Book Contest: Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation by Sharon Astyk

Many of you know that my interest in sustainability isn’t just in business, rather it’s an integral part of my daily life. We’ve ended up with an extra copy of Astyk’s book and in light of the recent crisis in Japan it seems fitting to share it. Astyk’s book is about the importance of preparedness, not in the typical sense we usually look at earthquake preparedness but about preparing your food stores in a sustainable manner. Many of us find ourselves updating our earthquake kits and food stores right now. She shares how all income brackets can best prepare themselves for any kind of crisis, from environmental to economic. The author’s panic-free approach is practical, reassuring and on occasion even humorous.

How can you win a copy of the book?

To enter for a chance to win a copy of the book leave a comment sharing your tips or questions on how to best to be prepared for emergencies, whether economic or environmental. You must be live in the Victoria area to be eligible to receive the prize. The winning participant will be drawn Sunday, April 3, 2011 and contacted by email.

Note: when you leave a comment you’ll be asked for your email. This won’t show publicly and I don’t share email addresses with anyone.

We picked up our copy of the book at The Good Planet Company at 746 Fort Street. Unfortunately they’ve sold out. However, Munro’s Books at 1108 Government Street, currently has 2 in stock. The publisher is New Society, previously a local company. Don’t forget – support local!

UPDATE: Congratulations to Heather who has won the book. Enjoy! Thanks everyone for sharing your tips and questions.

Healthy Living, Healthy Planet EXPO Saturday, March 12, 2011, 12-3 pm

Join Swift Kick Computers this Saturday, March 12, 2011 with more than 50 other green businesses at the 2nd Annual Healthy Living, Healthy Planet EXPO at the Brentwood Hall. (map) This well attended event is organized by L.E.A.D., Local Environmental Action Divas. They’ll be launching their new Diva eco-friendly coffee blend, a fundraiser to support workshops, community movies and other projects supported by these green minded Divas.

Stop by the table and introduce yourself, you can enter the draw for 3 gigs of online storage for one year or a 1 hour on-site computer call .  I am looking forward to seeing you all there. Here is a link from the Saanich Voice Online, a new community minded newspaper, highlighting some of the events and more about the EXPO.

I attended last year and highly recommend the short trip to Brentwood for the afternoon and maybe a stop for lunch at the Sea Horse Cafe next to the Brentwood Bay Ferry Terminal.

The details are:

Saturday, March 12^th

Brentwood Hall, 7082 Wallace Drive

12:00 – 3:00 pm

FREE Admission!

Connect with healthy and sustainable solutions: More than 50 Green Businesses, Fabulous Local Food, Community Networking

To learn more about L.E.A.D. (Local Environmental Action Divas)  and their inspirational group check out their website.

Recycling in Support of KIVA Micro Lending

Swift Kick offers a pickup and recycle service for old computers and monitors. For a $20 fee (per trip) we will take your old hardware to an appropriate recycling facility.

Currently half of the fee will be invested in KIVA! Swift Kick Computers has joined together with The Good Planet Company’s KIVA Lending Team where, together, we will be able to multiply our efforts.

If you don’t need our help disposing of your old computer hardware, please be sure to avoid the landfill. There are a number of recycling depots around town; one is located at the Goodwill near McKenzie and Quadra. See Encorp’s website for more details on locations and their program.

Holiday Computer Special

Just in time for the Christmas holidays, Swift Kick Computers is offering a new computer featuring:

* AMD 245 AM3 CPU running at a speed of 2.9GHz
* 2 GB DDR3 RAM
* 500 GB Hard Drive
* DVD Burner
* Microsoft’s latest version of Windows, Windows 7 Home Premium
* $600 + HST
* PLUS- 1 hour of onsite setup is included in the price! Yes, we will get you up and started with your new computer as part of the package!

Offer good until December 31, 2010

If you need your old computer or associated electronics recycled, we will happily take it away as part of a service call – no extra charge!

The Virus Scene – What is Old is New Again

The subject of Computer Viruses never seems to be out of the news for too long these days. Grabbing the most headlines in recent months has been the Stuxnet virus, seemingly one of the first attempts by nations and their security services to wage war on one another in the digital medium.
While Stuxnet likely isn’t something for us ordinary folks to worry about directly (unless we’re running a few gas centrifuges in our basement!) it is definitely worth noting how Stuxnet was apparently first introduced to computers in Iran – by infected USB memory sticks!

Things seem to have come full circle, just as in the early days of PCs most viruses were transmitted by exchanging floppy disks, now removable USB drives have become one of the most common forms of transmission for viruses. Unfortunately the Microsoft technology that makes such devices plug-and-play can also leave Windows wide open to this.

The Autorun feature of Windows is what allows our computers to automatically play a DVD or other form of media when we plug it into a computer, but it works equally well at running any virus or malware that has snuck onto the USB stick. You can disable Autorun on most versions of Windows (Google “Disable Autorun Windows” to see how), but equally important is to make sure you have anti-virus software installed that scans each new file before windows opens it. Avira and Avast seem to be among the best of the free anti-virus solutions out there today, but for the best (and what we use ourselves!), we recommend ParetoLogic’s Anti-Virus Plus. See our website or give us a call for more info on Anti-Virus Plus.

One Sheep, Two Sheep, Firesheep!

By now you may have heard about the recent internet scare – Firesheep; a downloadable program that only works with the Firefox browser. You’ve also likely already read my recent blog post which shares my health & safety concerns with using wireless technology. Firesheep highlights another Wi-Fi issue – security! The program in and of itself is not the problem; it only highlights a larger, substantial security issue.

If you have an unsecured wireless network at your own home, this is an issue for you; but it’s an even larger issue at wireless cafés, where free wireless internet access is offered to a lot of people at once does this problem truly start to become a serious issue. During the login process to any unsecured website i.e. when you see http://www.facebook.com and not the secured version of a website https://www.yourbank.com/login The wireless router will spread your login and confirmation info out to everyone that is within range of the wireless router, and normally this would not be a problem if there was no one listening for this information but each internet user happily using the internet, having a coffee and not caring what their neighbour is doing on their laptop. What Firesheep has now done is made your login information more public and the solution requires a security update from Facebook, Twitter, etc. Ultimately, the creation of Firesheep is a good thing. Bad publicity around such poor security practices of these sites will force these companies to adopt higher security standards for end user. 
Firesheep has also highlighted another security issue that some websites practice. For example, when using Facebook you can login at the secure https:// website but once you are login it will drop you down to the standard, unsecured http://

Some obvious recommendations, if you choose to use wireless secure your home network if you have not done so yet. Recently in a customers condo I conducted a test and found 5 or 6 wireless network and at least one network was unsecured. Secure you wireless networks but better yet, use a hard-wired connection!

There is a program here, called Black Sheep that has limited success in detecting anyone using Firesheep in the vicinity of a particular wireless router that the café is using. This will give you a fairly good idea if you are safe from Firesheep, but that is about all. I would hesitate to use any, free wireless networks and need to logon to an unsecured website.

To read more about concerns being raised about Wi-Fi click here.

Backup Tips and Helpful Info

If you have had a computer for more than a few years you’ve likely already experienced what it’s like to have a hard drive crash and take all your data with it… you don’t want to let it happen again!

An Ounce of Prevention
It sounds like common sense, but how many of us back up our data regularly? We have quite a few options these days, but the most common methods are to copy your key files and folders onto a USB stick, an external hard drive or burn them onto DVDs. It’s even better if you can take your backed up data somewhere “offsite.”

Unfortunately, we don’t always remember to do a daily back up and many tend to procrastinate for just one more day, sometimes even weeks. Inevitably that’s when things go wrong. We have the solution – With Swiftkick’s Online Backup you can have your key files and folders backed up automatically to a secure, offsite, internet data storage facility. It’s fast, automated and once it’s installed it will keep on backing up your data without you having to worry about it. See our website for more information!

And When Lightning Does Strike….
What can you do when you do lose your files?
Call us! Over the last 10 years we’ve received many a panicked call to recover deleted files, folders and entire corrupted and reformatted file systems and drives. We’ve acquired the skills and tools required to recover lost data from all manner of causes – and as long as the hard drive hasn’t developed a physical fault, there is a very good chance we can get your data back.

1. Turn the computer off so no further files get overwritten or more damage occurs.
2. Call Swift Kick Computers!

We can analyze your hard drive for a $30 and recover all retrievable data for $100, providing you with a CD or DVD copy. If replacing your hard drive we can copy your recovered data onto your new drive.