Facebook Proxy

So I was talking to my 16 yr old today and the conversation came on to Facebook and how she can get to FB regardless of where she is. Of course I’m deprived of this right at my job, as we have very tight security so we don’t waste time..

So she tells me casually that she can get into facebook regardless where she is.. Of course her school blocks access to the site (as they should). Using the proxy, she can unblock the proxy security at her school and get to her favorite haunt –> Facebook.

She tells me that to get around the restrictions of the high school blocking her access to Facebook (and that is it her absolute right to Facebook on demand), she just went to google and utilzed a facebook proxy.

When I went to Google and typed in facebook proxy and lo and behold, there were so many pages that allows you to circumvent restrictions on access to FB.

Of course none of the sites that were listed worked for me, from work.. Let me know if you have any success. Of course my daughter continues to get her daily dosage of Facebook even though she should be getting an education! Note to self, have a talk with this teenager ASAP about not breaking security, get a job, get a good education, etc.. Yet I know that conversation will just wind up with eyes being rolled!

The Simple Dollar – Must read for your life

My daily read that I’ve gotten hooked on is the The Simple Dollar. Trent Hamm is one of the most knowledgable individuals that i’ve come across in the blogsphere. His articles related to personal finance are truly worth your time. Trent provides insightful and very timely advice on bettering your personal finances.. If you have just one blog in your favorites, this is the one you must have in your favs.

Today Trent is offering to his readers his eBook – Everything you wanted to know about personal finances on one page

Thanks Trent for this excellent site and keep up the great insights!

OMG-XP Volume is dirty

Before I start let me wish everyone a happy “Cinco De Mayo”.  I got my day started with a flurry and I knew this would be a post that I’ll look back at and say hmm..

So this morning I booted up my trusty Dell XPS 400 and I get the BOD (Blues screen of Death) screen and it tells me that my “Volume is dirty”.  First I said WTF, and then I said OMG, I’m screwed.

Fortunately, I didn’t freak out and jump up and down.  Instead I let XP run through it’s rituals and fix the hard drive for lost clusters and lost links. This took about 10 minutes and the machine booted up into XP.

Yes, I know I wouldn’t have this problem if I had a Mac (that’s for my friend G, who’s now returned to his motherland in Michigan)

I went to my spare VISTA machine and Googled “My drive is dirty” and found out that I wasn’t screwed, but just that data on the drive had become corrupted. Yeah, I know that doesn’t sound like good news. Yet I’m sitting here on my Dell and typing this update.

Fortunately for me, I let  XP do it’s thing and it ran through CHKDSK and verified there was no structural damage (and verified the drive integrity).

I consider myself to be somewhat knowledgeable about funky XP messages, but in my 25+ years of working on computers, I’ve never seen this kind of message.

I found the following in one of  my favorite sites – The Tech Support Guy forum as a solution to this problem:

Keep in mind this will work if you are able to get into Windows.. AFTER the Chkdsk runs to try to fix the problem.
Click on the Start menu and open the run dialog.
2. Type “cmd” and return (without quotes)
3. Next type “fsutil dirty query <letter of drive that chkdsk keeps checking>” (for example, C:
4. If the returned message indicates that the volume is dirty, go to step 5
5. Next type “chkdsk <drive letter> /f /x”
If you get this below answer YES.
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? <Y/N>
6. After that finishes, repeat step 3.
7. If the volume is no longer dirty, reboot and chkdsk should not reappear.

The “fsutil dirty query” reports the current state of the flag.
“Chkdsk /f” forces Chkdsk to run whether or not the flag is dirty— it’s a way to ensure that errors are fixed, regardless of what the flag says.
“Chkdsk /x” goes a little further and helps ensure that any files that were left open get closed; it actually implies “/f” so you don’t need the /f if you’re using /x .
With either /f or /x, at the end of the run, Chkdsk should set the flag to clean

Anyway the lesson to be learned here.

Backup, backup, backup… Something I need to do today..