Kenja's Newsletter & Updates

Volume 2/ Edition 5

March 05, 2000

Hello again everybody

Welcome to the newest edition of Kenja's Newsletter & Updates.

This month, some of you may celebrate St Patrick's Day. You might like to visit the St Patrick's Day Links Page, where you will find many good resources and activities for this day. Or visit the St Patrick's Day Webring which has 103 member sites, all featuring information and fun things to do on that day. For great animated multimedia e-cards that you can easily personalize and then mail to all your friends and/or family, visit Message Mates.

Site Related News:

I tell you what, the last two weeks were probably one of the busiest and worst ones for me in a long time. First there were the consistent problems from the move of the domains, which seemed over powering at times, and then the persistent problem with the CyberCard section on the kenja.com side (still working on it as well, or might even scrap that section all together). Now what follows should probably be in the "Lighter Side of Life" section if it wasn't so sad:
During the time of the fore mentioned turmoil I received an email (about 10 days ago) from a lady claiming that she kept hearing a voice while visiting my website that said: "The World is a Vampire".

The way the e-mail was written (or the way I perceived it), was not one of concern but rather one of accusation. She said she didn't use to think of me in "that way" and use to like to visit my site, but now that the voice was there saying those words, she would no longer visit.

Normally, when there is something wrong at the website, I get a lot of e-mail with complaints and/or suggestions, however in this instance it was the only one I received. Now keep in mind, when I answered that e-mail my frame mind was not quite right either... one I was totally stressed out... two I felt attacked, and three... well that was the only complaint and normally majority rules.
So in short when I answered the e-mail, I suggested that either she may have some type of virus on her machine or some sort of plug-in for her browser installed that would cause that. I know for a fact I have no such thing installed on my website, not even in the Halloween section. I stopped short of suggesting that, people who hear things that aren't there may need to seek help otherwise. I proceeded to send the e-mail and put the whole thing out of my mind.

Now the big surprise came about 3 nights ago, when I was making some adjustments to the site and checked to see how they looked live. I got to one section of the kenja.com side... speakers turned low (was late at night) when suddenly I thought I heard a voice whispering. Totally took me by surprise, I turned the TV off, and sat here listening intently... nothing happened. OK Angela calm down... you ain't going crazy here.
I proceed to click on a link to take me to the next page and I hear it again... but still can't make it out. Now I turn off all programs I have running in the background, check the sounds of the theme I have installed to see if any of it comes close to what I thought I heard, TV is still turned off, and turn the PC speakers up a few notches. When I refreshed the page I heard it again and this time very clearly as the voice said: "The World is a Vampire"!

Lady if you are reading this (though I doubt it)... I am so sorry I doubted you!! Anyway, I found out quite a few things that night/morning and came to several conclusions as well:

Yes there is a virus called "World" and also one that is called "Vampire", and no they are not what caused my website to speak in "tongues"!
No, I most certainly do not worship the devil, and resent any type of notion toward that idea.
I do not tolerate any type of racism and/or other illegal behavior on my websites. As a matter of fact I pride myself on offering lots of quality and free stuff for all ages and different types of people.
I did not have anything installed at the websites that cause voices to speak or at least not with my knowledge.

Now then here is what happened: As you all are aware of, I do make money by running the banner ads on the websites. That is my only income from offering the themes, wallpaper, graphics, etc. and other services I provide. When I sign up with one of those banner companies, they want to make sure that we as websites run a "clean" operation (i.e. no porn, adult stuff, or illegal stuff etc.). We as webmasters expect the same from them in return, by not serving us banners that are not fitting our sites. As it turns out, one of my banner companies took it upon themselves to test a new type of banner promoting a rock group called "Smashing Pumpkins" (not my taste at all), by which it would also load a spoken sentence from the groups newest album (which where the words you heard) once the page was fully loaded. This company did not inform me prior of them "testing" this banner. If they had, I would have turned them down flat!

As it stands they have removed the banner from the rotation and we should not see or hear that again. Now this brings me to my final point of this session... please help me out by telling me when you see or hear anything unusual at the website. If I had gotten more than one e-mail about 10 days ago, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. My site is too big for me to police on my own all of the time. I try my best (this is a one woman outfit), but you regulars should know by now what to expect or what is out of place. By all means, if you hear anything or see anything that is offensive as that most certainly was, please notify me of the exact location and I will look into it.

Now for some good news... I am now an official mirror for the Steal My JavaScripts site. Here you will find 23 popular Java Scripts that require no prior Java experience to install into your homepages. You can test the scripts on the site, see examples, and when you are done customizing them to your own needs you copy the script from a window on the site and paste it into your own HTML code. A browser comparison chart is there, as well as some instructions on where and how to install them. Happy Java Scripting! *smile*

Desktop Theme & Screensaver News:

Haven't had time to make any themes in the last two weeks, however I had made some St. Patrick's Day Wallpaper for Webshots (only available to use with the webshots free wallpaper software), and there are still the two St Patrick's Day desktop themes from last year. *smile*

St Patrick's Day Greeting which includes the wallpaper of a couple of adorable puppies with a greeting for 800x600 screen settings, set of cursors (2 animated), set of icons, set of Irish wave sounds for all Window events, set of Logo SYS files (start-up, wait and shutdown screens), a free shamrock screensaver, and of course a very green color scheme! This theme is also listed at the DTCC St Patrick's Day Gallery (DTCC stands for Desktop Themes Creators & Collectors) along with many other nice looking themes for this occasion.
St Patty Bears features a wallpaper with a couple of cute teddy bears dressed in green for 800x600 screen settings, a set of cursors, set of icons, set of wave sounds, and a set of Logo SYS files (start-up, wait and shutdown screens), and of course a green color scheme.

The Screensaver section has two small screensavers for St Patrick's Day. Remember, this section is sorted alphabetically, so all you have to do is scroll down to the letter "S" and look for St Patrick's Day and/or Shamrock.

* NOTE* I use Zip Magic to compress and turn Stationery and/or Desktop Theme files into EXE format. If you ever get a password prompt during installation... ignore it and proceed. They are not password protected! For more installation help visit either the Stationery Help or the Theme Help sections.

Visit the Native American Music Shop for great Native American Music selections.

For great gift items visit Kenja's Gift Shop. Gift categories include Fine Jewellery, Gardening Decor, Crystal, Clocks, Brass, Sculptures and so much more. Now with a time limited Discount of 40% on all items!

The Gift:

The Gifts for this issue are a holiday Stationery with scrolling background and midi, and also a matching wallpaper (800x600 screen settings) for non stationery users. The graphics for the stationery and the wallpaper were created from ground up with PSP 6.0 tubes, various brushes and filters for effect. Both have a matching Hotbar skin located in the Holidays section as well. Might as well get your computer set up for St Patrick's Day... matched to the hilt! *smile*

Hope you enjoy the Gifts!

Please make note that the gifts are only for actual subscribers to this newsletter and not for visitors to the archive copies based on the net. Gifts are available for a limited time with each issue, roughly about 7 days and will then be removed... so get 'em while you can!

Browsers and Such:

Well, spent enough time on website related stuff for one issue (maybe even to cover several). So here then I will give you some short highlights on several browser related programs for all ages. Most of the following programs have not yet been tested by me, however they look to be quite interesting and the price is right... free!

Chi Brow is an Internet Browser designed specifically for kids. The only pre-requirement is that you already have Internet Explorer 4 or above installed. The program is free to use and seems to be putting the parents in charge rather than some other program as to what your kids can see on the Internet with this browser. Read the instructions at their website.
With Web Hunter Power Browser you can visit several sites (amount only limited by your PC's memory) simultaneously, while just having one window open. Additional sites will be displayed inside the same window with tabs at the top of the browser window, so that you can easily switch back and forth. The browser also lets you add your own personal notes to websites that you have visited (only visible to you for later use) and will stay there until you delete them. Might be a handy feature if you revisit sites frequently, but other than that I would say that could be a waste of hard drive space. This requires you to have IE 4 or better installed, and is free but banner ad supported.
Entry Point used to be called PointCast, which in turn was/is used to bring you up-to-date news directly to your computer. Back in the day when it was called PointCast it was a big program, about 5 MB to download and 8+ MB installed. Now with this new version, they trimmed the program size drastically to a little over 1.7 MB (3 MB installed) download and included many new features. This is still a free service, but now also includes a built in MP3 player, easy access to shopping and web searches, eWallet, easy access to other web resources, and of course your customized news & sports updates delivered to your desktop.
Hear Me is a small plug-in for ICQ users who wish to voice activate their ICQ homepages. Program is small, of course free and all it requires is the latest version of ICQ, an ICQ homepage (though they say you can activate this on other pages as well), and a microphone. I have not tested this myself, but it looks interesting. If you are an avid ICQ user, then you also know what a pain it can be if you ever loose your whole list due to whatever PC problems you may encounter. JVDE ICQ Backup may just be the program to save you from this. Personally I use a different method of backing up my ICQ files and lists, but not everyone has the know-how and this small program most certainly takes the mystery out of the process. *smile*
While we are still on the subject of chat programs... did you know that Excite offers a very nice free chat program (wee bit over 2 MB download) called EChat or otherwise also known as VP (Virtual Places)? Of course you could access the chat rooms from the website, but having the program installed is so much more fun. The advantages include: taking other people on virtual tours (your homepages for instance or any other site on the internet), use of cute pictures also known as avatars (download pre-made or make your own), be a Chat Host, play games and much more.
If you are a Yahoo Messenger user, then you can change the look of it by changing the skins (only available with the latest versions). Here are a few sites that offer some very nice Messenger skins: Shanana's Skin City who offers a nice variety of skins in three categories of Business, Fun and Seasonal. Bren's Yahoo Messenger Skins offers a nice variety of about 100 skins and also a nicely done picture tutorial on how to install the skins. If you have a taste for more skins, visit the Yahoo! Messenger Skinz Webring and their 37 member sites, some of them also offer skins for other programs like ICQ etc.). By the way if you want to skin your ICQ, you will need a free plug-in program called ICQ Plus (1.7 MB download), and then visit the mother load of all skins called Skinz.Org with 1000's of skins for all sorts of programs. Make sure to become a member (it's free too) for a full access to the site and voting rights.

Games and Fun Programs:

For this last section I would like to tell you about a few free game programs:

Here is something that will probably get the interest of all Golf fans. At About Golf you can download a free full version game of golf with great 3-d graphics, featuring the greens of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I would suggest that you use a program like GoZilla to help you with this game download of 39 MB, which actually will probably save you around $50.- (games like this normally cost about that much). This site also offers links to other golf sites, a golf magazine online and a few add-ins for the game.

If you are a serious gamer, but don't have the deep pockets (lots of money *smile*) to support your passions, then you should definitely give Free Games. Org and/or FreeGames Web a whirl. Here you will find hundreds of full version games for Windows (some are DOS based). Categories include from the ever so popular arcade games, action, war type games, to cards & puzzle/logic games, and more. I think one could spend hours here, selecting new games and download to your heart's content providing, the availability of space on your hard drive(s). FreeGames Web also offers some very cool looking 3-d games like G-Sector (is a 3-D Action shooter game played from a hover board... 21st Century is here *smile*) and other realistic looking 3-d games like Darts and Pool (Billiards). I might have to check them out myself, seeing that I don't seem to get out much these days. *smile*

In the event you are limited on hard disk space or just don't feel like waiting on a huge game program to download, then there are always web based games that offer a good alternative. At Pogo you can play all sorts of games while chatting with others, ranging from board games, card games, puzzles/logic games down to Trivia, and games that can win you money (anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars), like Casino games and Bingo. Be careful though, I hear this can be quite addictive and I have heard of people who "live" at these places, in hopes of winning the jack pot.

Some folks have games at home for either Play Station and/or PC that were bought, played once or twice, you got stuck at a certain level of the game(s) and lost interest. This actually happened to me a few times... in that case sites that offer cheats for games come quite handy. The Cheatbook offers a huge variety (sorted alphabetically) of such "cheats" that you can view online or download. English and German versions are available for the downloadable cheat books, dating from 1998 all the way to the newest version for the year 2000 (files are about 450 KB each). The site also offers add-on game levels for Command & Conquer and others, an online Magazine (this is in German only), a gamer forum where you may ask others for help, Java powered online games like Zelda and of course links to other related sites of interest.

On the Lighter Side of Life -:)

I received the following joke in the e-mail and I thought it to be extremely funny... hope you will too! *smile* Getting Bigger Breasts

One day, fresh out of the shower, a woman stands in front of the mirror complaining that her breasts are too small. Uncharacteristically, the husband comes up with a suggestion. "If you want your breasts to grow, then every day take a piece of toilet paper, and rub it between your breasts for a few seconds."
Willing to try anything, the wife fetches a piece of toilet paper, and stands in front of the mirror, rubbing it between her breasts. "How long will this take?" she asks.

"They'll grow larger over a period of years," he replies. The wife stops. "Why do you think rubbing a piece of toilet paper between my breasts every day will make my breasts grow over the years?"
The husband shrugs. "Why not, it worked for your butt, didn't it?"
He lived... and with a great deal of therapy, he might even walk again...

Author unknown

The Finishing Touches:

Hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter, and found lots of useful information. Remember, the next newsletter will be published on or around March 19 th, 2000. If you have any comments or suggestions, e-mail me at

webmaster@kenja.net

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Copyright © 2000-2001 Kenja's Newsletter & Updates ISSN: 1530-700X All Rights Reserved.
Content written & edited by A. Way aka Kenja. The opinions expressed herein are my own. The reproduction and/or unauthorized use of any parts of this Newsletter, it's content and/or graphics is strictly forbidden.

Quote of the Week *Peace and happiness are available in every moment. Peace is every step. We shall walk hand in hand. There are no political solutions to spiritual problems. Remember: If the Creator put it there, it is in the right place. The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.*
Native American Proverb: Author Unknown