Jeremy Herndon

Almost every day when I check my email, I am reminded of how many times spammers and evil hackers are trying to invade my computer.  I am frequently seeing warnings about a new virus that has infected many business computers, and sometimes I hear from a friend that their computer crashed because of a virus that their computer picked up.

I can remember one day going to my sister’s house and she was so upset because her computer had crashed and she had not backed up her important data.  All of her precious photographs of her little ones were gone forever, and all of her tax return information was now history.  That was not the time to remind her how many times I have stressed how important it is to backup your files onto an independent storage disk or drive.

Anyway, as I was saying, viruses are a very real threat.  Many computers come with some kind of anti virus program already installed, but those are frequently inefficient and obsolete by the time you actually get your computer up and running. 

I recently discovered a free anti virus download is available from the cyberdefender.com website.  They have a lot of very good software programs designed to protect computers from hackers and viruses.  They also have software for identity protection, register cleaners; I’m impressed that they have received good reviews from USA Today and ComputerWorld for their products.

I think someone has dumped an unwanted dog by the road near where we live. I have seen this strange stray dog wandering around the neighborhood for about the past week. I’ve checked with all of my neighbors, and they say they’ve seen it too, but don’t know who it belongs to. I’ve checked the animal shelter for reports of a missing dog, and looked around for “lost” posters, and they have no reports at all of the dog being reported as missing, so I really think that they dog was abandoned. The dog is a very good looking dog,

I have to expect that perhaps there were some kind of behavior issues that resulted in it being dumped. I’m going to try to get the dog’s trust and see if I can coax it to come to me at some point so it doesn’t get into trouble. I know one of my neighbors raises chickens and they said if they catch the dog in their chicken yard they will shoot it, and I really don’t want that to happen!

I was watching the news last night on CNN before hitting the sack.  There was a story about how unemployment is rising, and that there is a city in California where the unemployment and housing crisis have created a “Tent City.”  The homeless shelters in the area are filled to capacity, so the people who have lost their jobs and their homes are now living in tents.

After that news story the Larry King Live show came on, and he was interviewing several people who are considered experts in the field of employment. They were talking with people who have lost their jobs, and their experts were giving them advice on how to look for new jobs.  To be perfectly honest I felt that the advice being given was too generic, and sounded rather lame to me.

That makes me think that it would be a really good idea fo everyone to start looking for jobs, whether they have jobs or not.  Signing up for a career recruiting service that will try to match employers with employees would help keep the unemployment rate at a minimum.

Tonight is the night that we put our clocks ahead one hour when we go to bed.  I like having extra daylight in the evening, but I don’t like having the extra darkness in the morning.  I was hearing on the news that there is a significant increase in heart attacks in the general population when we change the clocks back and forth.  I think we ought to just pick one time and stick to it.  I don’t like trying to get my body to adjust to a new sleeping and eating schedule.