geeky happiness and request for advice

[chelseagirl]

So the teeny tiny VAIO has now been set up and is ready to come on my travels with me tomorrow. Today I had a lot to carry and the last bits of the preliminary work on the chapter I can still do pre-computer, plus M. is home and ill so I got all maternal and left him the toy to play with. It's about as small as it can be without the keyboard being impossibly small -- and to put that in perspective, my hands are so small that those curved ergonomic keyboards are very difficult for me to type on because they're too big. (And yet I'm five-nine.) It has a wireless connection and as far as we can see, there are wireless subscription services and then there is free wireless? I hope so because I'm imagining this mysterious bill suddenly popping up. This is scary because I may never be able to go off to the library and be unconnected again (sometimes for productivity's sake it's safer to be offline). SONY is a bit of a cheat because the software (Windows XP Professional) turned out to be a 60 day demo, so we loaded the software from our desktop, which is a bitch because it's XP Home and I'd heard Professional was much less buggy.

Advice on firewalls, and etc. please? The new computer comes with a 90 day trial of Norton AntiVirus. Is this good? We had McAfee and Spybot on the Dell desktop and they kind of suck -- at least all kinds of viruses have made their way through. I now read my Columbia email on cubmail, which is a web-based reader, and of course gmail is, but I still sometimes surf, and I'm afraid of getting the Vaio as polluted as the Dell is. (My beloved older Dell laptop, which seems to be too slow for most spyware or viruses to bother with, is getting *very* creaky and I don't think will be with us too much longer.)

And the good news is -- I can actually start to envision an end to the first draft of my final chapter, which means I can envision an end to the chapter and, well, the dissertation. Though I just erased the next sentence wherein I speculated on an end date and would have jinxed myself with . . .

In the newly warm weather, I put on an outfit I hadn't worn since last fall; not til I used the ladies' room at school did I notice I was verging on gapping at the waist. Yup, lost weight and now the skirt hangs lower on my hips than it did last fall. Which is a happy thing, except now I've got to figure out another top for this skirt. And hope I wasn't a complete fashion disaster in the eyes of my students.

Silly emotional stuff: This morning there was a stupid cute cartoon animal on tv, with big eyes. I got sniffly, even though it was just a silly gooey cutesy thing. M asked me what the matter was and I had to say, "sometimes I get sad when I see cute things because we've decided not to have children." (The toys I'll never buy them, I guess?) I know it's the right decision for us and the circumstances (career-changing grad student meets man from other country who then immigrates and also has to start his career over; financial stability still not in the picture), and I've never really wanted children so much as that when I was younger I assumed I would have them, and when I became one of those terminally single eternally having a new boyfriend type women, I figured I wouldn't, and when I mentioned to my younger husband-to-be that I didn't have forever to make up my mind as a woman his age would, we were both okay with the answer being no. Which, I am pretty sure is still what I want. It's just odd to have these stabs of sadness. Of course his first words were that we hadn't totally shut that door, but his followups were to ooh and ah over the cat and suggest that he was all the cuteness we needed.

Comments

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

No advice, but I will ask the Penguin, who will know.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[sbgrl.livejournal.com]

I don’t know enough about Firewall in order to offer up advice, but I’m not sure about this free wireless thing. I know there are hotspots around the city (Bryant park being one of them) where service is free, but these are far and few between. To use it from your apt you will need a service provider, unless someone doesn’t password protect theirs and you can hop on that. Quite common actually.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

M. was playing with the wireless (the dialup is really slow on this one; presumably because dialup is a dinosaur and we should have highspeed already), and found two services that let him connect. The others requested a password. I guess we were piggybacking?

[sbgrl.livejournal.com]

Yup. But if it makes you feel any better the people you were borrowing from more than likely pay only one monthly fee so it doesn't matter how many people or how often it's used.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

It does, actually. I would hate to have run up someone else's bill.

[sbgrl.livejournal.com]

These days, unless you use dail up it's one monthly fee.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Even most dial-up is, pretty much (aside from phone calls, of course), though I can remember getting an AOL bill for $60 once upon a time. (And dropping AOL, which was a supplementary account anyway, back when I couldn't use columbia while traveling, immediately.) Mine is still free, which is why we keep putting off getting broadband.

BTW, thanks again for the gmail invite. I really like some of the features, and have shifted most stuff over there now.

[ajinamoto.livejournal.com]

I love Norton, but I'm not sure about spyware protection. I have no idea if I have a lot of spyware on my machine.

*hugs* to you on your emotional stuff. M sounds like a gem, he said just the right things, IMO, I can't add a thing to that.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

If you can't try to buy something online without four or five alternate suggestions popping up, you do.

Dunno. I was kinda annoyed at him for bringing up the cat. Who *is* lethally cute, of course. ;-)

[leela-cat.livejournal.com]

There's no such thing as free wireless. Someone is footing the bill. Frequently, in cafes and such, the owner foots the bill to encourage people to sit and drink and eat. If you're getting it at home, then someone around you probably has a wireless connection that they haven't secured and other people can hop on and grab a free ride. Sort of like the way hobos rode trains in the 1930s.

On the upside, you're unlikely to get the bill.

We use Norton AntiVirus and Norton Firewall. I love them both. They've prevented multiple problems. We also supplement with regular Ad-Aware scans and Spybot scans to check against spyware and other nasties.

Also, if you use Firefox instead of IE, you can select what sites you want to allow to put cookies on your machine and whether they should be completely allowed or just for the session.

Good luck with the writing.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Do you know if this costs them anything? Considering the direness of our current finances, I might be tempted to use it occasionally if I'm not costing them something (kind of like how I'm using NYU's terminal at this moment and it doesn't bother NYU), but I won't use it if I am running up someone's bill. We've been planning to get a cable or DSL connection, but now is not the time, so we are persevering with dialup. (Which for some reason is very slow on the vaio; almost as if they don't really expect anyone will be using it . . . )

Good to hear about Norton. Did you get Ad-Aware and Spybot online, or did you get the programs at store?

Hmm, I'll ask M. to look into Firefox. I was annoyed to switch to IE in the first place, but a helpful tech guy up at Columbia screwed up my Netscape and M. knew IE.

[fshk.livejournal.com]

As a frequent user of wireless, if you're piggy-backing off of someone else's connection, you probably aren't making them pay extra. I've got two computers in my apartment connected to the same wireless router, but I'm only paying for one connection. There are also hotspots all over the city (all the parks, quite a few cafes, most for free, although Starbucks requires you to have a Verizon account).

Ad-Aware and Spybot are downloadable for free from the internet, just google for them.

I use McAfee at home on my laptop, and it works fine if you update it frequently. We have Norton at work, and it does the job. Neither is completely effective at preventing ad or spyware, which is the most common nemesis these days. Using a browser that isn't IE helps with that a lot. (Firefox and Netscape/Mozilla and Opera are all downloadable for free from the internet, too.)

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Okay, next question. If we got a wireless hookup for our desktop as well, how does that compare costwise to getting a cable modem or a DSL line?

[fshk.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're going that way, it's probably better (you'd have a more reliable connection) if you paid for service. My wireless router is connected to my cable modem.

[leela-cat.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, it doesn't cost them any extra for you to hitch a ride on their wireless.

Free versions of Ad-Aware and Spybot are both available online. Try

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As far as I know, it doesn't cost them any extra for you to hitch a ride on their wireless.

Free versions of Ad-Aware and Spybot are both available online. Try <a href="http://www.download.com</a>.

Firefox is also free. It's available at <a href="http://www.mozilla.org">http://www.mozilla.org</a>.

[karentoe.livejournal.com]

We use McAfee at work, and I use it at home. I've never had a virus in either place. You need to keep it updated - that's pay for the subscription to get automatic updates. Firewalls are more important if you are hooked up via cable, which you won't be.

I had trouble with Norton when I had a machine running Windows 2000. Windows 2000 and it just never got along.

My ISP offers virus checking on incoming mail, and a spam blocker. I use both. Does Columbia do any such thing? It's another defense in the war against viruses and spy ware.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

No, Columbia is pretty minimal since it's free. Maybe if I went to campus and ask. But the last time I went there for advice this kid reset all my stuff and it never worked right again. So I have trust issues.

I believe Martin did *not* update McAfee when it became a cost thing. But if Norton works well on the Vaio, I'll just stick it on the desktop as well. I'm still planning on getting a consultant in to sort out the desktop, eventually.

[trouvera.livejournal.com]

Check on classweb, there is antivirus software available for download there, and I'm pretty sure it's free. What I don't know is what program it actually is.