Donate now and get 15% more Andrew!

August 22, 2003

Today should be a fun day. I’m meeting my Dad downtown this afternoon and we’re going to make a run through the Bridgeport brewery down in the Pearl District of Portland. Not only do we get free beer at the end of the tour, but I’ve heard that the brewery also sell some of the best pizza in the city. Double whammy! I’ve never actually been to a brewery before–no, scratch that. All McMenamin’s pubs brew their own beer, so I’ve actually been to breweries dozens of times, but I’ve never taken a tour of a brewery. I went through a Scotch distillery in Scotland many moons ago, but I didn’t get to sample the goods at the end because I was with my Mom and that seemed to be a no-no. There are a lot of breweries in Portland, but the combination of this one being close, easy to get to, and having good pizza is too good to pass up. I’d like to take a walk through the Newcastle brewery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England, but alas, the lure of free Newcastle isn’t enough to lure me across the ocean. That’s a lot to pay just for a pilgrimmage to the brewery of your favorite beer (or ale in this case) to get free samples.

You’ll notice that I’ve added a “Donate” button off to the right. If you’re so inclined, feel free to drop me a few dollars when you feel sorry for me. I’m not sure what I can promise in return save for hours of endless entertainment through my website, though since the pictures are offline at the moment I’m not certain just where you’d find your entertainment unless you read my blog from the beginning. Four years is a long time, too. In any case, I’m saving donations, auction winnings from eBay (I sell old computer parts and other things from time to time), and bottle/can return money to see if I can put some money towards a new laptop in the future. I can hear people’s eyes rolling right now, but honestly, I’m starting to use my laptop more than my desktop, and since my laptop will need replacing at some point in the future, I might as well start saving for its replacement. Not enough to sell my desktop, mind you, but you get the idea. I was already started off with a generous donation of $5 by my illustrious sister, so I’m on my way. Only 399 more donations like that and I can afford a top-notch PowerBook, or 299 for a nice Dell.

I’d like to take a moment to offer some advice to my readers: get an antivirus program for your computer. The recent spread of both the Blaster worm and now the SoBig virus (neither of which touched me) reminded me that I hadn’t said anything in a long time, so here’s what I recommend doing:

1) Go to Price Watch at http://www,pricewatch.com.
2) Search for “norton 2003.”
3) Purchase an OEM copy of Norton Antivirus 2003–it will run you about $10, compared to the retail version that costs about four times as much. There’s no difference between the two versions except the lack of a manual.
4) Install Norton AntiVirus 2003 and update your virus definitions.

I’m sure that many of you already have an AV program, but check your version and see what the copyright date is, usually in Help/About. If it’s more than two years old, you need a new AV program. If your subscription for antivirus definition updates is expired, you need a new AV program, and buying with the steps I list above will save you money over renewing through the website of your AV vendor. If you have a recent version, then run the auto-update. I’m not saying that any of you have been infected with a virus, but keeping an up to date antivirus program is one of the most important things you can do when owning a computer. So many headaches can be avoided with that, both yours and others. The other thing I recommend everyone doing (except you, Dan, since you’re one of the filthy Mac zealots) is running Windows Update. You can do that either by clicking Tools/Windows Update in Internet Explorer or clicking on the Windows Update link on your Start Menu. Let WU scan for updates, then install all the critical ones. It may take awhile to download, so that’s the kind of thing you want to do at night before you go to bed or before you go eat dinner or something. Every single problem that’s been publicized in the last week between the Blaster worm and the fastest spread of any virus in history can be fixed by keeping an updated antivirus program and running Windows Update.

Speaking of Internet Explorer, I’ve had only one response from my proposal last week of checking out the Mozilla web browser from http://www.mozilla.org, and the response was favorable, it seems. A good summary of the advantages Mozilla has over other web browsers can be found here at the Mozilla website. If you’ve tried it out, leave a comment so everyone can see what you thought. It’s OK to not like it, too. I forgive you. My offer still stands of sending people copies to try out if you want it but can’t download it.

TGIF, not that my week has been too stressful in the first place. To use a slightly modified line from an episode of “Seinfeld,” this has been the “the summer of Andrew,” though I think I’m ready to give my attention to other matters that will earn me money and not just make me spend it. It’s been a nice time having the summer off (even though I had to listen to constant harping of “When are you getting a job? When are you getting a job?” from my various parents like synchronized parrots, as if I had control over who accepts my applications), but I’m getting bored and lonely. There’s only so much TV I can watch before I start getting antsy, and there are only so many things to do on my computer. I think I may dig out the information I used to apply for a couple of jobs and give phone followups on my resume submissions to make sure they have them, but that’s about all I can do for now.

Have a nice weekend, all.

Posted in Beer, Geekery, General