Sometimes you just want a break. Maybe you have a tech job and you don’t want to come home to “help desk” calls. Maybe you are sick of your cousin getting viruses because he surfs unsavory websites. I have a few subtle solutions to make these calls fewer and further between.
www.geekstogo.com – If your friend/relative has more time than money and hopefully a second computer, this website is awesome! It is a forum filled with incredibly smart people who are glad to walk anyone through the process of fixing a virused computer. The only thing they ask is that the person LISTENS to them very carefully, follows directions and does try to jump ahead. These guys use a bunch of free, downloadable tools to solve problems in a methodical fashion. One of my favorite tools from that site is “Combofix.exe”. That tools digs much deeper than Malwarebytes and Hijackthis can possibly dig. One of the most valuable pages on their site is the Malware and Spyware Cleaning Guide.
www.lmgtfy.com – Let me Google that for you is the ultimate in smart allelic responses to easy and downright stupid questions that people should know better than to ask you. It’s simple but effective. Someone asks you a question like, “What is Geordy Rostad’s tech blog called?”. So in response, you want to send them a message that it would be easier to figure it out for themselves than to ask you this question. This is where lmgtfy comes in. Go to the site and put in your query. A link will be generated. Send them to this link and they will see animation of going to Google and slowly typing in the query. Then they will be directed to the real Google results. They would have to be pretty dense not to get the message. Here is an example: what was the first .com registered?
logmein – If you can’t shurk your duties to be the family’s tech support sucker, then you probably need SOME sort of remote login agent to at least avoid a pointless car ride. Logmein has a free version that can be installed on any Mac or PC. It allows you to remotely log in, even from your cell phone or iPod Touch, and diagnose many problems without leaving your couch. It does get a little shaky when you are dealing with a nasty spyware infection that is using up all the bandwidth but when someone is asking how to do some specific task and you don’t feel like walking them through tedious steps, you can jump on with logmein and make short work of the issue. I used to use gotomypc but logmein has a free version. It doesn’t support printing or drag and drop on the free version but who really cares for our purpose here?
Logmein ALSO has an excellent secondary use. What if you want to secure your network but still need to be able to access it for troubleshooting? You may not want to expose an SSH port on your router to the outside. This is where logmein comes in handy. Logmein to your desktop on the private subnet and then SSH from there. This way, you can run a network with minimal or even NO exposed public ports. Logmein uses a 256bit SHA encryption and I have yet to hear of an exploit or vulnerability for logmein or gotomypc.
1-900-call-me-lots – If you REALLY can’t discourage your friends and family from calling you, maybe it’s time to monetize your efforts. Why not change your cell phone to a 1-900 number? This will keep your calls shorter than usual and have the side-effect of discouraging telemarketers from disturbing you. If they still insist on calling you, you’ll be happy to take their calls and laughing all the way to the bank.
P.S. if you are my friend or family and you are actually bothering to read this then this is certainly not directed at you. You are hereby granted a few more freebies…
, 1 
, 1 
and 2 
. I love having lots of these robots to clean and vacuum my house and houses that I sell too. As a result, I’ve gone through a LOT of batteries. What I’ve started to do is write dates on the battery of when I purchase them. If there is anything else special or substantial(such as used or li-ion) about the battery, I’ll write that on it too.
. This is an extra step that I sometimes don’t have time for. As a result, I’ll sometimes forget about it entirely and the battery will sit in the Scooba and over discharge. Doing this a few times will surely fry a lithium ion pack and will eventually fry a NiMH even.
with success in the past although one of my friends has had VERY mixed results with the Tenergy rechargeable AA’s. For the Roomba, they have OEM Roomba batteries at the Renton, WA Frys for $40 which is a steal for a local store in my opinion since the list price is $69.99 or they have them on Amazon even cheaper at this link: 
. For the 500 series, I have had success with this 
sold by Allergy by Gone. If iRobot products were designed specifically for Li-Ion chemistry, I have no doubt that Li-Ion packs would perform fantastically and we would all benefit from longer run times and cell life but since they are not, I don’t think it’s a great idea to run these types of battery packs in your robots.
by Robert Grossblatt. It goes through the entire process of building up and programming an 8088 based computer on a breadboard. The picture on the cover is an insane spaghetti mess of wires and breadboards. Looks like fun but I’m not sure I’m up to the task.
. It’s not quite an 
but it looks like it’s the best available so far.
is a great little hacking platform. There are lots of people putting out their own distributions and directions for customizing this platform. I’m going to attempt to make a list of all of the distributions and sources that I know of at the moment. If anyone knows of any other distros out there for the Z2, please feel free to comment. Here is the list in no particular order: