Guess who's back, back, back...

Fanfare, please:

The Jerc Store is back online!

I am hooked up on a brand-new laptop -- one that does not shut down every fifteen minutes and is not infected with a virtumonde virus.  Thanks to those who weighed in on the purchase, to Tom for helping me pick this baby out and to Dave for making Windows Vista slightly less terrible.

Hopefully everyone out there in Internet land has not given up on this site. Please start visiting regularly again because the posts will be flowing. Thanks again for your patience :)

[NEW] You can now e-mail me directly at: jerc@thejercstore.com

Another update

Hey everyone -- A few people have asked me what the deal is ("The Jerc Store is really hurting"), so I wanted to let you know that yes, I'm still alive and I will soon return to posting at the rate I had been.

My laptop is [almost] officially shot. The power adapter port thing (I really know what I'm talking about) doesn't give the computer enough juice to even boot up, thus making it impossible for anyone to tackle the virus, which, if you recall, was the original reason posting ceased.

The good news is that the government is giving me a lot of "free money" in about two weeks: Because I didn't get a stimulus check last year (for whatever BS reason), I am apparently getting one this year on top of my tax return -- whoo hoo! -- and that means it's time to start shopping around for a new laptop!

Now, while I could afford a MacBook with this money, I'm not sure that it's the best route to go. That's where you (if anyone still reads this) come in: If anyone's got any suggestions for a good, middle-of-the-road laptop that would primarily be used for writing and surfing the Web, please throw them my way.

Once I make the purchase, I'm hoping to give this site a facelift and get back to bringing you the entertaining -- yet utterly pointless-- posts you once so enjoyed

Until then, please be patient! I promise to be back soon!

Update

Now, not only is my laptop sick, but I'M sick now, too. Many apologies for the scarce posting. Apparently the laptop's got a Virtumonde or something. From what I'm told it's a pretty badass virus. [And if anyone knows how to get rid of it for good, PLEASE share!]

So, we're working on repairing the computer (and my health), and hopefully I can soon rejoin the blogging race...and stop burning my mouth on scalding hot tea, which I just did - @*?$%#!!!!!

Major FAILs of the Week

Just an FYI - my laptop's computer virus is back, which means that whole "whoo-hoo! I'm going to post more now" promise is taking a little detour. This whole mess has pushed me even closer to emptying my bank account for an MacBook. My Mac desktop is wonderful, but it's so full of photos that it moves slower than my 1995 computer in the office. Anyway, enough babbling. Here's something to keep you entertained til I can post again...

Here are this week's Major FAILs of the week. Feel free to share your FAIL photos/videos here or by sending them to failpictures@gmail.com.


see more pwn and owned pictures


see more pwn and owned pictures


see more pwn and owned pictures

Real quick

Hey everyone - Many apologies for the lack of posting lately. As you've probably read, my computer came down with some sort of ridiculous virus that basically made it explode every time I hit the power button. Fortunately, my boyfriend dedicated about 17 hours to this problem and miraculously got it working again. (I've just been too afraid to turn it on for the last week.)

So again, sorry for slacking and hopefully within the next two days I can get back to some sort of regular posting. Thanks for the patience!

yup, lots of "coughing"

As predicted, my computer completely exploded with pop-ups -- something about Adware? Spyware? A virus in the computer's registry?? Who knows.

My boyfriend dedicated about six hours of his Sunday trying to debug the thing, but apparently whatever I picked up is a bitch of a bug. So I will try to post as much as possible from my much slower -- but less-virusy -- computer, but I can't guarantee anything. Sorry ya'll :(

*cough*

No, I'm not sick, but I am moderately convinced my laptop came down with some sort of virus Christmas Eve. Luckily, (I think) it's all better now -- I just didn't turn it on for three days (hence the brief hiatus) and hoped it sorted itself out, which pretty much guarantees something worse will happen in about 10 minutes.

Hope everyone had a good holiday. Who's looking forward to 2009?? I am if it'll bring me a new job, more money, increased relaxation time and a slight drop in lbs. Oh yeah, and if that recession thing could go away, that'd be hot.

'Cuil' as the other side of Google

So some ex-Google employees launched an alternative search engine yesterday, touting it as bigger and better than powerhouse Google, but from my experience, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Cuil --pronounced "cool"-- drills into the actual content of a page, displaying results in more of a magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links, according to one of its developers. Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request. [click here to learn more about Cuil]

One big advantage Cuil developers are pushing is privacy, which Google tends to ignore these days. Does anyone else think it's creepy that as soon as you send a Gmail message with the word "love" in it, you get 20 ad links on the page for "Who has a crush on you" and the like?

As far as Cuil goes, the name is fun (My co-workers and I certainly had fun telling each other to "cuil it" yesterday in the newsroom when one of us had an inquiry that would normally beg a Google search), and the look of the site is pretty sleek...but Cuil doesn't really cut it in my book.

Try entering your name, your hometown or even the name of this site and you'll see just how inferior Cuil is to Google --or Yahoo! for that matter. Most of the results don't even match, and what does come up is not very relevant. In fact, try searching for "Cuil" on Google and you'll learn infinitely more than if you enter "Cuil" into the actual Cuil search.

This is the first time a new search engine has been developed by former Google employees, but it doesn't appear as though Cuil will be giving Google a run for its money anytime soon. I mean, "googling" is synonymous with Web searching now, is it not?

Second update: MySpace Murder

Updating an update of a previous item:

The Missouri mother responsible for 13-year-old Megan Meier's suicide and the phony MySpace account that pushed the young girl to do so has been indicted.

Lori Drew, of suburban St. Louis, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on one count of conspiracy and three counts of unauthorized access of protected computers to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, AP said.

Thank God for justice.

To read more about the case, click here, but the long and short of it is that the mother of one of Megan's former friends created a MySpace account and posed as a teenage boy named "Josh" to see what Megan was saying about her daughter.

The mother, her daughter and another adult had access to the account and corresponded with Megan as Josh for more than a month, until they began harassing Megan, saying that Josh didn't want to be her friend anymore and that the world would be a better place without her.

Megan, who suffered from ADD and depression, hanged herself as a result of the messages.

RELATED LINKS
MySpace Murder
Update: MySpace Murder

Floating on Air

My laptop is cool and all, but getting my hands on the latest Mac laptop--the MacBook Air--would be phenomenal.

This thing is 0.76 inches thick when closed and 0.16 inches thick when open, and for comparison's sake, a regular DELL laptop is 1.26 inches thick.

(Photos courtesy of infoSyncWorld.com)

The computer also turns on as soon as it's opened, and it comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade. Because of the laptop's sleek structure, something had to be sacrificed, so the MacBook Air comes without a CD or DVD drive.

The Air will go on sale in two weeks and cost $1,800.

The laptop was revealed by Apple exec Steve Jobs at the Macworld trade show today. Jobs also unveiled an online video rental service that will allow users to download movies for $2.99 - $3,99 and watch them over a broadband Internet connection. They can also download and keep the movie for 30 days while having 24 hours to finish the movie once it's started.

If you didn't know it already, Apple is taking over the world.