Joe Boy

Why Hurricane Shutters?

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A number of years ago after Hurricane Andrew I bought a house. I decided to do some research on how to protect my home in the event of a hurricane. As a computer guy the first thing I did was go to the internet. I went to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Website and visited their research division. I found a ton of information about hurricanes and what to expect. It also touched on how to protect your home. Many people in Florida always ask should I put up storm shutters and when. There is no easy answer on the subject. I also don’t claim to be an expert, but after reading reports and doing a ton of research I figured I would show my findings and how I protected my home from three back to back hurricanes. I would like to credit Mr. Stan Goldenberg at NOAA as a great resource of information for this article. Read more

Joe Boy

Your Flash is Out of Date!!!

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Everyone has seen this one and the question I am asked all the time is: “What do I do?”  Well first off, you don’t click the install button.  This is very important.  You do not know if the message is from a rouge website attempting to cause you harm or from a good website that is informing you that your flash software is out of date and has to be updated before you can safely use it.  So lets start at the beginning.  What is FLASH? Read more

How your Computer costs you money.
Joe Boy

7 ways your computer is costing you m$ney

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Everyone in business these days uses a computer. In fact most people have a computer at their home as well as the office. These are great tools to get repeating tasks done quickly so you can go back to doing what you WANT to be doing. Here are seven ways your computer is costing you money. Read more

Joe Boy

Photoshop copy and paste doesn’t work? What to do…

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So not long ago I was doing some work in Photoshop and a friend was going to assist me.  He loaded his Photoshop and for some reason could not copy and paste from Photoshop into MS word or even notepad.  So what do you do when Photoshop copy and paste doesn’t work.  You could try rebooting the computer but that won’t help.  You could try reinstalling Photoshop but that will not work.  You could go on google, which my friend did.  They offered a number of options and nothing worked.  So hopefully you will find this answer on google and we have two solutions for you. Read more

Joe Boy

Resizing and stretching photos to fit a predetermined size.

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Many times I get a client that hands me a 4×6 photo and wants me to turn it (somehow) into a 8.5×11 sheet of paper.  But they don’t just want it on the bottom, then want it as a background to put words on top.  Well even if you resize it normally to 8.5×5.667 you are still missing in height over 5 inches.  This is where you have to be creative.  I have seen people stretch a photo and warp the image so bad there is no way to tell what the orginial photo is.  Most of the time these needs arise is for backgrounds of advertising that is a large photo with text around it. I would must prefer just increase the image to 16.5×11 and crop it to 8.5×11 using only half of the image, but sometimes the elements are required.  Sometimes the client wants what they want even if it does not make sense.  So in those situations you have to protect the client from themselves and keep them from warping the photo.  You have to ensure the finished product still looks like a real photo. Read more

no pages selected to print
Joe Boy

Document cannot be printed, No Pages Selected to Print

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Every once in a while I get a call about an error.  I am told that Adobe won’t print.  After getting some more details I find they are working is Adobe Reader and attempting to print a PDF file.  The error states that “Document cannot be printed” which gets points for being descriptive and when you click ok you get another error that says: “There were no pages selected to print.”  Now that seems promising.  Except the person did select pages and in some cases selected exact pages they wanted printed.  When a client gets this message they spend a few minutes with the selection of pages and well you can stop.  It really has nothing to do with the pages.  In fact it is impossible to tell why this error message is triggered.  But we do have some solutions for you.  Each of these solution comes at a cost.  You have to determine which cost is good for you. Read more

Joe Boy

Panda antivirus accidentally marks itself as malware

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Reported on Z-net today was the fact that Panda antivirus was mistakenly bricking PCs.  This is NOT the case.  To brick a PC means that it cannot be repaired without purchasing parts. (ie new motherboard or hard drive.)  This was a simple mistake that affected a large number of people and should be resolved by the time you read this article. According to a Panda spokesperson, it has already fixed 90% of incidents.  In their estimation it was a small number of their install base.  So what really happened…   Read more

Don't want to start anything
Joe Boy

I don’t want to start anything!!

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We work with a number of senior citizens and we train our staff to be a little slower and very understanding. There are many times when just the terminology can get in the way.  Case in point, got a call from a new client that was older, and his problem was that he wanted to turn off his computer. Now to better understand, this client was a nice older man with one arm.  So to be able to talk to me on the phone was a little bit of work.  He would have to grab the phone with his good hand a balance it on his shoulder and up to his ear, so he could free up his hand to use the computer.  I asked him what OS he had and of coarse he did not know.  I asked if on the bottom left corner of the screen did he see a START button.  Read more

Joe Boy

The Coffee Cup Holder

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A woman called the office asking for immediate computer help. She had a Packard Bell computer and said that she broke the coffee cup holder and needed it replaced immediately.  After explaining that her computer did not have a coffee cup holder, I requested he to describe the issue with the COMPUTER. She then explain that the coffee cup holder was a part of the computer and that she pushes a button and the holder comes out.  There was a round hole which perfectly fit her coffee cup.  But the other day she accidentally closed it with the coffee cup still in it and broke it off the computer.  Read more

Joe Boy

Where have you been?

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Do you know where your kids are? Are they safe. Common questions from parents of teens these days. But who else wants to know where your kids are? How about advertisers. The world of Google has made for the ultimate resource: INFORMATION. We are taught has children that information is power. Well Google has collected a lot of it. If you want to know where you are you can just use the GPS on your phone. But what if you want to know where you kids are. There are apps you can buy and pay for to track your loved ones, but did you know that Google wants to know where you are and where you have been? Read more