Living today is always rather interesting. There seems to be a scam around every corner. Remember when marketing was an honest affair such as buy one get one free? No longer! Every time you see an offer you must really check it out to make sure the deal is really a deal. In this section I will write about “deals” that I find and tell you where the con is. Feel free to comment on any of these!
Nerd Notes will be about computer use or repair issues.
First of all I should warn you that I do not consider myself to be a nerd or geek. I am that way in some ways, but computers are not my life. At the end of each day I shut everything off. I see no reason to waste electricity keeping something on when I am not using it. It just costs money that I don’t want to spend. I even go around after my son and turn stuff off that he leaves on. I probably turn off 2 or 3 times the stuff that I turn on! A geek leaves his computer stuff on all the time and computers are the main focus of his life. I have many, many other things in my life! 
Should you turn your computer off or leave it on? My feeling is to turn it off when you are not using it. Some people have told me that turning a computer off and restarting it every day makes it die earlier. How many computers die from hardware failure? Practically none. Windoze needs regular restarts to work right. A Mac doesn’t, usually. I have never in all my years in computer repair seen a regularily maintained machine that was harmed by turning it off. Give your computer a rest and it will last longer and work better!
Beginning notes for catagory-about me and the way I think. 
I need to explain where I come from in this category. The computer that I use everyday is a Macintosh. Most of these entries will be typed on my MacBook. I do everything from video editing to web page design to audio program creation on my Macs. I own several of them that I use everyday.
I also own several Windows PC machines. I have tried all the things that I use my Macs for on them. I have one Windows 2000 machine that I built just for video production. I use it for converting film to DVD. It does a passable job at this but it is a rather badly thought out program. It makes a DVD that works and looks OK, but it is hard to use and slow. I have been in computers and networking for over 20 years but I still have yet to get a decent video signal out of this machine, even though it has the best video card available in it.
The Macs on the other hand, with a Sony video converter connected by FireWire, put out a pristine video signal. There has never been any problems in this area. It just works and works very well. This is the way things generally work with a Mac.
I have been involved in computers for a long time now and have used Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Amiga, BSD, and a bunch of other operating systems over these years. When I say something, I don’t just blow wind. My decisions and opinions have been formed through experiance on these platforms. When someone tells you that they hate one operating system or another, just ask them how much they have actually used the system that they speak of in the last 5 years. If they are truthful with you, you will have a better idea of where they are coming from. Then make your opinion from this information.