Wednesday, January 13, 2010

MSRT

For those of you who, like me, may want to do an additional check of your system for malicious software, the January version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (which I call MSRT) is now available. If you have Automatic Updates enabled, it will be (or was) downloaded this week. I like to go out to the MS web site and download this program every month and do a Full Scan, one I can see and view the results of. MS says the tool, if downloaded thru Automatic Updates, runs in the background and will report IF it finds something. I guess it has never found anything on my systems because I have never seen any reports at all from its having been run for me. So, being a Doubting Thomas (funny, but I really am) I let it run its 3+ hour course and then see the results (always nothing found). If you want the extra insurance, at no cost other than your time, download the MSRT to your desktop, double click on it, select Full Scan, and let it do its thing. After it runs you will see the report that says what it found and fixed, if it found anything, or it will tell you it found nothing. Afterwards, close the report and delete the tool from your desktop (or from wherever you downloaded it to). You can download the MSRT here:

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Back in town

Family trumped business for me for the past 4 days. I went to Atlanta to visit family last Friday and returned Monday. Other than finding a sub-freezing spell there which followed one inch of snow, the trip was perfect. It was so interesting to see how the inch of snow crippled the whole area. Schools were closed and there were many accidents. More interesting to me, patches of ice remained on the roads for all 4 of my days there, refusing to melt in the sub-20 degree weather. Apparently Atlantans do not make use of salt or sand or gravel down there as the icy patches continued to slow things down and probably are still causing the less careful drivers to slide out of control and hit something!

I was very pleasantly surprised by AirTran. I really didn't even know anything about them, but I experienced two non-stop, low cost, on time flights between Boston & Atlanta. I will fly them again.