how richmond geeks deceive google and everyone else instead on focusing in just fair business practices

I'm not a guy whom usually would pick a fight per se, and I'm not the guy who acts on impulse, but today I was pissed off at seeing a few reviews on my site www.richmondlaptop.net from a web search on google.
Then after a careful and closer inspection, I found these guys put some three persons (probably employees) to work on some treacherous black hat SEO tricks and as google lets me see the reviews those users posted on the web, I see they gave my business and everyone else in Richmond fixing computers a review between one and two stars, and a fake one with 5 (FIVE) stars for them.
This is a cheap trick I still wonder how google didn't catch up, I'm sure they can tune their algorithm to counter that practice, but so far, since May 2011 until today Dec 30 2011 THATS 6 MONTHS!! it worked, and you know what? the only good review I have on my site is a real one, and after that one I put my business on pause, and it is still in pause, due to a new approach, now we will do remote laptop repair and have the best price on the market for laptop repair all around Richmond and probably with a expansion mouth to mouth to all states, but so far, we are still not performing ANY service, and these guys still managed to provide a false bad review (we strive for 5 stars service or no fee is charged and we have a money back warranty and 100 day warranty on the service performed) for us.

and if you want to contact me, I'm the owner of www.richmondlaptop.net , A+ certified technician, and my email is richmondlaptop@gmail.com, my twitter: @richmondlaptop

good luck and have a good year.

excerpt from tymnet's wikipedia page

In January 1999, both XKL servers (ticket and token) were decommissioned. In late 2003 the hardware left onsite in San Jose was accidentally scrapped by the facilities manager during a scheduled cleanup.

ouch! big bad mistake, there should be a program like national monuments funded by the state to protect pieces of history of the computing age like this one which faded into oblivion due to not enough people knowing about the shceduled decommission or planned out phasing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet

from one of my favorite blogs, techrepublic

Ruby (which is one of my favorite languages because it is so expressive) can very easily be monkey patched into an indecipherable nightmare, while I’ve seen PHP (a language that encourages badly organized code to the point that I’ve often said it must stand for Page Hacked to Pasta) that was so clear and well-organized it would make you weep tears of joy.

The theory is not as important as the way you put it into practice.

this is part of an article, I didn't write it, but it is SO great that I took the freedom to reproduce it here, the full article is probably at techrepublic.com

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the most creative use of a stuffed mouse

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a special docking station

what I want, and still I'm waiting from the IT industry is a docking station with extra memory and a couple more processors to boost my current configuration, some extra cooling for life support and a streamlined (in the OS kernel) support of docking/undocking operation , the real thing should have a couple of pipe conduits for air flow... or wait, even better: a multicore 8 or 16 cpu with only 4 cores enabled when in undocked mode, then at docking time fire up all processors and/or overlock them with the aid of extra refrigeration, maybe a couple of peltier modules facing up in the docking station and some design to use the extra cooling from the laptop. we should be able to 'feel' the boost in power.. not like now.

am I dreaming? is it possible? why not? c'mon .. the actual IT "state of the art" technology is kinda boring for me now. no challenges are being overcome, just more and more packing transistors in smaller spaces.. 3D models are still in the horizon.. I know.

faulty seagate barracuda 2TB drives

I'm sure you'll shout WOW! when you see this item price, well, don't buy this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Seagate+-+Barracuda+2TB+Internal+Serial+ATA+Hard+Drive+for+Desktops/9419382.p?id=1218102739460&skuId=9419382&cmp=RMX&ky=1wUS7EE4pGHuNBZ4kBPyqLHyDuVRYOSI8 this 2 terabyte seagate barracuda SATA drive is, to say the least, a faulty design, and seagate refuses to give me my money back or another smaller or different item, even after I offered to pay the difference or absorb the difference, after three drives failed, the company refused to provide a better answer than : we can't do that, it's in the company policies, well, let me tell you this, dear Seagate, you company policy should implement some flexibility to handle very special cases like this one, I just can't trust this model anymore, the drive experiences some kind of lockdown mode for a couple of seconds at random, taking the entire system (I tried this in at least three computers) by slowing down or freezing the entire system bus, using 800 and other FSB bus speed didn't make any difference. as I don't have a lot of time to spare, and I wanted to make sure it was the drive not me, I took some extra time to run the tests, the company finally agreed to send me another NOT recertified drive, we'll see how it goes.

more on this later.

update: as of may 1 2011 there is no firmware update for this particular model, of course if you check the manufacturer's website you'll see the update, but when trying to apply the update, it just refuses saying firmware doesn't match.

DIY ultrasound.

I was with my wife today having a checkup and ultrasound and couldn't avoid thinking about how difficult can be to build a poor's man diy ultrasound machine. I wonder how specialized and hard to get may the sensor probe be. Well ... for all the other stuff and the DSP involved I think any decent computer today can handle that massive amount of data. I just can't stop thinking about the technology being overpriced or super proprietary just to keep the equipment being pricey ...or expensive. More on this later ...I'll check with papa google first.

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computer killers... this is one of many ..Beware

disable automatic restart after update

this made me loose some work last night so this morning I just googled for the solution, and bam! here it is, pretty much easy stuff, I think I'll be safe from "automatic" restart from now on: nice system modification. and a easy one.

http://www.coderetard.com/2008/12/10/how-to-disable-automatic-restart-after-windows-update/

google contacts info missing or out of sync

I use the contacts feature in gmail extensively and even in a abusing manner, (i.e taking notes) its a great tool for me to keep myself organized (sort of) and also to have all the info I need at the tip of my fingers, when this first happened I thought, well... it's just me, maybe I keep forgetting to click the "save" button , or maybe I just thought I wrote that note but I really didn't, (hello alzheimer:) now it is confirmed, I created a contact last night, and the gmail contacts feature has this "autosave" which I didn't used, I created the contact and filled the information (actually it was a couple of notes) and knowingly clicked "save" then I went to sleep, sending the laptop to sleep too, and now after a morning with no use I wake up my computer and find that the contact is there but all the notes are missing, and it's the second time in two days I lost something , fortunately , is not a big deal, I'm assuming here all my already saved contacts are in good shape, hopefully.

now, I wonder, possible causes (just let's not blame google here just as first culprit)

I have multiple machines desktop and laptops mac pc and linux windows with multiples instances of google gmail google contacts and google calendar opened at all times, all them are always in different states or the same, also I have filled my contacts with notes and random stuff to the point where my contact number surpasses 1300, also I have a nexus one phone and all the info is always in sync.

so all these computers are at a different distance from the server (in a network way) I mean they have different hops to the internet, different paths and different timing/sync settings, so what I think is happening here is that google is overwriting my contact info with outdated info from a previously blank (empty) contact, which I surely filled later.

any insights? google?

which laptop is the best?

I was asked by a neighbor today about "the best" laptop available, well, I know you know, that's a tricky question: here goes my answer (transcript almost literally from the email)

there is not a single laptop that can be qualified as the best of the best, usually what people focuses on while shopping for a laptop is a good performance/price ratio, (the best bang for your buck, if you know what I mean) there is one manufacturer which builds laptops for gaming people, and as games are usually a processor/memory eaters, you do need a great laptop to be able to run any game in a decent manner, so, even as being not a gamer, you may find some benefits from getting one from alienware, at www.alienware.com, personally, I just go for the best one I can afford at lenovo.com, which usually fits the bill, there is also a laptop for the field, if you travel a lot and have a need for a tough one, toshiba thoughbooks are for that.

you see? there is a million laptops for every need and user, what I recommend is to have it customized online at the buyer's site, like at dell.com, another seller, which some people disqualify as a good vendor but I heard some good stories too, well, being a laptop technician , I saw all of them fail and crash, so no laptop even the best in the world will ever replace a good backup policy and a disaster recovery plan, check the freebie at www.crashplan.com, where they provide offline and online backup for free and paid, depending on the kind of service and how you want your data to be secured. but don't forget, once online, forever online, no matter if they say it's encrypted, it is still there. so you may wanna do like I do, just have a offline backup policy , I backup right to my server, and I keep my stuff at a different physical place just for safety.

personally , I have an old and still reliable thinkpad T60 which I bought used and I upgraded to the maximum RAM possible (2Gb) and a 30Gb SSD hard drive which provides the muscle for speed and another 120Gb hard drive in the CD bay for storage. this one fits all my needs and I have it with windows XP service pack 3, which I got off eBay for near 40 dollars, any laptop today will come with a flavor of Windows 7, wich off the shelf is already asking you for a lot of memory, so I try to avoid going that route yet. I do have windows 7 in my desktop computer, but not in any of my laptops. I also have a mac desktop and a mac laptop, and a couple of HP laptops and a Gateway, but like I said, I it's a personal preference. being a geek I do have to have multiple computers :)

anyway, feel free to ask me any questions about the subject, I love IT consulting. oh, and my next laptop will be a lenovo w700, which runs (refurbished) close to 1200 dollars at eBay. but I will consider other options when decided.

best regards.

about best hard drive practices for a standard user.

I received a question from one of my friends about how to keep his data and hard drive properly. well.. this is my advice, which by no means is a full answered question, feel free to shoot suggestions or improvements for this post. thank you.

about best practices,...

I'm gonna tell you what I do and why: I don't keep a external hard drive connected at all times, only to move files back and forth, the reason is , what the manufacturer doesn't tell you is the hard drive becomes too hot internally and is designed to shorten the drive life that way, you having a eternal external drive is not a good business for them.

another one, some people call external cases "hard drive toasters" if you really work on the files in there and they are big enough and constantly accessed, again, the temperature plays a big role in their life span.

what I use is externals for temporary storage, depending how big is your daily data flow a flash drive 16 or 32gb may suit you better. also the spinning plates in a hard drive make them a victim of the gyroscopicforces involved when you move the drive and it is still spinning, not sure if you noticed that. they are not inherently designed for that job. I wait at least 30 seconds before moving a external after disconnection, proper disconnection, as in clicking "eject" you know the drill.

what would suit you better if you're a road warrior (not the cheapest option, though) is a external case with a SSD inside, then you have no moving parts and a lot less energy consumption ,ergo , less heat.

also if you always have internet access everywhere you go a couple of online tools can keep your data at hand, like dropbox or any other similar service.

for backups, you have paid an free options, dropbox again can be one and also crash plan, google for it. they have a free version, unlimited size, for what I read, if you base the backup in your own computer or a friend's computer. also I have a software called cobian backup running in my computer as a service backing up all my data to a slow but reliable NAS drive an Dlink dns321 two bay network drive modified for cooling purposes, connected to my router. which is mirroring the info in its two drives, so I can handle up to three drives failure and still be safe. i.e my computer my laptop and my external drive can all crash and I still have a *kinda of up to date* copy of my data set, anyway, it may be a little overkill but it works for me.

on the other side, some good external cases do have a nice fan, but in my experience, due to money spending constraints, I always feel like it is not enough, and also if I push the drive to full activity (something the design engineers seem to think the user never does) for a extended period of time, the cooling solution always fail. IMHO.

windows 7: sorry the filename is too long

I just got this error in my windows 7 computer while handling a copy got a long named file in a 64 bits version, I think as a user I should have at least the minimal option to say "truncate it and keep going" to such advanced OS, I know, linux doesn't have this problem, and from my understanding it is a filesystem limitation, independent from the OS, anyway, don't you think the OS designers should at least foreseen this situation and provided a better suitable option than "skip" for more end user experience and comfort? raise your hand if you do.