Hello, everyone. Welcome to another installment of Ask ERNIE. I have had an overwhelming response in the past week. It seems that many people require advice. So let’s get right to the questions.
Dear Ernie,
Maybe you can help me out. My kid’s PC blew out a hard drive. I guess the root command files were corrupted. Should I smash it with a sledgehammer or throw it off a tall building?
Crazy Over P.C.s in Central Alberta
Dear Crazed,
You’ve blown one hard drive and you’re already prepared to destroy the computer? You sound like you’re accustomed to using a Mac. My friend is always telling me how he can deliberately infect his Mac with a hundred different viruses every day and the computer will just shrug them off and say, "Is that the best you’ve got." Alas, those of us who want a serious business minded P.C. have to look after them a bit better. Make sure you have the very best virus protection, firewall, spy-bot sweeper, and cyber-rat trap that money can buy. Then you have to be certain that they are all updated twice every day (this ensures that they will protect you from the newest online threats). Then all you have to do is run all of these programs every single day. The great thing about the P.C. is that if you spend a few hours every week adjusting things just right, you can set these protection programs to run automatically at night while you sleep. It only takes about ten hours to go through all of them.
Dear ERNIE,
I have a blog and I think it’s pretty clever and entertaining. However, I desperately need validation from total strangers. How can I get people to leave comments on my page?
Please Validate My Life in Rocky Mountain House
Dear De-Validated,
This is a common problem amongst bloggers. There are a couple of different things you can do. You can set up a number of dummy e-mail accounts and then comment on your own page using pseudonyms. If other people visit the site and see that there are 25 comments on each post, they will believe that your site is really worthwhile and they will leave their own comment (although it will usually be in response to existing comments as opposed to being about your actual post). The other thing you can try is to leave comments with a track-back on as many other blogs as you can. Eventually, you can look forward to a 1-2% return on your "investment". Alternatively, you can always try writing some sort of a weekly column that has a format that encourages people to ask you questions (i.e an advice column). The only other thing I can suggest is you purchase a number of Halloween masks, then every morning you can wear a different one, and look in the mirror and have a "stranger" tell you you’re terrific.
Well, that’s all the space I have for this week. All the rest of you who wrote to me, don’t worry I will be doing this column every Friday and I will answer all your questions in due course. Remember all you have to do is leave your question in the comment section below. Also, I can answer questions on any subject. If I don’t know the answer I promise I will look it up, I won’t just make up something that sounds clever and amusing
