Weekly Off-Topic Thread #190

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

Should I Change My Password?

[Escapee]

The day crew hoping everybody has a nice weekend and the week that follows.

[dhascall ACE - Professor]

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spd2demun wrote:

Should I Change My Password?

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That site sounds like a train wreck.............................

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

Do you think ATT is offering viewing info to the networks that air on their tv service?  They can track which channels we watch and when, as well as let them know which channels we record.  If so, that would/could be a valuable incentive for networks to launch in Uverse.  If the UVRT can track that ATT has to have many many resources to offer this kind of ratings information for these networks.

[hpmsrm]

Nothing is sacred anymore.  I purchase a new computer from Staples Office Supply and the very next day I receive an e-mail ad from Micro-Center congratulating me on buying a new PC and a list of suggested accessories that I should not be without......and they'd be glad to sell them to me.   Now....how the heck did Micro-Center have that information within 24 hours about my purchase?  The only connection has to be through HP from when I registered my purchase with them.

[Uniblurb3 ACE - Guru]

Isn't that the truth Phil and anybody can find out any info about you they want.

It ticks me off to no end my wife was diagnosed with diabetes last year and we are constantly hounded by phone calls from company reps wanting to give, or sell at reduced rates, diabetes testing supplies. And most believe she's on Medicare, where she would get them for free, and we aren't quite there yet. Free?? Somebody is paying for these supplies, try taxpayers, and half the calls are from a foreign country.

As a First-Responder I went through extensive training on HIPAA and real tight rules on medical patient privacy. So who sold my wife's name to all these testing supply companies? The doctor's office, the pharmacy/mail order scripts, or somebody else who has access to her patient info? Really sucks!

[oufanindallas]

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hpmsrm wrote:

Nothing is sacred anymore.  I purchase a new computer from Staples Office Supply and the very next day I receive an e-mail ad from Micro-Center congratulating me on buying a new PC and a list of suggested accessories that I should not be without......and they'd be glad to sell them to me.   Now....how the heck did Micro-Center have that information within 24 hours about my purchase?  The only connection has to be through HP from when I registered my purchase with them.

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Micro-Center is the support center associated with Staples.

[Escapee]

Someone said the only people that can't see medical info is your family and you. To the medical industry your records are an open book once it leaves the DR office and gets in the insurance pipeline. It is like Staples and Micro-Center.

[Uniblurb3 ACE - Guru]

Sounds about right SKP. I'm not so sure my insurance company would release patient info but started thinking the drug companies sure would. Her testing supplies are made by Johnson & Johnson and they didn't become so huge/rich by not selling as many products as the can.

[oufanindallas]

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Escapee wrote:
Someone said the only people that can't see medical info is your family and you. To the medical industry your records are an open book once it leaves the DR office and gets in the insurance pipeline. It is like Staples and Micro-Center.

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Actually that's not true, medical information is only supposed to be seen by you and your doctor.  How pharmacy companies market is by a database of doctors and what medications they prescribe,  there are no names attached to the prescriptions. 

As far as insurance companies go, if any of that information was leaked they could get sued. So there may be a few more people that see your information, however,that information cannot leave.

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

Don't forget, there's always hacking of sites and we don't always find out about it.

[hpmsrm]

I'm gonna repeat something I mentioned in a previous post.  If you're thinking about upgrading to FF 5.....be sure read the comments about a few of the incompatibilities before you click the mouse.    You might find yourself missing a few features that you were using.  In my case I lost the Google Toolbar and can't get it back.  Now the part of that feature that I use a lot is the Google Book Marks.   It disappeared with the tool bar.  The Bookmarks accessed from the menu bar are not a complete list so right now I using IE-9 so I can have my Google Tool Bar and book marks.  I imagine there is a work-around but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know about it.  I should have stuck with FF 4.....which was my original intention.  I do dumb things every so often.

[Uniblurb3 ACE - Guru]

Phil, you are not alone and this sounds like a fix to your problem in losing the Google Toolbar/Bookmarks w/FF 5.

Mozilla has me so paranoid about taking things away in the past I'm often afraid to make any upgrades. I'll still never forgive them for taking away FireShot, which I used for screen shots, due to a forced upgrade.

I spend quite a bit of time reading the posts on their website and there's some pretty good people/info on there. Every time I have a FF problem/complaint I head straight there and often there are some work-arounds posted.

[hpmsrm]

Thank you Uni.  I looked that over.  Kind of scary territory for me.  When I start messing around with this sort of thing I have a bad habit of screwing up my PC which, otherwise is working great.  Know what I mean?

When I'm on this forum I'm usually on my laptop which is running milk-toast Windows 7.  But my new desktop is running Windows 7, 64 bit.  This laptop is the only one I've upgraded to FF 5 and I think I'll leave the desktop as-is until either Google or Mozilla says "uncle" and makes a change.

Re the desktop:   I held my breath when I installed the software and drivers that go with my Minolta 35 mm transparency scanner.  Sure enough.....it was not compatible.  But I Googled the problem and found a solution.  An adventurous soul had written a modification to the driver which makes it acceptable to the Win 7, 64 bit OS.  HEY....one down....one to go.  My Pinnacle Dazzle which is the device I use to capture video and sound to my hard drive and then burn it to DVD's.......is a total loss.  On the desktop Win 7 won't even let that driver be installed.  Interestingly I've been able to MAKE it work with the 32 bit Win 7 on my laptop.....and the old desktop.  But with the 64 bit system it's a complete no-go.  Pinnacle...so far....is unresponsive.  I'm willing to purchase a new package of software from them if it will solve the problem with the capture device.  But I'm discouraged to read posts over on their forum to the effect that none of Pinnacle's software or drivers will work with 64 bit....not even their newest stuff.  Well....I've got news for that company.  ALL new computers being sold today are being equipped with the 64 bit OS.  If Pinnacle doesn't get with the plan they're going to discover that a segment of their market has disappeared. I've also noticed that most of the late model refurbished units on the market have also been converted to 64 bit.  Sooooo.....in the meantime....my video capture device is out of service.

[oufanindallas]

Phil,

  Are you using Home Premium or Professional Win 7 64bit?  If you are using Professional you can always download the free XP virtual machine from Microsoft and use that to install your Dazzle.  Older versions of the software I support don't work under Win 7 64bit, but work just fine under the XP VM.  There is also an  XP VM you can install on Home versions of Win 7, but I'm not sure how well it works.  One other thing you can try is to run the program in compatibility mode and see if you can get it to work. Also see if there a a Vista 64bit driver for it.  Should work as well.

[hpmsrm]

Thanks OFID.  I have the Win 7 Home Premium version.  64 bit on the desktop.  That is the one that refuses to even install the driver.  According to what I read on the Pinnacle forum that company has, so far, never released a 64 bit version of the drivers for this Dazzle device....for any of the Windows OS's.

I've tried changing the compatibility setting but since the driver did not install from the get-go that did not help.

I've E-mailed my question to Pinnacle.  Have not heard back as yet.  So, if they DO get around to answering my quiry....maybe I'll have a better idea of what to do.  If all else fails....I can always connect the device to my laptop because it works just fine with the 32 bit Win 7.  Strange huh?  Re the Virtual machine approach......I've given though to that before.....back when I was first considering the switch to Win 7.  But, since it turned out that everything worked fine with the 32  bit version I had discarded that idea.  Might have to revive it however.  I'll see what Pinnacle has to say before I decide.

[Uniblurb3 ACE - Guru]

YW, and good luck Phil.

On another subject. A couple weeks ago the lower thermostat on my 50 gal electric hot water tank stuck on and about scalded us every time we turned the hot water on.

I called Reliance Mfg support and a nice rep told me to pour 3 gals of apple cider vinegar in the tank to decalcify it, break up the rust, and then flush the tank out. I asked him about using white vinegar like we decalcify our coffee pot with? The "good ole boy" said no, it has to be the apple cider type. He's also the one who told me the lower thermostat is always the 1st one to go out/stick on.

I bought a $10 lower thermostat at the local hwd and easy to switch out. But wow was it hard to clean/flush the tank out and wouldn't drain through a hose with all the rust/calcium/crap in the bottom of the tank. Plus apple cider vinegar costs $4/gal (3 for $12) where white vinegar is $2/gal. I ended up having to take the hose off, along with the top of the cheap nylon drain valve/faucet off, and use buckets to take the sludge/water out. Luckily the tanks up on concrete blocks where I could use a bucket. Also had to use a thin wire to unclog the valve of big chunks many times and what a pain.

Sorry I ever cleaned it out, and a waste of time/money, because the tank sprung a leak in the bottom 2 days ago. 10 year warranty on tank leaks and of course the tank's 11 years old. Figures.

So I bought a smaller new 40 gal electric hot water tank at Home Depot yesterday and changed them out. It's a General Electric tank but almost all of them are made by Rheem. Cost $320 and has a 12 year warranty. I could have bought another 50 gal tank for $249 but it only has a 6 year warranty. That's too short of time and since the kids flew the coupe we don't need a large 50 gal tank.

I was surprised/disappointed the power used per year, and the costs, were not much different in the 10 gal tank size difference. $508/4773 kWh per year for the 40 gal tank and $520/4879 kWh for the 50 gal tank. You would think there would be more than a $12 per year price difference for heating an extra 10 gals of water all year.

I was also disappointed new hot water tanks no longer have a knob on the front for adjusting the water temperature. It's factory pre-set for 120 degrees and to change it you have to remove the front lower thermostat cover and use a screwdriver. I always like the ability to turn it down to the very lowest setting while on vacation.

Also the drain valve/faucet on the bottom of the tanks no longer has a knob on it for draining and you have to use a screwdriver to open/close that too.

All knobs were removed from hot water tanks for child safety reasons. Guess since they are close to the ground, for a child to reach, that makes sense. Lots of warning all over the tank, and in the manual, that is you turn the temp up to 125+ degrees the hot water can scald/burn you, and especially children.

I would have liked to install a "hot-water-on-demand" system which would have saved me a lot of money on electric in the long run. But right now couldn't afford the $700 - $800 investment and probably would have involved a lot of water line/electrical work. It's not easy making system changes in a 94 year old house.

[oufanindallas]

I would have liked to install a "hot-water-on-demand" system which would have saved me a lot of money on electric in the long run. But right now couldn't afford the $700 - $800 investment and probably would have involved a lot of water line/electrical work. It's not easy making system changes in a 94 year old house.

Uni,

 The wife works for a plumbing/AC/heating company. Tankless water heaters aren't the savings that everyone thinks.  If you have a large family then yes, but with my family being just 3 of us (wife, 2 yo son and myself) it's not a money savings that will be the driving factor in installing a tankless water heater when we have a house built, it's the fact that the inside of a hot water heater is NASTY after only a few years.  Since tankless doesn't store water, it doesn't have all the algae and other not so nice things building up in the tank. 

[Uniblurb3 ACE - Guru]

Thanks for the heads up OUfan. I'm not very familiar with the tankless hot water systems but do know a friend who put one in his old house. He never mentioned anything about his electric bill going down.

It does may sense there would be less contaminents in a tankless system. I never thought of algae since didn't realize it would grow in 120+ degree hot water. I've seen lots of cold water algae and the last place I lived at we had real problems with iron algae growing in the the back of the toilet tanks. We had real high iron/surfur in the well water which was a nightmare. Couldn't afford an iron filter, kept clogging up the rental water softener, and the house smelled like rotten eggs just from the water.

I'm on a water well system now and it's hard on anything in a water system. Luckily I have really clean/clear well water that's filtered through 200' of sandstone where my submersible pump is located.

I have an inline water filter and my main problem is real fine dark sand. I use fine filter elements which do a pretty good job of filtering sand/most things out. But hardly any type of filtering system, which is half way affordable, will take all the well water minerals out.

BTW, when I didn't have a water filter system I had to replace all the rubber faucet washers, and other parts, real frequently. Nothing like fine sand, which you can't see/feel, eating things up.