Eddie On Everything

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AcrobatInfo.exe is as bad as a Virus – How to remove it

I’ve noticed that my older laptop running Windows XP has gotten much slower when browsing files in Windows Explorer.
I did some research and found that every time I did anything within the Windows Explorer shell, a process called AcrobatInfo.exe was firing up, eating up system resources, and just generally slowing things down. The result [...]

How To Tell If Someone Is Lying About Their iPad Experience

OK, maybe that title is a little harsh.
Perhaps a better title would be “When someone tells you they love their iPad because it functions as an eBook reader, you should be a little suspect of their claims, because they’re starting to sound like a fan-boy, simply parroting the ad-copy dreamed up in Cupertino, [...]

Domain Name Registrars Can Be Held Liable For Contributory Trademark Infringement

Attention domain parkers and registrars offering “cash parking” and domain monitization services:
Yes, you can be held liable for contributory trademark infringement if you knowingly profit from your clients’ infringement.
So sayeth the Southern District of Florida.

More specifically, the allegations against the defendants included conduct enabling a class of customers comprised of fictitious entities and anonymous individuals [...]

Is a Home Cholesterol Test Accurate?

While shopping at Target today, I noticed a home cholesterol test on closeout sale.
It was a First-Check Home Cholesterol Test, regularly $12, but on sale for just $5.
I didn’t think it’d be very accurate, but thought I’d pick it up just for kicks.
After getting it home, I noticed that the test only measures total cholesterol, [...]

Your Phone Number is on Facebook – Who Cares?

A lot of my Facebook friends keep re-posting this.
Apparently people are outraged that their phone number is available to their Facebook friends.
Why is everyone so concerned?
The message:
PHONE NUMBER IS NOW ON FACEBOOK! Go to the top right of your screen,
click Account then Edit Friends. Go to the left side of yourscreen [...]

Roomba Battery Issue: Won’t hold a charge / Charges and Discharges quickly

I have a few Roombas that I purchased from Woot. They may or may not be refurbished, I don’t recall. After years of excellent floor-cleaning service, I had a Roomba battery issue today.
My Roomba Discovery would go from dead to fully charged in about 3 minutes. It would then [...]

Opera changes third-party iframe cookie handing in latest release

The support requests for my Facebook-based application started coming in today:
“This application isn’t working in Opera!”
“I just keep getting redirected! I’m using Opera.”
“Your site is BROKEN! Please fix it IMMEDIATELY SO I CAN ACCESS MY ACCOUNT!! I’m in Opera!”
Odd, because it *used* to work in Opera. [...]

Open Source MyBB has become my forum of choice

Have you heard about MyBB? No? Then you’re in for a treat.
A friend of mine has had the domain name uwred.com for a while now, and had been planning to use it to set up a Wisconsin Badgers fan forum. I finally got around to helping him out with that.
If you’ve ever [...]

mod_rewrite in .htaccess to Force www in URL Not Working

Setting up a new site today, I ran into a problem with a .htaccess not working.
It was a pretty simple solution, and was the result of a minor oversight my part.
Still, it took me about 10 minutes to realize the mistake I’d made.
I just thought I’d post here in case someone else makes the same [...]

Facebook Rolls Out “Master” Privacy Controls

Got this in the mail from Facebook today. Turns out the rumors are true. Thought I’d share.

Hi Eddie,
Facebook will roll out changes today that will make it easier for our users to understand and control their privacy settings. As this change will have an impact on our users, we wanted to let you, [...]

Adding a Confirm Dialog To Instapaper’s “Read Later” Bookmarklet

I use the awesome website Instapaper.com to keep track of articles that I want to read.
For those who aren’t in the know, Instapaper will take any website article, convert it to a readable format (that is, strip out ads, sidebars, and other extraneous crap), and store a link to it in your Instapaper account [...]

ING Keeps Hawking Their Easy Orange ARM Without Calling It An ARM

A few months back, ING sent me a direct mail piece advertising their Easy Orange Mortgage.
ING’s Easy Mortgage is an Adjustable Rate Mortgage, or ARM, though they go to great lengths to never use the term “ARM” in their promotional pieces.
Looks like they’re at it again.
I received yet another advert pushing their 5/1 ARM.
Again, I [...]

How to Make phpbb3 Forum Links Automatically rel=”nofollow”

I use phpbb3 for this site’s discussion area. It’s not a particularly popular section of the website, but it does attract one type of commenter – spammers.
Spammers like to create posts that link to their own site. They do this for two reasons – one is to drive traffic directly to their site. [...]

Use Google Public DNS To Speed Up Your Browsing Experience

A recent comment on an old article about Comcast’s DNS servers being really slow brought something to my attention: Google now offers a public DNS service.
Why use Google public DNS? For starters, it can really speed up your browsing experience. The average webpage requires about a dozen DNS lookups, and these lookups [...]

Chipotle Calorie Calculator

I’ve made calorie calculators for both Subway and Blimpie.
Mariah suggested that I make a calculator for Chipotle as well – so I did!
You can find the Chipotle Calorie Calculator here.
You’ll note that I’ve also added a Nutrition database section to this website – I hope you find it useful as well.
Chipotle Calorie Calculator

Fixing the Chrome Error: “Could not create directory for unzipping”

I went to install a new extension in Google Chrome / Chromium and I was getting the error message “Could not create directory for unzipping.”
This doesn’t seem to be a permissions issue, as I have full rights on the PC I’m working on.
I found this thread in which some others report the same error.
The funny [...]

How to Fix the clock’s “An Error Occurred While Windows was synchronizing with” Error

Ah, daylight savings time.
The time of year that reminds us all that our computer’s automatic clock setting mechanism may not work as expected.
I’ve been getting the error message “”An Error Occurred While Windows was synchronizing with time.windows.com” error message when trying to manually sync my clock to the Windows time server.
A screenshot of the error:

If [...]

How To Keep An SSH Connection Alive in Linux

By default, many Linux configurations automatically close SSH sessions after a certain amount of inactivity.
You can easily change this setting on your system by editing the sshd configuration file.
Of course, before doing so, you should consider the security implications of keeping SSH sessions active. Setting your server to keep connections alive may present a security [...]

How Many Calories are In a Subway Sub?

I wanted to know that, too.
So I created this Subway Calorie Calculator so I could find out the answer.
Subway does list nutritional information in PDF format, but it’s hard to determine the exact calorie count of your sub if you don’t order on their 9-grain bread.
Since I was tired of doing the math, [...]

Blimpie Sub Calorie Calculator

Blimpie subs are great, but it’s hard to know how many calories, carbs, and protein are in each. Particularly if you like to order custom subs, like I do. I made this calculator to help me determine the nutritional values of my ala-carte Blimpie subs.