It's been a while since I last used Windows 98 but today had to add a batch file to an old computer which ran from scheduled tasks every day.

Encountered the problem where the command window was still open once the scheduled task had finished - as this is an unattended pc, so coming back to it several weeks later would have meant closing lots of these open command windows!

Goggled for a solution to closing a command window from a batch file when run from scheduled tasks produced lots of questions on how to do it and lots of answers for how to do it in XP (!) where exit /B works quiet happily.

The solution is relatively simple though' but right clicking your batch file and selecting properties then the Program tab and then ticking close on exit and OK will create a shortcut with the same name as the batch file.

This then closes the command window properly when the batch file has finished running when started by scheduled tasks.

I was looking through some web sites trying to work out what to do with some old domains that are getting a lot of traffic but are not really pulling their weight in terms of generating income and came across this ebook/package.

The sales page is slick enough but, being an associate of Amazon already the screen shot of earnings used as an example seemed a little odd.

Amazon associates are paid a sliding scale percentage so if it really had EUR 14,000+ worth of sales @ a commission rate of 4%, which is paid for low volume sales, these must have been very high ticket prices! The skeptic in me knows this is a fraudulent screen shot that has been photoshop'd or similar but they forgot to edit the percentage to make it authentic.

Now really wondering just how many of clickbanks products have sales pages that are just fraudulent?

As a side note the sales page say's no website required for the Amazon/PPC advantage the site promotes, this is NOT the case you can no longer bid on PPC direct to an Amazon Astore or Product Page without breaking the agreement you have with Amazon.

To be fair whilst the sites claims are fraudulent the software they are offering MAY still have a use?

Oh, and if I'm wrong and you buy this and make lots of money, give me a call I've a small continent that I can sell you.

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OK so you’ve heard that digg is a good way to promote your web site – think again unless you’re fortunate enough to hit the hearts of the few hundred ‘favoured’ digg users you’re screwed and your account and web site are destined for obscurity as far as digg is concerned.

 

We’ve been here before with DMOZ where if you’re having trouble getting your site listed there is always the option of paying an insider to help, the editors of DMOZ used to charge a few hundred to get a listing but the elite few in Digg are looking for much more than that, front page of digg can cost a lot more, but be warned if they think that you are competing with their traffic your account and IP address will very quickly be banned.

 

So you’ve digged a few of your pages and had several more diggs – you’re a threat very soon your IP will be banned – nothing you can do about it? You’ve tried a few Internet cafes and other public hot spots but their IP’s have been banned as well.

 

The solution – well at least until google wakes up to this corrupt system, use anonymous proxy’s, google for them but be aware they are not always what they seem. Quite a few users are also getting their competition banned by using the few remaining un-banned hotspots to digg their competion multiple times to get their site banned.

If you still want to use Digg - never use an internet cafe or hotspot - never use your work computers - never use a dynamic IP, and NEVER NEVER use any IP address that may be used by someone else. 

For fun, if you're into wasting  time, try the support email address digg provides - you really have to laugh at the replies you get.

When we had a phone call last summer, telling us my Aunt was very ill and wouldn't last long (she had cancer), we took a drive to see her for the last time with our 5 year old son, the journey was almost 7 hours and after reaching there it was too late in the day so see her so we stayed in a B&B and planned the next day to visit her then go to the cemetery to put flowers on my Nan & Granddad's grave.

The next day my husband took our son to the beach whilst I spent precious hours with my Aunt as my own Mum was battling with cancer and couldn't make the journey.  Afterward we put flowers on my Grandparents grave and I explained that this was where the Angels came to take our prayers and souls of those who died, back to God.  My son looked at me with such knowing eyes as he knew that Nanny was going to go back to God soon.  After hugging me we went to the beach before making the 7hr journey back home.

My Aunt died that night and the next morning we told our son that my Auntie had died and the Angels had taken her to Heaven.

The next day I found my son staring at our AA book, after asking him what we was looking for.....
He replied - the place we go when we die like your Auntie....you know, where we put the flowers ' DEVON'...

So now you know!

It's my Mum's birthday today - she passed away a few months ago and everyone has been really kind today knowing it's our first without Mum.  All in all it's been a quite good day - it's just felt like Mum's been watching from above on the 'you've been framed show' with us as the participants

I wore a pair of Mum's earrings to my son's school for parents day and after I got dressed  - I spilt coffee down my T-shirt!

Then when my Father asked if he could use my hoover - I forgot that my husband told me he was going to take it to bits and check it for me as yesterday I had used it  - and it made a really loud noise - anyway , I told my Father he could use it but I thought it was on it's last legs - literally seconds after he turned it on this loud high pitched whining noise and a pop sounded followed by a lot of blue/grey smoke from the hoover which filled the kitchen..... I turned on the cooker hood to MAX whilst my Father ran to the fire alarm just in case it went off.

We decided whilst the rain had stopped and the sun was out that now was the time to go to the cemetery...off we went carrying a heavy large tub of mixed bulbs and border flowers of Mum's favourites.  After arriving we all get out of the car and make our way to Mum's grave, we put the tub on the grave and lit a candle and before we could even say a prayer - the Heavens opened....maybe deciding the flowers looked droopy.   My second outfit of the day soaked with mud and rain and as we ran back to the car I really felt that Mum was up there laughing at us in Heaven.

Wow, this was a little unusual.

Wireless laptop running Vista SP1 connecting to a Micronet wireless router, using simple security i.e. WEP without mac address filtering, connected in turn to a cable modem suddenly the laptop stopped being able to connect to the wireless network. (Event viewer showed the laptop did not receive a response from the router when it tried to connect.)

Everything else on the wired or wireless side was still ok (about 3 XP machines, Wii, Xbox and a few Windows Mobile devices) and the laptop would happily connect to everything else tried Unsecured, WEP, WPA etc.

Eventually we ended up using 'arp /a' and 'ipconfig /all' to find that the Micronet wireless side was now, for reasons we will probably never find out, using the same mac address as the laptop.

A hard reset of the router and resetting it up was done and again everything working (there wasn't a simple way to change the wireless mac address on the router only the WAN's mac address could be configured - and the laptop was using an inbuilt Raylink card which also was missing this option).

Always curious - I wanted to see the code behind a certain web site ... but it was 'encoded' in JavaScript by something calling itself HTML Code Guard.

Saving the page in Firefox actually decodes the page and allows you to see the full HTML code that was hidden in the script! (I guess iexplorer does the same). [The html is at the end of the file below the original Javascript]

Not sure why anyone would want to use it but if you do here it is, needs registering to remove a trial message - but then again why would anyone use it?

OK probably serves me right but one of my pc's got infected with a rootkit (Thanks Trend Micro) and all google ads and search results were getting redirected to mainly adult friend finder although there were a lot more.

Steps I took to remove gaopdxserv.sys ; (all the software I've linked to is free to use, donations are welcomed by most of them, although I must admit to using www.prevx.com scanner it is free to scan and will give you the file names to look out for but it costs money if you want it to remove the stuff for you, but the steps below effectivly do the same if not better.)

Downloaded sysinternals rootkit revealer here

This showed a suspicious gaopdxserv.sys was running but was hidden from the API (basically hiding itself).

Booted the computer from a Windows XP disk - selecting the recovery console to get to a clean command prompt.

deleted all refs to gaopd*.* in c:\windows c:\windows\system32 c:\windows\system32\drivers and c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc there was 4 or 5 entries in total and not in all of the directories listed (sorry didn't keep a list of them).

Rebooted the computer, and all was well again cleaned the registry manually using regedit to remove all references to gaopd and also recycler which was trying to autorun something on the c drive resulting in not being able to open the c drive in explorer.

Used http://www.malwarebytes.org/ to get rid of the multitude of things that had come in while the root kit was there.

and finally ccleaner to tidy up the registry.

Oh and ditched trend micro and went back to McAfee although that may change as it's a little slow!

{we are now aware that the l is missinng from the title - thanks to all those who let us know, we includded an extra n and d to make up for it!}

I visited the co-op in St Johns Street Kempston this evening (4-Dec-08) at around 21:05 and bought a few items requiring me to need  a bag to carry them home.

 

The male cashier serving behind the till had placed the items I had bought (4 cans of larger, a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar and some tobacco) onto an empty carrier bag at the side of the till, this was also littered with receipts left by previous customers . After paying and receiving my receipt and change I waited for a while but nothing happened so I then asked for a bag to which the reply was ‘there is one there’ indicated by pointing to the bag under the shopping and the discarded receipts.

 

I packed my shopping after freeing the bag from underneath my shopping and throwing the discarded receipts behind the staff side of the counter but at this stage I was already feeling that customer service was being neglected so I asked for details of the head office and was directed to the outside of the store where it should have those details – at this point a helpful female member of staff who had overheard the conversation, and perhaps had seen what I had to go through to get my shopping into the bag,  went out of her way to provide me with a phone number for the customer service department.

 

OK, I know this is only minor but I’ve never experienced similar in Tesco or Sainsbury’s and working as a Customer Services Manager I am shocked as to the (minor) irritations I have had during this transaction – there is  an Express Tesco nearby offering a high level of Customer Service at all times by well trained staff and I’m left wondering if the fact that the Tesco’s is always busy and the co-op is always quite if this has anything to do with this type of incidents?

 

I hope this feed back proves useful, I personally like the store as it is nearby and up until now have never had any reason to question the ability of the staff working there.

I belong to a recycling group where we offer items to the group before taking it to the tip/bin....and this week I did a massive clearout after a recent house move. I offered various items like a fish tank lid, books, soda stream bottles and even a working DVD player. Yesterday whilst I was outside in the garden, a gentleman turned up and as the time was close to one person due to collect the fish tank lid, I asked him "Are you here for the fish tank lid?" to which he nodded.
I opened my door and brought out the lid, explaining the tank didn't survive the move but it had never been used and needed a good dusting and showed him the basics. He thanked me and taking the lid, went on his way.
This morning, I email people that didn't turn up to collect the items they wanted yesterday, asking if they still want it, on the one's that had not shown up AGAIN without letting me know (my DVD player), I withdrew my offer to them to give to the next on the list who would hopefully, seeing I am giving something which has value, working and good - ie my DVD player, turn up.
Within ten minutes, the person who requested the DVD player originally, emails me with:

I was at your place yesterday between 12:00 and 13:00 hours and you gave me something like a dvd cover.  I was even thinking but she said she has a dvd player.So I showed up but you gave me the wrong stuff

I sat there, staring at my screen - DVD COVER????? I explained fully, that it was a fish tank lid!! Why on earth didn't he say at the time - I've come for the DVD player!! not this......I would have got annoyed but I was still laughing from him saying it was a DVD cover....I mean....I even showed him where to put the tank light!

Maybe he was stunned by my beauty and just took what I was offering in the hope that he'd have to see me again to put this right!!!!  (MAYBE???)