after night hoping to get a few extra BTUs. And I doubt that many Certified
Public Accountants over clock their calculators to get improved completed job
throughput. Of course I am generalizing and agree that C.P.A.s probably
research ways in which to improve himself. Most people, who actually do
something at home, instead of passing out in front of the television, take up
what is commonly known as a hobby. In most cases, I think it is safe to say,
that the hobby of choice is far removed from the person’s job tasks.

Blessing or curse?

Some would say that the computer person is extremely lucky to have found a job
they love so much that they go home and do it some more. Some may say that
they are crazy and need to get out of the house a little more. Maybe all those
hours spent at home and alone on World of Warcraft has lessened the player’s
quality of life. Time will certainly tell. I am certainly not qualified to
make such judgments. However, too much of any one thing is usually not good.
Too much brightness in a room can be an uncomfortable experience. Just as too
much darkness makes seeing anything at all completely impossible. My personal
feeling on this subject can be summed up by saying that your World of Warcraft
rogue character’s backstab level, really doesn’t help define you as a person.
To me, the computer is very utilitarian. It is there to do what it is supposed
to do. In some cases, this would include perform some entertainment role. We
have to remember that some of those beautiful images we assign as our desktop
wallpaper are just mathematical representations of what is actually out in the
real world. I would rather see the Pacific Ocean, the Rocky Mountains, or the
Grand Canyon up close and personal, not on a twenty-two inch screen. Even if
that screen is the latest, most fantastic, High Definition screen available;
it isn’t the ocean.

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Has this ever happened to you? It’s 3am and you just got home from the bar, and you had a little too much to drink. The reason you were out drowning your sorrows was that you didn’t have a very good day at work. Something there just rubbed you the wrong way and really ticked you off. For sake of argument let‘s say your boss is making you work overtime every night this week. As you order beer after beer you start thinking about how nice it would be to just give him a piece of your mind. By the time you get home you’re livid and go directly to your computer and compose an email that would set the record straight (at least in your mind you think it would). You click send and stagger into your room and pass out. You wake up the next day, completely oblivious to what happened the night before, and go to work. When you arrive there is a note for you saying that the boss would like to speak to you. Then it hits you, OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE!!! If you would have only known about Mail Goggles, a new feature to Google mail your job would still be safe.

Just go to your Gmail account and click on settings and then the ‘Labs” tab. Go check it out, it might sound a bit funny but it could possibly have some practical use.

First: Always Run Behind a Router
Routers come with a hardware firewall, and when configured properly they can be 10 times better than a software firewall. Not only does a router give you added protection in the form of a firewall, it also give you room to expand should you ever want to add another computer creating your own home network. Also if you ever plan on using wireless devices it would be smart to purchase a wireless router at this time.

Second: Use a Good DNS
About a couple months ago there was an announcement about some holes in DNS making it susceptible to DNS poisoning. DNS poisoning is basically changing the association that a domain has with its proper IP address. A hacker could go into a DNS and change the destination of a website. For instance if you typed in http://www.myspace.com it would actually take you to a page that looked like MySpace but is actually a phishing site that would record your login name and password. Not a good thing. Most importantly, some of the major internet providers like ComCast had not made the appropriate changes to their DNS servers a month after the news was made public. As of the time of this article I am not aware if the correct changes have been made to the ComCast DNS servers. I suggest using www.opendns.com , OpenDNS was one of the first DNS providers to secure their servers, and for the home user it’s free.

Third: Stop Clicking on Every Link You See
When receiving emails from someone you don’t know delete it immediately and never ever click on a link inside of that email or open an attachment in an email. If you receive an email from someone that you do know, make sure it’s not an email that has been forwarded to a lot of people like the joke emails that people like to send to everyone in their address book. The only time I would consider opening an attachment or clicking a link inside an email is when it is from a reputable company that I have asked to receive or from a person that I know that is as aware of internet security measures like myself (a colleague). And never ever open an executable (.exe) attachment that comes in an email.

Fourth: Be careful out there
1. Be aware of what websites you go to. If you are at all suspicious of a website leave it immediately.
2. Never click on a popup no matter how tempting it might be. Windows Vista security does a good job of handling popups. If you’re using Windows XP, download Windows Defender and install it.
3. Stay away from adding toolbars to your browser. These can rob your system resources and make your operating system run slower.

If these steps are followed, in my opinion you are on your way to having a more secure system and will have a better and safer computing experience. By this time you will have noticed that I left a few things out, a software firewall and a good antivirus. In my opinion if you have a hardware firewall that is configured properly you don’t really need a software firewall, but if you are running windows XP or Windows Vista by all means turn your operating system firewall on. But again in my opinion nothing else is needed. As for running an antivirus, hopefully your computer came with one when you purchased it unless you built the system yourself. And if you did build it yourself I’m sure you installed one. If you still don’t have an antivirus, I suggest you get one. There are even some excellent free ones out there for the home user, just do a Google search for “free antivirus” and you’ll be all set. And remember to always keep you operating systems up to date as well as your antivirus.

Earlier this week I received a phone call from a friend of mine in Chicago who was having trouble with his computer. My friend, who shall remain nameless, was visiting websites that he shouldn’t be if he wants to maintain a healthy computer. Yes, that’s right, it was porn. It seems that while on a particular site he received a popup. This popup looked like it had originated from his antivirus program. It told him that his computer was infected with countless viruses and malware applications. It instructed him to run a scan of his system from that popup. Had he read it a bit more carefully he would have realized that it also asked him to pay a fee. That alone should have thrown a red flag. When he finally realized what he had done he panicked and turned off his computer. Now, when he started his computer back up it was stuck in an endless boot loop. That’s when he decided to call me. He said, “I think I’ve just done something I shouldn’t have.” He then proceeded to tell me the story of what happened. I couldn’t help but laugh, not into the phone mind you, I laughed to myself inside. Since it wouldn’t let him boot into safe mode we had to do a recovery of his operating system (XP). I got him all sorted out with his drivers and everything, scolded him a bit and told him not to go back to those sites anymore. He reluctantly agreed and ended the phone call. A few days went by and I received another call from him. I think I did it again he said and quoted a particular porn site and told me never to go there. This time he couldn’t get rid of a virus scan popup, very similar to the one he had earlier in the week. I directed him to his task manager and had him stop the process of the application. It had created a shortcut on his desktop and placed a shortcut in his startup folder as well. He deleted the two shortcuts before I could tell him to write down the path of the file that the shortcut was leading to. So now that file is somewhere on his machine and might raise its ugly head again sometime in the future. After he had completed this task he couldn’t get his Internet Explorer to launch. I had him to boot into safe mode with networking so he could access the internet and download Adaware and Spybot to hopefully remedy this problem. It’s been a few hours and I haven’t heard from him again so I’m hoping that solved the problem. Time will tell.

Thank you for joining us. It is our goal here at Southern Illinois IT Professionals to provide a forum for IT professionals in Southern Illinois and the surrounding area as well as Alumni from the area colleges and universities. In this forum we can seek help or provide help for our colleagues in the area as a learning tool and to help us tune our skills to make us better at our jobs. We can get to know each other, make friends, and obtain valuable job contacts that could help us grow in our careers. -SIITPros