Home Again

Yesterday I brought my wife home from the hospital ending what seems to have been the longest loneliest period of my life. My next task is to take us both away for a few days for a bit of pampering in a hotel by the sea. This time I have two new toys to play with. The first is a CamCorder which I haven't had before - I used to use my SLR to record videos. The second is a 3G dongle that should allow me to keep in touch with the world from my hotel room without incurring sky high charges for using the hotel's WiFi connection.

While she was in hospital, my wife used the dongle and her notebook to keep in touch with me in real time using Yahoo Messenger. It made the world of difference to how she felt and to how she was able to keep in touch with the world outside. When you are in hospital for any length of time, you crave for contact with the outside world. These dongles make it possible AND cost less than a mobile phone to run. From the other patients point of view there are no annoying ring tones or someone talking. Typing on a laptop is almost silent so it annoys no one.

I only use a fraction of what one of these dongles can do as they can easily allow you to browse the web, download and watch streamed programs, use iPlayer or spend a fortune on eBay. When I am away from home I can collect my email, check my bank accounts and talk on yahoo with anyone I need to (a friend looks after our animals while we are away and calls to reasure us that all is well).

The learning curve for the CamCorder is going to be a steep one as mine is not sophisticated with anti shake and all sorts of other twiddly bits. I'll let you know how I get on when we come home.

Another scam

This week I was sent a copy of a warning issued to all their customers by AOL. It is about a new way to try to trick you into revealing your credit/debit card details. It works like this;

1. You receive an email that asks you to ring a number because there is a problem with your PayPal account. If you do, a recorded voice asks for your credit/debit card details
2. You may receive a phone call where the caller already knows your credit/debit card details but wants you to give them the security number on the back of the card

What you should do is this;

• Delete any email that asks for financial details. No reputable company would work like this and certainly not a bank, credit card company or PayPal.
• If you receive a phone call asking for any of your card details hang up immediately then ring the telephone number on the back of the card. If the first call was genuine then your card company will be able to tell you what the problem is. However it is much more likely that they will be able to confirm that you have received a vishing call and will tell you what to do next.

If any of you want to read the original warning you will find it at AOL Warning

This warning does make you wonder where these crooks are getting your card numbers from. My wife and I were so concerned about this that we decided to set up an account that is only used for shopping on the web and eBay. With the help of our Bank, we opened an account that does not have a cheque book, has no overdraft facilities at all, can not accept any direct payments such as Standing orders, Direct Debits etc and has only a Debit Card as the way to access any funds. We keep the balance of the account below £10 and only move money into the account when we have made an online purchase. So far it has worked just fine but if anyone does get hold of the card details the most they will get is £5 and it will flag up on the Bank's computer that this is an unauthorised transaction and we will know that account has been hacked.

Our Bank were so impressed by how it has worked (we have been running it for a year now) they have started to offer it to all their online customers for use as an online shopping account.

A shocking tale

One of the nurses looking after my wife in hospital was notorious for crashing electronic equipment as soon as she touched it. Her colleagues thought it was a hoot but not her boss and he banned her from even going near his computer. I thought the tale was a bit far fetched till I watched her take a blood pressure reading. As soon as she put her hand on the machine it crashed.

My mind went back a number of years to an incident when I was a newly qualified computer technician just starting off in business. A firm I looked after had a typist/secretary who couldn't use a computer. Before they dispensed with her services they asked me to have a look at what she was doing to see if there was a simple solution to the problem because apart from this, she was a very good worker. I detached a computer from their network and set her off typing a letter. In less than 10 seconds the monitor went funny with the picture distorted and the computer froze. The lady dissolved in tears and fled to the toilet. I switched the computer off and rebooted it and all worked properly again so the problem was either static electricity or a stray magnetic field. I eliminated magnets as I could find no trace of a gauss field but where was the static coming from?

When the lady returned red eyed from the loo I was about to give up and confess myself beaten when I heard a sharp crack as she sat down.
"It's always doing that" she said as she shook her hand where a spark had jumped from her to the metal of the chair.
The penny dropped. The young lady was wearing a silky looking blouse and a pencil skirt. I asked her if she had a slip on and with great trepidation asked her what her undies were made of. She told me that both her slip and undies were silky man made material like her blouse.

Now those among you that have done physics at school will remember the demonstration of rubbing a glass rod with a silk handkerchief and then picking up scraps of paper using static electricity. What was happening was the young lady's undies were rubbing against her slip and blouse and having the same effect. Her plastic soled shoes were insulating her till she sat down in the metal chair and the electrical potential was high enough to generate a spark to jump the gap.

I asked the young lady to wear cotton clothing and undies the following day and we repeated the test. No sparks and the computer behaved itself. A neat and cost free solution.

Now back to our nurse. Her uniform is mostly made of polycotton and there is no way to change that so I had to do a bit of oblique thinking. Every computer technician will be used to using a wrist strap to earth themselves while handling electronic components so maybe this was the answer. I took a wrist strap with me on my next visit to the hospital and showed the nurse how to use it. Two days later when I took my wife for her regular treatment session the nurse wasn't on duty but all her colleagues were full of the story about how she could use a computer and the other electronics in the unit without something horrible happening.

The moral of this tale is that if ever you have to open the case of your computer, before you touch anything inside, put your hand on a radiator or metal sink for a few seconds and make sure you have drained away all the static electricity we all carry as part of our daily lives. Not everyone carries as much as the nurse or the fashion conscious secretary in the story but you may be carrying enough to seriously damage some of the parts inside your computer and you could land yourself with a big bill to put things right.

Update

I am extremely pleased to be able to report that my Wife is steadily getting better. She is coming home for the weekend and we are all thrilled to bits that she has made enough progress to make this possible.

A few weeks ago I told you I was trialing a new router the Billion Wireless N 3G ADSL router. It has enabled my network to run at a much higher speed which made streaming videos around the house a very simple operation. I am not as impressed with the Wireless coverage as it doesn't seem to have the power to get a good signal from my study on the ground floor to our bedroom upstairs. My previous router a Netgear DG834N used to be able to do this returning a signal strength of 65% or more. The Billion has never managed more than 40% so it is significantly inferior in WiFi performance. However it could be said that is offset by the gigabit speed of the cabled part of the network and the ability to switch from ADSL to 3G if the ADSL signal is interrupted. It depends how much you value your Internet connection and how critical it is that you are connected at high speed. If you are running a web server from a machine at your office or handle a significant number of web base transactions every day, then I could easily see how you could justify the expense of buying a router like this one. But I can't see how you could justify the cost if all you do is Browse the web, send and receive emails and take part in online chats and messaging.

Conclusion

This router is a good solution for a small business or home office that needs fast, always on access to the Internet and can justify the £150 + cost. It is not as good value for a house full of teenagers with laptops as its WiFi side isn't powerful enough compared to Netgear's N WiFi routers.

A Tiny Contrast

Ten years ago I used to dread the onset of holidays because they had to be preceded by the dreaded clothes shopping trips. In those days both Jackie and myself tipped the scales at well over 20 stones and finding nice clothes that fit was a nightmare. After visiting the fourth or fifth shop where nothing was big enough, in the right colours or stylish we would often adjourn to a cafe and stuff ourselves with cream cakes or other comfort food.

Compare this to our visit to the Nike shop last week. Jackie headed for the Ladies section but on her way she spotted a lovely blue tracksuit. She picked one up and went to try it on and called me from the fitting room to see what I thought. Too big - I was sent back to the rail to find a smaller one. It was then I noticed that the suit was in the children's section and the size that was too big was 13 to 15 yrs. I found one that was 12 to 13 yrs and that proved to be a perfect fit.

I couldn't help thinking about a picture we have of Jackie feeding some ducks when she was at her biggest. The bright orange T shirt she was wearing was 5xl and I couldn't help thinking about our shopping trips now where we have problems finding things that are small enough in the styles she likes.

Jackie is still in hospital but there are signs that she is begining to improve and get better. There is still a long way to go before she is well enough to come home for good but she has reached the stage where she comes home during the day at weekends which is proving to be a very special time for us as we get to spend some quality time together and Jackie is re-connecting with our home and is able to keep it clean and tidy to help me.

Update

Today is the day I hoped would never come. Today my wife is starting a course of treatment that should allow her to leave hospital and live a normal life again. Fifteen years ago she had similar treatment and that left her disabled and unable to work. We both know this is the only treatment that can make her well again in anything like a reasonable time but we are both very apprehensive about the outcome.

Please keep us in your thoughts today.

My wife is ill in hospital so there will be no posts on here till I get her home. If anyone has an IT problem please use the contacts page of my web site to call me.

http://www.omega-cottage.co.uk/contacts.co.uk