Blinky Lights and Shiny Objects

My computers all have huge hard drives and large amounts of RAM, but that doesn't mean they can hold everything and do everything and still run smoothly.  Computers, Windows computers at least, run better and are much happier the less stuff they have on them.  Here are my favorite ways to clean up my computers and improve performance and security: 1) Delete old restore points.  This isn't obviously presented as an option and isn't possible unless you've got administrator privileges. But it can reclaim a lot of hard drive space.  Restore points build up each time Windows Update installs or updates anything on your computer.  I haven't found an option that auto-cleans them up, so here is the method for manual deletion.  These instructions are for Windows 7, but there is something very similar in Windows Vista and even Windows XP Professional. A) Open a Windows Explorer window (windows key + E) and select your computer in the left pane, so that the hard dr...

...by taking things out of it. There was a weekend last year when I finally understood and internalized the raw fact that we weren't moving into a new house any time soon.  We'd been in our starter house for nine years, and I checked Zillow.com, and something went "click" in my brain.  If I wanted to live somewhere better with more space, it would be because I upgraded this house and got rid of a bunch of stuff. The upgrades have gone very well, and should form the subject of many posts which are relevant to the title of this blog.  This essay is about de-cluttering, specifically lessons and hang-ups experienced by a pair of engineers who were raised by people who were raised by people who lived through the depression. I had previously considered "clutter" to mean useless trinkets set out for decoration, so I didn't think I had any.  Nope.  I could look around my house as a whole, and think, "How do two adults and one cat need so much STUFF to...

Public Service Announcement: your local mall might have a 3D body scanner that will tell you what pants and jeans will fit your shape.  A Me-Ality kiosk recently came on-line at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, IL, and I tried it out this week. If you can stand still for less than 20 seconds, fully clothed with your shoes on, and you can handle low-power radio waves reflecting off your skin, you can do this.  They ask you to fill out a form with your email address, and it is worth giving a real email address, because of the information you will be getting. After the scan, you get a bar code that refers to your measurement data now stored in their system. Mercifully, they never show or print a picture of your 3D point-cloud derriere. They do print a list of all the pants in the mall in their database that should fit you.  For me, that was 6 types of dress pants and 20 types of jeans.  (I was expecting "ERROR DATA NOT FOUND" as my only result, so this is a lot of mat...