Inexplicable slowness

Advice No Comments »

Have you been experiencing sudden slowdowns, color wheels, and general unresponsiveness that started within the last few weeks? The problem may be one of the latest updates to Safari, or rather, the interaction of an older Flash plug-in with the latest version of Safari.

Flash is a type of animation that is common to many web sites. In order to see it, your machine needs the Adobe plug-in for your web browser. The good news is that either your Mac came with it installed or the web sites that use it will offer clear instructions on how to install it. The bad news is, once you’ve got some version installed, it’s up to you to keep it up to date.

My belief is that the new Safari coupled with an older Flash plug-in is resulting in a glitch that is swamping resources on your Mac causing general system slowdowns. Quitting Safari will help for a time, but eventually the problem will return.

The solution is to download the latest Flash plug-in from here, then quit Safari and install it. Be sure to do this every few months (at least) to keep up with the newest release because nothing on your system will tell you when your Flash plug-in is out of date.

Eddie away next week

Business 1 Comment »

Ed Covelli will be away next week, starting tomorrow, April 16, and returning on Monday, April 25.

Eddie will be swimming from New York to Africa where he will hike to, then climb, Mount Kilimanjaro. At the peak he will build a small eatery called “Elmo’s” from materials he’ll bring along in a backpack, local materials, and snow. Once complete, and directly after the dessert course, he will retrace his climb, hike and swim back to New York, backwards this time so casual observers will think he’s doing it all again.

Having already climbed Mount Kilimanjaro several times myself, I will remain behind to assist in all matters great and mundane. You can reach me at the office number of 212/201-1465 or via e-mail.

The Epsilon hack

News 2 Comments »

By now you’ve probably heard that a company called Epsilon got hacked last week, and you’ve likely been told by roughly 10,236 organizations that you deal with regularly, so what does it really mean for you?

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Underwater digital pictures

Advice 2 Comments »

In the olden days, when women dragged the laundry down to the river and men struggled to make their VCR’s stop blinking “12:00:00″, anyone who wanted to take pictures underwater would either have to buy a disposable analog camera (and hope they wouldn’t need more than 24 tries to capture those wily fish), or get a pricy underwater case for their regular digital camera. The underwater cases worked well enough, as long as you kept them properly lubricated and didn’t intend to take land pictures between dives, and didn’t mind the extra bulk.

Fast-forward to 2011 when you can get digital cameras that you can actually take underwater with you. Crazy, right? But I can tell you firsthand that they work and take decent pictures both under and over water with no more maintenance than a rinse and towel-dry.

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Back later than planned

Business No Comments »

Due to circumstances entirely within my control, I will be returning from my vacation on Wednesday, April 6, not Monday, April 4 as originally planned.

Believe me, I am as upset about this as you must be. I mean, who wants to spend extra days relaxing, dining and generally enjoying themselves when they could come back to work? Not me! I argued, I screamed, I cried and bargained, all to no avail. The problem, you see, is my wife who had the temerity to say “yes” when I first suggested extending our stay. Blame her for being so agreeable.

Until my eventual return, Ed Covelli stands by to assist and can still be reached by phone at 212/201-1465 or via e-mail here.

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