A while ago I signed up for multiple scholarship sites, since I was returning to school now as a father and husband, and just do not have the money to afford the college tuition.  Since I was in need of any scholarships, grants or funds that I could get my hands on as a low single-income family, I decided to sign up for ScholarshipPoints.com…

Well, after registering, then signing up month after month to see if my name was drawn, no luck. I blew it off thinking that it was just my typical lack of luck that I wasn’t winning, but as I got the monthly emails of winners, I kept noticing a trend.  More than half of the winners were always female, and many times more than 75% of the awarded scholarships went to women.

So, I decided to make this blog post, in hopes that some others will search Google to see if anyone has talked about their bias.  Since the website keeps records of the winners back to 2006, I have created PDF copies of all the winners that they have posted, and linked them to the stats below (male/female award count for each year). You decide for yourself if they are biased against men…

2006
MALE = 1
FEMALE = 1

2007
MALE = 3
FEMALE = 9

2008
MALE = 8
FEMALE = 18

2009
MALE = 14
FEMALE = 23

2010
MALE = 14
FEMALE = 68

2011 (as of April 2011)
MALE = 7
FEMALE = 20

You notice that the percent biased the site is against men has typically gotten higher with each year. At any rate, they are an “Edvisors Company” but other than a simplistic staff listing on the parent website, I could not find any list of board members or people to contact other than the generic info/webmaster link.  I hope that someone in a position to do something about this reads this post.  There is no possible way this is coincidence, or chance. This is just another roadblock for men, especially white men who already don’t have any options as it is in the scholarship availability pool.

Today I needed to test a program that required a Blu-Ray disc to function. I did not have a Blu-Ray drive on the computer I was using, so I decided to use a Blu-Ray ISO file. Well, Since I had no way to rip a real Blu-Ray disc to an ISO (since I did not have a physical BD drive), then I created my own fake Blu-Ray disc image/ISO file, and used Slysoft’s Virtual CloneDrive to mount it, and voila!…the program that I was using thought it was a real BD disc, and let me proceed with my task (I was software testing basically, and knew I did not need a real BD disc just to get past that part).

So, if you need a Blu-Ray disc, but do not have the physical hardware to load one, and do not have a real ISO file on hand, then you can use this one. Feel free to download and use this for whatever you want. There is no actual video in this Blu-Ray ISO file, but it will trick any program that is requesting a Blu-Ray disc.

LINK: http://www.corusa.com/public/virtual_bd_disc.iso

Comment here if you used this, and tell me what program you used it with, or what purpose you needed it for. I am curious to know

Google.com is probably the only website I use on a daily basis. I cannot think of one single workday that goes by that I do not use Google for something. I have noticed for about the past 2 years, they upgraded their site to allow for suggestions. At first I thought these suggestions were just based on what Google deemed to be the most popular search items, based on search statistics. Then I realized that, on average, two out of every three suggested results (in the top 3), are businesses. Then I realized that the suggested words are not universal, but based rather on the specific country Google site. For example, if I go to “Google.com”, I will get different suggestions that if I go to Google.ca. Now, on top of this, the suggested words are then filtered a 5th time, based on your location within the country. Google uses your IP information to determine what city you are in, or at the very list which major city you are near, then gives you suggested words based on all this statistical data.

First and foremost, if you were not alarmed half-way through the paragraph, then wake up. These suggestions are paid for, by the companies first and foremost. Secondly, if there is no paid for suggestion for a certain letter, Google then gives you results based on your location. Again, these are still not purse results, since someone in one city might get the suggestions, but someone else, halfway across the globe might never find what they need. I believe this is deceptive on Google’s part, so I went through the entire alphabet, and posted below the top 3 suggestions for each letter. Check it out…

Amazon
American Airlines
AOL
—
Bank Of america
Best Buy
Bed, Bath and Beyond
—
Craigslist
CNN
Chase
—
Dictionary
Dallas Morning News
Dillard’s
—
Ebay
ESPN
Expedia
—
Facebook
Facbook Login
Funbrain
—
Gmail
Google Maps
Google.com
—
Hotmail
Hulu
Home Depot
—
Itunes
Ikea
IMDB
—
JCPenny
Justin Beber
James Avery
—
Kohls
Kroger
Keller ISD
—
Lowes
Lady Gaga
Lost
—
Myspace
Mapquest
MSN
—
Netflix
Nordstrom
NTTA
—
Office Depot
Orbitz
Olive Garden
—
Pandora
Poptropica
Pizza Hut
—
Quotes
QVC
Quotes about life
—
Realtor.com
Reverse Phone Lookup
Rooms To Go
—
Southwest Airlines
Sams Club
Skype
—
Target
Texas Lottery
Translator
—
USPS
UPS
United Airlines
—
Verizon Wireless
Verizon
Victoria Secret
—
Walmart
Weather
Wikipedia
—
XM Radio
Xbox Live
Xbox
—
You Tube
Yahoo mail
Yahoo
—
Zappos
Zip codes
Zip codes by city

Just for kicks, I then browsed to Google.ca, and started over again with the letter “a”. My results were completely different, not even one word was the same until I got to “F”…I received “Facebook” on both the default and Canadian sites. Google was now suggesting words that it deemed Canadians would be more desiring to see, and I am sure they were as filtered down as the default domain was, perhaps even more so.

I don’t know about you, but I believe that everything in our society is already filtered so much that it is hard for us to really know what the truth is. Is Google really going to be a part of that? When you want to know the truth about something, you want the rawest, most pure data you can get, right? So that your decision is based on an accurate starting point rather than a list of assumptions and judgments already made by a corporate entity. With Google being the number one search engine that the public uses, they not only have the responsibility, but the duty to give the public information that is unfiltered. By not doing this, they are in fact giving you a polished, cleaned up, and pre-filtered list of results and suggestions that THEY deem to be important. The word important here means “someone paid Google enough to make it on the first page by buying AdWords”. Never heard of that term? Yes, “Google AdWords” is a product that companies can buy to boost their rankings, and get closer to the page one results. Most people do not go past page two when trying to get results, much less page three, so Google has created this system whereby companies can pay tons and tons of money; I am talking about millions a year to Google, to end up on the first page. I guarantee you, that every one of the big companies that are listed in those suggestions above have marketing teams that have the sole task of funding Google with enough money to keep them on top. I find this to not only be deceptive, but inaccurate.

If I were to do a history report on the Revolutionary War back in 1996, when the World Wide Web was only a few years old, then I would most likely get hard data from search engines like InfoSeek.com/Go.com and Lycos (way before Google’s time). If I were do conduct those same searches now on Google, in 2010, I guarantee you I would get some kind of sponsor or company influenced in my results which would then lead to a site, possibly owned by that company, giving me information about so called “history”. What is to prevent these companies from taking part in revisionist history practices that better fuel their company’s agenda?

For example, Wikipedia was created and owned by a guy named Jimmy Wales, who claims to be an “Objectivist” (his own made up word); but how objective can one person be? In fact, it has been the complaint many times that Wikipedia is a front to fuel the liberal agenda.

(Source: http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia)

And here I am giving you a man-made site as a source, to refute another man-made site as being bias and filtered…you decide for yourself what the truth is. My point, in this blog, is that in the same way Wikipedia cannot be trusted as a source of fact, neither can Google. Through million dollar contracts with major heavyweights in the corporate world, influencing search results on every topic, Google can no longer be an empirical form of truth and knowledge. It is sad that a company parades around as a virtuous white knight, doing no evil, and providing everything for free, when at its core, it values profit much more than knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, capitalism is good, but you don’t go around pretending to be a humanitarian when your bottom line is all that matters to you in the end.

Google is just like all the rest; don’t go falling in love with them just because they “appear” on the surface to be do-gooders. If anything they are doing more harm in how they filter and taint results, since the results found by users are what fuel what is considered “popular”. If those results are based on spoofed and cherry-picked data, then the results mean nothing.

In 2004 I had a Netflix subscription.  At the time it was by mail only, 3 DVDs at a time, no streaming, but I was still giddy about the whole experience.  Well, 4-5 years later they decided to offer instant streaming to your TV or computer.  Well, after ditching them in 2006 due to the original infatuation wearing off and coming to the realization that $19.99 a month for movies was ridiculous, I picked it all back up again.  Last year I signed up a second time for a subscription at the most basic level of $8.99 (1 DVD out at a time, and unlimited streaming).  What’s the first thing I did of course? Fill up my queue with about 100 movies, half of which I will never see, since it would literally take eons to get through a list of even 100 discs.  So I decided to check out the instant streaming section of the website.

This is where my story turns into a review.  Here are the Pros and Cons of the Netflix “experience”.

PRO: You can stream movies, CON: You can only stream a few movies, and usually B-movies or knock offs with the exception of a few that might be good, but never saw a single oscar nomination, much less an award.

PRO: You can setup multiple profiles/logins restricted to specific MPAA ratings. Once for me and the wife, and possibly one for kids when they get old enough. CON: No instant streaming allowed on sub-profiles, this the only reason for a profile is to have your own DVD rental queue…whoopie. Oh, and another thing – once you create a profile you cannot delete it, even from the main administrator account.  Huh? What is the purpose for this “Feature” (dare I call it a feature).  If you can add something to your database, you should be able to remove it. Very lame.

PRO: You can now stream to the Wii! Yay.  We have a Wii, and the interface is cool, but wait…CON: You have to have the Wii Netflix Disc in every single time you want to watch a movie…Seriously? Why was this not made a channel downloadable from the Wii Store?  Was this not common sense.  Speaking of lack of common sense…

PRO: (no more PROs, just CONS), CON: You cannot limit or link the Wii to a specific profile/rating, like “G “for your kids only.  The Wii does not allow for user login, meaning it hard-links your device to your account.  It also uses the default account, no profile control or limitation, meaning that your kids get to see all the history/activity of movies that maybe you and your spouse have watched.  Do I really want my kid coming to me and asking if he can watch “A Few Good Men”? No thank you, thus I have to keep the Netflix disc out of the Wii and locked away whenever I am not there. Thanks Netflix! Stellar job.

CON: No ability to clear your history/cache of “Recently Watched Items”.  Again, as stated earlier, on the Wii you can see everything you have ever watched for the last 100 movies or so.  When I want to let my kid pick out a movie, do I really want him just one keystroke away from being able to see all the mature movies mommy and daddy have watched? (By “mature”, I do not mean “adult”, I mean PG, PG-13, and possibly R rated movies that are no appropriate for children). Thanks again Netflix…there another reason I have to keep the Wii disc locked away. Much appreciated.

CON: No way to assign a profile to a Netflix enabled device, thus no parental control available on the Wii.  Huh??!  Netflix does realize this is a CHILD’S TOY right?! No parental control available in the Netflix Wii client. Solid work Nintendo and Netflix. Now my kids can play Super Mario Brothers, and if squashing goombas does not satisfy their killer instincts, they can always click a button and watch Stallone shoot bodies in half with a 50-caliber gun at point blank in Rambo! Alright!

CON: Technical support is incompetent.  I called them up and asked them to make some of these things work on their end, like limiting the Wii to only playing G movies, and they said they cannot do that.  So I asked them to delete the test profile I created that I no longer needed (since I cannot use profiles for streaming anyway), and they said that they could not delete it from their end.  Huh? You have a DB back-end that you cannot edit at headquarters? Again, congratulations on a fine programming job.

Now, with all this said, I of course realize it is 100% the parents’ responsibility to watch you own kids.  Of course my child would never have access to this, but my point is, shouldn’t I be able to give them access to this, in a limited fashion? I cannot even do that now? the program should be made in a way to allow the parent to give full or no access, depending on each family’s situation and needs.  Until Netflix releases a 2.0 with the above issues fixed, then no Wii access for my kid(s) and frankly we’re thinking about ditching it altogether due to some of these common sense items not being in the initial release. They have a lot of things that should have been caught and revisited by the developers in the QA process, but were not.

Try again Netflix and Nintendo.  Good attempt, but it is just that, and attempt, and definitely not ready for prime time.

So, for a while now I have been frustrated with Thunderbird’s (and every other email client’s) handling of replying from a secondary email account, and the client not choosing your primary email as the send from address.  For example…at work we all have two email accounts.  One that is public, and on our business cards, and that we use to communicate with clients and the outside world, and one that is internal and used only for backup purposes of the primary/public email account.  To make this tangible, let’s say my public account is “con...@domain.com” and my internal one is “conn...@domain.com”.  Well, we host all our own email and the backup email account is on a different server (which has a lower CPU tax rate, and less likely to fail) than the primary email server, so we just move stuff over from the primary (external) email to the secondary (internal) email every week or so, so that if our primary server goes down then we have not lost more than a week or so, at max of email communiques.

Now, with that knowledge, sometimes we have to reply to an email that we have already moved from the primary email Inbox over to the backup email’s Inbox.  So, when I select the option to “Reply” or “Reply All” (usually), to an email that I have already backed up, the new message window shows that the email will be coming from “conn...@domain.com”.  I have the manually change the drop-down selection to my main account every single time I reply to an already backed-up email.  This would normally be a minor inconvenience, but my primary email account has a signature image/text attachment, so when I select that email account from the drop down, it auto adds that signature to my reply, and it always puts it at the top, so I have to cut/paste it below my message.  Well, I have found a way around this annoyance in Thunderbird.

Go into your email account settings, and on the top-level properties of the backup/secondary account that you move everything to, set the Email address to the primary email “con...@domain.com” (for this example, in my case).  Just underneath the top-level properties, you are still using the correct password and username (which is most likely the backup email address, or at least the part before the “@” symbol, depending on how your server dictates login).  In any case, this will allow you to automatically make Replies from the backup account automatically use the primary account when sending the Reply.  Also if you use a signature, be sure to add that option to the backup email settings as well.  Now you can type Replies from your backup account just like you do from your primary account.

I have been using Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit) for a while now on my work laptop. At home I am still on Vista Ultimate (64-bit) just because I do not want to go through the entire re-installation process, but as soon as I have a free weekend (an a spare $250 to buy Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit), I am going to do just that!

Windows 7 has the look and feel of Vista, which some users may hate, or never got used to, but honestly I prefer it now to XP, and I was a die-hard XP fanboy long after everyone else had switched. In fact, at work I went straight from Windows XP to Windows 7, just a month ago, because XP was so stable…why change? Well, the reason I went with Windows 7 was not only the glowing reviews I had heard from the same people who said “Vista is horrible,” but also the fact that Windows XP will stop being supported in summer of 2010…that leaves only 5 more months (max) from the time of writing this, to get Windows Updates for XP. I also do not like to wait until the last minute to switch because you and I both know that Microsoft always focuses on their new product more, and will be making it more secure, while not focusing as much on XP since it is a dying product. It makes no sens, business-wise for Microsoft to invest any more major funding or efforts to support XP when after summer of 2010 it will be extinct!

If you are like me, then for the longest time you have hung on to Windows XP, because let’s face it…it was the best operating system that Microsoft ever released (once SP1 came out that is). I believe that Windows 7 has replaced this position by leaps and bounds.

Windows 7 still has the UAC feature, but you do not get popups every two seconds anymore. This was also fixed in SP2 for Windows Vista, so you may not have noticed it for a while. Also, file-copying is much faster when copying around the local harddrive, or to/from other Windows 7 based drives due to the Ext4 file-system being used. I will not go into the details of how this allows for faster throughput, because honestly I do not understand it fully myself, but the basic concept lies around less verification (but still secure) and more streams pushing the data…(in layman’s terms obviously).

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Windows 7 has the looks of Vista, but the functionality of XP. Like XP it is stable, fast, and just gets things done; while at the same time (even on low-end hardare) giving you the look and environment of Vista – which honestly does not take long to get used to if you give it more than a day of usage.

Let me know what you all think of Windows 7. If you are using the ‘Home’ or versions other than “Ultimate”, then I cannot guarantee your experience will be as rewarding as mine. The ultimate version of Windows 7 (just like “Professional” with XP), is the only version of Windows worth installing in my opinion. Comments?!!

So, I got your attention with the blog title eh? Well, you probably clicked on this to debate the most powerful verse in the Bible, rather than actually find out which one I believe it to be, right? Thought so.  Well, I will just out it out there, and if you agree or disagree with me, either way is fine, since every verse of the Bible will speak to each person differently, so feel free to disagree.  Now, before I state what I believe is the most “powerful”, I should probably state that this is by no means the most “important” verse.  I think other Christians will agree that if they had the chance to share only one verse with a non-Christian it would be John 3:16, that states the entire basis for Christianity in one sentence – “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son, so that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal [everlasting] life”.  This I believe is the most important verse in the Bible, and should be one of the first of many that I hope you share with others who are lacking God in their lives, but as far as powerfulness goes, this is where I turn to the book of James.

For those who do not know, in a nutshell, James is a great book for those Christians who think they have heard everything the Bible has to say, and are just coasting along on auto-pilot through life.  In my opinion, James contains the most challenging verses in the Bible.  These “challenging” verses are ones that call for accountability, on our part as Christians.  James is basically like the Advanced guide, once you know and understand all the basics, on how to live for Christ.  This book does not hold back, and even says in many places what makes up a true believer.  James is definitely not a book I would throw at someone who is unfamiliar with the Gospel, or much less has not even accepted Jesus Christ as his/her personal Savior yet.  It is a book that really is most effective for those who have completely understood the basics and have a good grasp of their relationship with Christ.  I find that is is most effective for those of us who have been a Christian for our whole lives and think we have it all figured out, and that the Bible contains nothing new for us.  Well, take a look in James; read 30 verses a day, see what it has to offer you.

Now, without further ado, the most powerful verse in the Bible.  The reason this verse is so powerful in my opinion is that it does not say “Christians, do this…” or “Follower of Christ would do this or that…”, but rather, this is a verse that applies to everyone, Christian or non-Christian.  There will of course be some non-Christians who even after hearing this verse, will come up with some excuse why it does not apply to them, which goes back to the whole M.O. of being a non-Christian.  It is much easier to walk your own path, and ‘do your own thing’ without accountability, than to accept the responsibility that comes with being a Christian; which by the way, is the hardest part.  I could spend another paragraph on this easily, and perhaps it should be a separate post, so on to the verse.

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” – James 4:17 (ESV)

Wow.  The verse states no conditions, if’s, and’s or but’s about it.  It is straightforward and to the point (another good feature of the book of James).  That fact, combined with using the ESV (English Standard Version), which is the most literal translation of the original Hebrew, makes this verse all the more powerful.  Nobody in their right mind could debate the meaning of this verse, or try to interpret its meaning into anything other than what it clearly states in black and white.  This basically says, in more practical words, ‘When you know what is right and wrong, and still do the wrong thing, you have sinned’.  It does not say, …”except if this is the case…” at the end does it? James does not give conditions or places in life where we can use conditional ethics.  Right and wrong are black and right.  My sociology teacher in college would have had me convinced otherwise, but that’s the world for you; always trying to convince you that in some situations, wrong things can be “OK”.  Sorry, no thanks, not for me.  You are either doing the right thing or the wrong thing, and followers of Christ know the difference; and guess what?…it does not change from day to day.

Heck, everyone knows the difference, Christian or not.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, giving us awareness and discernment to all mankind.  That is my point…you do not have to be a Christian, like it or not, for this verse to apply to you.  All humans have discernment between right and wrong.  Between the morally correct choice versus the more self-advantageous choice.  Which one are you going to choose? Are you going to ignore this verse out of convenience, and do what you want to do anyway? Hoping that God will just let is slip by since there are other people out there doing much worse things? A sin, is a sin, is a sin. There are many Christians out there today, myself included, that sometimes will think ‘God could not possibly care if I do this, just for a little bit, then move on to do other things’, even though I know it is something I should not do.  Well, you are who you are when nobody is looking.  Let the record show, that phrase is actually a secular phrase, that is not stated in the Bible.  This verse carries with it a universal foundation.  It is Biblical, and it is worldly that if you know the right thing to do and chose not to do it, you have in fact sinned. No two ways about it, which is why I believe this to be the most powerful verse.

Please feel free to comment, share, discuss…I will be checking the comments and replying to them myself.  Unfortunately because Satan is hard at work everyday in peoples lives, I have to approve comments, due to those who just want to swear, call names, and post other non-constructive comments.  Do not let that keep you from posting though…I will check this regularly to keep the discussion going.

I recently had a discussion with my friend who has a job in the media field, and he is shooting and doing things right, however it got me thinking that I never posted my post about shooting in 24p.  He is not shooting in 24p, thank goodness, but so many people are; people who have no idea what 24p is.  Only about .00000001% of the people out there should actually be using the 24p feature on their cameras; however every kid on YouTube thinks that shooting in 24p makes them a professional now at “Film Making.”  Please, STOP!  To understand why you shouldn’t shoot in 24p, let’s first define what the different framerates and resolutions are.

- Standard NTSC SD Resolutions = 480i, 480p

- Standard NTSC SD Framerates = 60i, 60p, 30p

- Standard NTSC HD Resolutions = 720p, 1080i, 1080p

- Standard NTSC HD Framerates = 60i, 30p

Now, you notice that I did not list 24p above, even though it is an option on pretty much every HD consumer and professional camera out there.  Well, I hate to break it to you, especially those of you who used it as a deciding-factor in buying the model camera you did…”24p” is just a marketing gimmick.  Unless you are going to transfer your footage to film, for theatrical release or inclusion in a professionally done hollywood film or BluRay production line, then 24p is useless.  In addition to not gaining anything by doing this, you actually are loosing quality, since you have 6 frames per second that you are sacrificing, and could have, but are discarding at the shoot, so you can never go back and get that footage.  There is no way to make 24p file look like it was filmed in 30p, so stop shooting in 24p.  No, you are most likely NOT a film-maker, otherwise you wouldn’t need to have read this.

Some of you may have heard that Pioneer has started making some of their new drives LabelFlash capable (2005 technology, but still way better than ugly puke-yellow LightScribe). These enabled models include the DVR-217 and DVR-218. Well, for those of you like me who have the DVR-216, which is not LabelFlash capabale from the factory, then you may be disappointed. However, I found a way for those of us with the SATA version of the DVR-216 to have LabelFlash, without having to buy a new drive! There is a way to upgrade the firmware, but it is not an official flash, so only do this at your own risk. I was able to do this in less than 5 minutes, and my drives still work perfectly, plus they can create LabelFlash discs now, for free! Follow these steps to make your DVR-216 drive LabelFlash capable!

DO NOT CONTINUE READING THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE A PIONEER DVR-216 DRIVE! THE FILES IN THIS POST ARE SPECIFIC TO THAT DRIVE MODEL. IT MAY WORK ON A DVR-215 BUT I MAKE NO GUARANTEES.

Normally you would begin by downloading and running MSCE to patch the firmware, and then you would run it through DVRFlash, however, I have already patched the firmware for you. I enhanced the read speed and enabled auto-bitsetting when burning DVD+Rs – this makes the disc more compatible with set-top players and MAC computer. I also set the drive to RPC1 instead of RPC2 (this make it region free), so you can play any DVD region, not just your native region (most likely USA: Region 1 only). So we can skip the MSCE step, and go straight to flashing the drive. I accept your thanks.

1. Now, download this file here: dvr216_files.zip. It contains both the Firmware and the LabelFlash software.

2. Once you expand it, copy the whole “firmware” folder directly to the root of your main drive (probably your “C” drive).

3. Click on the “Start” button, then “Run” and type in “cmd” then press [ENTER]. This will bring up a command prompt window.

4. Type in the following command: “cd c:\firmware” (without the quotes). This will change the prompt path to the firmware folder you copied.

5. Now, type in the following command: “DVRFlash -ff D: S0415430.104 S0415431.106″ (without quotes). Make sure you change the part that says “D:” to your own drive letter of your DVR-216 drive. It may or may not be assigned the letter “D”. It is imperative that this be accurate, or else you might mess up another drive on your computer.

6. Go through the prompts, typing “y” for ‘Yes’ at both the disclaimer, and the ‘Are you sure’ warning. Your drive will take about 30 seconds to flash, and then you are DONE! Some computers may require a reboot, but mine did not. I was able to start burning LabelFlash discs right away. (You will notice that your drive changed from “DVR-216D” or just “DVR-216″ to “DVR-216L”. The “L” means the new firmware was successfully flashed to your drive)

Now, if you have some LabelFlash media, you can go ahead and burn a copy. Just open the “labelflash” folder, included in the download link I gave you, and run “LIM.EXE” (This is the LabelFlash software executable). You will select your Pioneer “DVR-216L” drive from the right-hand side, and then inset a LabelFlash DVD upside-down (blue side facing downwards). You can then choose a template, type in text, and then click to the “OK” button in the bottom right! Make sure to select “High Quality”, then burn away! The progress indicator will look something like the image below…

After it finishes, it should auto-eject the disc, and you will have a perfectly LabelFlashed labeled disc! Mine took about 10 minutes to complete on high quality, but since it is a permanent weatherproof label, that short wait is fine with me

ENJOY!

Many time I fix my friends’ or my family’s computers, and I run across one common theme among them all…they are DIRTY! Now, I am not talking about dust bunnies here, although that might prompt me to write an entirely new post. Anyway, when I say “dirty”, I am talking about the file structure! Some of the hard drives have not been formatted or even just cleaned up in years, and unfortunately most of the people who I try and stress this point to just don’t see why it is important. Then i say, “Well, you had to call me to come here, didn’t you?”, at which point I get a polite agreement-nod, and I can move on.

Now, there are many places extra left over files and junk can hide, which strangely enough is right out in the open! On your Desktop! Most people’s desktops have way too much junk on them…I believe mine has 4 icons, but then again I am somewhat OCD, so the max anyone would ever really need is two columns on the left. I see no reason to clutter up your desktop with icons you might click on once a month. How hard is it to go to “My Documents” and open it up that one time you need it, or click on the Start Menu? Well, either way, that is not what I am here to talk about, albeit a very nasty subject.

What I want to stress today is the root of the primary drive, most likely your “C” drive. If you are running any version of Windows XP, then the screen-shot below contains the only files and folders that should be allowed to reside in the root of the drive. Notice, you need to show hidden/system files to be able to see some of these, so open “My Computer” and select “Tools”, then “Folder Options…”. Select the “View” tab, then make sure you select the radio button (bubble) that says “Show hidden files and folders”, then UNCHECK the boxes next to the following two line-items: “Hide extensions for known file types”, and “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)”.

Yes, it will give you a warning and ask if you are sure…just humor Bill Gates and play along, and confirm that is what you want. Now, when you open your main drive, probably your “C” drive, you should see this…

I am posting this for all of those like me out there who like to clean up your drive every now and then. Add/Remove programs can only get rid of so much, so sometimes it is necessary to manually delete files, carefully, in certain areas of the computer. So, use the screen-shot above as a reference for the only “required” files that should be in the root of the “C” driver for Windows XP users.