World Wide Kids' Art

The worldwide art gallery

Put your art on display! The Worldwide Art Gallery has pictures created by kids from Germany, Russia, Canada and the United States.

Check Government Auctions For Goods You Need

Looking for a good used car? The federal government regularly auctions used vehicles. Some are government cars; others are seized by agencies such as Customs, DEA, or the Internal Revenue Service.

Vehicles are just the tip of the iceberg. Many other goods also are sold by the government. For instance, lots of real estate comes on the market. There is one limitation: You're unlikely to get a crack at government lighthouses, which the Park Service sometimes dumps!

Some sales are open only to local governments and non-profit agencies. More information.

Editing Marks In Microsoft Word

Word has the ability to display (and print) "P" Paragraph symbols and dots (dots represent spaces). They are an aid when editing documents.

There are at least two ways to turn off the editing marks. On the Standard Toolbar, you should see the paragraph mark (it looks like a backwards P and an elongated T, crammed together). Click it. That button is a toggle, meaning you turn the Editing Marks feature on and off by clicking the "paragraph" button.

If you prefer, you can turn off the marks with the Word menu bar.
Click Format -> Reveal Formatting
The Reveal Formatting panel will open on the right side of the window.
At the bottom of the panel, clear the box next to "Show all formatting marks."

Shop Where Doctors Shop (for medical information, that is)

The National Library of Medicine is the world's largest biomedical library. It has many goals--one of which is to educate users about available sources of medical information.

It does this by providing access to medical journals, books and audiovisual materials.

Safe Mode? Gotcha!

The technique for forcing Windows XP into Safe mode is not the same as for Windows 9x.

In 9x you could hit the F8 Key during bootup to force a Safe Mode Startup.

You'll have to prepare for a Safe Mode boot in advance:
From the Start menu's Run dialog, enter the command MSConfig
Click on the BOOT.INI tab
Check the /SAFEBOOT box.



Now when you boot, Windows will go into Safe mode.

Which Rocket Scientist thought up that one? Other than knowing that s/he works for Microsoft, Je ne sais quoi. Maybe it was the one who thought up Microsoft Bob, any of the many other famous M$ blunders. This one is good enough to qualify for a promotion.

Note: the trouble with this solution instead of the old one (F8 during startup) is that if something has gone so badly wrong that you need Safe Mode, you might not be able to get into Windows to do the above steps. Hence, my rant.

When you no longer need Safe mode, you'll repeat the process and uncheck that box.

One caveat: Don't experiment with the other settings on this tab. You could wind up unable to get back into MSConfig to undo your changes.

An Ounce of Prevention is Better Than a Pound of Cure

Most people go to the Better Business Bureau to file a complaint.
But you also can learn from other people's mistakes by checking out businesses before you give them money.

Enter the name of a company or a Web site address to find out how reliable the company is. It will show the number of complaints and how many of those were resolved.

Remember, a large company may have many complaints. You should only be concerned if many go unresolved.

Control Order In Which Start-up Programs Load

By Neil J. Rubenking, PC Magazine

You may need to launch multiple start-up programs in order, perhaps to connect to a VPN before launching a program that needs that connection. Create a new folder called C:\Ordered Launch and drag any shortcuts that currently reside in Start | All Programs | Startup to this new folder. If the shortcuts don't already exist, create them in the new folder.

Open a command prompt, navigate to C:\Ordered Launch, and issue the command DIR /B /S > ordered.bat. Enter notepad ordered.bat to open the resulting batch file in Notepad. Copy and paste the lines in the desired launch order. Surround each line with quotes and precede it with the start command and a space; for example, start "C: \Ordered Launch\First Program.lnk".

Double-click on the batch file to test it. The programs will start in the specified order, but if one takes longer to initialize, it may appear out of order. In that case, insert a delay line after the slow-starting program. This line will insert a 5-second delay: ping -n 5 127.0.0.1 > nul. Edit the value after -n to set a different delay. After testing the file, open Windows Explorer and right-drag it to the Startup folder, selecting Create Shortcuts Here.