The first thing that you’ll need to do is download and install Revo Uninstaller Free Version. Revo Uninstaller is a program uninstaller that goes above and beyond an application’s native installer by removing registry entries the program may have not deleted and files or folders the program didn’t remove. You are going to want to use RU to remove unnecessary software such as IE toolbars and programs you don’t use. Often times just doing this can dramatically increase hard drive space because we often times download something, install it, realize that it sucks and just leave it there.

The next place that probably requires some TLC is the desktop area. How many times has a friend downloaded some ridiculous picture, stupid program installer or idiotic song to your desktop and just left it there? It could also be that you yourself put all sorts of pictures, text files, etc. there and just leave them. Having a cluttered desktop can degrade startup time and memory consumption as your computer has to load all of that into it’s memory to display properly. Windows has a place for documents, music, pictures and video-put your desktop orphaned files in their proper place…I’ll wait. Personally, I don’t like icons on my desktop with the exception of the Recycle Bin, but if you must display program shortcuts, there are two options: an icon dock or an icon fence. An icon dock is a sort of bar that allows you to organize your icons in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing. ObjectDock and RocketDock are two of the more prevalent icon docks out there and both provide similar capabilities.

An icon fence let’s you keep your icons on the desktop, but let’s you group them together in an organized fashion. Fences seems to be the only viable icon fence out there. As far as your rouge program installers go, either delete them or back them up on a flash drive or DVD (or CD for you old school folks).

The Start Menu is the place most overlooked by people wishing to organize their computer either by accident or from the large amount of time it can take manually moving and deleting all those shortcuts. There is a small program, which I just stumbled upon recently, that takes all the blood, sweat and tears out of rearranging the Start Menu aptly called Start Menu Organizer. Before you download and install this wonderful program, go ahead and take all the programs out of their folders (even the folders that come stock with Windows). Don’t worry about the program’s readmes, uninstallers or links to any websites that the programs may have included.

After everything, and I mean everything, is taken out, go ahead and delete every single folder you have in your Start Menu. I only say to do that because the way the program is set up, it can be a daunting task trying to figure out how to move single shortcuts from the folders they are in by default. Once that is taken care of, go ahead and install Start Menu Organizer and get to organizing. The interface is pretty self explanatory so I won’t get into explaining it. I like this program because it lets you put programs into categories based on the program’s use. It has ten default categories-Games, Graphics, Internet, Media, Misc, Office, Programming, Security, System and Utilities. If you are unsure what category your program fits in, Google around or make your best guess. After you’re done, check the Start Menu to make sure that the program caught everything (it didn’t catch Windows Update for me, so I had to move that one manually). You could go ahead and uninstall the program if you want to as none of the changes you made will be affected.

Finally, let’s take a look at your Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders.

Let’s begin with your Documents folder. Make new folders that cover all of the different document types there, i.e, one for PDFs, Word Documents, Excel files and so on. If there are some files you can live without constant access to, upload them to Google Docs (Docs now allows you to upload any document type and in most cases will allow you to open them in your browser) or simply back them up on your removable media of choice.

Once that’s complete, go to your Music folder and cringe at the massive amounts of music you’ll have to rename by hand. Just kidding, go ahead and download Advanced MP3 Renamer and have the program auto-rename all your music to the correct file names. Once that’s done, start arranging your music by artist and album. The typical format is Artist->Year-Album Name, where -> denotes a folder inside a folder. Best practice dictates that you should rename the files as soon as you get them that way you don’t have to spend too much time renaming crap loads of songs.

Next is your Pictures folder. The typical format for these is Date->Subject. I typically don’t bother renaming the pictures themselves, but if you must, go ahead. You could also upload them to Google Picasa (yes I am a Google fan boi) or again, store them on removable media.

Finally, navigate to your Videos folder. If you are like me, you probably have a lot of TV shows** and movies there, so organizing this folder is defiantly a must. For programs like Boxee to retrieve any relevant data, the naming format for  TV shows is Name.Of.Show.S??E??.Episode.Title where S?? denotes season number and E?? denotes episode number.Flash Renamer is a great program to help with renaming the episodes to the proper format. I arrange the season folders like this: Show Name->Season ??. Your movies should be named named similarly-Movie.Title.Year.Part. I personally don’t name TV shows or movies that way (for TV shows I use Name Of Show-S??E??-Episode Title and for movies I use spaces instead of the periods), but like I said, to use programs like the aforementioned, that’s the way to do it. Check this post for more information regaurding the naming of video files.

Whew, we’re almost done with all of this. I know it seems like a lot, but it really shouldn’t take any more than an hour or two at the most. Luckily the final steps involved don’t require any renaming or organizing.

You’ll now want to grab CCleaner and install it. In the Cleaner section CCleaner, go ahead and click the Analyze button in the lower left hand corner and it will let you know what is being removed from where. After the analyzing is complete, click the Run Cleaner button on the lower right hand side. You’ll have to exit out of your browser for it to fully clean everything, but the program will let you know when to do it. Next, move down to the Registry section and make sure that all the check boxes on the left side bar are checked and then click Scan For Issues. When it’s done checking out your registry, it’ll ask you if you want to back up your registry. I don’t normally back it up, but you can if you want. Finish the prompts and navigate to Tools->Startup. Delete or disable everything with the exception of your anti-virus, torrent program and anything else you want to start when your computer does. CCleaner does not display any system critical processes so if you wanted to delete everything, go for it. It won’t hurt anything. Minimizing the amount of startup programs will increase start up time. You don’t need any updaters running or anything like that, but as a minimum, keep your anti-virus stuff on so you don’t have to turn it on manually every time you turn your computer on.

The very last thing you should do is defrag your system. You’ve been moving and deleting a bunch of files so your system is probably a little fragmented. Reason being is that your computer doesn’t start putting data down at the beginning of your hard drive, it actually places it all over. When you are doing the things that you just did to your computer, sometimes it’s hard for your hard drive to keep up with all of the places you have sent your data to and just leaves portions of files or programs in various places resulting in slower access times. A defragmentation program will sensibly arrange the fragmented portions of your hard drive (it will try and group program information as close together as possible) for faster access times thus making it easier for your computer to find and display the bit of information you’re now calling up. You can use Auslogic’s Disk Defrag or the built in Windows defrag, though I haven’t been able to tell a difference in the two, but I like to use Auslogic’s.

And that’s pretty much it, you’ve made it. Your computer should be clean as a whistle and well organized, mine is…at least for the time being. Make use of these programs as they speed up the process pretty quickly and will help you keep up with cleaning so you don’t have to spend so much time on it the next MSF Clean Your Computer Day. If I’ve made any kind of error in the way I’ve explained something or you don’t understand, don’t hesitate to let me know.

**When I wrote this, I did not know about a nifty little program called TV Rename. Check it out and download it.

On to the post:

I first mentioned the fact that Michael Bay was producing the Nightmare On Elm Street remake in my Just Effing Stop… post and even from the previews I saw at the time, I knew that disappointment was right around the corner.

I won’t be the guy that complains it wasn’t Robert Englund starring as Freddy, because I understand why he didn’t. The man is almost 63 years old and the role of Krueger requires a lot physically because of the make-up and action sequences that Freddy’s involved in. Even though I’m a sort of purist when it comes to the actors that portray my favorite bad guys, I think that Jackie Earle Haley was by far the best Englund alternative they could have found. He did such a superb job and it was evident to me that he  studied hard on what Englund had become via Freddy’s mannerisms and speech characteristics and stayed true to them while making Freddy his own at the same time.

Another aspect of the film brought a tear of sadness to this Freddy enthusist. A lot of scenes from the first Nightmare were recycled which gave the film huge predictability issues. Without going too much into detail, the bathroom scene quickly comes to mind along with several others including a few of the death scenes.

The writing for the movie was particularly horrible, especially the way they presented Freddy before he become the monster of nightmares. In Wes Craven‘s version of events, you could see that the human Freddy had the monster he would eventually become boiling just under the surface of his personality. In the new one, he is presented as the Mr. Rodgers of Elm Street turned evil pederass who runs away from the mob of parents screaming like a little girl that he didn’t do anything. Though, while we’re on the subject, I did like how the movie explained why he moved from molesting kids to killing teens, which is something that the old movies don’t do very well.

Another aspect of the writing that got my goat, was the story. I know that as a horror movie fan I shouldn’t be too upset at a bad story line, but it seems to me that in remaking such a prolific movie, you’d want to make sure that you do the original justice by not skimping on the story. A Nightmare On Elm Street is not your typical slasher movie in that most of the “good” parts happen in a dream world. This lends itself to a sort of creativeness that is not achievable in movies such as Friday the 13th and Halloween, etc. They could have done anything they wanted during these scenes and yet they chose to do the same old-same old.

Finally, the biggest reason why I’ll probably never watch this movie again is the way they made Freddy look. I totally understand that they were going for realism over the almost comical look of the Englund-era Freddy, but I think they took it a little too far. The new face of Freddy is just not scary to me and I think that it’s because of the realism. I don’t want to look at an actual burn victim and immediately think of Fred Krueger. A happy medium between comical Freddy and burn unit Freddy would have been preferred. I guess that on the positive, they did stick with the ugly red and green sweater and the tattered Fedora.

All in all, if you are a fan of the series, by all means go see it. Just because I didn’t care for it doesn’t mean you won’t. You’ll at least be impressed by Haley’s performance as Freddy rebooted.

Just out of curiosity, how well did any of you like the movie?

For those of you who are not familiar with this truly amazing game, let me explain why Final Fantasy 13 is so important. The first Final Fantasy game to be released for the PlayStation console was Final Fantasy 7. If you take a break from reading this and Google something like, “Best RPG ever,” you will almost always see FF7 in the top 5. After Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 ran their respected course for the PlayStation came the first release for the PlayStation 2 console, Final Fantasy X. Now, this game is not nearly as highly rated as FF7, but this was truly an amazing game, which I rank 3rd in the franchise just behind FF7 and FF3. We are now up to PlayStation 3 and this console represents a huge leap in graphics and game play from its predecessors. On March 9, 2010, Final Fantasy will make its first appearance on this console, as well as multi-platforming for the first time by being released on the X Box 360.

As Final Fantasy 7 was the first release for the PlayStation and Final Fantasy X was the first for the PlayStation 2, one is lead to believe that Final Fantasy 13 for the PS3 and X Box 360 will be yet another great game following the previous debuting patterns. In fact, Square, the developer of the Final Fantasy series released an RPG for the X Box 360 entitled Lost Odyssey, which was their way of warming up for the FF13 release. If this game is any indication of what is to come with FF13, the game will not disappoint.

Lost Odyssey had stunning visuals, a deep and enthralling storyline, and a new innovation to the typical turned based fighting style of Square RPGs. Final Fantasy 13 almost definitely will prove to be a major milestone in the Final Fantasy series and I for one cannot wait to get my hand on this game. If you have never played a Final Fantasy game and are interested in playing some of the most decorated games of all times, check them out as you can get them relatively cheap now that they are older. And for those of you who have played some or all of the Final Fantasy games, March 9th is right around the corner. I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a well written RPG, and I haven’t even played it yet;but with Final Fantasy debuting on a platform, I can guarantee a great game.

I took my first trek into the world of Linux back in 2000 with a distro called Mandrake. I had such a hard time installing it on my Pentium I (75MHz processor) that I pretty much abandoned the idea as fast as it came to me. I even tried the 4 CD install on computers in my A+ Cert class, but still couldn’t get it to work. What a POS distro.

In 2007 I took another stab at it when a guy I worked with started telling me about this Linux distro that would pretty much work on any system out of the box so to speak. At the time, I was running Windows XP on an AMD64 2.2 GHz and again wasn’t in any position to upgrade my hardware. I’d never had any problems with XP per se, but, being the nerd I am, I wanted to see how much better this Linux distro would run on my system.

Ubuntu.com is where I eventually ended up and it changed my computing life forever. They had several different versions of Ubuntu there, for free download I might add, but the version that had caught my eye was the AMD64 edition. SWEET! I was totally floored by it after reading up on it on the forums because it brought features to the table that Windows XP x64 had left to be desired.

After downloading and burning the .iso I was surprised to see that it had this great “LiveCD” feature that allowed me to test the OS in it’s entirety without ever installing it on my hard drive.

After booting into the Live session, I entered my WiFi password and alakazam, I was surfing the net. I didn’t have to set up my network card. I played around with it a bit more, checking out all the programs and features and stuff and it hit me: Ubuntu never prompted me to install drivers or anything like that and yet everything just worked. I find I really like this “Ubuntu” thing so I decided to go ahead and actually install it.

A few clicks about my time zone, how I’d like to partition my HDD, do I want to install it alongside Windows, etc. and I was up and running. As I’m a new user, I left almost everything at the defaults. (I think I may have adjusted the partitions). About 25 minutes later, it tells me to remove the CD and reboot.

After the POST message, my brand new GRUB menu asks whether I’d like to boot into WinXP or Ubuntu. Of course, I choose Ubuntu. I’m up an running in about 1/2 the time or less than it would take to launch WinXP. I like this.

So now, here I am, at my new linux desktop. I’ve got the gold standard of internet browsers, Firefox, but I honestly don’t recognize 95% of the other programs I have. I’m sorta lost.

I then find out why Ubuntu is one of the best distro’s to start with; The absolutely massive and very helpful community. All it took to find out what I needed was a few keywords in the Ubuntu community forum search. I was totally in love.

The only reason I decided to keep Winbloze around was to sync and update my iphone, though I’ll admit, I beta-tested windows 7, and thought it was great. At least until the point where M$ demanded $300 for it. WTF? Ubuntu is just as full-featured, yet they manage to give it away. I’ve now installed a host of linux distro’s, but I stick to Ubuntu, because if Linux ever has a chance to seize a market, Ubuntu will be the flagship with it’s ease of setup and user friendly community. Windows will never again be my go-to-OS because with the help of volunteers and the fact that it’s open source, Ubuntu and the Linux community as a whole will just about always have access to programs and apps that can do everything Windows programs and apps can do, and in some cases, do it better.

This article is aimed at people who already have Ubuntu installed and want to run a stand alone version of Windows 7, or any version of Windows for that matter, to play games, etc., that don’t run well or at all under the various Windows emulators available to Linux users. If you’re starting with two fresh hard drives, just install Ubuntu on the master hard drive (or SATA drive 1) as usual and pick this tutorial up from there. Windows users wishing to install Linux can just use Wubi, Ubuntu’s built in installer, from within your operating system. As a side note, I will be using the words Ubuntu and Linux interchangeably.

Let’s get started.

Assuming that you have Ubuntu on your main hard drive, open up your computer and disconnect it. You have to do this to sort of trick Windows into thinking that it’s getting installed on a primary hard drive, otherwise Windows will tell you that it can’t install it’s bootloader on a secondary drive, in so many words anyway as I forgot what the exact error message is. If you are running IDE drives, set the Windows HD to master and connect the IDE cable to the primary IDE socket. If you are running SATA drives, you should be fine as long as there aren’t any other hard drives connected before it. For example, your Windows HD is on SATA 3, but you have a storage HD on SATA 2, this is bad because Windows will still see it’s designated hard drive as secondary. Your best bet would be to place the Ubuntu HD at SATA 1, Windows at SATA 2 and any other HDs to the remaining SATA positions.

After you get the hard drive situation taken care of, you can install Windows as normal and then reconnect your Ubuntu hard drive.

You’d think you’d be done after that, but you’re not. When Windows gets installed after Linux, it overwrites the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) with it’s own, NT Loader (NTLDR), in the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the C: drive the next time the computer boots and wipes any trace of another operating system from the boot record. When that happens, you can’t boot into Linux even though you installed it on your primary hard drive. What we need to do now is a little GRUB repair.

The next step is to grab an .iso of Ubuntu 9.10 from here, if you don’t already have it, and burn it to a CD/DVD. Insert the disc and restart your computer.

The BIOS in my computer is always set to check my disc drive for something bootable first, so if yours isn’t make sure you set that so you can boot into the Ubuntu Live CD instead of Windows.

Once that’s squared away, select the first option you are presented with once the Ubuntu CD has booted up. The option should be labeled “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer”.

After you get Ubuntu up and running, mount the hard drive that the actual Ubuntu is installed on and go to the terminal, found in Applications->Accesories.

You’ll need to verify which partition Ubuntu is booting from by typing this command:

mount | tail -1

The output for that command should be something like:

/dev/sda1 on /media/dc2b02cb-bf3b-486a-a405-8de01677

ac55 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit)

The output will actually be joined at the last “7″ of the first line and the first “a” of the second line with no spaces. I formatted it like this so that it wouldn’t run out into the side bar.

This is the very next command you’ll need:

ls /media/dc2b02cb-bf3b-486a-a405-8de01677ac55/boot

Note that there is a lowercase L at the beginning, not the number one. Executing that command should output your GRUB information. If it doesn’t, you’ve messed up and need to start over.

To reinsert the GRUB into the MBR, you’ll need to specify the directory and drive info you got from the first command a-like-so:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/dc2b02cb-bf

3b-486a-a405-8de01677ac55 /dev/sda1

Same situation as above. All of this will be one line in the terminal with no space between the “f” and the “3″.

If you get some sort of error complaining about the status of the BIOS, simply add *space*–recheck to the end of the install command where *space* is an actual pressing of the space bar.

If you did everything right you’ll get a message reporting as such, if not, try your luck again.

The final step in this process involves one last command to make doubly sure Windows will show up in the GRUB the next time you boot. The below command should do the trick:

sudo update-grub2

Feel free to restart your computer at this point (don’t forget to take the Live CD out!), basking in your triumphant glory over the Microsoft NTLDR. You have successfully overpowered and out-manoeuvred a worthy opponent in your struggle against the evil that is the NT Loader. Pat yourself on the back you big ball of nerd…Linux GRUB FTW!

I have followed all of the Washington teams throughout my life and have very rarely had too many players on these teams that I can truly rally behind. Of course, I stand behind all the players that go through any teams in Washington, but there have only been a couple that have truly stood out throughout their respected leagues. For example, Sean Taylor was considered by many to be the best safety in the NFL, all the way up until the day that he was murdered in his Miami home. In addition, Gilbert Arenas was one of the top five point guards in the NBA for the Wizards before a plethora of knee injuries and a terrible decision related to guns set him back. For as good as Taylor and Arenas were, the talent of Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals trumps them all.

The talks have already begun within the first five years of Ovechkin’s career as to whether he is the best player to ever pick up a hockey stick. Of course, them seems crazy because everyone instantly (and rightfully so) thinks, “Hey, what about Gretzky?” True. Gretzky is widely considered the best NHL player ever. It is wild though to take a look at where Gretzky was at the same point in his career as Ovechkin is now, and the truth is, Ovechkin is off to a better start. Obviously, only time will tell if Ovechkin will be considered the best ever as he is still relatively young in the sport and has a lot to live up to and prove before the smoke clears.

For what it is worth though, Ovechkin and his rivalry with superstar wingman, Sidney Crosby, are bringing attention to a sport that only a few years ago went an entire season with no games. On super bowl Sunday there was an amazing matchup between two of the best teams in the league, and two superstars squared off in what was the best game of the season. However, the two teams that put on the amazing show were not the Colts and Saints at 6:00 P.M.; it was the Capitals and Penguins at noon earlier that day. The Penguins and there dynamic duo of Malkin and Crosby came to Washington to face off with the Capitals and Ovechkin it what was the game of the week in the NHL.

The game lived up to the hype and exceeded what anyone could have expected. The Caps were (and still are) on a winning streak that is only four games short of the NHL record of seventeen consecutive wins. That record is ironically, but not coincidently owned by the Pittsburgh Penguins. This certainly added fuel to the Penguins fire to come into Washington and put it to the Capitals. They did not disappoint. Before the Capitals and their home sellout crowd knew what had happened, the Penguins, off the stick of Crosby, were winning 2-0. I was watching that game thinking of what a shame it was that the Capitals were a) going to lose; b) end their winning streak; and c) have Crosby outshine Ovechkin on national television.

Ovechkin did score a breakaway goal and get the crowd involved, but that did little to ease the pain that was felt as the score reached 4-1 Penguins. Had it not been such a marquee matchup, most (including myself) would have changed the channel and started getting ready for the Super Bowl. This would have been a huge, huge mistake. Not only did tempers flare and the intensity of the game reach an insane pace, but the scoring came in bunches. The Capitals, down 4-1 on their home ice, went to a new level. Ovechkin pieced together a hat trick, which of course was welcomed with a barrage of red and blue hats that littered the ice and gave the guys a second to catch their breath. As the Capitals tied the game at four goals each, the red clad crowd erupted and remained on their feet for the remainder of the game.

Neither team scored another goal in regulation and overtime was on. Halfway through the 5:00 minute overtime period Ovechkin ripped a slap shot that was saved by the blocker of the Penguins goalie, where it was then put to the back of the net by a waiting Mike Knuble to solidify the comeback victory for the Capitals and keep their hopes of breaking the NHL winning record alive. Ovechkin’s three goals and one assist on NBC that day was yet another milestone in the stellar career of this young star. Many people are starting to recognize hockey as more than just a Canadian spectacle with a few fights sprinkled in. Ovechkin (and yes, Crosby as well) are exactly what the NHL needed to spark American interest in their sport. Hopefully, they will continue to put on epic performances against each other and other teams so that more people will realize the intensity and competition level of this much too often slept on sport.

With all due respect to Manning and Brees, they were not the stars of this past Super Sunday. Two young players from Russia and Canada, respectively, put on a show that will be hard to duplicate in any sport. Ovechkin will continue to impress, continue to awe, and hopefully, give us Washington faithful a long overdue championship to celebrate.

Let’s Go Caps!!!

Yesterday I got to sit down and watch a live press conference held by Google, on YouTube which is why I mentioned it,  to announce the release of their new social networking tool aptly named Buzz. It should, however, come as no shock that the new Buzz isn’t really anything new at all, but an almost carbon copy of Facebook and to a lesser extent, Twitter.

The way Google explains it, Buzz will allow Gmail users (and only Gmail users since it’s integrated into the Google mail app) to share things such as status updates, web links, pictures and video via their inbox to anyone who is “following” them. Nothing new or exciting about that.

The one feature that stands out to me is that you don’t have to hunt down and manually add all the folks that use Gmail in your contact list just to receive their updates. Upon activation of the service, Buzz will automatically adds those users to a list of people for you to follow.

Google has also stated that Buzz will be available for mobile users, which again, is nothing new. You can Facebook it up or Twitter your heart out from your shiny new iPhone already. But again, the feature that stands out most to me for the mobile version is that with the help of the Latitude app that Google has in their mobile package, Buzz will calculate your location and allow you to include that information, if you want to, with whatever it is you are sharing. It’s too bad my wife took over the iPhone, that’d be a real neat feature to play with.

If you are a huge Google fan like I am, you’ll probably end up using it. My hope is that in the future, they allow Buzz to update Facebook and Twitter so there will actually be a reason to use it, though in reality it will probably fall off the map just as orkut has. I just wonder what will become of Google Wave, which is similar to this except that you don’t need a Gmail inbox to use it.

Here are the promos for the normal and mobile versions:

Check it out on my deviantART account or download it here. This was drawn in pencil, scanned into Adobe Illustrator and colored, lettered and paneled in Adobe Photoshop CS4…enjoy.

We may do more in the future, but I don’t know…it would be pretty neat to make it a kind of monthly feature type deal here. And don’t forget to comment here to tell us what you think of it. Comments received may persuade us one way or the other to continue with it.

-That is all…

THE red phone.

The red phone that is only to be used in top secret contingency reporting was ringing and no one had any idea why. Col. Shoup instantly grabbed up the phone, praying that the call didn’t mean that the Russians were invading the US (which was a pretty big fear back then).

Instead of hearing the expected crisis report, the good Col. was greeted with a little boy’s voice that simply asked, “Is this Santa Claus?”

Thinking that it was some kind of prank, Col. Shoup rather harshly demanded to know who was calling the ‘red phone’, only to receive another rather vexing reply.

“Is this one of Santa’s elves, then?” the boy said. The boy then started to rattle off his Christmas list.

Strange call to be placed with the organization charged with the monitoring and protection of US and Canadian air space.

Evidently, a local Colorado Springs Sears Roebuck had placed an ad in the papers that day telling children that they could talk to Santa with a special phone  number. What they didn’t realize is that the phone number was off by one digit and would inadvertently ring CONAD’s crisis hotline.

After the second call, Col. Shoup had figured out the mistake and sent a young airman to field any more of the calls they might receive. He had asked the young man to tell the children that he was helping the big guy out and that he could give them Santa’s RADAR ‘position’ if they wanted to know where he was.

It was that Christmas Eve that a tradition was born and continues to this day with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense), who replaced CONAD in 1958, with literally hundreds of volunteers that help make tracking Santa on his fantastic voyage across the world that much easier.

From the official NORAD Tracks Santa website:

“NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets.

“Tracking Santa starts with the NORAD radar system called the North Warning System. This powerful radar system consists of 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America. On Christmas Eve, NORAD monitors the radar systems continuously for indications that Santa Claus has left the North Pole.

“The moment that radar indicates Santa has lifted off, we use our second detection system. Satellites positioned in geo-synchronous orbit at 22,300 miles from the Earth’s surface are equipped with infrared sensors, which enable them to detect heat. Amazingly, Rudolph’s bright red nose gives off an infrared signature, which allow our satellites to detect Rudolph and Santa.

“The third tracking system is the Santa Cam network. We began using it in 1998, which is the year we put our Santa Tracking program on the internet. Santa Cams are ultra-cool, high-tech, high-speed digital cameras that are pre-positioned at many locations around the world. NORAD only uses these cameras once a year on Christmas Eve. The cameras capture images and videos of Santa and his reindeer as they make their journey around the world.

“The fourth system is made up of fighter jets. Canadian NORAD fighter pilots flying the CF-18 intercept and welcome Santa to North America. In the United States, American NORAD fighter pilots in either the F-15 or the F-16 get the thrill of flying alongside Santa and his famous reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and, of course, Rudolph.”

You can log on to www.noradsanta.org to track Santa’s movements on Christmas Eve via Google maps/Earth or you can e-mail NORAD at noradtrackssanta@gmail to get updates on his location. For those of you who won’t have access to the web on Christmas Eve, you can also call NORAD at 1 877 HI-NORAD (1 877 446-6723) for tracking information as well.

I think that it’s great that the people involved do this. I’m sure kids from all over the world have a lot of fun with it. And so this Christmas Eve, while you’re sitting at home sipping on eggnog, watching A Christmas Story and baking Santa some cookies, check the site out, even if you don’t have kids. I know I plan to.