Well it had to happen sooner or later, I would have preferred later.

The computer that I built about eight years ago finally decided to become worthless.  Back when I built the now deceased one I could save a lot of money by purchasing the individual parts, i.e. case, motherboard, memory, sound card, etc. and assembling them myself.

Times have changed.  I checked on purchasing the parts and doing it again but that is no longer as valuable as it was in the past.  I found that I could buy a Dell for just about the same and I wouldn’t have to spend the time and (yes, even for a geek) the frustration of getting everything working.

I have also done something else that I had decided to put off for an extended period of time…Microsoft Windows Vista.  It looks great… all shiny and new.  Vista’s Aero features are just visually dazzling.  The new large flat screen monitor couldn’t be better.  However, all that said I still miss Windows XP, but only slightly.

It took a while but I even got important older programs working properly.  About the hardest part was getting my wireless network working with Vista.  I think it has too much security which made it complicated, but it does work now.  I easily got all of my previous documents transferred over to the new system thanks to a portable hard drive. 

Life is good so what am I going to complain about?  Well, so far, nothing.  I like it and intend to use it to the fullest.  If any of you have any tips for me about what you find to be useful new features, let me know.  I know that is a little backwards (me being the geek and all) but hey, even I can use a neat trick from time-to-time.

One of the first things I found to be much better than XP was the way the taskbar works.  Pre-Vista when you hover the mouse over the taskbar program buttons they would show you a text description of what is there.  In Vista you actually get a preview of the window that it represents.  What makes it even better is if something is moving in the actual window you will see it move in the preview.  For instance if you are watching a video and minimize the movie momentarily, just hover the button and you can watch the movie without opening it.

And then there is the efficient way the start menu works but maybe we will talk about that another time. 

Don’t forget to visit the new DoubleClicks.info site.  I had a lot of you sign up last week but no one left any comments.  I guess the reading is good but give me some of your thoughts.

It is time for that all important announcement that I know you have all been waiting for.  I would now like to proclaim the ultimate in the internet/computing industry – well, ok it isn’t that big of a deal but the new DoubleClicks.info site is up and waiting for your input.

First, I would like to thank those of you who volunteered to test out the site after I asked for help last week.  The suggestions that I received were greatly appreciated with most of them being incorporated into the overall implementation of the site.

Second, why the heck would I take the time and effort to reimage the site when it was working perfectly well before?  Well there are many reasons but several of them were most evident to me.  First you need to just plain redo a site over time to keep it fresh.  Next, the site wasn’t working as well as the day it had been created a couple of years ago.  Over time hackers, spammers and other types of meanies on the internet had been cracking at it and it was wearing down from the barrage.

For instance, I may have 5-10 readers sign up on the site a week; however, I averaged 35 spammers signing up on the old site each day.  That meant that each night I had to go online to the site and delete their usernames.  They really couldn’t add posts to the Double Clicks site but their usernames alone were too disgusting to work with.  By-the-way, a spammer signs up on websites to have their username posted along with their product, website or whatever they are trying to get you to use and peruse.  The more places they appear the more chance they have to making money on worthless and/or inappropriate things. 

The old site I had was based on a phpBB template.  PHP is the programming language used for the site and the abbreviation stands for PHP Bulletin Board.

The new site is based on WordPress (Wordpress.org).  WordPress is a publishing system also written in PHP and run by a database.  At this point in my life it appears to be slightly easier to keep spammers off WordPress which, other than helping users learn computers, is one of my major goals.

I have all of my columns since June 5, 2007 at the new site so take a look for the one that you missed. You can use the search engine on the site to find a column if you just remember a word or two from it, remember the title (although they are usually different titles than the printed versions) or even find them by date if you remember when the DNR published it.  Of course, I also want you to register at the site which allows you to post your thoughts and questions about a column if you would like to.

You can receive RSS feeds from the site, read my latest Twitters (boring) and even see some of the pictures I have taken in the past couple of years (no I’m not a photographer, but even a blind pig can find an acorn every now and then).  Please sign up at DoubleClicks.info soon and let me know what you think!

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This weekend I went geocaching (geocaching.com) which I wrote all about last summer.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, go check it on the internet or on my new Web site which I am working on for this column.  Email me if you are interested in testing the new site. 

Some out-of-town friends came to visit my wife and me this weekend.  We told them about geocaching, so off we went in and around Harrisonburg to see what we could find.

We found a few caches before we got caught in the middle of the short but active hailstorm that hit Saturday afternoon.  And thanks to ShamRockerz for “Hard Core Cache“.  That is one of my favorite caches so far.

When we continued our caching adventures, we came into an area of woods that had some strange looking trees spread throughout. The husband of one of our friends is a hunter and woodsman but had never seen these trees before. He thought they looked like some type of locust but none of us knew for sure. (That would be me especially as my entire woodsman abilities could be written about in detail on a postcard.)

My wife took a couple of pictures of the trees and we went on about the rest of the day. The trees were strange looking to us as they had these extremely large thorns growing out of the side of the trunk and branches. There were groupings of these thorn-clusters all over the trees, some of which would really, really cause you some damage if you landed on them.

The trees were strange looking to us as they had these extremely large thorns growing out of the side of the trunk and branches.  There were groupings of these thorn-clusters all over the trees some of which would really, really cause you some damage if you landed on them.

Once we got back home, I Googled, “thorns on side of trees Virginia” and found they were honey locust trees. These trees are common in Virginia and the photos showed us that they were the exact ones we “discovered” in Harrisonburg. We found that the pods from honey locusts are edible but the pods from the black locusts are toxic. We also discovered that years ago the thorns were used for carpentry nails … I told you they could hurt.

I just think it is fascinating how even in nature a geek can use the Internet to learn things that they know absolutely nothing about. One thing I would like to know is who got someone to taste the honey and black locust pods to see which one was toxic?!

In the past I have written columns about filing your taxes with different tax preparation software.  This year I have a warning that I gave you the first time a couple of years ago, but it is rearing its ugly, vicious head again.  I feel that this needs to be revisited especially with some of the emails I have recently received.

If you have gotten an email from the IRS informing you that they have received your returns but want to verify, ask a few more questions, finish some unfinished part of your returns, or just want to communicate with you regarding your taxes — I have two words of counsel for you.  DELETE IT!

These emails are scams which are most likely phishing.  Phishing is the term that basically means someone is trying to trick you into giving them your confidential information, then using that information for personal gain, which will damage you.  You could be damaged financially, in the courts, and/or most any other way that could come about through someone stealing your identity.

Recently many people have received an email from an official sounding company that “works in conjunction” with the IRS in getting you a quicker return.  It may seem to be from the IRS with an official looking email like, “returns@irs.com” (Hint: the real IRS is .gov, not .com).

Here is one directly from the IRS web site:  “… bogus e-mail, which claims to come from “tax-refunds@irs.gov” tells the recipient that he or she is eligible to receive a tax refund for a given amount.  It then says that, to access a form for the tax refund, the recipient must use a link contained in the e-mail.”

Be warned, the IRS will never ask for personal identifying or financial information via unsolicited e-mail…NEVER!

If you went to the link in that email, they would ask you for your full name, mailing address, social security number, and charge card number (red alert).  Just think about it, why would the IRS need your charge account information?  Right!  They don’t need it, but someone who would like to use your credit would.

Now before you think, “Who is foolish enough to fall for something like that?”, the answer is many thousands of people.  So don’t you be hoodwinked.  The emails and the sites that they link to look very real.  I give security talks showing two sites; one the actual web site of a major bank and one from a scammer.  They are identical…you can be tricked so be careful! 

If you have sent your returns to the IRS for a check refund and want to know when you will get your refund go to their site (www.irs.gov) and click on “Where’s My Refund?”