Went to a client’s house the other day. He had been without email on his desktop computer at home for 2 weeks. He could check his email on his iPad and iPhone – but his PC just kept giving ‘timeout’ errors. After a lot of time spent messing around with Outlook settings, system and Outlook updates, and even creating a new Outlook “profile” I stumbled across a website that suggested disabling your anti-virus program.

Now, he’s had the same program on his PC for years (it came bundled with PC-Cillan), and hasn’t changed any of his settings. But, sure enough, when I disabled it Outlook started working. So, there must have been an update to the software that decided that to make his PC safer, it would block email. NICE!

This is why I recommend a plain-jane antivirus program called AVG. It’s free and it just checks for viruses. The big boys have gotten into blocking everything in a desperate attempt to make the PC more secure – but they end up making the PC useless. Techy users can certainly handle these apps, but your average user just ends up with a brick on their desk.

So, if your PC’s email suddenly stops working, check the settings with what your provider recommends and then try turning off your Anti-Virus software. It might save you days of frustration.

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One of the things I’m doing to try and get my name out there is answering questions on Linked-In. I hadn’t realized this was even on their site before I can go into their questions section and answer questions other people have posted. It’s fun and challenging, plus I have the hope that someone will see my answer and hire me to fix other problems they have.
I love helping people and solving puzzles, and this seems like a good way to keep my hand in. I’ll be reposting some of the more interesting questions and answers here.

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Consulting is a strange business. You’re only selling your time and expertise. So, my client’s are cutting back and downsizing, which means less work for me. How do I get new clients? Especially, when businesses everywhere are cutting back! Normally, I get all my new business through word of mouth and it’s a slow process. I don’t mind – I keep my clients for the long term (most for more than 10 years), but because I don’t have a real method for getting new clients I’m in a bind now.

So, I’m going to start blogging here.. and I’m letting all my clients know I need more work. I’m joining Linked-In and answering questions there. Other than that…. not sure.

Any suggestions?

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Ted and Josie are both participating in the Renaissance Faire this year: Josie in the games booths and Ted as a Friend of the Faire (FAF). We all went  up to the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area last weekend to check out the yard sale and get them set up. It was fun wandering around on the Faire grounds while it was being built and Josie completed her costume.

Now Josie and Ted have to take their classes (accent, character building, costume, etc) and then they’ll be ready to greet and entertain the public.

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That means goodies to eat, like Lebanon Balogna:

Cougar Cheese from Washington State University:

And pretzels from Pennsylvania:

We also got our Christmas tree up. We had to put it in a new place (where we normally have the futon), but it looks good there:

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So, we’ve been busy with the usual holiday stuff: shopping, cooking, eating, singing Christmas carols, going to parties, but we did take a few photos.

Josie had her advanced band concert. They sounded great and you could really hear the difference between beginning and advanced band. The auditorium was packed, as usual, so there was lots of enthusiastic clapping.

We have a possum that climbs down our front juniper tree almost every night so we can see him quite clearly from our front window. We call him Peter the Possum. We stepped outside to the porch to take this shot.

Josie and I made Raspberry Shortbread Window cookies for the Neighborhood Cookie Party. It took us two tries and about 4 hours or so, but our second batch came out beautifully.

Finally, we got our new holiday decoration this year: a Christmas Hippo. She’s very cute and has a santa hat and a wreath of holly. She fits right in with our two reindeer.

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Here are photos from our Halloween. We had a good time this year. We didn’t carve pumpkins until the last minute and weren’t even sure if we were going to, but then our neighbor, Jenny, invited the neighborhood to carve pumpkins on Saturday morning on Mr. Dick’s lawn.

So, we went to Vons and got pretty much the last three pumpkins they had. We carved those three from templates I found on the internet, which worked out really well. Then Josie did a pumpkin for Mr. Dick from her own design.

Josie wore her costume three times, for the Halloween party across the street, her school’s Halloween dance and Halloween night. She went trick or treating with her friend Halloween and she figures they did 30 blocks or so

We do know she got 8 pounds of candy!

Here are the photos:

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I put up some photos of our new (to us furniture) and the noobz that Josie decorated.

Our friends Shawn & Heather recently bought a house and got rid of a lot of furniture during the move. Their lose was our gain. We replaced:

Our ancient tv and tv cabinet (an ikea original)

Josie’s chest of drawers (also an ikea purchase and the only one I’ve made that I’ve been disappointed with). We got a really nice armoire that Josie loves.

The table we were using for Josie’s desk in the front room.

Here are a few photos of the new furniture:

Note that we replaced, we didn’t add. Each addition actually gave us more room in the house, which in our little house (about 1000 sq. feet) is very important.

And here’s the action figure that Josie painted at Blizzcon. She did a great job. Ted said it took her 3 hours:

And, here’s the photo on the Orange County Register’s website of Josie doing that painting.

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I didn’t actually spend the whole day at Blizzcon on Saturday because I went to watch the LA Sol (womens pro soccer team) play in the championship game. They lost, unfortunately, though I think it was an exciting game for everyone but Sol fans to watch.

Josie dressed up more for the second day and got a lot of attention because there weren’t that many people in costume. We stayed through the first bit of the Ozzy concert, didn’t go in the hall, but watched it on the screens. It looked like an entertaining show (though I wouldn’t have wanted my iphone anywhere near the water that he sprayed all over the first rows of the crowd). Not our kind of music though, I prefer being able to understand the lyrics of the song I’m listening to. He actually looked pretty good, but he does have a way of walking that makes it seem like he’s going to fall over at any moment.

Other than that we played the Worgen/Goblins again and Ted and I did our fishing quest and got a couple of packs each of the tcg cards. That was about it.

Oh, and Josie spent about 3 hours decorating her noobz (a starcraft marine action figure), photos will follow once we take them, she did a great job.

Here are the photos from yesterday, mostly of Josie:

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What a day, we had a lot of fun at Blizzcon and this was Josie’s first one. Safe to say she really enjoyed herself. She dressed up as a modern blood elf (pretty modern clothes, but blood elf ears and did her hair in one of the blood elf styles, it was subtle, but quite good). She got a lot of attention and enjoyed it.

The line management to get into the con was terrible. There was a huge line to get in that snaked around the front of the center and back to some kind of parking lot. It must have been several hours worth of wait time, even if it was moving. Then, when it got near to the Opening Ceremony time they must have just opened the doors and suddenly the line collapsed and we wound up in the center before our friends and daughter who were well ‘ahead’ of us in line.

They definitely can’t fit everyone into the main hall for the concerts, so we’ll see what happens with that.

You can read about the announcements elsewhere, but suffice to say, we’re stoked about the Cataclysm changes. Very smart of Blizzard to make the old world new again. I can’t wait to level up an alt and I’m already planning what I’m going to make. May even (gasp) prune out some of my cobwebby alts that I’m not playing right now.

Best booth/swag/people goes to Razer, they make gaming mice, keyboards, headsets. Gave a lot of stuff away, had a shuffleboard game to play for a prize (and the line wasn’t too long). And they were darn cool. Plus, the t-shirts they gave away were actually something I’ll wear. One says “Aggro at your own risk” (good for just about everyone in my family) and the other says “This T-Shirt Binds on Equip.”

Swagdog was also good, they had a wheel of fortune to spin and win a prize. I just wanted the pen and I got that, then Ted won the free hat (which you can customize with your guild symbol and info) and he gave it to me for my birthday, which was cool.

Upper Deck has a free photo that looks like a trading card where you can choose your background (we got Arthas).

We played the Worgen and the Goblins. You could only choose a male and you started at level 6 in the starting area. When you finished quests you got a special red Blizzcon bag and could actually win real world prizes (we didn’t though). The worgen are awesome and creepy, the goblins actually look like a lot of fun (if I can get over how they look).

Here are our photos:

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