Disabling That Annoying Windows Automatic Restart Nag Screen

While I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to make sure our computers are safe and secure by encouraging people to use their automatic update features, it does have one hugely annoying and potentially dangerous aspect: automatic restart.

After some updates which it downloads and installs for you, it will then pop-up a message to say that you need to restart your computer for the updates to take effect, and you have two choice – restart now or restart later:

There are two problems with this.

The first is relatively minor, but it’s all too easy to click on the Restart Now button when you meant to click on the Restart Later button.

I know – RTFS (if you’ve come across the popular term RTFM then you’ll be able to work out what this means), but as this nag pops up when you’re probably focused on doing something else (e.g. work, playing games), then it’s still too easy to do.

The second is much more dangerous – you may have wandered off from your computer for a while (e.g. to eat, sleep, or other natural functions), and are not there to respond to the nag.

Now, if you’ve gone off and not saved the latest changes to your Word document, then shame on you – I’ve no sympathy.

But what if, like me, you run data back-ups every day (as indeed you should do)? Then having Windows restart your machine in the middle of that back-up job is plain inconvenient and inconsiderate, because you have to start it all over again.

I choose to back-up my Outlook Express files overnight because this particular job takes about two and a half hours, and with it being the quietest time of the day from a business perspective (we offer 24 x 7 phone support to our customers), then it’s the obvious time to do this necessary housekeeping.

Or supposing you’ve started, or scheduled, a massive download, and then you find that Windows has kindly rebooted your machine for you right when it got to 99% complete?

P*ssed off wouldn’t even begin to describe how you’d feel!

So, fed up with the nag screen, I went on a hunt for a solution, and found two things that may be of interest to you.

Firstly, I found a video, although it appears as though it’s aimed at Windows Vista users only:

Secondly, I found a very helpful post on Technize.com, that provides instructions that work for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, with both termporary and permanent methods for solving the problem.

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Song Of The Day – She’s In Love With You (Wednesday, 31 March 2010)

(See my previous post, My Internal Jukebox for what this category is all about.)

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Take Control Of Your Health By Dr Mercola

I’ve long been a subscriber to Dr. Mercola’s Newsletter, which is claimed to be the world’s #1 free health newsletter, something which I can well believe.

He covers all sorts of subjects, including vaccinations (one of my hobby horses), as well as diet and obesity, pets, and much more – there are over 50,000 pages of articles and resources once you subcribe.

Many of his articles take the form of a short introduction, often with a video, followed by his own take on the story.

He doesn’t pull any punches, and is happy to take on the might of the drug industry if necessary.

He is also a great believer in natural solutions, such as Vitamin D, for example, which is fine by me as I’m no fan of chemical-based products of any type.

So, I was delighted to find out that he has released Dr. Mercola’s Total Health Breakthrough, which is a complete guide to weight loss, preventing both disease and premature aging, and living healthy and longer.

If this is even half as good as his previous material, then it’s going to be a great read that will make a significant difference to your health.

It also comes with five free bonus reports, including one on artificial sweeteners. (Did you know that aspartame was once on a Pentagon list of biowarfare chemicals?)

I highly recommend Total Health Breakthrough and know that you won’t be disappointed.

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The Truth About Vaccinations

Whether to vaccinate your children, yourself or your pets is becoming an increasingly hot topic.

There are many who say that vaccinations have caused all sorts of minor and major problems, including death, while on the other side of the fence, the big drug companies and the government swear blind that vaccines are both safe and effective.

With the amounts of money at stake here, since the pharmaceutical companies make obscene profits every year, it’s not surprising that people are growing ever more sceptical, and when those fears are backed up by direct and personal observation of some of those side-effects (e.g. the often-quoted autism caused by MMR shots), you can’t blame them.

So, in a continued effort to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, the US Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, recently told Reader’s Digest that health officials had decided to tackle the problem of increasing concerns about vaccines causing autism by suppressing the press.

Unbelievable?

In a country that prides itself on its right to free speech?

It should be, but it seems like one more nail in the coffin of people’s rights to choose what they believe is best for them, their families and their pets.

Much is made of the fact that vaccines helped rid the world of all sorts of infectious and life-threatening diseases, as justification for their continued and increased use, while simultaneously trying to convince people that there is no evidence of side-effects, serious or otherwise.

So, I was delighted to come across an excellent blog post this morning, called “Proof That Vaccines Didn’t Save Us“.

In summary, this post presents a whole series of graphs that clearly demonstrate three things:

1. Vaccines did not eradicate the diseases that plagued the world.
2. Vaccines are not nearly as effective as the drug companies make out.
3. Vaccines are dangerous.

In the interests of helping people see both sides of the coin, I strongly encourage you to read the above-mentioned post before having any further vaccinations.

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Stupidly Simple SEO – It Actually Works!

Just a day or two ago, we came across somebody advertising something called Stupidly Simple SEO, which is a method of getting one-page micro-site indexed and listed on Google – within minutes.

Now, you have to admit that this sounds fanciful at best, especially as he claims that you don’t even need your own website either.

And no complex formulae, keyword density calculations, backlinking – in fact none of the traditional SEO stuff at all!

Well, ever suckers for something new, we decided to try it out for ourselves.

The good news is that you can find out the basics of this system for free, via a short video.

However, if you really want to make full use of this ingenious system, then you will need to upgrade to VIP membership, as this gives you access to many more detailed training videos, including some advanced techniques that are truly cunning.

Unusually for us, we watched the five or so training videos almost immediately, and have just published our very first micro-site using the Stupidly Simple SEO technique.

We clicked the Submit button at 8:51pm our time (which shows up as 11:51pm on the website we used, because of different time zones):

Just 20 minutes later, this micro-site was listed in third place on Google, immediately after Amazon’s double listing:

The above screen shot was taken at 9:18pm, so that means Google indexed it at 9:12pm – exactly 20 minutes after publishing.

Now, we still have to make some money from this micro-site, but this initial test is certainly very encouraging (and in fact my wife is working on our next micro-site at this very moment).

So, if you want to try it out for yourself, then we can safely say that this really is Stupidly Simple SEO.

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The Regex Coach

For all but the most die-hard programming propeller-heads, the term “regular expression” is liable to bring out a cold sweat.

True, they’re incredibly powerful …

… but they’re also incredibly hard to get your head around.

So, what is a regular expression (aka regex or regexp)?

Well, in a nutshell (a Wikipedia nutshell, to be precise), they Read more…

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Diuretics

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Song Of The Day – Hold Me Now (Saturday, 13 March 2010)

(See my previous post, My Internal Jukebox for what this category is all about.)

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Be Part Of The Spam Solution, Not Part Of The Problem

I have long believed that if you buy anything, no matter how much you want it, from a spam email, then you are contributing to the problem.

It costs very little to send out millions of spam emails, and the commission or profit from just one sale will keep these idiots in business, flooding yet more people’s inboxes with yet more spam, for another day or two.

If you really want to buy something advertised in a spam email, whether that be a watch, pills (of the “blue” kind as well as others), or any other item you may find, then please, do NOT click on the link.

Instead, go and do a search for the product using Google, or another search engine, and buy it from a legitimate website (or from somebody who conducts their business ethically and support permission email marketing).

After all, if nobody bought from a high street store, that store would soon go out of business, and the same applies to spammers. The solution is simple: don’t buy from them – ever!

So, I am pleased to say that I fully support the “Spam. Don’t Buy It.” website:

Be part of the solution, and not part of the problem: please, don’t buy from spammers, and help to spread the word – the sooner people stop buying from spammers, the sooner the problem will go away, because legislation alone won’t solve it.

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WordPress

WordPress has changed over the years and grown
People have embraced it and clearly shown
That technology simply won’t stand still
Hungry to ensure it bends to their will
Every bell and whistle that springs to mind
May now be found – it will not be confined
Easier interface, thousands of themes
Small acorn to giant oak tree, it seems

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