My Parents Need a New TV

The TV in my parents' living room has finally kicked the bucket, and they need help selecting a new one.

The problem is that it must fit into a small cabinet that's designed for a 27 inch CRT.



Is there any place that sells new CRT TVs? Best Buy sure doesn't!

An LCD with a 4:3 aspect ratio would work just as well, but nobody seems to make those anymore either!

My New Toy

When I was in Utah, I managed to get a hold of a directional WiFi antenna.

Today I got the pigtail adapter so I can hook it up to my laptop.

Turns out it's very sensitive to line-of-sight obstructions. I got about 3 miles of range with it from a big omnidirectional antenna in Utah, but as soon as a building got in the way, it was gone.

Spyware

Today I had the displeasure of removing yet another instance of Antivirus XP 2008. It's a scam antivirus program that is nearly impossible to remove, at least, until I found my new favorite antispyware program: Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.

Spybot stole the crown from Ad-Aware not too long ago because of its more open licensing and the fact that Ad-Aware has started to become bloatware. I'll still be using Spybot, but probably not as much now since Malwarebytes found so much more crap after I ran Spybot on my client's computer today.

My favorite spyware prevention software remains the same: Firefox and SpywareBlaster.

I still miss it

Well, right now my mind is swarming with ideas and questions about the directional antenna I acquired on my vacation. Over the last couple days, I could have just gone to the wireless village at DEFCON and asked an expert. They were everywhere, and happy to help.

Not anymore.

I'm back!

I went on vacation for the last two weeks, mostly to see my family in Salt Lake City, but I also stopped at DEFCON.

The talks were pretty interesting, but you can get them all on their web site. There were parties and places to hang out and talk to other people, but overall, it was crowded and I don't think it was worth the expense to be there. I also saw more women than I thought I would, but nearly all of them had boyfriends or were married. It was a fun experience, but considering it cost me $120, plus $100 to share a room for 3 nights, and it would have cost me $100 in gas to get there, I would have stayed home knowing all I know now.