Leatherheads Movie Review OR How I Wasted an Hour »

My wife and I wanted to rent a movie and do the “home body” thing this past weekend, so Friday I went to our local video store to see what caught my eye.  We take turns selecting the movies and it was my turn.  The pressure was on.  My mouth was dry.

After wading through the TONS of movies out there, I was leaning toward a George Clooney movie: Leatherheads. My wife and I agree on most romantic comedies and with George Clooney and Rene Zellweger starring, surely this movie is going to be great!

I am also one of those people that scans the cover of the movie box to read the review snippets and there were two placed prominently on the cover to further convince me of the wise choice I was getting ready to make:

“Hilarious!” – Christina Vandre (KARE-TV)

“Clooney and Zellweger are comic gold.” – Kevin Steincross (Fox-TV)

Even though I had never heard of either of those two, I felt that surely they must be in the know when it comes to movies.  “They both work for TV stations”, I mused, “and TV stations are responsible for the things that display on people’s TV screens and movies are also shown on screens.”  The connection was obvious to me.

Selection in hand, I proceeded to the checkout.  In my world, things were moving perfectly.

Upon my arrival home, it became clear to me that my wife did not share my enthusiasm.  She was apprehensive about having to watch a “football” movie.  “But, honey”, I assured her, “two TV people said it was a score.  Look, right here on the cover.  Read that.”  I was confident that she could not deny my logic.  She was unimpressed.

Undaunted, I inserted the movie into the DVD player.  It was about that time that things fell apart.

Leatherheads could have been more entertaining were it made as a silent movie.  At least then there would be justification for keeping one’s eyes open and focused on the screen throughout as opposed to a) dozing off or b) reading the list of ingredients on the box of candy one was eating.

I have seen tomato plants that were more entertaining.

I cannot elaborate on the details of why this movie was a dud. Mainly because of these two reasons:

1. I dozed off in parts.
2. We turned it off halfway through, reasoning that we had already gambled and lost an hour of our lives and, since the movie was going to be 2 hours long, decided to not lose any more.

I can, however, tell you that a box of Good and Plenty candy has NO fat but does have nearly 150 grams of carbohydrates, most of that being sugar .

How to change your email Send/Receive settings »

Many times you may wonder why you have to click on the Send/Receive button to get your email. Shouldn’t it be automatic? Yes, it should be, but by default it is not. Here is how to have Microsoft Office Outlook automatically check for your email every 5 minutes.

1. Open Microsoft Office Outlook

2. Click Tools –> Send/Receive –> Send/Receive Settings –> Define Send/Receive Groups

3. You will see a box that looks like this:

Click the checkbox next to “Schedule an Automatic Send/Receive every “5″ minutes.”

4. Click Close

All done!

Top 10 Security Tips For Your Small Business Part 2 »

To continue our Top 10 list of simple (and mostly free) security tips for your small business.

7. Watch out for email attachments

Email attachments can be a wonderful thing. They allow people from all across the world to send pictures to family and friends, businesses to send documents to clients, and sometimes the occasional Powerpoint presentation that somehow didn’t make the trip can be sent directly to you in a matter of seconds. Though, for all of these wonderful things, email attachments can also be very harmful. Many of the most common and harmful viruses are spread through email. These will infect your machine as soon as you open the attachment. The main ways to avoid these nasty viruses are:
Never open an email attachment from someone you do not know. Only open an attachment if it is from someone you know and you were expecting it. If you are sending an attachment to someone else, let them know ahead of time. And last, but certainly not least, have an Anti-Virus program, such as Norton Anti-Virus (updated daily) that will scan incoming and outgoing emails for viruses.

6. Anti-Virus Software

Having a properly updated Anti-Virus program on your PC is crucial these days. Most Anti-Virus programs such as Norton Anti-Virus, Trend Micro, McAfee, and AVG all do updates daily in the background, so you don’t have to worry about it. Without an Anti-Virus program, accidentally opening the wrong attachment, or clicking on the wrong pop-up on a website, may open the door for spyware, adware, malware, and viruses to take over your PC.

5. Windows Updates and patches

I was just working on a PC yesterday and noticed that we are up to 93 Windows Updates AFTER the Windows XP SP2 update. That’s quite a few updates! Most of these updates are actually security patches for either Windows or the programs that are running with Windows, such as Microsoft Office, Windows Media Player, etc… These updates are important because they help to close “backdoors” that hackers have found that allow them to compromise your data and your privacy. Having some type of firewall, an anti-virus program and not opening strange email attachments will protect against most of your common threats. Though, to take it one step further and keep your data safe, set your Windows Updates to automatic and let it do it’s thing. There can be exceptions to this rule, though not commonly. Feel free to ask me any questions if you are having any troubles with your Windows Updates.

 Click here to see tips 8 through 10 and stay tuned until next time for the Top 4 security tips!

What exactly is Adware »

To continue our journey into the land of annoying pop-ups and information stealing software, let’s talk about Adware.

Adware is in the same group as spyware (privacy-invasive software) in that Adware may be used to allow Spyware into your PC. If the program you are using has Adware built-in, it may display or download advertisements to your PC at any time. (Ever had pop-ups out of nowhere? Even while not on the internet? That’s one example of Adware) Most software developers may use this as a means to offer free software or software at a reduced cost (since they are being paid by whomever they are advertising for). Though as I stated above these adware programs basically leave the door open for spyware programs.

To keep your PC ad free, I recommend running a program called Ad-Aware on your PC(s) at least once per month. This will scout out those nasty Adware registry files and program files. It also deletes them for you, how great is that!

Check out part 1 of What exactly are Spyware, Adware, Malware, and Viruses to find out more information on Spyware.

The Importance of Data Backups »

These days almost any business large or small has some type of important electronic data that they rely on. Whether it be email, financial, or basic documentation this data can be crucial to keeping your business running smoothly and efficiently. However, a simple PC crash can cause many hours of hard work to be lost instantly. Even worse, having some sort of natural disaster, be it a hurricane, flooding, fire, etc… can cause you to lose thousands of dollars in data loss. Hardware can be covered and replaced by your insurance company, data on the other hand, once lost, is gone forever (or at least until someone goes through the lucrative task of trying to rebuild years of data in a few weeks.) Here are two simple words that could be your saving grace from any of these horrible events: Disaster Recovery

Having a Disaster Recovery plan in place will give you the peace of mind to concentrate on the other areas of your business instead of having to worry about data loss. Crystal Coast Technologies offers a Disaster Recovery plan that will fit your business needs through something called Online Backups. These online backups will back up your important data off-site and have it available to be restored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Before your data is sent off-site, it will be encrypted and completely secured so that your data stays completely safe. With Crystal Coast Technologies your data is going to be safe and there for you when you need it.

Click here to learn more about our Online Backup Solutions.