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If there are no last minute changes, Zen Tech will air on 6-3-15 & 6-10-15. See Jane Do will air on 6-24-15. The wrong dates were given during today’s show.

 

Intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

Glenn was in the studio, Paul joined in by phone.
Paul was in Los Alamos in Santa Barbara County (not the town in New Mexico) on his way to San Diego

Paul noted that the Zen Tech website, now running on WordPress, hooks into KVMR’s Google Calendar to display the upcoming schedule for this show. He said there is a lag time of about 2 days. And indeed, when Glenn looked at the schedule, it still showed See Jane Do in the 6-3-15 time slot.

Paul lamented that his Toyota Corolla station wagon is nearing the end of its life. It has over 330,000 miles on it. He’s been driving it for some 20 years and the oil light has been coming on at low revs and there are signs of small quantities of oil in the coolant. He thinks the repair cost, especially the labor, is too great for such an old car. He said he’d like his next car to be an import that’s no older than about 1998, when onboard diagnostic became common.

His Toyota has a ‘diagnostic plug’ but it’s too old to have onboard diagnostics and he wondered what it was. He did some research on the internet and found a instructions about shorting a couple of pins together in the plug. If you then turn on the ignition, the check engine light would flash in a sequence to indicate if something was wrong. When Paul tried it, there was no indication that there was a problem. He thought the electronics were too primitive to sense trouble with the oil pressure.

Glenn thanked the listeners who’ve supported KVMR. And he mention the Nevada County Library Read Up Learning Center which offers an adult tutoring program in math, English reading, writing and speaking skills. Call 530-470-2772 for more info.

Paul noted that WordPress allows website visitors to leave comments on the Zen Tech site. Listeners are welcome to leave comment or even start a discussion. Critiques are allowed but keep things civil. The comments are moderated, which means someone will look at them before they are made public. There’s also a Zen Tech Facebook page.

Unlike the Zen Tech content on the internet, the web content of a commercial enterprise needs to be curated more diligently in order to attract customers. A great example of such an enterprise is The Outside Inn, Paul said. Their Facebook page is managed by a photographer who has posted interesting pictures of the Nevada City area. <The only local Outside Inn I found on Facebook is here.>

Paul has noticed an increase in the number of people accessing the podcast of the KVMR evening news — several hundred downloads every day. He reminded listeners that the podcasts can be subscribed to so each broadcast can be picked up automatically. He said KVMR would like some feedback about their podcast system.

Glenn said he hasn’t been putting up podcasts of the Zen Tech shows lately but intends to resume doing so. And Paul said that he was able to preserve the show notes from previous Zen Tech shows when switching to WordPress. The are some 240 searchable show notes.

Bruce called. He uses Firefox and Thunderbird on a Windows 7 machine. Sometimes these programs would say ‘do you want to do this in safe mode’ when he starts them up. If he tries to run them again, he doesn’t get the message.
– There have been a flurry of Mozilla upgrades in recent years and sometimes a new installation will not “clean up after itself”. So try uninstalling and then reinstalling the programs.
– Uninstalling should preserve the data (passwords, history, bookmarks, etc). <Pay attention. During the uninstall, there may be a check box you need to tick to preserve the data. I don’t remember for sure.>
– In Firefox go to Tools -> Addons and then remove or disable any addons you don’t recognize.

Bruce also complained that in Windows 7, if he opens an app and tries to access a file, he has to do it as an administrator or it won’t open. Paul said, as an example, there’s a program the guys like to use called Spybot 1.6.2 (Paul would not recommend a newer version) that should be run as an administrator. To get it to do so, right click the shortcut and select ‘always run as administrator’.

Bruce then said he’s unable to run the Chrome browser. It would start to launch and then quit.
– “You want a system-wide check disk”. <Run the check disk program, I guess he meant.>
– Create another user and try running these applications under that user’s account (profile).
– If things run OK under the new profile, pull in everything from the old profile then drop the old profile.
– Bruce said he might get a new machine and then import the apps from the old one. Paul said that’s not a good idea and that it’s best to do a fresh reinstall of each app. The data you can import but not the apps themselves, Glenn said.

Chris called. In Windows 8, when he slides his finger the “wrong way” on the trackpad “the thing pops out on the side”. “Is there any way to get rid of that”. Paul thought it’s call the Charm.
– You can move it to the top or the other side, but Glenn wasn’t sure if you can get rid of it.
– Do a Google search for: disable charm. You might find tips to make it less obtrusive.
– Reduce the sensitivity of the trackpad. Go to the Control Panel and try reducing the acceleration setting. Or move/swipe your finger slower so the Charm doesn’t come up.

Paul asked Glenn if he’s heard much about Windows 10. He hasn’t heard much except the general consensus that it’s great and everyone will want it. Paul said there’s rumor that it will be free so as to encourage those who create applications for it. With more people using Win10 there’ll be more incentive to write and sell apps for it.
<It’s Official: Windows 10 Free For Many Users
Didn’t pay for Windows? You might still get Windows 10 for free
>

Douglas called. He had to do something at a Fedex store and logged on to one of their computers with his Gmail account. He then started getting email saying people have been logging into his Gmail account. He changed his Gmail password and wondered if that’s enough to fix this security problem.
– That should be sufficient. Paul said he should have been notified by Gmail that the password has been changed — he was.
– Don’t go back to that store again.
– Gmail doesn’t allow weak passwords so it’s likely no one guessed it, it was likely stolen. There might have been a key logger (hardware or software) at that computer that recorded your password as you typed it and sent it to the culprits.