LeeNukes

I’ve recently been finishing off the DIY around my house and I now need to get a mattress for the spare room. I don’t have the biggest car in the world (Citroen Saxo Open Scandal) so I can hardly fit a mattress in there.

So, I was in a pickle, do I go to a store and get it delivered? Well, given that I pretty much live my life online, I thought why not check out mattresses online.

So, I had a route around, I saw a few sites, a few of these being:

www.discountmattresscentre.co.uk
www.e-mattress.co.uk
www.landofbeds.co.uk

Now I looked into these sites a bit more, and it turns out there are other mattress and bed sites that are in this collection. They are all ran by the same company, it seems like they have the market sewn up. Sure there are others but these guys seem to know mattresses and beds, which is just what I’m looking for.

I like www.e-mattress.co.uk the best I think. They seem to specialise in sleep secrets mattresses, which is the brand I’d been looking at in stores too.

Can’t believe I’ve written this much about buying a mattress, anyway to wrap up, this company seems top notch. I’ll be ordering my mattress from them soon, probably after pay day before my money goes on nik naks and hula hoops.

The other websites in their list include:

www.mattressdiscountcentre.co.uk – specialise all sizes of mattresses at discount prices
www.nationalmattresscentre.co.uk – specialise in Relaxsan mattresses
www.nationalbedcentre.co.uk – specialise in Relyon beds and mattresses
www.nationwidebeds.co.uk – specialise in Healthbeds
www.beddiscountcentre.co.uk – specialise in Sealy beds and mattresses
www.latexbedcompany.co.uk – specialise in Dunlopillo beds and mattresses
www.easysleepco.com – sell all major brands of beds at discounted prices

As I said, they have the mattresses online market well under their control, they clearly know what they are doing with their e presence. Try them out, I spend far too much time researching companies before I part with my money (as the 300 or so words in this post proves), I’ve done the hard work for you.

Megaleecher.net has posted an article about KON-BOOT. A tool for bypassing the password protection on some Operating Systems, well, I say some, here is the list:

Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2008
Gentoo
Ubuntu
Debian
Fedora.

Quite a long list. Now, although the malicious intent for this application is obvious, this is also a very handy tool for the IT professional to have in their toolbag. Should be much quicker then password cracking tools out there and no need to change the password using any other tools too.

http://www.megaleecher.net/Easiest_Way_To_Hack_Windows_And_Linux_Computers

I recently moved my Linksys WAG54GS router from plain http to https access for its maintenance page. Even though I only have it accessible internally I like to be as secure as possible and given this was an easy fix I just did it.

Today I got these errors in Firefox 3.0.8:

So, I assumed that the certificate had became broken or changed in some way. So I delved into the Certificates area of my Firefox (Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Encryption -> View Certificates) and I deleted the one for my router, easy to spot as it had its IP address listed.

I tried again, nothing, same error. I closed and reopened Firefox. Same error.

The solution for this one in particular is that there is also a Security Device certificate installed in the Authorities section listed as Cisco Linksys. Once I deleted this one it then gave me the normal screen as if I’d never connected to my router before.

The recommendation from Mozilla regarding this is here *Mozilla*

I recently changed my mobile phone package with Orange as I was paying £35 a month on my contract but my bills including data usage were often over £40.

This is now back down to a more reasonable £10 a month. When I was discussing my contract whilst activating my new SIM card I got talking about the data packages they offer.

Their packages on offer are:

Orange World Access
Mbs per month / cost per month
Unlimited Evening & Weekend Browsing / £ 5.00
30Mbs / £ 8.00
80Mbs / £ 41.13

I thought the Unlimited Evening & Weekend package seemed ideal. I’m unlikely to use it during the day unless its weekend. So I looked into the T’s and C’s. Hmm, not as good as I thought:

From Orange Website

Fair usage policy: To ensure the fair allocation of network resources for all customers the Offer may not be used for: modem access for computers, internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, Instant Messaging, peer to peer file sharing and non Orange internet based video. If such use is detected, notice may be given and Network protection controls may be applied to all services which Orange does not believe constitute WAP or mobile internet browsing. This may result in a reduced speed of transmission, inability to use such services and, at the discretion of Orange, removal of the Offer. The Offer is subject at all times to a fair usage policy of 1000MB each month. Usage above this amount will constitute abuse & Orange may, at its discretion, monitor usage and withdraw the Offer from your account in the event that the fair usage policy is abused.

I was hoping/intending on using it plugged into my EeePC, a cheap way of getting mobile broadband. Or so I thought. So it turns out you can only use the service how they want you to. Come on Orange, at 1GB a month what do you expect people to do??!

I just wish they put it as 1GB, there you go for £5 take it or leave it and do with it as you will. If people use their computers with the service surely they will use the 1GB quicker. So you still win. Honestly.

1) Not know the difference between the Google Search bar and the Internet Address bar.

When you get asked to type in a web address it always helps immensely if you type that address into the Google Search bar as opposed to the address bar.

Here is the difference:

Google Search Box

The Address Bar/Box

2) When on the phone to IT support be as disinterested as possible about what the fault was and how it was resolved.

Working in IT support can’t get much more joyous then when the person on the end of the phone who, coincidently called support in the first place, doesn’t care why their PC broke down and isn’t interested in how to stop it doing that in the future.

3) Log your faults through another member of staff who’s time is worth less then your own.

This is always especially helpful for getting a quick resolution to your problems, even though its you that has the problem your staff member who you have assigned the task of “calling support” is just as likely to know what went wrong.

4) Never update your software.

Your software worked the day it was installed, why is it likely to stop working now that its 3 years later? Sure, it will probably do it itself. This is one sure fire way of keeping your computer in tip top condition.

5) When you ask for remote support, always leave them to work on your PC whilst keeping your work open.

IT support is IT support for a reason, they should know which documents you were working on and which need saving. If they can work their way around computers then they should quite easily be able to asses the difference between one unsaved Excel spreadsheet and another.

6) When you receive an email with an attachment work on it on the email.

Its 2009, when you receive an email with an attachment on it, feel free to work on it and rather then save it to somewhere where anything could happen to it, like be backed up, once you’ve done your work, just hit the save button. The Outlook fairies will take care of the rest and keep your work attached to that nice email it was received in.

7) No need to know the mouse.

When you’re speaking to IT support, you may be asked to do various things with the mouse. These can range from, double click, single click, right click and even left click. Not knowing the difference between a right click and a left click isn’t a problem, your computer will just know what you want to do and correct it on the fly. It will also make your support issue get resolved quicker.

8) company property doesn’t count if its a computer.

Should you have the opportunity to use a computer for your work feel free to install anything that you would your home computer. Browse the internet at your leisure, visit game website and install as many random pieces of software that you can find. Championship Manager will run great on your work PC and all those gadgets you download won’t slow your PC down at all.

9) The more toolbars the better.

When you download a piece of software sometimes it comes with a toolbar such as Yahoo toolbar, Google Toolbar, MSN toolbar etc. The more of these you install the quicker and safer you will be on the internet. It will also give your web browser that “you” feel.

10) Be vague.

There is nothing which makes an IT support person more happy then when a call comes in which they not only have to fix, but they also have to actually guess as to what the problem is in the first place and how it happened.