20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is about the adventures of Captain Nemo, his crew, and his quests/captives on board the submarine, Nautilus. Ships of war keep getting attacked and sunk. The survivors believe it to be a large whale. A harpoon ship gets sent out to track it down and kill it, but finds out that the whale is actually the Nautilus.

During a confrontation with the harpoon ship, The Abraham Lincoln, and the Nautilus Mr. Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land were thrown from the Abraham Lincoln and ended up being recovered by the crew of the Nautilus. Captain Nemo knew of and respected Mr. Aronnax for his studies of marine life. Nemo allowed them to stay on the Nautilus as quests, but vowed that they would never again return to their normal lives.

My favorite part would be when Captain Nemo took the Nautilus to the south pole. Once verifying that they were indeed at the pole, and the first humans ever to be there, they turned to leave. On their way out from under the ice cap they got pinned between the cap and an iceberg that rolled over and came up from beneath them. With their limited supply of air to breath they worked relentlessly to free themselves.

One thing that I found to be a little annoying was it tended to go into great detail about ever little animal or plant they came across while in their travels. This made several parts of the book very drawn out and a little tedious to read. However, overall it was a wonderful read that I would highly recommend it to anyone. Especially anyone who appreciates a good adventure.

This is an issue that I just came across and it only was affecting Excel 2003 for me. However it may happen in other MS Office 2003 applications (Word, PowerPoint, etc) as well. There may also be several different problems that cause this symptom so this resolution may or may not work for you.

I found that it was the “Open File Validation” causing the issue. I am not all that concerned with this functionality so I found a way to turn it off. This involves modifying the windows registry so if you are not familiar and/or comfortable doing so I would not recommend you trying this yourself.

1. Exit Excel

2. Click “Start Menu”, Click “Run”, type “regedit”, and then click “OK”. For Windows 7 users you may not have the “Run” option, in which case you can just type it in the search bar you see when you click on the start menu

3. Locate and select the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\

4. After you select the key that is specified in step 3, click on “Edit”, then “New”, then “Key”

5. Type “Excel”, and then press Enter

6. Select “Excel”, click on “Edit”, then “New”, then “Key”

7. Type “Security”, and then press Enter

8. Select “Security”, click on “Edit”, then “New”, then “Key”

9. Type “FileValidation”, and then press Enter

10. Select “FileValidation”, Click on “Edit”, then “New”, then “DWORD Value”

11. Type “EnableOnLoad”, and then press Enter (Note the default value is 0 which disables the validation.)

At this point I closed RegEdit and rebooted. I’m not 100% sure if the reboot was needed, but it never hurts.

When my PC came back up I double clicked on an .xls file on a network drive and it opened right up as it should.

The Google redirect malware (Virus/Rootkit/Spyware) has been around for quite some time now. I have been brought a computer to clean with this malware on it countless times. I have sometimes been able to remove it and sometimes have not been able to. From what I can tell there are numerous different pieces of malware that have the symptom of redirecting your Google search results. At the very least there are several generations of the same piece of malware, and it seems to be getting harder and harder the cleanup.

Let me just say right away that most of the time when I am trying to clean up a PC with this malware, it is a paying customer and they are paying by the hour. So instead of paying me for hours and hours of time they generally want me to backup their data, and format the hard drive and reinstall Windows. This is a fail safe way to remove the malware, but comes with the aggravation of having to basically start with a brand new PC. Every little piece of software you had has to get get reinstalled, and every little thing you had customized has to get redone.

I generally try the same tools in the same order every time I try to remove the Google re-director malware. At some point in time each and every one of these tools has successfully removed the malware at least once. Because some of these tools are quite dangerous in the wrong hands I will only be listing them by name. I will not have links to download them, or tutorials on how to use them. If you go find them on your own and decide to give them a try just keep in mind that some of them will find valid files and try to remove them. They can mess up your PC worse than it already is. This being said if you go an try them on your own please be careful and if anything comes up that you aren’t 100% sure what to do or how to answer leave it alone.

I generally try the following tools in this order:

1. MalwareBytes Anti-Malware

2. Spybot Seach and Destroy

3. Microsoft Malicious software removal tool

4. TDSS Killer

5. R_Kill

6. RootRepeal

7. ComboFix

I make sure I have the newest version and the newest updates for each tool. If I run these and it doesn’t remove the malware, this is when I recommend to do a reload of the entire system.

This was only meant to be a helpful guide to give some people some things to try before they paid someone to fix it or, as some people do, gave up and go buy a new PC. Again, use caution when using any of these tools. Especially the last 4 on the list.

Using A Compass Alone

No map

The purpose of using a compass NOT in conjunction with a map would be to hold your course while traveling towards a distant landmark.

For example, you may be able to see your destination (or a prominent feature you know is close to or on the way towards your destination) while standing on a high ridge. But that feature may be many miles away, and once you leave your high-point, perhaps you’d lose sight of it. By taking a bearing and determining your direction of travel with your compass, you can use that bearing to continue in the right direction once you’re underway.

Re-check you bearing often. If you want to know your bearing in degrees, just read off the number on the dial that’s lined up with the index mark.

Now that you have your direction of travel — a bearing — you can begin to follow it. To do so, choose a prominent target in that direction — it may be a distinct tree, a boulder, a post, anything you can keep track of and recognize even if you look away from it — and walk towards it without looking at your compass. When you get to that target, get your bearing again, choose a new target, and repeat.

Using A Compass WITH A Map

Also known as the craft of orienteering
In this next section, we’ll go over:

1. Orienting your map to true north
2. Obtaining a travel direction from a map
3. Using an intersection to determine the location of a distant feature on a map
4. Using resection to determine your exact location on a map
5. Using the compass as a protractor

Orienting A Map To True North

To properly read a map in the field, you should first orient it, meaning that the details on the map should correspond to the landscape. And you should keep your map oriented while traveling along your route.

To orient your map, first find true north. Here’s what you do:

Your map is now oriented to true north. Now take a look at your map and then at what’s around you and see that it makes sense.

Obtaining A Direction Of Travel With A Compass

To reach your desired destination

The steps are as follows:

FOLLOW THE BEARING:

Just as described above under “Using A Compass Alone,” choose a prominent target in that direction and walk towards it without looking at your compass. When you get to that target, get your bearing again, choose a new target, and repeat.

Periodically check to be sure that the compass dial didn’t get turned as you were walking and has not deviated from the direction of travel that you’d set while your compass was on the map.

Also, re-orient your map from time to time and look around to double-check your progress.

Let’s face it, GPS devices are great. I use them on a regular basis. I have GPS units for both driving navigation and while I am out in the wilderness camping, hiking, etc. I also use GPS enabled apps on my cellphone for a wide variety of activities. I am sure that the majority of people are the same way; they rely on GPS systems pretty much on a daily basis. Now just think of what would happen if you lost your GPS unit, it got broken, stolen, or the batteries died and you didn’t have extras. What if the device itself worked fine, but something happened to the satellites, or something interfered with the signal from the satellites.  I truly believe that most people would be completely lost, and this is exactly why I believe we have become way too reliant on GPS technology.

I have seen it first hand, people will venture out with their GPS and think to themselves “I have the GPS, How could I get lost?” They don’t think about having a backup device, or even better, a map and a compass. In my vehicle I leave plenty of maps for all of the areas where I travel often. If I am travelling somewhere different I get a map ahead of time to have with me. If I am hiking or camping, I have a compass and a map of the area I am in. (I’m also quite sure that most people would have no idea how to properly use a map and a compass, but more on that later.)

While a lot of people argue with me about how reliable today’s GPS system is, and it is, people still don’t think about other unknowns that you could come across while out in a vulnerable situation. Say you are on your way to a job interview; you are following the GPS turn by turn directions in your car. All of a sudden the screen goes blank, one good reason may be a blown fuse, but you are in an unfamiliar place, you don’t know where any parts store is to get another fuse, and now you at the very least are going to be late for your interview. So what do you do? Well, in this case, even if you had a backup GPS unit, you probably still wouldn’t be able to use it, because it is the fuse in your vehicle that has gone bad. If you were smart you would have written down the directions before you left home and had those with you. If you had maps of the area in your car, and had the address written down or remembered, then you could spend a few minutes finding the location and figuring out a route to get you there.

As another example, say you are out hiking in the woods. You have a handheld GPS unit tracking everywhere you go; you assume that when it is time to head home you will just click on the waypoint of your starting location and the GPS will take you straight to it. If you were smart you would even have extra batteries with you for the GPS. Somewhere along the way you trip and fall. The screen of the GPS gets smashed on a rock. Now what? Could you make it back? Hopefully you would not be alone on the hike and the other person would also have a GPS, but say you are alone, or the other person doesn’t have one with them. Now is when you would really love to have a map and a compass, and know how to use it. Now granted in order for this to work you would have to at least know the general direction you traveled in from your starting location, but in my opinion if you don’t know where you started and didn’t take note of your direction of travel when you started, then you don’t belong out in the woods anyway.

My point is that there are way too many ways for your dependency on GPS to get you into trouble. You need to have an alternate method of navigation, whether on the road or in the wilderness. Even if the GPS unit you have with you is functioning normally it still doesn’t mean that you are in the clear. What most people don’t know, or never thought about, it just how vulnerable the GPS systems are to outside tampering. Now you can assume for the most part that the satellites themselves are relatively safe, unless some country or well-funded terrorist organization finds a way to either hack and take control of them or do physical damage. The satellites send RF (Radio Frequency) signals on a specific frequency to the receivers that we all use. If something or someone were to send out a stronger signal on the same frequency it would effectively jam the system and render the whole thing useless. The really scary part is just how easy this would be to do. Some critical infrastructure that could be impacted by interference would include plane and airport navigation systems, emergency service vehicles, ships and security vans, some of which carry large amounts of money. Researchers in Britain have gone as far as saying that GPS failures could lead to “loss of life”. It is not only interference here on earth that we have to worry about; Solar flares in space can cause serious damage to satellites.

I am hoping that anyone that may read this will seriously think about having backup methods in place in the future. Granted in today’s world being lost on the road will probably not lead to serious injury or death, but being out in the wilderness is a totally different animal. As I mentioned earlier I believe most people would have no idea what to do if their GPS malfunctioned on them in the wilderness. Even if they did have a map and compass, most wouldn’t know how to use it. I encourage anyone who does any kind of hiking or camping to at least get a basic knowledge of orienteering. For this reason I am going to follow up this article with a brief tutorial of how to use a map and compass. [UPDATE: I have now posted this tutorial. You can find it HERE.]

With all of today’s viruses and hackers out there, Internet security is more important than ever. With no security in place it is extremely easy for a virus or hacker to access and take control of your computer. There are several reasons why they would want control of your system. You could have sensitive business data that he/she could access or they could use your system to do other hacking, to make it look like you were the culprit. Either way you look at it, viruses and hackers can cost you valuable time and money, if not worse. There are several ways to slow down and hopefully stop them from gaining access to your computer.

You are especially vulnerable if you have an always on high speed internet connection like DSL or Cable. Fortunately most of the time these connections are shared through a dsl/cable router, and just about all routers on the market have at least some sort of firewall built in. A firewall stops all unwanted traffic from coming in on the internet connection. Think of it as a bouncer for your computer, anything that is expected or has a legitimate request can pass through, anything else gets tossed back on the street.

The firewalls that come in the router do a very good job at keeping hackers at bay, but this does not mean you can let your guard down totally. You still need to be careful about where you go and what you do on the internet, as well as keeping your virus scanner up to date with the latest releases of virus definition files.

The people that are using a dial-up connection to the internet are a little less likely to get their system compromised by a hacker, but the threat is still very much there. With a dial-up connection it is a good idea to have a software firewall running. Software firewalls do the same thing as their hardware brethren, but take up your computer’s memory and processor usage.

The drawback to a software firewall is that by default it will probably block a lot of your valid software that you want to get out to the internet. They are also famous for popping up alerts for software trying to access the internet so often that users tend to stop paying attention to them and just click “Yes” or “Allow” every time. A software firewall will take some time to tweak to get it blocking the unwanted software and allowing everything you want to let through without annoyingly asking you every single time.

Probably the most important tool for internet security is knowledge. Users need to know what is safe to do, what is not safe, and need to learn, that if something looks fishy, to just back away. As an example if you are downloading a file that is supposedly a picture, make sure it has an extension that is one of the common image file formats. (.jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, etc) If it is supposed to be a picture and the file extension is .exe don’t download it, and if you already have, delete it immediately. This is just an example and is not to say that the file may still not be infected with some sort of malware.

Most “Internet Security” suites for sale come with a virus scanner, anti-spyware module, anti-spam, and a firewall. As with anything else, you get what you pay for. There are a bunch of free packages out there, and some of them are quite good, but for the most part you will want to stick with a paid, well known service. Either Mcafee or Norton provide good products at a reasonable price. The thing to keep in mind is that nothing will stop or find 100% of the malware out there. There is always a risk of getting infected, so you still have to be careful about what you download and open.

Well, First let me explain the terms. Malware is a general all encompassing term that includes both spyware and viruses. Malware is defined to be any software code that is written for malicious purposes. Trojans, worms, and adware are also all types of malware.

As I said, Spyware is a type of malware. It generally gets installed, runs, and collects information about the user without their knowledge. The presence of spyware can be hidden from the user and can be difficult to detect. On the other hand some spyware will take the “Hide in plain site” approach. It will pose as an anti-virus or anti-malware program. Most of the time it will pop up messages informing you that you are infected with viruses/malware and it wants to you click on a link to clean your system. In reality it is not going to do anything beneficial for you. What it will most likely do is ask you to enter your credit card information or other personal info of some kind.

The term “virus” is commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware. A virus is defined as a computer program that can copy itself and infect other computers. There are many methods for a virus to replicate itself in order to spread. Years ago it would imbed itself onto a floppy disk and would then infect another computer when that disk was moved from one system to another. In more recent years a lot of viruses would send itself as an attachment in an email to the people on your contact list. This has a pretty high infection rate because people will see that the email is from someone that they know and won’t hesitate to open it. (I have written a separate blog post about email based threats. You can read it HERE.) This is by no means the only way viruses can spread however. Floppy disks have gone by the way side but USB flash drives are now very commonly used. The viruses can take advantage of these devices the same way as the floppy disks. A virus can also spread without any human interaction at all through vulnerabilities in almost any computer software. This is why any software vendor is generally constantly updating and patching their software.

While spyware and viruses are the two main types of malware circulating today I still feel that it is pertinent to mention a few others. Adware is software specifically written to display advertisements. This is most often in the form of “pop-ups”.

A trojan horse is a malicious program that masquerades as a valid application. So while you think you are downloading and running a harmless game, for example, you can running a program written to delete all of your documents.

Rootkits are lesser known and less common than other forms of malware. They are difficult to detect and even more difficult to remove. Generally speaking they are used to obtain continual privileged access to a computer. Once this is done, the writer of the rootkit can basically do anything he wants with the compromised system.

There are numerous other, more specific, types of malware. I have only covered the most common in this article. I only intend this to be a general overview to give people some quick information. Now that I have described some of the main types of malware, let me write a little about protecting yourself from it and how to remove it once your computer is compromised.

First things first, you absolutely must have anti-virus software on your computer. If you do not you are asking for trouble. Most anti-virus packages out there now days are sold as “internet security” suites. They will include anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, and a software firewall. All of the above are good to have (Although the firewall can cause a lot of headaches in other areas, but more on that in a future post.), but what you have to remember is that nothing is 100% secure. It is an ongoing battle between the anti-virus companies and the virus writers, and you are stuck right in the middle. As soon as the anti-virus companies find and block a certain virus/spyware the creator will modify it or create a new one to get around the protection on your computer.

The two big names in the anti-virus market are McAfee and Norton. Both are good products, but both offer pros and cons just as anything else. These are both paid services and I believe both use subscription based licensing. There are also a handful of free anti-virus applications out there. AVG and Avast are two examples of free anti-virus software that are available. These free services generally offer a free package that is just basic protection and will offer other paid versions that are a more complete suite of tools. I would only recommend these free options to people who are a little more computer savvy and are much more cautious and knowledgeable about what not to download or click on.

Now as I said before no anti-virus/anti-spyware program will catch 100% of everything out there. This is why there is a long list of utilities that I use to remove malware once it has already made it onto your system. I will cover a couple of the safer, more user friendly ones.

Spysweeper by Webroot is a quality non-free application. It not only does a descent job of removing spyware from a PC, but it will also constantly run and try to protect you from getting it installed on the system to begin with.

Another great tool that I use all of the time is MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. It is free and does a fantastic job of, in my opinion, cleaning up about 95% of the malware out there. Spybot Search and Destroy is yet another tool that I would recommend to others. It is another free tool and also does a good job of cleaning up most spyware. It also has an immunization option which attempts to stop you from going to known spyware infected/infecting websites. There are many other tools I use to remove malware from systems I work on, but most of them are more advanced and also dangerous to use if you tell it to remove the wrong thing. For most average malware infections the tools I have listed here should be sufficient to clear up the majority of them.

I just spent a week trying to redo this website. I’ve had a website up and running with WordPress for some time now, but I wanted to do something a little more advanced and a little more visually appealing. I had been using a standard free blogging theme for WordPress. It worked but was a little lack luster. I did a little research and found two other CMS (Content Management System) applications that were very popular; Joomla and Drupal. Let me admit that in the end I stuck with WordPress.

Out of the two new CMS options that I found I experimented with Joomla first. Joomla was built to be a content management system that does blogging as well. WordPress was originally built to do blogging, but it is slowly evolving into more of a CMS system. I installed Joomla, in a testing location, with my hosting companies 1-click install script. It was up and running in under 2 minutes. Now it was time to learn the interface a little. I spent about 30 minutes looking around and playing with settings. I found the interface to be fairly intuitive and well organized. Next came the process of creating the actual site. The default Joomla theme is pretty basic, boring, and in my opinion very ugly. So I did the only thing I could do… Googled Joomla themes.

OK, so I admit I searched for free Joomla themes. This was probably what lead me to my final decision of not using Joomla. While there were tons of themes available I really had trouble finding one that even looked half way decent. At the time I was unwilling to purchase a theme. I figured that this was just my personal website, that I won’t be making any money with the site, and why pay for something that I can get for free. Well I searched through pages and pages of free themes and finally found one that looked fairly decent on the live preview. As I got into customizing the site I kept running into barriers. I couldn’t customize a certain part of the theme that I wasn’t happy with. Parts of the theme just didn’t work or display properly. I just kept getting more frustrated as time went on. I kept downloading new themes and kept having the same issues. So I decided, the hell with this, I’m going to remove Joomla and try out Drupal.

As with Joomla I used my hosting companies 1-click installation script and it was up and running in a couple minutes. The first thing I noticed about Drupal was that interface was entirely different than WordPress or Joomla. I spent an hour just trying to figure out how to create the initial page and how to add content. I then started searching for free themes again. After an hour of searching I found one and tried to create a functional page. That is when it all went south. Now keep in mind that I am an IT guy, I know computers, and can pretty much figure out anything just by playing around with it for a few minutes. Drupal I just could not figure out enough on my own to create a complete website. I tried to read how-to articles and other information I could find on the internet, but the deeper I got into it the more I realized that while Drupal is immensely powerful, it is just more complicated. It would have taken much more time than I was willing to invest to learn it. Just about then I decided that I may have to actually pay for a theme for either Joomla or WordPress.

Like I mentioned earlier I had been using WordPress for quite some time, so I decided to look a some premium themes for that first. I found www.themeforest.net. I have to say I was blown away and amazed when I saw some of the themes for WordPress. I didn’t even know WordPress could do some of the things that were in these themes. I settled on a theme called Over’All. You can find it here. I was impressed by the simplicity of it, the clean look, but it still had a little eye candy to it.

In the end I stayed with WordPress for it’s simplicity and because I was already familiar with it. It is easy to setup, easy to use, easy to learn, and as I found out, as long as you are willing to cough up a few dollars for a premium theme, it can do some amazing things. If I had chosen to find a paid theme for Joomla I am sure it would have fulfilled my needs just fine. Although the learning curve is slightly higher with Joomla. Drupal seems to be a very powerful system, and I have no doubt if I had the knowledge, or the willingness to take the time to learn, it would have worked out just fine too. I was looking for something easy and quick, but that allowed me to create a decent looking site. WordPress fulfilled all of those criteria.

Having read and loved the first three books in the Ender series, there was no way I was going to miss this entry. Like so many others, though, I am of split mind about the finale (and how appropriate, given the schizophrenic existence of its lead characters Ender-Peter and Val-Jane). While “Children of the Mind” does contain Card’s trademark wit and while the last 100 pages kick into high gear, the final installment, on its own, is as unsatisfying as it is pleasing.

One of the major problems is Card’s ill-considered decision to publish “Xenocide” and “Children of the Mind” as two books rather than one cohesive unit; the fourth entry seems more an epilogue to the series–a 350-page denouement–than the climax it should have been. Card admits he originally planned the two books as one work, and this admission resonates like an apology. Well over a third of “Children of the Mind” summarizes what happened in previous volumes, and another third is riddled with endless conversations on political and metaphysical topics, many of which the characters already debated at length in “Xenocide.” Only in the last 100 pages does Card finally abandon the themes that were presented more thoroughly (and competently) in the earlier books and turn his attention to resolving the many loose ends. In sum, Card would have been much wiser to have written a unified 600-page book rather than 900 needlessly repetitive pages.

The second problem is that Card’s philosophical ruminations often steer awfully close to quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo. The entire section set on Pacifica, a planet governed by Samoans, feels particularly incongruous. (Peter and Wang-mu wonder aloud–twice–what they are doing on this particular world, a question that is never really fully addressed.) True–some of the philosophical questions are fascinating, but there’s very little that wasn’t already said better and more succinctly in “Xenocide,” and the dialogue is often excruciatingly shallow. Take this conversation between Valentine and Novinha, which reads in part:

“You didn’t really need him anymore.” “He never needed me.” “He needed you desperately,” said Valentine. “He needed you so much he gave up Jane for you.” “No,” said Novinha, “He needed my need for him. He needed to feel like he was providing for me, protecting me.” “But you don’t need his providence or his protection anymore.”

I wish I could tell you this bit of dizzying dialogue is an exception, but there are similar angst-ridden conversations between Miro and Val, Peter and Wang-mu–in short, between any two characters who feel the need to explain to each other their raison d’etre. In the earlier books, Card allowed metaphysical questions to arise as much from the actions of the characters and the development of the plot as from the dialogue; in “Children of the Mind,” everyone seems to be in post-Freudian interplanetary counseling.

Yet the book is not a wholesale disaster; and I particularly enjoyed the page-turning final resolution, even though it relies on a melodramatic sleight of hand. If the last third of “Children of the Mind” were merged with a pared-down version of “Xenocide,” the whole would probably have been equal to the excellence of the first two books in the Ender series.