New Laptop
December 5, 2007
Well, I finally broke down and bought a laptop computer. I have been wanting one for personal use for some time now, but could never justify the expenditure. I am not really sure that I did this time either, but never the less, I now have a laptop.
I envision using it on family trips and for easy computer access from various points around the house. Since we take a fair number of family trips, it will allow me to keep an eye on all of my websites when away from the house. For those long dance weekends, where countless hours are spent watching other parents’ kids dance, I can slip out and do some compute work until my kids are ready to dance.
Set up and installation of the laptop was a piece of cake and went off without a hitch. I must say I am pretty impressed with the Windows Vista that came on the laptop. It is a nice upgrade from Windows XP. That said, I don’t see spending the bucks needed to upgrade the 5 PCs scattered throughout the house. It’s not that much nicer.
In order to access my home network and the internet from the laptop, I also set up a wireless network. Previously, I had stayed with a wired network as I had multiple LAN drops wired into every room of the house when it was built. If I really want a mobile laptop, plugging it in wasn’t going to work. All of my PCs are still hardwired to the network but the laptop connects wireless. Setting up the network was also a piece of cake. I was worried about Vista and XP communicating with each other properly, but it turned out to be a non-issue.
The geek lives on…
More Spam Issues
February 12, 2007
Spam continues to be a problem here at Mr Papa’s World. I recently wrote about some of the tools I use here.
In the last week or so, I have run into some serious trouble with the Bad Behavior plugin blocking good folks like me! Prior to about a week ago, it was stopping a lot of spammers from even reaching my site. This had the side benefit of saving me some bandwidth too. Then all of a sudden, it stopped being nearly as effective.
Akismet is the other piece of software I use to defeat spam. While Bad Behavior was functioning, Akismet had to do very little to stop spam since it never reached Akismet. Prior to Bad Behavior, Akismet was stopping several hundred spams a day.
Well, with Bad Behavior going on the fritz about a week ago, Akismet slowly started ramping up spam stops again. When Bad Behavior started blocking readers and then me, I finally threw in the towel and uninstalled Bad Behavior today. The Akismet spam blocks are already rising steadily throughout the day.
I guess it really doesnt matter how the spam is stopped as long as it is stopped. By getting to Akismet, it uses up a bit more bandwidth, but I seem to have plenty of that. I dont know how many “good” readers Bad Behavior stopped, but at least with Akismet, I can peruse the blocks before the stuff is removed. I didnt have that option with Bad Behavior. Of course, not sure I want to review several hundred or more spam logs a day to find a few bad blocks, but I will do it for a while to see make sure Akismet is not blocking real comments.
Bad Behavior is supposed to be releasing a new major revision to the plugin soon, so I may yet try it again.
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