We certainly have had more than our share of rain in the Atlanta area recently! Many areas experienced historic levels of flooding as swollen streams and area lakes overflowed. Lots of people had wet basement, but many were really flooded!

Is your home in a flood hazard area? FEMA has online resources which outline the extent of the officially calculated hazard areas. One such resource is FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer for Google Earth.

To get started, download and install Google Earth if you do not have it already. Then download the FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer and save it. Opening this file will launch Google Earth with the FEMA layer loaded.

Here is a screenshot showing the overlay after choosing “Special Flood Hazard Areas” and “Floodways”.

The red areas indicate flood hazard zones, where flood insurance may be mandatory.

Congratulations!  You’re headed to college.  Many colleges have specific requirements for incoming students.  Georgia Tech, for instance, requires every student to have a laptop and gives very specific requirements. Some schools have no requirements but suggest that you check with the individual department within your college.

Check with your college to see if they have arrangements with Dell, Apple, IBM, etc. to purchase computers at a discount. Wherever you buy a computer, buy the computer and software separately. MS Office Student/Teacher edition comes in a 3 computer version — so it can be loaded onto 3 machines and not tied to a specific computer. Anti-virus products by Symantec and others also come in multi-user packs. You should check to see which anti-virus/anti-spyware software your school requires. Use their suggestions. Trying to substitute another anti-virus software will waste time and money. Some colleges sell third-party “computer service warranties”. On the surface these may seem like a good idea but read the fine print carefully. Most warranties only cover hardware problems and frequently exclude printers. Most computer problems are caused by software, viruses, and spyware which are usually excluded. Dropping the laptop or spilling liquid on the keyboard also usually voids the warranty.
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On July 19, 2009, Stewart Cink won his first major title at the 138th Open Championship at Turnberry, Scotland, defeating 59 year-old Tom Watson in a playoff. Cink had birdied the 72nd hole while Watson bogeyed, forcing the playoff. This is the sign that greeted Stewart at the entrance to his neighborhood when he returned home. Stewart likes to twitter - check out his tweets.

In this economic climate it is more important than ever to get the most value for your money when purchasing a computer for your business. Dell has had a policy for a long time that Dell products purchased directly from dell.com can be returned for repayment or substitution within 30 days. Dell has an Asset Recovery Business that takes these returned computers, refurbishes them, and sells them in an online store.

These computers come with the same warranty as new units, ranging from one to three years depending on make and model.
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On Memorial Day in Duluth, Georgia the streets and public squares are lined with flags and crosses, honoring those who gave their all to defend our freedom and liberties.

HP has announced voluntary recalls and replacement programs for some of the battery packs used in some HP and Compaq laptops. If you have one of these recalled battery packs, you may be eligible to receive a free replacement battery pack.

These recall programs were announced on May 14 2009, October 30 2008, April 20 2006, and October 14 2005.

If your battery back is identified as being included in this recall program, you should replace it even if you are having no problems with the battery pack. This is due to a potential saftey issue with the battery pack.

Full details can be found here

If you are a Netflix subscriber, you may have noticed that some titles are available for instant viewing on your PC. Now you can watch these titles on your TV instead of on your PC. Roku sells an appliance that accomplishes this. It is about the size of a paperback, and comes with an IR remote.

The little Roku connects to your home network wirelessly or via Cat5, and connects to your TV via composite video, component video, s-video, or HDMI. It is available for a flat $99 fee, no subscription (other than Netflix) required.

I was working on a client’s PC, tuning it up, etc. The client mentioned that Quickbooks would always hang when posting a duplicate check. It turns out that the previous IT guy had disabled the sound card, since this was a “business computer”. Quickbooks was trying to generate an audible notice on a duplicate check and was not gracefully handling the fact that no sound card was available. I re-enabled the card, muted the sound, and quickbooks was happy again.

Fill in your information (first/last name, zipcode) and your name will be included with others on a microchip on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!

Link: marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname