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Welcome to 2017!  There’s something so appealing about “starting over again” when the calendar flips to a new year.  I know it’s just symbolic, but for me, symbols can be powerful and useful, and the New Year celebration is no different.  It’s a chance to rejoice, to welcome in the new, to call down possibility, and to learn from, and let go of the past. And so we march forward, into the unknown.  The great adventure of life continues! Welcome to 2017 This year my resolutions are multifold: Achieve better health Physically Mentally Emotionally Spiritually Relationally Socially Financially Have more fun, experience more adventure, try more new things Create more peace Do more for the community Set more definitive goals Travel more Ok, enough about me – How about you?!  How have you been?  What are you up to?  I’d love to hear from you!  Drop me a line, [...]

I hope you are faring well during this holiday season.  Things have been very busy on my end, thus my sporadic newsletter as of late. Nevertheless, I wanted to take some time to wish you happy holidays and discuss the two topics of today: Firewalls and The Return of the Light. On Firewalls: If you don’t know what a firewall is, now’s your chance to learn. And if you do any online shopping or banking, you should probably understand the importance of the firewall. So here it is. A firewall is a service (either hardware or software-based) that acts as a gatekeeper to your computer from the outside world. So imagine for a moment that you have a cable modem from your internet service provider and you’ve plugged your computer right into it to get online. Now with many modern modems there is a caveat to what I’m about to say, [...]

Flowers, Hot Lava, a Stranded Dog and The Dangers of Centralization I hope you’ve had a great couple of weeks! Last week I didn’t get a chance to send out my newsletter because I was embroiled in adventures with my wife and our friend visiting from the mainland. We had the opportunity to go back to the Hawaii Botanical Gardens which was, as always, a real treat.  Additionally, we took a trip down to the Kalapana Lava Flow which was quite spectacular. The Trouble with Centralization So last night an interesting thing happened which brought up the topic for today’s newsletter – Centralization. It all started when my wife volunteered to help our neighbors by bringing their dog to the airport to catch a flight to the mainland.  The neighbors had caught an earlier flight, and the dog was to catch [...]

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  This is one holiday I can really get behind – the idea of taking a day to really reflect on all that we’re thankful for seems as good a reason for celebrating as any.  And oh, how much there is to be thankful for! So I decided to take the time and list some things I’m thankful for.  Perhaps you can relate to some of these.  I’m going to spend a little extra time with regard to technological marvels since, after all, this is a tech newsletter.  Here goes… Technology I'm Thankful For Medical Technology: when you think of how much technology is available to us when medical needs arise, it’s really truly amazing.  From the devices and machines, to the systems and pharmaceuticals used for treating a mind-blowing range of maladies – the medical technology available to us is nothing short [...]

Technology and Your Health featuring The Super Lazy Man's Guide to Healthy Diet I hope you are well and thriving. This week I’m going to discuss technology and health. I think this is a topic often overlooked as we all seem to take our use of technology for granted.  Rarely are the health effects truly considered as we sit in front of our screens day after day. To start with, I’ll briefly discuss ergonomics. If you sit at your computer for long periods of time, correct ergonomics will ensure you minimize the strain on your body.  Poor ergonomics can cause strain to your neck, back, shoulders, arms, legs, wrists, eyes – you name it.  Here’s a picture of an optimal computer workstation for reference: Notice the screen is basically at eye level, not down on a table as is common for laptop users.  If you use a laptop, it’s [...]

This week I’m going to keep things brief and provide you with a list of some useful keyboard shortcuts that, when utilized, can save you a lot of time as you work on your computer.  This is particularly useful if you’re a touch typist - it can save a lot of mousing time (and wrist stress) as you work. Ones you may already know: CTRL-C = copy (this works almost anywhere and is quite useful when paired with any of the first 3 items in the next list marked with asterisks *) CTRL-X = cut CTRL-V = paste ALT-TAB = cycle through windows WINDOWS-TAB = flip through windows CTRL-TAB = cycle through windows or tabs within an open program WINDOWS-D = jump to desktop (press again to pull all windows back up) CTRL-Z = undo CTRL-Y = redo Ones you may not be as familiar with: * Hold SHIFT while [...]

I hope you are faring well in the wake of this week’s events. Today I’m going to talk briefly about list management before I share my thoughts about this week. List Management We each have our lists.  Our Facebook friends.  Our LinkedIn network.  Our email lists...  And to each of us they each mean something different, have different purposes.  Today, I’d like to encourage you to take a closer look at your lists.  Because the fact is, in a world of mass communication, our lists are some of the most important assets we have, because they represent real people with whom we share a connection. In the world of online marketing, this is one of the first things you are taught: your list is extremely important – it’s everything.  No list, no connection. But I think this concept is much less appreciated by folks who aren’t familiar with the strategies [...]

This week I did another Windows 10 install and I was again struck by the erosion of privacy built into the system.  At this point it seems most people have given up on the idea of privacy (or simply don’t care) – but for those of us who do, you may want to keep reading. So with Windows 10, when you go through the setup (either when buying a new Windows 10 computer, or when upgrading from a previous version), there’s a screen that looks like this: Now, the average user is probably just going to click the big “Use Express Settings” button on the bottom right.  Seems pretty straight-forward, yeah? Sure – if you don’t care about your privacy. If instead, you click the tiny little “Customize settings” option in the lower left, you’re taken to this screen: Ok, so by default – if you had clicked [...]

Below is a copy of an email I sent a friend yesterday in an attempt to help her deal with malware that she recently picked up on her computer.  I’m including this because malware is the most common computer problem I see and really, every computer owner needs to be familiar with this process and be running Spybot at least once a month, and certainly anytime there’s reason to believe the computer has picked up some sort of malware.  This could come in the form of unwanted popup windows, extreme slowdowns, or any other strange computer behavior, particularly when online. So the first part of this process is the install itself, which is only done once.  But the rest of it – from the update process to the immunization process - should all be done regularly. Then, after I describe the Spybot process, I get into some other things to check [...]

This week I’m going to talk about bottlenecks – in your computer and in your life.  We’ll start with the computer. Computer Bottlenecks If you want to get the most out of your computer, you have to understand the concept of the bottleneck. Warning: we’re about to get into super geekout mode. Basically, your computer is made up of a bunch of different components which each play a role in the overall performance of the system.  The way all these components communicate with each other is call “bus architecture” and, if you’re a supergeek like me, is quite fascinating when you really dig into it.  In my previous life I had the opportunity to work with Intel engineers to really go deep into the principles of bus architecture and it was one of the most fascinating parts of my job. I used this knowledge to design custom computers specifically built [...]