Pounding the Keyboard: Dr. Heckle & Mr. Jive

By Cliff Feldwick

The above combination (a nickname given to two guys I worked with some years back) was brought to mind recently when a colleague described the show her daughter went through when buying a new car.
How things suddenly changed when "maybe we should ask your dad" was mentioned and all of a sudden the extended warranty was "free." Not that anyone in the computer industry would do anything like that, of course.
Anyway, it makes sense that Saturn and Scion can make larger margins on their cars simply by enforcing a "don't dance" policy on pricing (the price on the web site is the price at the dealer - any dealer). People, myself included, will gladly pay more money to avoid the hassle and B.S. associated with the average car salesman. Let's face it: We conduct this exercise once every few years and they do it every day.
But we do have something to help level the field if you're willing to do the homework, since web sites like edmunds.com and kbb.com (Kelly Blue Book) not only have reviews and real invoice prices, but features that illustrate the average price people paid.
Just like term insurance prices dropped dramatically some years back when Internet comparison shopping became easy, maybe web sites like these can help beat back some of the fog that seems to be in the daily forecast at a car dealership.

Subliminal Messages
(... this column is great ...)
Speaking of cars, some years back some psychologists postulated that the proliferation of "SX" models was really subliminally spelling "sex." That's sort of like the instant messaging protocols today, where "C U L8R" saves those precious seconds.
So what can we make of two models out now: the GMC SLT and the Ford Focus ZTS? Considering the size and general posture of the GMC, "SLT" easily becomes "assault," which reinforces the idea that 50% of SUV owners get them for their intimidation factor (except to 95% of Hummer owners). And the "ZTS" sure sounds like "zits." Not the image I want for my car.

Bad Program (bad, bad)
Speaking of things you don't want, what would define a bad computer program? How about intrusiveness (creates problems with other programs), badly written (can't turn off "features" that are causing problems) or overhyped?
How about all of the above? That would be Norton 360.
Pushed heavily as an "update" when you go to resubscribe for your Norton Anti-Virus, Norton 360 has caused problems of one sort or another on at least 50% of the computers I've had to deal with. First off, it includes a "backup" feature that messes with everyone else's backups, including the built-in version in XP (a pretty good, free program) - usually disabling them. There is no way visible to turn this off from within its control panel that actually works - the only way to get it to stop is to do an uninstall. Even when you call tech support, their advice will not work.
This is, unfortunately, a trend in Norton products. Different years of their "Internet Protection Suite" have such dumbed-down control panels that customizing them to work with other programs (or even getting a good handle on what they're actually doing) is impossible.
What to do? Well, the free McAfee offered by Comcast turns out to be pretty good. I usually don't download the "Protection Suite" part of it, since a nasty install of it on a client's computer made it lock the user out when that person tried to restart the machine. But in a sign of a well-written program, you can avoid that feature and still install the good parts, such as anti-virus and firewall.
And AVG (the free programs from Grisoft) are well worth it. They offer separate anti-virus and spyware programs, rather than a "suite." The price is right, they work, and so far, no problems found. Oh, and Windows Defender (rather than Windows Degender, an interesting misspelling) from Microsoft is a great (and also free to download) spyware remover.

Pretty Trashy
I do an Adopt-a-Road with fellow Rotarians along Snowden River Parkway, which is certainly one of the more heavily traveled roads in Columbia. And yes, people are slobs. But I can report that Budweiser has once again reclaimed the title of "favorite beverage of people who throw crap out of their cars," pushing out Red Bull, the previous clean-up's winner.
There must have been a younger crowd before. And it's still cold, apparently, since we only found one condom wrapper. That will certainly increase as it warms up. Goes hand-in-hand with the Bud, I suppose. Jimmy Buffett, please take note.
The worst spot along that road is the hill opposite Lincoln Technical Institute. That's where students hit the convenience stores on the other side of the parkway and drop wrappers and all sorts of junk on the way back. They also hit the liquor store there, since there are usually a small ton of vodka miniatures and beer bottles in those weeds. I bet it helps their concentration in class.

Cliff Feldwick is president of Riverside Computer Consultants in Columbia and does network set-ups, computer troubleshooting, data retrieval and other techno-wienie things when not recovering from bending over after hours picking up trash. He can be reached at 410-880-0171 or at cliff@feldwick.com.