Author: tvalleau

Do the bad guys have your password?

Here’s the bad news: YES, the badguys already have your email, and any number of your passwords. There’s a good chance they also have your Social Security number, your home address, your phone and other stuff.   How you ask? Well, it’s very unlikely that YOU have been hacked, and extremely likely that they got […]

How to move emails from one ISP to an other

The other day, I moved a client’s domain from one ISP to another; from A to B. That involved moving their email addresses as well, while keeping them identical between the previous ISP “A” and the new ISP “B”. Convenient as that is for the client, there’s one issue: all their email prior to the […]

Are better cables better?

OK: take this FWIW: It’s been my experience that better data cables are worth the extra cost, up to the point where some sleaze tries to sell you solid silver USB cables “for audio” for $125. I do know that “real” CAT 6 ethernet cables are more reliable than the generic (and some not so […]

On moving to an SSD

(This is my answer to someone who was concerned about durability, size and speed, when thinking about switching to an SSD.)   Durability: pretty much forever, based on write cycles. I have a 2 year old Samsung Evo 840, which has been on 15 hours a day, 365 days a year.Samsung uses a wear-leveling indicator […]

iTunes tips

I’m an old guy, and can’t seem to break my habit of using iTunes to do my updates, instead of Over The Air, the way everyone else does it.  If you’re part of the OTA crowd, you can quit reading now. I’ve seen (with more regularity than I’d hoped) these two problems:   1) Often […]

How to repair and replace Safari’s iCloud-sync’d bookmarks

PRINT THIS PAGE, since you’ll be quitting Safari to do this, and the page will go away, eh?  🙂  I suggest reading thru all this before getting started… ___________________________________________   Here’s the problem: your Safari bookmarks are all messed up. In my case, repeated syncings (and probably stupidity on my part) ended up with 10,700 […]

sparseimage vs sparsebundle

I was using a sparsebundle to backup my OSX drive on an always-mounted external drive. I did that because I (mistakenly) thought that would prevent the OS from seeing the extra OS.) Well, I just learned that if the drive the sparsebundle is on is a mounted drive, then the OS sees the sparsebundle as […]

Advice on USB hubs

Having just gone thru a bunch of USB issues in the last 48 hours, I’m prompted to share my experiences. I have 5 hubs hooked up to one machine. They are all 7 port hubs, and all of them have a power supply. 3 are USB 3.0 and two are USB 2.0. Yes, I have a lot […]

Preventing Spam on Your Blog

I run a few blogs, and as anyone with a blog can tell you, spam postings are more than a little annoying. For years I have tried various different WordPress plugins, some more successful than others, but most lacking, unfortunately. I’ve now been running a paid service (although the fees are very modest) that has […]