Author Archives: Matthew Gedeon

Space Empires 4 Cheat Trainer

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I have thought to myself for a while that someone needs to make a Trainer for Space empires IV. It get’s really tedious to type “Money” a hundred times, but to research faster, you need to. I made a macro to do it for me, and just thought I’d share. It’s an exe file, so to be safe, I would scan it with a virus protection software before using it. I promise it’s virus free, but you probably don’t know me, so I recommend you error on the side of caution.

To use it, just double click on the exe program, and it will sit and wait for you to open up the window you put the cheat in. Once it sees it, it should hold down the control key and start typing. The worst it will do is nothing, and if it doesn’t work for you, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to make it more universal.

SE4cheat100

SE4cheat30

A tingly feeling inside.

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Doesn’t it just make your day when you get something done that you’ve been meaning to do for forever?

Take today for instance, I’ve been “fixin ta” clean my car for about 4 months. I had a day off so, what better time to do it than the present?

While cleaning my car, I found a steering wheel cover that I had meant to put on my car’s human interface device roughly 2 years ago.

Now my car is half clean and my steering wheel gives more of an “Old Man” impression than it did…but it doesn’t burn my hands as much and grips better. A great trade says I.

Steering Wheel Cover

My old mans car just got older.

And yes, I laced the cover to the wheel instead of wrapping it. It’s more comfortable to the grip that way.

Full content in Word Press Categories.

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Problem: In wordpress, themes control whether a category page displays an excerpt, full content, or just the link to the post. For some weird reason, twentyten (2010) only displays the title. Here’s how you change to full content in 2010, and I’m sure it will be pretty much the same in every theme that doesn’t have a control for this built in.

You’ll find your answers on Kdari’s WordPress blog.

Don’t Compromise Your Whole Computer!

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I’m not just being dramatic here.

Trojans are awful!

I was going along, minding my own business when up on the screen pops a box telling me that my version of java is out of date and prompts me to download the update. My first inclination was to get straight out of the site, but I didn’t follow that inclination. I downloaded the program file, scanned it with AVG, and finding that it didn’t contain any threats, I opened it.

Two minutes later, I was the proud new owner of a NeoSploit Trojan virus.

Trojan Warrior

Click image to visit original

The best thing about a trojan is that it knows how to party. True to it’s nature, it invited a few friends including Generic 13.

Fortunately for me, I knew that the longer a Trojan has access to the internet, the more friends it can bring over, so I disconnected and ran the two programs I had at my disposal; AVG and MalwareBytes.

Neither one of them could take care of the problem, even in safe mode with the system restore turned off*.

Let me just add, that if you don’t know how to turn off the system restore, you are better off formatting the drive or getting a nerd to do the virus removal, because you’re going to be in over your head otherwise.

To make a long story short (took me more than 48 hours spread between 4 days.), I used Reg run Reanimator and Combofix to take out the exe files** and MalwareBytes and AVG to mop up the random .dlls. Then I downloaded Bit Defender just to be on the safe side and used fport to check and see that no open ports weren’t waiting to trick me. (Had to watch a video to make sure I knew what to look for.)

*You want to turn the system restore off because trojans and some other viruses can hideout in the system restore and come back to haunt you after you blow them away. This is a classic example of windows trying to be helpful, but failing. System restore is great for undoing stuff you did to yourself, but is useless against trojans.
**Remember how I said that you better know a good bit about windows before you attempt this? Combofix and Regrun Reanimator both opperate on low levels. Lower than your typical virus or malware protection. As such, you can easily kick out the pillars of windows if you don’t know what they are. Reanimator has a way to just assess the damage and send the report to their professionals instead of doing anything you would regret, but I can’t attest to their effectiveness, and I don’t know whether they are free, since I didn’t need the help.

So, the moral of the story is,  don’t download any important updates from anywhere but their update downloader (which usually shows up near the clock.), or from the official website.

Don’t compromise your email address!

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Chain mail is designed to be passed on…but Don’t!

computer full of spam.

It opens you and others up for spam and virus attacks. How? did you ever notice that the message you just received has between 20 and 2,000 email addresses before you even got to the message? This is because email is designed to be convenient…not safe. All you have to do to save yourself from becoming a target for spam and viruses is to send mail only to people you know or trust, or just to one person at a time… and don’t ever forward something that induces the next person to send the email on. If you simply MUST send on that chain letter, copy just the message and paste it by itself into a new message. That way, if it falls into enemy hands, you’ve not handed over other peoples email addresses…just your own. I’d recommend posting a note in bold at the top of the email that says something to the effect of:

“If you decide to forward this message, please copy the body of the email leaving out email addresses before you do. This will help to prevent spamming. Then copy and paste this note so that others will know to do the same.”

Message in a Bottle

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During my thinking time*, I struck upon this idea. What if I could send a one line message back to myself at any point in time. What exactly would it say? What would I change?

I’m not going to lie to you and say that I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve got a few regrets.

It took me half a second to meander to the one choice that I felt was the most pivotal in the insanity that has plagued my adult life. Now, I can’t really send a message back to myself, but for a few minutes, I pretended that the option really existed. I ran the tape of my recent history back and found the point of most effect and in my mind, I delivered my letter to myself.

Now, I can only assume that I would take advice from myself, but let me amend that. I usually calculate in rough probabilities, not ones and zeros, so I see myself at that point in my life as 80% likely to take my own advice.  (Higher now than before.)

So, I ran the tape forward through about ten scenarious that would be the likely outcome. In five of them, I never took up writing, in two of them, I just lived a boring life…but I wasn’t driven insane! That has to count for something right?

Not really.

I took those ten scenarious apart for the next ten minutes, breaking them down, looking at the effects on other people, what might…and probably would happen. How would I have handled this without that happening to me first? What would have become of so and so?

Of the scenarios that came of my message, the few hundred I came up with were overwhelmingly bad with a tendency toward worse. There were three scenarios that had a better outcome for myself  and others , but they depended on people making highly unlikely choices. That’s why there were only three of them.

Who knows? I may have made some highly unlikely choices in my real life. I haven’t been analyzing my decision making process as I go. I don’t have that kind of processing power. It takes a lot to make what I think are good decisions without trying to figure out what decision making process I was using…

Long story short, I’m glad I’m not God. He has so many tough choices to make, and even has to let us make our own choices because He has made the tough choice to do just that. (Calvinists will have to humor me.)

Maybe I should stop pitying myself and start pitying people who have made far worse choices than mine or just didn’t get much to begin with. I’d almost be tempted to pity God, but I don’t think He needs it. He can handle Himself and everything else, and He’s the only one who can/could/will be able to.

* Yes, I have a thinking time. You should too.

Freely e-File State Taxes!

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Turbo tax is one of the easiest products to use, but because they don’t expect to make much money by doing things for free, they’re decided to hide the best option where it’s harder to get to. Here’s the deal

  1. The Free Edition is free only for the federal return. If you need to file for state, you’ll pay $30 per state. *
  2. The Freedom Edition is free federal, and most states are free as well. The few states that aren’t on the free efile program are still much cheaper. The only catch is, you can’t use the freedom edition unless you made $31,000 or less last year, or are active military, or qualify for the EIC. Of course, that leaves a good slice of the country free to use their freedom.

*If you have already filed for the federal, and want to file for the state, you’ll have to sign up for the freedom edition with a different email address and provide all the info all over again, but the cost difference between 0 and $30 justifies the extra effort in my mind. Just do yourself a favor, don’t skip all around. It confuses the poor program. The temptation is to skip right to the state return part, but it pulls the information you put in the federal part to fill in the state part. The program is very particular about that too. It took me an extra 15 minutes to get green lights because I did it out of order and it didn’t like me too much…but I’m used to that from computers.

Interesting images

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Can we be less precise? I'm still trying to figure that out.

This is also used as an advertisement for the coast guard. 😉

It’s amazing what you can find when you aren’t looking for anything in particular. When I’m looking for funny pictures, all I get are retarded or revolting junk.

Why does a good thing never last?

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Every time I find something that is truly outstanding, it goes away. Back in my wild days, I found this really awesome flavor for energy drinks. Guava is fantastic as an energy drink flavor, but apparently it didn’t sell well, because after a few months of finding it, I was unable to find it anywhere in the Nashville area. Stupid supply and demand (grumble grumble..)

Before that I found a really good pesticide, and of course they stopped selling it.

This time I decided to fight back. I have found a really good, and I do mean REALLY good flavor of chip. I’m pretty sure it must have kind of controlled substance in it because I definitely failed the dare to eat just one. Go buy one, try it and tell your friends.

hint of lime

Please buy me!

Then you can call the warehouse and order enough to make it through the upcoming famine in style.

*Note, although I wish I was getting paid to write this, or some other kind of kick back, this effort has been made for the sake of the greater good of humanity, which involves lime flavored corn chips…….but I’ll have to get back to you later on how that works exactly.