15
Joining The First-Time Buyer’s Club
Posted by | Posted in Geek Stuff, Personal Shizzle | Posted on 15-01-2009
Well, I went and saw the mortgage advisor yesterday, and as expected he went through a few bits and pieces with me about the different types of mortgage available and whatnot. Afterwards, he set me some “homework” to do between now and the next time I see him.
It’s all pretty bog-standard from what I can tell, and so I’ll work out my budget, do the credit check stuff, have a look about for some houses, etc, etc until I see the guy next week. ‘Citing stuff!
Well, it’s officially a week since the virus outbreak started here at work, and things are just about calming down. I’ve had one or two virus warnings pop up on my own laptop, but it’s nothing my anti-virus software couldn’t handle. I mentioned a few anti-virus programs a few posts back, and as I recall I wasn’t majorly impressed with McAfee. Still, it seems to be doing it’s job now that it’s up to date, and I really cant complain. As it happens, Microsoft released a new version of their Malicious Software Removal Tool a couple of days back that was updated specifically to combat the W32/Confiker worm that’s currently infecting our systems. If only they’d released it a week or so before, then we could have avoided this whole mess!
Having just looked up my blog post about anti-virus software, I realise I didn’t give you the answer to the riddle I posted. Well, as you may recall, the riddle goes as follows:
You’re standing in a room that has two doors. One door leads to heaven, and one door leads to hell, although you don’t know which is which. There are two men in the room, each one standing by a door. One man always tells the truth, and one man always lies, but again, you don’t know which is which. You’re trying to get to heaven, and to help you, you can ask one of the men only one question. Who would you ask, and what would you ask them?
The answer is rather quaint. You see, because you don’t know which guy tells the truth and which one lies, you have to think of a question that you can ask either one, and know that the answer is reliable. So, pick either one of the guys, and ask them, “what door would the other guy tell me to go through?”, and then whichever door he tells you, walk through the other one.
It makes sense of you think about it. If you happened to be asking the guy who always lies, then he’d know which door the truthful guy would tell you, but because he’s a liar, he’d tell you the wrong door, so you know to go through the opposite one. If, on the other hand, you happened to be asking the truthful guy which door the liar would tell you to go through, then the truthful guy would honestly tell you the door that the liar would tell you. But again, because the liar would tell you the wrong door, you know to go through the opposite door again. Tada!
I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t figure it out for yourself, because I sure didn’t. Do feel bad, however, if you didn’t even think to Google the answer just to satisfy your curiosity. (On searching for an answer myself, I came across this interesting article that has a similar puzzle or two to solve).
For the first time since New Year I actually had a decent night’s sleep last night. I’m not sure why exactly; perhaps because I really needed it. Either way, I’m not complaining. It means I might have a bit more energy than usual, for the gym trip tonight. Due to the fact that we’ve not quite finished off all of our Christmas food, I’ve still not quite got back into the strict regime that I was on before January, but I’m determined to keep up the hard work.
I didn’t get time to do any mixing yesterday, as I was listening to a lot of new tracks that I hadn’t got round to listening to yet. I think the only reason I found the time to do that is because I archived and deleted all music from my machine over the weekend, so I had no music left on there to listen to. Still, there are plenty of fresh tracks out there, so I’ll build up a new collection soon enough. You never know, there might even be some mix-worthy tunes out there too.
There seems to have been an influx of celebs popping their clogs over the last couple of days. Patrick McGoohan, the actor who played Number 6, in the hit 60′s series The Prisoner, has died, as has the internet legend Ricardo Montalban from Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. I used to love Star Trek II. Aside from Generations and First Contact, The Wrath Of Khan was the best of all Star Trek films. I guess we’ll see if the new one will top the others. As it’s been delayed by about five months, I should hope it will. Still, a respectful RIP goes out to the actors, and best wishes to their families.
UPDATE: I think I spoke too soon about our virus issues being solved – we’ve had a small resurgence in the number of infected machines. I do wonder, at times, what the hell we’ve been doing for the last week. But now that the removal tool has been released by Microsoft, we should hopefully be able to put a stop to this virus once and for all.
We’ve been installing a few patches on many of our PCs over the last week, but I’ve got no idea what the hell they’re for. Clearly they don’t stop PCs from getting infected again, nor do they seem to help McAfee to detect and remove the threat. Still, what can you do…
hi i signed in to your wordpress site from Natty’s blog at http://nattybux.blogspot.com/ so i guess your are Dom or Dom put your wp blog on Natty’s comments, either way i really admired Dom’s comment there about buxto..
thanks for the neat stuff http://gravitonring.blogspot.com Anthony aka gravitonring OH why i commented here: PCTools AVirus and Threatfire are free for personal use and have kept my old computer running through this last year of hack whack and kill the web nonsense 
http://www.threatfire.com/ http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/ Enjoy!
i never really knew much about trance music but i downloaded this is my religion
oh you will still need a firewall with those freebies, but pctools also has a free firewall, i just use a different one that is much more silent
Hi, thanks for the links! You can never be too careful with viruses these days.
Yeah the comments at Bux are getting a bit out of hand really. I think people just need to chill out. We all knew what we have been getting into, so there’s not really a lot we can do.
Glad you liked the mix (ish!). I might be recording another one soon, although the tunes will be a lot slower and more progressive.
:~}}
i really respected Ricardo Montalban as an actor, although the original Star Trek [Kirk] is not my fav
DS9 and TNG even Enterprise i luv looking at old reruns endlessly, my script is at http://gravitonring.parks.officelive.com/default.aspx it cost me $10,000 and has produced a giant pain in the ass up to now 
3 years is just enoigh to get noticed and at 70 i will never write another story, i needed a writer to do this script, and he went off on his own after it, but i keep trying 
i was in 7 hollywood films in Pittsburgh PA from 1990 to 1998, beautiful people on the sets, but it is a giant pain in the ass too 
i got minimum wage while Jon Claude got $100,000 a day 
anything after that Voyager, i am as addicted to it as Barkley was
oh about Ricardo, he was on the Tonight Show NBC many years ago and demonstrated his voice warm up exercises, i used them ever since and actually developed a decent voice
AFTER i stopped smoking…
hey Streakfury, just found your blog again on google, sorry to be away so long, had some old age crises
will be 72 this month, sad to say i turned in the alleged pay per click site b..to into the internet crimes site several months ago, they were so paranoid that they secretly delayed payments without disclosing why or how a member violated their so called security, i LOST over $1400 to these paranoid idiots, which is what they owed me for over 18 months, then continually delayed until my choice to turn them in for criminal stupidity 
i am still addicted to star trek, and now electronic trance, i hope you and all your loved ones are well and enjoying the holidays, i am still at http://gravitonring.blogspot.com/ but i have gone over to the dark side 
advertising web stuff to try to make a buck 
Hi Gravitonring,
No problems! I’ve not been as active as I used to be on this blog anyway, so you haven’t missed much! I’ve had a lot of work on lately so that’s why.
I’ve still not been paid by Bux either, and I’ve been waiting since June 2008! I’ve kind of lost hope really, although I’ll be keeping an eye out and pestering them every now and then for an update. I dread to think how much they owe me, but I’d be happy just to get my money back to be honest.
I took a look at your site – I can see what you mean! Dark side indeed, hehe. I hope it helps you make a little money on the side! Glad to see you’re still into Trek. Have you tried the online game Star Trek Online? I play it at the mo, and it’s not too bad for casual gamers. Take a look:
http://www.startrekonline.com
Take care, and have a great holiday!
oh yeah the secret stupidity of b..to is IF you do NOT click their idiot site, just about every day, then they put your cash request back into nothingness and never actually pay you unless you click a lot, and even if you click a lot they do not pay, what idiots !!
oops i should update, i PAID for pctools AV suite, then had a crash and had to reinstall factory settings, WAALAA that was the end of pctools, NO WAY to ever reinstall their AV suite after a crash like that, but they did refund me, but only because it was within 30 days, so i no longer recommend paid pctools, nor even their freebie