Find My iPhone

In a comment to my review of my iPod, I said the iOS 4.2.1 update only offered two incredibly minor improvements to the iPod software. However, another thing they introduced was “Find my iPhone” as a free service. If you lose your iPod, you can log onto an Apple website and it will show you on a map where your iPod is (though it looked like it was at the house on the corner across the street) and also have the iPod make noise and display a message. You can also lock the iPod or erase it completely if it has fallen into enemy hands. But if someone steals it, all they have to do is reset it to factory settings and they have a functioning iPod even though at least they can’t get your personal information. It seems like Apple could set it to completely disable the iPod if it was reported stolen. Though that would mean there would be some overhead in keeping up with when you sell it or if Apple replaces it.

Anyway, the feature doesn’t work as well with an iPod as an iPhone because the iPod isn’t always connected to the internet like an iPhone, but I did a test in my house yesterday and it worked fine, with the iPod making a fairly loud sonar pinging noise and displaying the message “I’m over here, under the sofa!” (which I had told it to display; it wasn’t actually under the sofa).

However it wasn’t easy setting it up. First I had to set up a Mobile Me account and my existing iTunes account password wasn’t good enough for Mobile Me and showed my e-mail address as unverified, but wouldn’t send a verification message. But I changed the password under iTunes and got it working. You also have to set up a screen lock where every time you turn on the iPod you have to enter a 4-digit pin number. One option was to have it ask for the pin after 1 minute which I figured would be better since it would let me at least skip a song without having to log in. That lasted a few times before I decided I didn’t want to have to enter a pin every time and I have disabled that. I don’t know if that disables the Find My iPhone feature as well.

New Lower Gas Price

Today I filled up at Kroger. I was hoping to get through the whole month of November without filling up, but it wasn’t going to happen. Anyway, I was entering the mileage in my spreadsheet and I noticed on the receipt that they charged. $2.590/gallon. I think this may be the first time ever in the US that I haven’t been charged an extra 9/10ths of a cent for a gallon of gas. Last time I filled up with gas at the same Kroger, it was $2.479/gallon.

John Adams

A few years ago, HBO produced a miniseries about John Adams based on David McCullough’s biography. I remember Andrew watching a little of this when we were staying in Williamsburg. I asked him why he was watching it and he said it was interesting. Go figure. It turns out it was a perfect movie to watch in Williamsburg (though really he didn’t watch more than 30 minutes of it, I don’t think; we stayed pretty busy) not least of all because they filmed some of the movie there. It also won 13 Emmy awards, though this is a little misleading since the miniseries category isn’t nearly as competitive as, say, comedy or drama series. It stars Paul Giamatti who has played a lot of different kinds of roles, but most famously starred in Sideways where he was a whiny loser (or maybe “winey” loser, hee hee). The miniseries is on 3 disks, spanning 8 hours. It covers Adams from the Boston Massacre up until his death which took place on the country’s 50th birthday, the same day that Thomas Jefferson died.

Continue reading “John Adams”

Win 7 Antispyware

Tonight Mom called and said she thought she had gotten some kind of virus disguising itself as anti-virus software. She kept getting a window popping up telling her to download some software. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to do this and that McAfee was supposed to protect her from viruses. But McAfee had let this one through. [In fairness to McAfee, it turns out her subscription had expired several months earlier.]

This isn’t a virus so much as it is a trojan and like so many of them, once it gets on your computer it is very hard to get rid of. By manipulating the Windows registry it prevents executables from running so that you can’t install anything or run programs, and it stops you from getting to websites where you might find help or download fixes. Even if you can find the virus’ executable files, they will reinstall themselves the next time you open your web browser or any other executable. Awful.

Continue reading “Win 7 Antispyware”