HERE’S where you guess…

I’m done with my whining, my-life-is-so-crazy, Time Suck series. 

• Peruse the 10 Time Sucks,
• pick which THREE were the reason I took some time off
• and leave a comment. 
• Anyone and everyone is eligible till Thursday at midnight. 

Since we’ll probably have more than one right answer, we’ll randomly pick a winner.

Oh, can you stand the excitement?

Time Suck #10

 

(Anyone else bored of this?  Yeah me, too. Last one, I promise.)

How about a trip to Utah?  Do you think that, in addition to the trip to California, might have been the reason I retired for a month?

What if I told you that on this trip to Utah I came down with a HORRIBLE flu and so I only left the house to go to the Museum of Ancient Life:

and hang out with some bloggers at CPK?

What if I told you that when this kid (seen here in happier/healthier times) came down with the flu, right as I was getting better, I threw in the towel, loaded everyone up and headed for home, 3 days early?

 

Does that absolve me from blogging for a month?  What do you think?

BOGO Revisited

Buy one pair of shoes, get one half off is not BOGO.

Explanation: I know I've talked about BOGO and BOGOHO before, but I'm still seeing annoying advertisements, so I'm still going to complain about it. There is a local shoe retailer advertising their BOGO spectacular, where you can buy one pair of shoes and get one pair half off. This is NOT a BOGO offer. Ordinarily, I'd say it's a BOGOHO - buy one get one half off, but it isn't even that! It's buy one pair, get one pair half off. That's BOPGOPHO. To simplify, you're buying three shoes and getting one for free. It's a BTGO sale. Of course, BTGO is hard to pronounce, and since the shoes are priced as pairs, it's a little misleading. Luckily, I'm not much of a shoe shopper, so I probably won't be partaking in this misleading little sale of theirs.

ESET NOD32 4.0.424.0 English Home 32-bit/64-bit

ESET NOD32 Antivirus System - Integrated, Real-Time Protection against viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, phishing, and hackers. Best detection, fastest performance & smallest footprint.

NOD32 Antivirus System provides well balanced, state-of-the-art protection against threats endangering your PC and enterprise systems running various platforms from Microsoft Windows, through a number of UNIX/Linux, Novell, MS DOS operating systems to Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Domino and other mail servers.

ESET solutions are built on ESET’s one-of-a-kind ThreatSense technology. This advanced heuristics engine enables proactive detection of malware not covered by even the most frequently updated signature-based products by decoding and analyzing executable code in real time, using an emulated environment. By allowing malware to execute in a secure virtual world, ESET is able to clearly differentiate between benign files and even the most sophisticated and cleverly-disguised malware.

Users of Microsoft® Windows® can experience the power and elegance of NOD32's ThreatSense Technology with ease and comfort. Our single optimized engine offers the best protection from viruses, spyware, adware, phishing attacks, and more. Keep tomorrow's threats at bay with our proactive detection technology.

If you are interested in computer security and would like to get a chance to influence the development of ESET's security systems, we invite you to join our Early Access program. Gain early access to the latest technology in beta and release candidate stages.


Download: ESET NOD32 4.0.424.0 English Home 32-bit/64-bit | Alternate

Protable Product Key Explorer v2.1.7.0 | 2.18MB

Product Key Explorer displays product key for Windows, MS Office, SQL Server and over 200 other software products installed on your local or remote network computers. In order to install or reinstall Microsoft Office, Windows, or other commercial software, you must have access to a product serial key (CD Key) for that product.

roduct Key Explorer retrieves serial keys from network computers and allows to protect your company from having pirated software on your network. With this software you will be able to track the number of software licenses installed in your business, find and recover a lost or forgotten product keys, save and keep an up-to-date backup of all your software license keys in a central location. Excellent tool for network administrators, or businesses undergoing a software license compliancy.

Product Key Explorer is a powerful utility that can help you to recover lost license CD keys for many popular products (including Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Office, etc.) Product Key Explorer automatically recovers serial keys of the current system and retrieves product keys from network computers. The software allows to protect your company from having pirated software on your network. With this software you will be able to track the number of software licenses installed in your business, find and recover a lost or forgotten product keys, save and keep an up-to-date backup of all your software product keys in a central location.

Resetting the system - it is always a risk with the possibility of losing the serial numbers to programs. If you only use boxed, and they all stand on a shelf near you, then no problem with reinstalling will not, but the number received from the developer by e-mail program, it is very easy to lose.

Program Product Key Explorer will keep the serial numbers to reinstall. The utility analyzes all the applications installed on your computer, and displays their names, and used the serial numbers. This information can be saved for later use. Product Key Explorer works in a local network, so that it can use the system administrators, in particular, to capture pirated programs. Product Key Explorer supports more than two most common applications.

Features of the program:
• Allows you to decode, view and save the serial number and other registration information for the installed programs on your computer
• Work on a network with other computers on a range of IP-addresses or a list of IP from a text document
• The program supports more than 500 software products to find their registration information
• Quick search with a single click on the button "Find Keys"
• Save your login information. Txt,. Csv,. Xls, mdb,. Html, or. Xml files
• Ability to create a backup copy of keys, and save it to a REG-file (in the registry, Windows)
• Support for the issuance of keys and the preservation of many computer games
• Support for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista

Finds the Keys for the following programs:
• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003
• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Office 2003
• Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003
• Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
• Microsoft Visio 2003
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007
• Microsoft MSDN 7
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2003
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
• Macromedia Dreamweaver 7
• Macromedia Dreamweaver 8
• Macromedia Fireworks 7
• Macromedia Flash 6
• Macromedia Flash 7
• Macromedia FreeHand Adobe Acrobat 7
• Adobe Acrobat 8
• Adobe GoLive 7
• Adobe Photoshop 6
• Adobe Photoshop 7
• Adobe Photoshop 8
• Norton Internet Security
• Norton PartitionMagic 8
• PowerQuest PartitionMagic 8.0
• VMware Workstation
• Nero Burning Rom 6
• CyberLink PowerDVD
• Ipswitch WS_FTP
• WinPatrol
• Quake 4
• Winamp 5
• Super Cleaner
• EO Video
• InterVideo WinDVD
• Sonic Solutions MyDVD
• Sniffer Pro 4.7
• NuMega Bounds Checker
• Ositis WinProxy
• ZoneAlarm
• Dell Service Tag
• Borland Delphi 6
• Borland Delphi 7
• And more than 500 other programs ...


Download: Protable Product Key Explorer v2.1.7.0

Shock Desktop 3D v0.5 | 2.06 MB

If you're tired of your old desktop and changing wallpapers doesn't turn you on anymore, maybe you should try something a little more radical. In which case, Shock Desktop 3D could be just what you're looking for!

With Shock Desktop 3D you can have your standard Windows desktop completely overhauled and give it an amazing three-dimensional look. As soon as you run the program, your current desktop will be replaced by a 3D environment where you can freely move your icons as if they were some sort of tokens. The animation effects are so realistic that it really feels like the icons have become actual objects.

You can choose to have your icons rendered as rectangles or as 3D cubes, which makes them even more similar to small toys for playing with. You'll probably spend a while tossing cubes around, piling them up and organizing them on your new desktop. Luckily the program lets you save these layouts as predefined user profiles.

That said, the truth is that Show Desktop 3D is not really a very useful app. It does look gorgeous on your PC but it doesn't really add any new functionality to your desktop. Besides, it doesn't let you use wallpapers, which I think is a major drawback.

Shock Desktop 3D applies a very eye-catching three-dimensional effect to your Windows desktop.

OS: Win2000/XP/Vista

Download: Shock Desktop 3D v0.5

ESET Offline Cumulative Updater 4021

This self-extracting archive will install and/or update the definitions in a directory of your choice. Users will then be able to perform a manual update of their ESET 3.0.x / ESET 4.0x product offline.

Download: ESET Offline Cumulative Updater 4021