One would think this is trivial. Yes, it is, once you know how. So here is how it is done.
It is not sufficient to set the maximum password age. That only forces you to change the password when it is that old.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/how-to-set-the-password-to-expire-on-windows-7/
My favorite right turn. In Redwood City
- Inspired by a possibly old Chinese proverb “I dreamed a thousand new paths… I woke and walked my old one.“
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/routine-is-the-enemy-of-the-creative/
Click to see full image with pointers
The California DMV offices, although over-burdened by excessive customers, has always, in my experience been very efficient and extremely fair in their sequencing and processing. But if you go to the wrong DMV at the wrong time (which can happen almost always) you will waste some time that you could have saved with just a bit of forethought.
Here are some tricks I use that has always saved me plenty of time compared to the first couple of times I went there – about 10 years ago or so. This was before the Internet empowered the DMV. For some of the references in this post click on the image to see in full size for the details.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/how-to-avoid-wasting-time-at-the-dmv/
While there are many companies promising you free credit reports, with the exception of Annual Credit Report.com, none of them are free. Annual Credit Report.com is a central site that allows you to request a free “credit file disclosure”, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. I have listed them in alphabetical order.
These three companies are the only credit reporting companies in the US. All three companies sponsor this website and its content. This is the only reliable and free credit reporting service for consumers.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/run-your-annual-credit-report-thrice-a-year/
I have been putting up with this mildly annoying error message for a couple of months now. “wide” is my own router which has no issues working with my iPad, iPhone, other laptops, apple tv, and everything else. But whenever I connect my iMac, I get this error. In the beginning, I could just select the network again from the menu on the menu bar. But now that simply causes another failure.
My initial investigations had led me to believe that it could be fixed by fixing an entry in the KeyChain Access application. But that solution did not resolve the issue permanently. It came back very soon. And apparently thousands of people are having this issue – probably due to an unchecked regression in Apple’s code. While the annoyance continues, I have found a quick fix that, though temporary, is a viable and reliable workaround.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/could-not-join-network-name-a-connection-timeout-occurred/
Siri is polite
I have bought every iPhone as soon as it was released. So I may be biased when I say ‘Buy the iPhone 4S and buy the iPhone 5.” With that fair warning, let me give you an idea of what you get with the iPhone 4S.
Of course, you have heard of Siri, and watched the Apple ads “Assistant”, “Siri, Snow Today”, and “Santa”. Based on these ads you would think that Siri is the only new thing worth mentioning on the 4S. Apart from the 8 megapixel camera capable of recording 1080p HD video, there isn’t much more. Certainly the A5 chip is much faster than the A4 chip on the iPhone 4. So the question is, is it work upgrading to a 4S just for Siri and the camera?
If you already have an iPhone 4, and wouldn’t mind jail-breaking it, there might be ways to do get Siri on the 4, but I am not sure. In any case, I am not a big fan of jailbreaking. The image stabilization that Apple claims for the 4S videos don’t really work at all. I have tried this on several iPhone 4S devices. So if you are going to upgrade, it has to be for Siri and much better camera (minus the image stabilization.)
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/should-i-wait-for-the-iphone-5-or-buy-the-iphone-4s/
A house is usually one the most expensive things a person buys for themselves. This is true for more than 99% of people who have or will buy a house. So it is important to be careful when you buy a house. Recently a couple of my friends asked me what I was looking for when I was house hunting. They also asked how it felt to own a house, and what are the things I did and did not expect that happened.
These questions prompted me to write this blog post hoping that it will provide some good tips to other people on the lookout for a house.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/tips-for-friends-looking-for-a-house/
Charging an iPad with an iPhone charger
Sooner or later you will run into a situation where your iPad is almost out of charge and you cannot find your charger. Yes you can certainly connect it to your Mac or PC. But there is another thing you can do. You can connect it to your iPhone charger! 95% of iPad owners also own an iPhone so you certainly would have one lying around.
You can also charge your iPhone with the iPad charger if you need to. It will not harm the phone with extra current or anything. I do both all the time. Even Apple Support says you can do that. See this article at Apple Support. It says “The iPad USB Power Adapter is a 10W charger. While designed for use with the iPad, you can use the iPad 10W USB Power Adapter to charge all iPhone and iPod models by connecting them using a Dock Connector to USB cable.”
In practice they are interchangeable. The only disadvantage, if you look at it that way, is that it will take longer for the iPhone charger to charge the iPad than it will for the iPad charger to charge it. But for an overnight charging situation this is not an issue at all. It completely charges the iPad in a handful of hours.
Charging an iPhone with an iPad charger
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/you-can-charge-your-ipad-with-your-iphone-charger/
I have now reached the age at which my father wrote his first will. He died about 8 years later. I was about the same age as Joshua is now.
His will was about a page long. My dad’s friend was the witness. It talked about who would get what when he died. It was pretty straight forward but not very interesting other than the fact that it was a will. After he died, we have been sharing the wealth amicably. There was no need for any disputes because we all had enough and when ever we needed something, we shared things fairly and without quibbling. So the will was not really ever interesting. But there was one very interesting wish in his will. And that I will never forget. Because we implemented that as well. At very short notice too.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/my-fathers-will/
Image courtesy Lacoste
Money is never free. Not even from your parents. So if some ad agency wants to pay you a large sum to put their banner on your website, for no apparently good reason, be wary. It is a scam.
There is a scammer (or a few of them working together) to try to gain access to the internals of your blog. Here is my experience over the last two days. I have validated by googling that a whole bunch of bloggers were targeted.
For the benefit of future targets, I am going to paste the emails verbatim so that they can find this post and escape the scam, should they choose to search with the right terms from the emails. The emails are self explanatory, so I will keep may commentary to a minimum.
I just want to point out that after I got the last email, I did some research and found that you can do a ‘whois’ on the emailer’s domain as a precaution. I also found that they may be targeting .info tlds (I assume some of these webmasters may be cheapos – and thereby more gullible.) Depending on the name on the email people assume that a “he” or a “she” sent the email. But it was a team effort on the part of the scammers. They only started doing this in the last 5 weeks, and their approach has been evolving. For example, a few weeks ago, the victims asked who the advertiser was, and they said Lacoste. Now their initial email itself says the advertiser is Lacoste. They always represent an “agency”. They are always in France. There are various websites for the “agency” that are all pointing to the same content.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.johnvarghese.com/advertisement-banner-scam-beware-of-free-money/
Welcome to Simple Solutions where I blog about simple solutions that I have thought of or have implemented. I hope you will find them useful and invite you to join the conversation.
