How to organise your PC desktop.

I'm a great believer that, managing your every day's clutter is the best way of freeing your mind. It's therapeutic for me.

One of the easiest space to de-clutter is your desktop PC. There are a few awesome organising widgets that you can use to organise your stuff. No longer you need to rummage through your directory to find those missing files and to keep on rearrange your icons all the time.

Here are some of the links of the widgets that I have been using to organise my own desktop.

I like my desktop to be as clean and simple as possible.

Well, everyone knows that I'm still using XP. It is the most stable OS that Microsoft has churned out and most of the applications am running, currently have no fix and doesn't support the usage of Windows 7. An old hag, but still very much reliable.

OK. Let us begin.

1. Organise your icons.


The one that am using above is called Fences. If what you need is to organise your icons accordingly, you can download the free version. It gives the illusion of fencing and segregating your icons according to how you want to organise it.

All you have to to is, once you have installed the app, launch it and drag your icons to it. Simple as 1-2-3.


2. To-do list.

Oh come on, you know you spend more time staring at your computer than going out socialising. LOL. What better way to remind yourself of those errands and chores that are just waiting to be done? Sticky notes on the fridge is way outdated. What we need is a virtual stick-on-note.

There a couple of options out there. If you are using Yahoo! Widget, then you can download the widget.

But what am about to recommend is something a bit more awesome than that typical sticky notes that are abundant out there. I use HottNotes.

Why? Because you can scribble on it, create a check-list and if you still prefer the old sticky plain note, they have that too. Most importantly it is created by Joel Riley, a student at Virginia Tech because he needed to list out things and I just love the fact that he shared this with the world.

My very own hottnotes!
(As you can see, my niece is quite demanding, and annoying too)

3. Yahoo! Widgets or Google Desktop.

What differentiate the two? Well for me Yahoo! Widget is more cool and fun. It is so fun, sometimes the widgets don't really serve any purpose and being fun with a large consumption of RAM is just a big NO for me. I chose Google Desktop because I depend on them like an addict depends on crack. LOL.

Since am using the grand daddy of Android Phone (T-Mobile G1), I occasionally sync my calendar, email and my contacts to Google cloud. So it is just practical for me to use Google Desktop anyways. I got my RSS feed, bookmarks, Google reader all from there. So it's cool but most importantly, it serves me perfectly. So choose wisely on what you want to use.

psstt! I've managed to root my G1 and had updated it with Froyo 2.2. But that's another story for another day. :)


4. Zune.



I've been using Zune for PC since the first day they published it. I kinda have a love-hate relationship with it. I hate their full version. It is just way to crowded for me. I like the fact that we get some sort of history about the artist, their music and everything but I usually need my music to be a background noise when am doing work. I don't really read those historical information and whatnot. The simple minimised version is totally for me; it doesn't really take up so much of space because my screen is not that big.

What? Winamp? Itunes? Oh come on, who uses that anymore? LOL.

P/S: If I download anything for free and if I like their application, especially programmer like Mr. Joel Riley, I usually paypal-ed them some money to show my gratitude and appreciation. We should always do that. As a developer myself, giving out or sharing free stuff is one thing, but to be able to know that someone appreciate what you have invented, the feeling is just too awesome, we might want to do more great stuff for you.

So be kind, donate some. :)

So True.

A friend (an Iphone user) emailed this to me. I laughed my ass off when I first saw it. I'm guilty of passing the same judgement. I'm an Android girl. I'm guilty of thinking and seeing Apple user as nothing more than just a poser and somewhat a cult follower that worships Steve Jobs and the closed-uptight path that he walks on. LOL.

Fighting the "Shortcut Virus".

There's nothing that can make me feel more suicidal than hearing the first thing that come out from my colleague's mouth when they see me stepping into the office; beaming with smiles because that day I've managed to get in earlier than usual;

"The shared directory is no longer accessible. I think it's a virus"

*sighs and walks heavily*

There goes the thought that I had earlier on about how it's going to be a great day for me.

So I stuffed all of my "stuff" in the locker...I was once told by my boss that I would probably be the only "girl" in my company that is so technical, I need to carry two extra bags consisting of - laptop,network cable, tester, my test pen, external hard disk, thumb drives, CD installers and what not, just to satisfy my technical side.... and dragged my flat feet straight to the server room - Only to found out that I left my server room's key in my handbag and had to walk all the 100m back to my cubicle but at the same time trying to look as if I was actually running around trying to fix the problem.

On my way back to the server room, I bumped into a door,my leg hit the edge of the table and shoulder a wall. Man! Talk about poor estimation of space and opening.

Bruises aside, I finally got into the server room and started doing some troubleshooting.

*

"Shortcut Virus". It hides all the original folders and files in the directory and creates false shortcut of them, hence the name. Man! The genius behind this virus must have been so bored with his life living in the basement of his parent's house. I use the word "his" because, come on, you know woman can never screw up things and make it as haywire as this. :)

Back to the "shortcut virus". Unfortunately, the Anti-Virus software for my company is fucked up. Can't even detect the existence of it, even it is constantly running at the background and "pretend" to be apart of Windows system process.

So what a system-admin-that-thinks-she-is-awesome-but-actually-has-limited-knowledge-on-virus-fighting-regime's to do? Go online and google for it of course!! I spent few hours trying to find the best solution for my server that is currently running on Windows Server 2000 (haha yeah I know, it's damn old but we are in the middle of migrating it, so spare me the lectures) that is also our AD and Web Server. So this is a critical server for our daily operation.

p/s: Beggars can't be choosers you know. I have to work within my means. Combining everything in one server could be seen as poor, but damn, when it comes to OPEX budgeting, WE ARE POOR! so beat it!

After a couples of trial and error attempts, I resorted to the SUPERHERO scheme. Track it down, and put it out manually myself! *shred shirts and wears out-tie underpants*

So if any of you suffer the same predicament as I did, use the following steps as guideline in getting rid of the "Shortcut Virus".

1. Unhidden your hidden stuff!

As mentioned earlier, this virus hides all your stuff in the directory. So first, in order to make sure that all the data is still there, you need to "see" it.

• Go to the folder options under the View Tab, check on the Show Hidden Files radiobutton, and uncheck the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) checkbox. This will enable you to see all the files available under the current active window panel.
• Do not try to unhide it by using the option under the Folder Properties individually because it is a hassle, and also most of it will be disabled.
  

2. Identifying the Virus Files and Ammunition.

Let me tell ya, this virus was solely created just to piss the hell out of you and messing with your head.

• It thrives on autorun.inf file available in your folder.
  
• It usually created 2 *.exe files under some random name that doesn't make any sense to you. In my case it was, taasmex.exe.
• Then there's, thumb.db. This file is usually automatically created by Windows when you are viewing the picture using the thumbnail options. But the thing is, original file under Windows is named THUMBS.DB. With an "S".

3. Killing the background process.

• If you are lucky enough, a mere task killing process can be invoked via Task Manager. But most of the time it didn't happened that way.
• If it is difficult for you to kill the bugger, then download HijackThis. A product from Trend Micro that would enable you to force-kill a running process.
  
• After you have downloaded it, install it on your server/pc, trace the process and kill it.
• Delete all the files mentioned above. I suggest that you Shift-Delete it rather than move it to the thrash bin. You never know that you might "accidentally" restore it back.

4. Delete all the shortcuts made by the virus and change the attribute of the directory or folders to unhidden all the hidden folders and files.

• Go to Start Menu - Run , type cmd. This will call the command prompt window.
• cd to the location of your infected directory. Let say its in E:\ then type this.

C:\> E:\
E:\> attrib -s -h /s /d *.

5. This command will make your folder to appear again before your very eyes.


If all the above mentioned steps do not work for you, then please email me so that I can bang my head on the table and try to hang myself on the ceiling fan.

Good Luck!

Tweak : Fixing the Firefox.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Firefox internet browser. I know it is one of the safest if not THE SAFEST, most convenient, well organised and all the features that would make a geeky worm goes gaga over it. Well, I am one of those unimpressed geek.

The only issue I'm having an emotional flip-flop with Firefox is the Add-On/Plug-ins feature. Why? Because it is always being automatically downloaded and once it is installed, it always search for updates. I don't need all those extra features because I prefer the native add-on free browser. Disabling it won't exactly put my mind at ease.

Although I always refuse any sort of additional downloads, sometimes I do overlook certain updates. Especially when it comes with a DEFAULT configuration.

The CULPRIT is Ask.com Toolbar. I hate it with passion! And for the past few days, it has been giving me hell.

One thing I need to remind the fans of Firefox is, when you remove your Ask.Com Toolbar, just make sure that you perform this step.

--> Go to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components and remove the AskSearch.js file in that folder.

Because although you think by performing uninstall task and everything will magically goes away, in reality, sometimes it doesn't really completely remove all the components of the add-on/plug-ins, and these "containers" that were left behind will cause your browser to go haywire.

Example:
You will get this every time you enter any URL on the address bar. The browser freezes for few seconds and will later produce this error message. What triggers this? It is the damn AskToolbar (I would rather refer to it as Ass TooBAD). It leaves behind the file I mentioned above, and still the browser will try to call it. Stupid or what?


All you need to do is just to remove the AskSearh.js and things will go back to normal. Trust me. It is still a pain in the ass, but it is a curable pain.

One more issue.

If you are a fanatic internet user; say, you use internet 24 hours a day and browse almost all the available pages in the virtual world; you might want to, once in a while clear your cache and browser history. That what we were told to do right? and by doing that we would think that it will be gone, deleted, vanished, cleared, thrash-binned, and whatnot.

Wrong.

You need to perform this instead.

1. Go to your Start Menu, navigate to Run and enter this %appdata%/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/.

2. You will then be diverted to your mozilla profile folder (oddly titled with an extension .default) that housed all your configurations; like bookmark, historical data and so on and so forth.

3. Open that folder, search for this file, places.sqlite . This file contains all your browsing history for as long as you have been using your Firefox browser. The size won't become smaller just because you constantly clear your history.

4. Rename this file place.sqlite.bak or you can delete it if you want (but I would recommend you to rename it, it is always a good practice to do backup). Because this step will force the Firefox to create a new file and will give you less headache every time you want to type in a URL and the browser would "SLOWLY" trying to search for the recommended site for you, based on your browsing history.

There you go. Hopefully it is all clear now. Even the greatest and the awesome-st browser is flawed.