Those guys who send out spam by the bucket-load are really busy these days. In the past month alone they have tried to sneak more than 9,000 of their fake comments onto this site. These "comments" are attached to links to various sites selling drugs, loans, pornography and you name it. …
I have long been suspicious of chiropractors. Why? One reason is that the practice has a wobbly foundation. In 1895, D.D. Palmer declared that “95% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrate, the remainder by luck stations of other joints.” His conclusion is that most diseases could be cured by adjusting vertebrae that interfere with nerve vibrations flowing from the brain through the vertebrae. Recent studies have shown that while spinal manipulation can be helpful to treating some back pain, “there appears to be little evidence to support the value of spinal manipulation for non-musculoskeletal conditions.” (Shekelle, P.G. “What role for chiropractic and healthcare?” New England Journal of Medicine 339:1074-1075.)
Another reason for my skepticism regarding chiropractors is that I’ve heard too many tales of highly suspicious sounding chiropractors. I’ve heard, for instance, about the “need” to be treated two to three times per week for years on end for nebulous sounding conditions.
I’ve never before been to a chiropractor. Five weeks ago I would’ve assure you that I would not likely ever go to a chiropractor. That was before my pain got bad, however. For the past five weeks, I’ve been suffering from a pain on the left side of my upper back. It comes and goes during the day, ranging from a dull ache to a severe stabbing pain that makes it hard for me to concentrate anything else. The pain sometimes borders on disabling. Sometimes, lying down is the only thing that settles down the intense …
You might think I’m being facetious, but I’m dead serious. Let's select one day per year to remind people to regularly back up their computer data. I am utterly completely and bewilderedly tired of hearing people tell me “I lost all my data, songs and photos because my computer hard drive…
I’ve been in this position many times. I know important information is somewhere on my computer, or is it? And if it’s on my computer, is it in the form of a wordprocessing file or is it something I received or sent on an e-mail? What’s the best way to find it? Do I go to dozens of subdirectories, opening in reviewing hundreds of documents, or do I use the simplistic “Find” feature of Outlook, and watch the search results slowly trickle in?
I’ve read articles suggesting that many professionals spend more than five hours per week simply hunting down information that they know is on their own system. I am sure that I spent several hours per week looking for such information. To say that it can be irritating is truly an understatement.
This constant frustration recently led me to a pleasant discovery, but it wasn’t obvious at first. I started looking at various shareware packages that claimed that they could track down your files based upon Boolean searches. Many of them seemed promising, and I tried a few, but I really didn’t see anything that stood out, and I wasn’t inclined to try very many of these packages, since there is a learning curve associated with each of them. Another option was to purchase an expensive package, such as Isys. Then again, I really didn’t want to be spending several hundred dollars unless I had to.
I then discovered Windows Desktop Search, free to all who …
What I actually did was to pay $199 for a Western Digital “MyBook” 500 Gb external hard drive. While comparing hard drive prices, however, I stopped a moment to consider how incredibly far hard drive prices have fallen over the years. I concluded that I was getting a windfall no…