I recomend Zonealarm, hasn't failed me yet.
It's simple; a program tries to connect to the internet and zonealarm pops-up a window asking for your permission (which has a nice remember this checkbox so you won't be bothered every time)

Okay, I'll give Kerio a shot. (yikes; 2MB in 20 seconds!!1 )

BTW, how might I go about checking if there's a trogan on my system? And I am still a bit paranoid about staying online for long periods, but I think I'll try being on MSN/ICQ more often. My brother is probably wondering why he never sees me online Probably better find out if Miranda or Gain still work with MSN; what happened with that?

General rambling follows: it's been a good "stuff" week for me. Two Amazon books (both on finance management), my modem, a new stereo (my old one was mostly broken) and some nice relaxed-fit jeans since I needed new pants I was going to get the stereo in a paycheck or two, but Wal-Mart (when I went for my pants) had a good deal on a 3-CD/radio/tape system with a remote even (under 70 bucks). Their Gamecubes are a friggin' steal now at 116 bucks; that's the same price their GBA SP's are going for! PS2/XBox is still over 200 bucks though

23 you should get a copy of ZA like everyone else has told you... but if you have a spare old pc you could set up a ipcop firewall. IPCop is quite easy to setup + free. You can also use this firewall to share the internet connection(if that appeles to you).

Gaim still works with MSN

while you are spending all your loons, you could cobble together a Linux box as a proper firewall/server. It's sweet having a Linux box just a PuTTY away

My friend Adam lives out in the middle of bum-yuck nowhere, and has Dial-Up (worst place to have dial-up, too). Whenever he comes over, he downloads gigabytes upon gigabytes of stuff and burns it to CD.. and he's continuously muttering "I hate you." over and over again while doing it.

I like to use McAfee's Stinger app. Works very well, and is the least bloatiest virus program you will ever find. It can't GET any leaner without sacrificing user friendliness.
It's a standalone program, too, so there's no installation process at all. Just download and run.

Save up an X-Box or PS2 fund util boxing day. I know I'm going to be going crazy. Every single year I find sweet deals, but never have any money.. this year shall be different.

Congratulations on getting high speed

Outpost is a very good firewall, I used to use it but I have chaged to Norton now a days. Outpost you can get it free for personal use, I administration is really easy. It learns gradually from your network use and there by creating filters and rules.

You can even write your own plugins for it.

Google for 'Outpost' or 'Agnitum' IIRC, that is the company that makes Outpost.

You bought two books from Amazon on finance management.

You'd think the first fule of finiance management would be not to buy too many books from Amazon.

I notice Amazon now carries video games. I was thrilled since their prices are usually so low ... then I found out they're still full price since it's just Toys 'R' Us' service. Bummer.

I know AVG got a bad review somewhere, but it's worked well for me, and I forget the name of the freeware program that got a good review (starts with an 'A' ...)

Firewall's up. Should I be at all concerned that a bazillion (by which, I mean a half dozen or so) people/computers/things constantly want to send me ICMP packets (usually calling itself a "tcpip kernel driver")? Denying them isn't affecting my ability to view all the web pages I normally do. They mostly have names that imply they're local. What's up with these things? Signs of a trogan on my system? Just random arsewipe hackers?

I'm going to read Kerio's docs later when I get a chance (before anyone tells me to RTFM )

It's alive!!

Nope, Win98 (this isn't common knowledge by now?) Thanks for the tip; that bloody thing was hitting me hard.

And I'm presently on a Mac laptop of some kind, and I see my avatar is fubared Lovely ... I hate IE. changes avatar

Dude, I hear that about every Windows OS Depending on the person I'm talking to, 2000 is the best, XP is the best, 98 is the best, etc.

I just wanted to make sure it was a good idea to cut that stuff off. Only things I let through my firewall so far are mIRC, Firebird, and Thunderbird.