Tuesday, December 30, 2008

How To Disable The Beep On Dell Laptops

How To Disable The Beep On Dell Laptops
Click Start - Settings - Control Panel
Double click the System icon.
Click the Hardware tab, then click the Device Manager button
Click View, click Show Hidden Devices.
In the Non-Plug And Play Drivers section right click the "Beep" and select Disable.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Garbage Disposal Humming Hums

Does your garbage disposal hum but not work? Perhaps your garbage disposal is humming but won't work? My Insinkerator did just that. I don't remember putting anything in my garbage disposal that would jam it but when your garbage disposal is humming or hums but doesn't do anything it may be jammed. So how do you get your garbage disposal working again? First of all if your garbage disposal hums pull the plug. Continuing to run the garbage disposal will cause it to smoke and will eventually break it for good. If your garbage disposal hums unplug it and get yourself an allen wrench. Insinkerator brand garbage disposals come with a double sided allen wrench. Look on the bottom of the garbage disposal for a hole that will match the allen wrench. Insert your allen wrench and give it a crank. Hopefully you'll be able to crank it a bit in both directions to free up whatever is caught. If it cranks easily then remove the allen wrench and plug in the garbage dispoal. It may now run properly without the hum. If so then try something through it, I recommend a piece of bread. KEEP YOUR FINGERS OUT.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Minnesota Unemployment Phone Number

If you are recently unemployed in Minnesota or have a question on your Minnesota Unemployment Benefits you may be looking for the Minnesota Unemployment Phone Number. Depending on why you need to call the Minnesota Unemployment Office and where you live in Minnesota will determine which Minnesota Unemployment Phone Number you need to be calling. For example, if you live in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota you need to call 651-296-3644. If you live outside of the Twin Cities you need to call the Minnesota Unemployment Phone Number 1-877-898-9090. Lastly if you are deaf and need a phone number to reach a TTY your phone number is 1-866-814-1252.

If you need to send a fax to the Minnesota Unemployment Office the phone number for that is 651-205-4007

Minnesota Unemployment Application

As I posted earlier. If you are a worker in Minnesota and are unemployed or think you might become unemployed you need to research your options for collecting Minnesota Unemployment Benefits. Step one if you are unemployed in Minnesota is to fill out a Minnesota Unemployment Application. The state of Minnesota has a great website that will allow you to fill out the Minnesota Unemployment Application online. At this same website you can logon after applying for unemployment and check the status of your benefit. You can also use their Minnesota Unemployment Benefits Calculator to determine how much you might receive each week.

Minnesota Unemployment Benefits Calculator Estimator

If you live in Minnesota and are unemployed or feel you may become unemployed than you need to start researching Minnesota Unemployment Benefits.

Many times workers want to project, calculate or estimate what their Minnesota Unemployment Benefits might be. The state of Minnesota has created a nice website called the Minnesota Unemployment Benefits Estimator that will tell you what your potential unemployment benefit might be it helps calculate unemployment benefits. To get the Minnesota Unemployment Benefits Calculator to work you visit their website. Then logon using your social security number. The unemployment website then takes data given to them by your employer and creates an estimate of what your Minnesota Unemployment Benefit might be.

Wisconsin Mall Updates

This weekend I performed several updates to my website about the various Wisconsin Malls one can visit. There are several malls in the Milwaukee area like the Brookfield Mall and Mayfair Mall. Madision is also the home of two malls, East Towne Mall and West Towne Mall. Then scattered around other parts of Wisconsin you have several other regional malls that make shopping in Wisconsin a treat for visitors and citizens alike. Updates to the Wisconsin Malls website include zip codes, meta tag improvements and the addition of several pictures. My shopping malls in Wisconsin site was sadly neglected for far too long.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Wisconsin House Rentals

If you are looking for a house for rent in Wisconsin you may want to check out the Wisconsin House Rental website. Here you can find information on prices for houses for rent in Wisconsin and especially houses for rent on the Wisconsin Craigslist website. There are certain requirements to rent a house in Wisconsin and you can find more information on what you'll need to have in cash and on your record to successfully rent a house in Wisconsin.

What's Your Favorite Maple Grove Restaurant?

The other day I was eating in my favorite Maple Grove Restaurant Houlihans when it dawned on me how many options Maple Grove offers for dining. The Gammet of Maple Grove Restaurants runs from fast food like Burget King and Wendy's to fine dining at Pittsburgh Blue. You can get everything from Sushi to Steak and Lobster at places like Red Lobster. You can eat Italian food at at least three high quality Intalian style restaurants. Now that I mention Italian, Biaggi's is maybe tied with Houlihans for my favorite Maple Grove restaurant.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Millionaire Matchmaker 2 Coming Soon

I spent my day after Christmas watching a marathon of The Millionaire Matchmaker on Bravo TV. They were airing commercials for the new season of The Millionaire Matchmaker which starts on February 12, 2009. This season Patti Stanger will feature not only male and female millionaires, she'll also be helping a gay millionaire find love through dating and coaching. It was nice to see The Millionaire Matchmaker back on Bravo TV, it's been a long time coming for Millionaire Matchmaker Season 2.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Landlord Organizing For 2009

Today I had a nice chance to get organized for the start of a new year. Last year I became a landlord and learned many things. One of the most important thigs was to stay organized. To set myself up for a great 2009 I did the following today. I located the Minnesota Certificate Of Rent Paid information on the MN Internal Revenue website and read the instructions. I then filled out the proper number of MN Certificate Of Rent Paid forms for my tenants and put them in the envelopes with postage all ready to mail after I receive my January rent payment. I then started a new year in Quickbooks due to some issues I had in the previous year. Now I can start the year fresh with everything balancing. This will make pulling financial infomation from Quickbooks much easier next year. Finally I created an invoice for January's rent and emailed it to all my tenants after creating a distribution list so they all get the invoice at the same time. This eliminates the possibliy that one tenant may keep information from one or more tenants. On the invoice in the Memo section I note that Rent is due 1/1 and a late fee is assesed on 1/5/2009. Hopefully this ensures that rent is paid on time more consistantly in 2009.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Rock Of Love Bus January 4 VH1

On January 4 2009 your going to want to be watching VH1 as Rock Of Love Bus is set to premier. This is the latest installment in the Rock Of Love series with Bret Michaels from Poison continuing his quest for love by dating the bad girls of rock and roll. Rock Of Love Bus is sure to be more of the same but this time they are taking the show on the road. Expect more bad girls and football but in new locations as Rock Of Love Bus hits your TV on January 4 on VH1.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

More StarTribune Spyware




Tuesday night I left my computer on overnight and mistakenly left up the StarTribune website. I found this nice treat on my screen the next morning. Again it's likley an advertisor of the StarTribune newspaper website hijacking my browser and trying to get me to install the malware Antispyware XP 2009.

Nene and Greg Leakes Being Investigated

Reality TV show stars NeNe and Greg Leakes from The Real Housewives Of Atlanta were investigated by the local FOX news station and they ran this report. It turns out that while playing rich upper class Atlanta elite that may not be the case. I wonder if Bravo TV knew this when casting or were they fooled as well. I also wonder if this will reflect badly on Dwight Eubanks and his new show Behind The Purple Door which is another upcoming reality show set around Atlanta's Elite african american community.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

New Dwight Eubanks Show Behind The Purple Door

I just finished watching an awesome trailer for a new show called Behind The Purple Door which features The Purple Door Salon in Atlanta run by Dwight Eubanks. Yes he's the diva from The Real Housewives Of Atlanta that in some ways stole the show. Dwight Eubanks has such a bold personality that this reality show is a no brainer and sure to be a success. I was not able to find out what channel we'll see Behind The Purple Door on or when but hopefully soon we'll have more than a trailer to watch. You can watch the Trailer for Behind The Purple Door at this website and learn more about Dwight Eubanks at another that I found. Now that The Real Housewives Of Atlanta is over it's nice to know we'll have something else to watch.

Greg And Nene Leakes House For Rent

Remember that beautiful house that Greg Leakes and Nene Leakes lived in on the show The Real Housewives Of Atlanta? Well it turns out it was a rental. I found the MLS listing for 1765 Silvermere Court in Duluth Georgia. If you want to live in Nene Leakes house you can for a mere $2995 per month. The house is for rent because Nene and Greg moved out of the house in November 2008 but according to court papers they still owed about two months rent to Winwood Properties the management company.

Friday, December 05, 2008

The StarTribune Continues To Send Spyware

So in my previous AntiSpyware XP post I had thought that the StarTribune website was using advertising that would hijack the visitors browser and send them to a rogue website that tries to install the malware called Antivirus XP 2009. In the past couple days i've not seen this happen any longer so I thought they had fixed the issue. Today a coworker was reading an article on StarTribune.com and suddenly the page was blocked by our AntiMalware product called SWPS by Secure Computing (Now McAfee). The employee was simply reading an article when their browser was hijacked and attempted to send them to a site that installs spyware known as Antivirus XP 2009. Check out the screen shots below.

The Add-in "Outlook Scan" (C:\Program Files\McAfee\VirusScan Enterprise\Scanotlk.dll) cannot be loaded and has been disabled by Outlook

If you run McAfee Virusscan and Outlook 2007 you may receive an error when opening Outlook 2007 that says.

The Add-in "Outlook Scan" (C:\Program Files\McAfee\VirusScan Enterprise\Scanotlk.dll) cannot be loaded and has been disabled by Outlook. Please contact the Add-in manufacturer for an update. If no update is available, please uninstall the Add-in.

To fix this close outlook 2007 and delete the file EXTEND.DAT from the folder %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\ and start Microsoft Outlook 2007.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Access Denied When Installing SP3 For Windows XP

I recently tried to upgrade a Windows XP system to SP3 and received Access Denied during the initial extraction of the files. I then tried to install SP3 for Windows XP from the Windows Update site but that update failed as well. I found this solution to Access Denied when installing SP3 for Windows XP. It mentions this soulution for a RC2 version of SP3 but I fixed the access denied error on my production Windows XP version. First you back up the registry by running regedit, click file and export. Make sure you have "My Computer" the top most part of your registry highlighted. Then click the link to download the SubInACL.exe from Microsoft. Then run the proper script to make the changes and when finished re-run the SP3 install.

Update, this did not work in my case where I got Access Denied during the extraction part of SP3. I have McAfee Virusscan 8.7 installed on my PC. I right clicked the Vshield icon and disabled the on-access scanner. I could then re-run SP3 for Windows XP and it completed installing the service pack.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Is StarTribune Handing Out Antivirus XP Malware Spyware On StarTribune.Com?

Twice last week my PC's web browser appeared to be taken over in an effort to get me to install the malware called Antivirus XP 2009. The web browser changes to a website called proscanner-online or something like that. I was able to clean it off the PC but was puzzled because I don't go to websites known to hand out spyware. I would never have thought that StarTribune.Com would be handing out malware like Antivirus XP 2009 but sure enough, tonight while reading my email I noticed my browser switched sites and went to some proscanner-online site with a popup box that Antivirus XP 2009 puts out trying to trick you into installing the malware. I killed the iexplore.exe process and went to the living room. Then my wife says hey this spyware thing is back on StarTribune sure enough within minutes because both PC's were sitting on the Star Tribune website the browsers were redirected to a website trying to hand out Antivirus XP 2009 Spyware. I'm going to keep watching this to try and determine if it's one of the many advertisements on StarTribune.Com or maybe it's the website of the Star Tribune itsself handing out Antivirus XP 2009.
Update 12/2/08 as a test I left a browser with just the StarTribune website up overnight. Sure enough I turn on my monitors this morning and see this on my screen.

I killed the iexplore.exe process again and have been working all morning on non-startribune websites and have not seen this so i'm getting closer to deducing that something on the star tribune website is doing a browser hijack and trying to get the user to install Antivirus XP 2009.
Update 12/2/2008 In doing some more testing I found that my cliboard on yet another Pc had been hijacked and when I pasted a url would appear that if clicked would take you to a website that would try and install antivirus XP 2009. A great explanation of what is going on at StarTribune.Com is here. It appears that this is flash based banner ads on Star Tribune's website that exploit flaws in certain versions of flash. It hijacks the clipboard and either the user pastes the nasty url in places or somehow it also hijacks the browser and sends the visitor from Star Tribune to the Antivirus XP 2009 affiliate. Star Tribune isn't alone in putting banners on their site that exploit the visitors flash plugin, other media sites have done the same without their knowledge.