Dear Mom,
Today I cleaned for one of my two Tuesday ladies. I managed to get her house cleaned and solve some computer problems for her. She's got several friends who send her forwards and is being inundated with stupid emails, sometimes several hundred a week. It's gotten where she hates to pick up her mail. I wish people would stop doing all that unnecessary forwarding of huge files. It's much easier and more responsible to send a link to a website where they can see the same thing without clogging up their mailbox. Or even worse, sending a picture of another kitten doing something inexpressibly cute, taking 15 minutes to download to someone on a dial-up connection. I have been known to plan revenge upon irresponsible forwarders.
Her grandson has been taking care of her computer, scanning and defragging, etc. whenever he comes over. Her Norton (!!!!akkk!!!!) anti-virus ran out several months ago and she's been surfing on a fast connection with no anti-virus since then(!!!!double-akkk!!!!). I downloaded and installed AVG Free Version for her, scanned and defragged and ran a virus scan. It caught one Trojan horse. Don says that means I should install Spybot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster, too. I'll do that next time.
This evening I got her a GMail account and we talked her through downloading and configuring Thunderbird so she's good to go. Now she can inform her close friends and relatives of her "good" address and let the rest wonder why she doesn't pick up their emails anymore.
I love you,
Lisa
Showing posts with label Thunderbird. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thunderbird. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
"Survey Says!!!...."
Dear Mom,
I was reading a blog about personal finances and one author referred to a savings method as 'snowflaking'. The basic premise is that, just as debt can 'snowball', you can also add to your assets by adding small amounts every day when possible, and never spending money foolishly, 'snowflaking', so to speak. Snowflakes add up to snowballs, and you can have an asset snowball just about as easily as a debt snowball. Accumulating assets makes you feel great, debt makes you miserable.
snowflaking-a-primer
One thing that the author does is take online surveys for cash and recommended a few that had proven trustworthy and paid cash. I've signed up for and taken pre-qualifying surveys for four of them so far. The amounts are very modest, but since I'm at the computer often and spend no time at all in front of the TV "wasting my time", why not try it?
I was leery of receiving spam, so I set up a new email account to handle just the surveys. Gmail has great spam filters and I'm happy with their service so I set up with them, then installed Thunderbird. Why Thunderbird? Don and I were setting up an email account for a friend and the process of getting a gMail account with Thunderbird was absurdly easy. And it's just fun and kind of cool to have more than one email client. You do have to give a lot of what I used to consider personal information to the survey sites, but so what? What do I have or know that anyone would use, and for what purpose? I have *so* gotten over paranoia.
On occasion I've taken online surveys and then they want your email address to send you the results. This is not a good idea, they're asking for your email address and offer you something you want, like to find out "how smart are you?" or "how do you stack up in the bedroom?" or some such silliness. As soon as I find out what they want, I close out the window by clicking out the window, not by clicking a "no, thank you" or "don't email me", those are just a ploy to get you to give them information.
It will be interesting to see how this comes out. I was careful to use only those sites recommended by real people who "field tested" them. Do I see a snowflake?
I love you,
Lisa
I was reading a blog about personal finances and one author referred to a savings method as 'snowflaking'. The basic premise is that, just as debt can 'snowball', you can also add to your assets by adding small amounts every day when possible, and never spending money foolishly, 'snowflaking', so to speak. Snowflakes add up to snowballs, and you can have an asset snowball just about as easily as a debt snowball. Accumulating assets makes you feel great, debt makes you miserable.
snowflaking-a-primer
One thing that the author does is take online surveys for cash and recommended a few that had proven trustworthy and paid cash. I've signed up for and taken pre-qualifying surveys for four of them so far. The amounts are very modest, but since I'm at the computer often and spend no time at all in front of the TV "wasting my time", why not try it?
I was leery of receiving spam, so I set up a new email account to handle just the surveys. Gmail has great spam filters and I'm happy with their service so I set up with them, then installed Thunderbird. Why Thunderbird? Don and I were setting up an email account for a friend and the process of getting a gMail account with Thunderbird was absurdly easy. And it's just fun and kind of cool to have more than one email client. You do have to give a lot of what I used to consider personal information to the survey sites, but so what? What do I have or know that anyone would use, and for what purpose? I have *so* gotten over paranoia.
On occasion I've taken online surveys and then they want your email address to send you the results. This is not a good idea, they're asking for your email address and offer you something you want, like to find out "how smart are you?" or "how do you stack up in the bedroom?" or some such silliness. As soon as I find out what they want, I close out the window by clicking out the window, not by clicking a "no, thank you" or "don't email me", those are just a ploy to get you to give them information.
It will be interesting to see how this comes out. I was careful to use only those sites recommended by real people who "field tested" them. Do I see a snowflake?
I love you,
Lisa
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
I like Thunderbird
Dear Mom,
Had to clean 2 houses today and I'm not really overly tired. Very interesting... I've been considering taking on more jobs, not increasing the number of days I work, just doubling up. I work on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday during fishing season (Cottonwood Cove). Have to leave the other days of the week free so Don can work, too. I had been considering doing 2 houses on each day but was holding off because it's pretty tough. I've had to do it a very few times and was extremely tired, but that was back when I was chronically sleep-deprived. Now, with adequate rest, I think I can do it so I'll give it a shot.
I'm playing with my PIM program, Kontact in Linux and it's whiz-bang. In fact one of these days I'm going to be so organized I'll be almost like my friend Charlie who invented the term organized. Nah, never happen, but I can dream, can't I? For now I have to apply myself and learn how to use the silly thing. The cool thing about it is you only have to enter the info once for it to be available to all the other components. In other words, enter all the info you want, even birthdates, events, etc. You can categorize (like family, friends, clients, business) and then apply filters when you search, to narrow the field. It's pretty darn cool. As I said, someday...
Don was setting up your gmail accounts today while I was at work, and we finished it up tonight before he left for work, so you two are ready to go. We researched email clients and Thunderbird was highly rated, but we had no idea how great it was until we went to set up the accounts. All we did was enter your gmail addresses and passwords and the deed was done! No fuss, no bother, presto! We never set up an email account so easily. Wow! The cool thing was you both can have Thunderbird, his in Windows and yours in Linux. I think you'll like it.
I love you,
Lisa
Had to clean 2 houses today and I'm not really overly tired. Very interesting... I've been considering taking on more jobs, not increasing the number of days I work, just doubling up. I work on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday during fishing season (Cottonwood Cove). Have to leave the other days of the week free so Don can work, too. I had been considering doing 2 houses on each day but was holding off because it's pretty tough. I've had to do it a very few times and was extremely tired, but that was back when I was chronically sleep-deprived. Now, with adequate rest, I think I can do it so I'll give it a shot.
I'm playing with my PIM program, Kontact in Linux and it's whiz-bang. In fact one of these days I'm going to be so organized I'll be almost like my friend Charlie who invented the term organized. Nah, never happen, but I can dream, can't I? For now I have to apply myself and learn how to use the silly thing. The cool thing about it is you only have to enter the info once for it to be available to all the other components. In other words, enter all the info you want, even birthdates, events, etc. You can categorize (like family, friends, clients, business) and then apply filters when you search, to narrow the field. It's pretty darn cool. As I said, someday...
Don was setting up your gmail accounts today while I was at work, and we finished it up tonight before he left for work, so you two are ready to go. We researched email clients and Thunderbird was highly rated, but we had no idea how great it was until we went to set up the accounts. All we did was enter your gmail addresses and passwords and the deed was done! No fuss, no bother, presto! We never set up an email account so easily. Wow! The cool thing was you both can have Thunderbird, his in Windows and yours in Linux. I think you'll like it.
I love you,
Lisa
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