Expert Advice from a Local Computer Consultant
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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Computer consultant Carol Wolfe, a Scarsdale resident of 16 years, is a great resource for home and business technology users. If you need advice about your computer, iPad or iPhone or are having trouble syncing your devices, backing up, transferring data, setting up your printer and your wireless she can help. She writes periodic blogs on her website and here's her most recent entry about backing up your computer, malware and storage:
Backing Up Your Computer:
Backing up is probably one of the most important things that you need to do to ensure your data is safe. 
Determining whether or not your computer is backing up is something you should be checking on a weekly basis.
On your Mac, check the time machine on top of your screen and make sure the latest back up is recent. Your computer should be backing up every time you use it.
All hard drives crash, whether it's the hard drive on your computer or the external hard drive that you use to back up your computer. I've had both occur to me. Over the past 7 years, I have had 3 hard drives crash on my Apple computers, one iMac, two laptops. Most recently, my external back up drive crashed. On October 6th I got the message that my computer wasn't backing up. I take these messages seriously as it can mean a whole host of things:
1. My computer hard drive has an issue
2. There is a defect with the time capsule software
3. My back up hard drive has an issue
4. There is something wrong with the wired connection or wireless connection depending on how I am backing up
If you get one of these messages, don't wait more than a day or two to seek help in resolving it. The longer you wait, the more of a chance you can lose your data. In my case, my perfectly good external hard drive stopped working after 3 1/2 years of use. I quickly purchased a new one and am now all set.
I feel that every desktop should have a dedicated external hard drive that is twice the size of the computer it's supporting and that laptops should use the Apple Time Capsule because most people don't remember to connect their laptops to an external hard drive.
Pictures: I have thought long and hard about how to save pictures and here are some of my thoughts.
1. Never reformat the SD cards that you take your pictures on. They are so cheap and so small now that it doesn't make sense to erase those picture should your
computer crash. You can purchase a 64 gig SD card for approximately $30.
2. Make sure your computer that houses your pictures is backed up
3. If you go on vacation, eject your external hard drive and put it in a safe (yes, I do this!)
4. Put an extra copy of your pictures on a cloud server. As soon as I clean up my pictures, I plan on putting them on DropBox for safekeeping. For $10 a month I
can get 1 terabyte of space on DropBox. That is a tremendous amount of space.
Be careful, however, how you import your photos into DropBox. You do NOT want to import your iPhoto library, just the jpeg files. There is a way to get access to
your route files and not go through iPhoto. If you are interested in doing this, let me know and I can take you through it. Also, never copy more than 1,000 pictures
at a time as if your computer is slow or is having issues, it can crash on you (which goes with my other mantra, don't try and do too many things at once).
Q. So what do you do if your computer crashes and you have no backup?
Data recovery can be very expensive. If you take your computer to the Apple store, the first thing they will ask you is if you have a backup. If you don't then they will recommend you take it to a data recovery center to back up your data. Until recently, the Apple store in Greenwich was a lot more generous then the one in Westchester. They were giving customers their corrupted hard drive while so they could find a place to recover their data. If you bring me a native hard drive (out of the computer) I can access the data for you.
The Greenwich Computer Supercenter does data recovery as does MicroCenter in Yonkers. Also, if you have an old PC that has files on it that you can no longer access, I can access the hard drive and place the data on a flash drive or an external hard drive for you.
Malware:
I have seen several computers lately that had malware on it. It can be incredibly annoying and will redirect your web searches, pull up unwanted pornography sites and cause unwanted popups on Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox. If you are getting messages from Tuneupmymac, Mackeeper, MacDefender, Conduit as a websearch (through extensions in your Safari preferences), vsearch, etc... Here is an article on the Apple discussion page that discusses malware. If you have malware, you can book an appointment with the genius bar at Apple or I can come over and help remove it from your computer.
Should you read the link, I do have OpenDNS set up on my router which I feel has prevented malware from getting onto my computers.
Q: iCloud Storage is full and my iPhone and iPad aren't backing up to the cloud...
The iCloud only gives you 5 gigabytes of space on their cloud for free. The main things that iCloud stores are:
1. Photos (not photo stream, but your camera roll which are the pictures and videos that reside on your phone's hard drive
2. Mail (if you have a .mac, .me, .iCloud account that you actively use for email)
3. Apps
4. Documents
To reduce your iCloud usage, you can:
1. Clean up your email and delete irrelevant emails: I see a lot of unopened emails from online retail stores and associations- if you are no longer purchasing from these stores, UNSUBSCRIBE.
2. Delete unnecessary photos or videos (if you connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer and launch iPhoto, you can import all of your pictures onto your
computer)
3. Delete the number of Apps that are being backed up. This will not delete the Apps from your device, but will delete any data on the Apps (such as Candy Crush
scores, etc...I don't play but I understand it's very addictive)
4. Delete documents that are being saved to the cloud.
If you share the same Apple ID amongst an iPhone AND an iPad, 5 gigabytes is not a lot of storage. The rates, however, to purchase more storage on iCloud have gone done tremendously over the past several years.
Monthly Prices:
20 gigabytes: $ .99
200 gigabytes: $3.99
500 gigabytes: $9.99
20 gigabytes should be more than ample space for most people and at $12/year, that is far less then the $100/year Apple used to charge for cloud storage.
If you have any questions or are interested in any other topics please feel free to contact Carol Wolfe at cswolfe@mac.com, or visit her website at www.csjconsultants.com.
How to Find Gardeners Who Mulch
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Perhaps all the talk about the benefits of mulching your leaves in place has convinced you that it's the right thing to do – but here's the harder part: How do you convince your gardener/landscaper to make the change?
I attempted to speak to the person who mows our lawn about purchasing the mulching blade on two occasions. Both times, from the look on his face, I could see that he was just pretending to understand what I was saying or was dead set against it and attempting to be polite. He nodded his head, failed to follow up and most likely is hoping that I will soon forget about it.
But with all the attention that the Village is putting toward getting the word out, it's not something we can just ignore. Sitting in my home office listening to leaf blowers I am yet again reminded to either get through to my gardener or seek out some alternatives for next year. For those who want to learn more, The village Board of Trustees will hold a hearing on a potential change in leaf collection practices from loose leaf pickup to bagged leaf pick up on Tuesday on 11/25 at 6pm in Village Hall and the public is invited to attend.
I asked Michelle Sterling, Chair of the Scarsdale Forum Sustainability Committee how locals can find gardeners who mulch and she referred me to the Love 'Em and Leave 'Em website (http://www.leleny.org/) where there is a listing of landscapers who are on board. Check it out here:
She also mentioned that her landscaper, Damian Landscaping at 914-632-7867 or 914-497-1509 is an avid mulcher who is taking care of many homes in Scarsdale.
Does your landscaper mulch your leaves? If so, add their name and contact information in the comments section below.
Water Rates on the Rise
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We received a water bill from the Village of Scarsdale this week that far exceeded any of our prior bills. Though we live on a third of an acre and do not have a pool, our bill went from about $100 in August to $721.50 for a reading date of June 21- September 4. A neighbor on a similarly-sized plot reported that their bill was $1,400. Was it a mistake?
Curious to find out more we called the Scarsdale Water Department and found out that the rate for water consumption above 50 units is more than triple the rate for the first 50 units. To be clear, the first 50 units were billed at a rate of $2.05 each, while the remaining 80 were billed at $7.18 per unit.
The woman at the water department reminded me that unlike the prior summer this year there were no watering restrictions– allowing residents to use their sprinklers as much as they desired. And I must admit, though our lawn looked lovely this year, we are paying for it dearly.
We also emailed Village Manager Al Gatta for an explanation of what's behind the high cost for excess water and here is what he shared:
From Village Manager Al Gatta
Our rates have been pretty steady in the past years and rank very well with the 18 utilities for which we have comparisons. For example, in the last ten years, 2004-2005 to 2014-2015, the rate increased from $1.60 per unit to $2.05, a .45 increase or about 2.8% a year. Last year the rate was not increased and remained at the 2012-2013 rate of $1.95. Scarsdale was the 14th lowest rate of the 18 utilities that were measured against.
The sole and most significant factor in rate increases is the charge by the New York City Water Board for its water. Since 1999-2000 the entitlement charge increased from$383.78 per million gallons to an approximate $1,600 per million gallons, or 417%. The excess rate increased from $1,737.97 in 1999-2000 to an approximate $5,200 in 2014-2015, an approximate 300%.
When I was in school there was a book called the Cadillac Desert and it was about controlling the water rights to the Colorado River where you had Native Americans, Colorado, Arizona and California disputing rights to the resource. The Native Americans said he who controls the water rights controls the public policy. It certainly has been the case with the City of New York in the last 25 years.
New York City Water Board has been forceful in its public policy in a number of ways which has caused the water rates to increase significantly over the past years. Some examples are support for environmental issues such as fixing its multi-billion dollar infrastructure, to full treatment of water, to increasing the treating of water for certain bacteria. This has been in the $billions. Also to protect the watershed in Westchester County, it has given out $millions in grants to up-county Towns and Villages for land preservation and infrastructure improvements. Also the city has been a leader in advancing programs that reduce the use of water by the 20 million people it serves. All of these programs have been welcomed and supported by Westchester residents and particularly the environmental groups in the County.
It looks like the only way for residents to reduce expenses for water is to reduce the amount used, i.e. conserve. The City is now involved in a multi-million dollar program to inform, educate and encourage the reduction of water use through its system.
Finally, the resident in Scarsdale that had such a large increase in the quarterly bill should call the Water Department to come out and check the meter and investigate for leaks.
LWVS Urges You to Vote Yes for the Bond Referendum
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The League of Women Voters of Scarsdale (the "League") supports the final proposed capital projects bond referendum (the "Bond"), in the amount of $18.12 million, recommended by the District Administration (the "Administration") and approved unanimously by the members of the Board of Education (the "Board") on October 6, 2014.
At the time of our previous consensus statement of October 3, 2014, the League was not in a position to weigh in on the final bond proposal, as the Board was still considering additional items for possible inclusion in the bond. The League expressed support for the list of publicly vetted projects recommended by the Administration and approved by the Board on September 8, 2014. Understanding that the Board would "use the opportunity of retiring debt to ensure tax neutrality," the League further supported the Board's consideration of "other District and building-level facilities priorities for possible inclusion in the bond issue."
The League commends the members of the Board for their willingness to revisit their decision of September 8, 2014 in order to maximize the use of bond funding for capital projects, while, at the same time, honoring their original borrowing parameter set in 2013-14 discussions to ensure tax neutrality. We appreciate, in particular, that the Board engaged in an open and candid public discussion, which benefitted the community by providing insight into its decision-making process.
We applaud the thorough and inclusive process the Administration and the Board used to prioritize and select additional projects at the high school, many of which, we understand, have been deferred in years past.
The League further commends the Board for utilizing a variety of opportunities and formats for outreach to the community in order to educate and engage as many voters on the Bond as possible, and we encourage the Board to continue these efforts.
We urge the public to vote "Yes" on the Bond on Thursday, December 11, 2014 from 7 am to 9 pm at the Scarsdale Middle School. Information on how to register to vote and/or to obtain an absentee ballot is available by clicking either the "Bond Referendum" link on the District website or the "Voter Information" tab on the League website.
Westchester Voters Go Democratic
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Though the Republicans dominated the national election, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino failed in his bid to unseat popular Governor Andrew Cuomo either in his own county or statewide. The unofficial vote tally for Westchester County shows that Cuomo got 55% of the vote to Astorino's 42%. Statewide results were similar with Cuomo at 53% to Astorino's 39%. So for now Astorino will return to White Plains and focus on county issues.
Cuomo faced criticism for disbanding the Moreland Commission, a group he had formed to investigate corruption. He angered some voters with mandating a comprehensive state testing program in local schools. However his campaign messaging stressed new gun control laws, balanced budgets and reduced tax increases due to the tax cap. Cuomo spent $30 million on the campaign to Astorino's $4.6 million. Speaking from Mt. Kisco Cuomo said, "We cut spending, we reduced taxes and jobs are coming back. Westchester County has the highest property taxes in the nation and I am tired of excuses from local government about why they can't make ends meet."
In his concession speech Astorino indicated that he would run again, saying, "We have not tilted at windmills – we have planted a flag and will be back to claim it. Better governing is what NY needs." Quoting John F. Kennedy he said, "Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive."
Democrat incumbents for state office all fared well in Westchester County. Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli got 60% of the vote here and 57% statewide. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman got 59% of the vote in Westchester and 54% in NYS. Congressman Eliot Engel and State Assemblywoman Amy Paulin both ran unopposed. Commenting on her re-election, Paulin said, "I want to thank the voters in my district for their support. It has been my great pleasure to represent the people of the 88thAssembly District. Together we have accomplished so much and I look forward to continuing to work on legislation and constituent issues that matter to you and to all New Yorkers, said Paulin. "I am honored to have your trust."
Scarsdale's State Senator Andrea Stewart Cousins had a solid victory with 73% of the vote vs.
27% for her Republican challenger Robert Lopez Foti. She hoped to become the first woman to lead the majority party in the NYS Senate but her colleagues did not fare as well and the Republicans are claiming a majority of the seats in the NYS Senate. A spokesperson from her office said, "Senator Stewart-Cousins won a resounding victory in her district and thanks voters for their support."
Scarsdale's own Acting Village Justice Arlene Katz won her bid for Family Court Judge with an impressive 137,265 votes. Commenting on the results, Katz said, "It has been a great honor to serve as Acting Village Justice in Scarsdale for almost 19 years. I am now deeply honored to have been elected to the position of Family Court Judge in Westchester County. Decisions made in Family Court can have longstanding consequences and often affect every aspect of the lives of families and children every single day. I am committed to making a difference and ensuring all those who appear before me receive the services, guidance and protection they need and deserve."
All three ballot propositions passed in both Westchester and in NYS. The Scarsdale Schools will benefit from the Smart Schools Bond Act and is slated to receive $445,000 for classroom technology, high speed internet and tech smart security features from the $2 billion bond.
