Google's Mental Block

Google just added a welcome new feature to its search engine that allows users to block unwanted sites from appearing on the search engine results page (SERP).

Allow me to cite one example. My pet peeve is a site called Experts Exchange. Whenever I do a Google search for a technical problem of any kind involving Microsoft Windows, that site is invariably among the listed choices offering a solution.

Unfortunately, in order to see the answer to that particular problem, you must first sign up for a free 30-day trial. To do so, you must provide not only an e-mail address but a credit card number that is required to "validate" your free trial. Riiight. Not to worry, though: they are quick to add that "You will never be charged during your free trial and you can cancel at any time." Whew; I am so relieved.

Sorry, folks; that is never going to happen. I do not want to encounter that nonsense ever again; with Google's new feature, now I don't have to.

Google's own web site describes how to block specific sites from search results. The steps to actually block a site seem to work just fine as long as you have a Google profile and are logged on to it.

My heartburn comes from Google's instruction that says "Whenever your search results would have included pages from that [blocked] domain, you'll see a message at the top or bottom of the page reminding you that the domain was blocked." I have yet to see any such message or notification.

Even more problematical is Google's statement that users can "[a]dd or remove blocked sites using the Blocked Sites page which is accessible via your Search Settings page when you're signed in." Hard as I looked, I could not find any reference to the Blocked Sites page anywhere in my Search Settings.

The only way I could find to navigate my way to the Blocked Pages site was to conduct a dummy search, visit any site shown in the results, and click on the link to block that site. That link then transformed into a link entitled Managed Blocked Sites. Clicking that link in turn finally threw me into the Manage Blocked Sites page. There I could freely add new sites to block and mark previously blocked sites to unblock, including the most recent blocked site that served only as a vehicle to access the settings.

However, that process struck me as a truly awkward and artificial contrivance. Why should users have to arbitrarily block any random site just to access the settings? As I am writing this masterpiece, today marks only the first or second day after Google's release of this new feature. Hopefully over the next few days, Google will smoothe out these rough edges.

Until then, I have discovered a very simple workaround: while in the Manage Blocked Sites page for the first time, simply bookmark that page as you would bookmark any other web site. For most people, the applicable url should be http://www.google.com/reviews/t or, if you are like me and use only encrypted Google searches, https://encrypted.google.com/reviews/t.

Bingo! Now we're cooking with gas. With that one bookmark, I now have total flexibility. Any time I want, I can simply click my new bookmark and then easily block any site or sites that might offend my delicate sensibilities.

As the old Alka-Seltzer commercial once said, "Try it; you'll like it."

Microsoft Windows: Unfriendly Letters

As many years as I have been wrestling with Microsoft Windows, I have unwillingly accepted the operating system's default assignment of drive letters to USB devices. That's because I was totally unaware that users can themselves seize control over the drive letters assigned to USB external hard drives. I have only recently discovered this fact.

Why does this even matter? Well, our family has four computers: one laptop for each of my two children plus a desktop and a backup laptop for my own use. By default, two of the four machines assigned drive letter G to its associated external hard drive while the other two assigned drive letter E. And one of those changed to F when I affixed a USB thumb drive in addition.

This kind of inconsistency drives me nuts. When I want to manually copy files from the computer to its external hard drive, I am constantly challenged to remember which machine(s) uses E: or F: or G: as the drive letters. And when I write a batch program to automate that backup process, I have to employ multiple conditional "if" statements based on the respective machine names to account for the differences.

Enough is enough. In Windows 7, follow these steps to set the drive letter for external USB hard drives:

• Click the "Start" orb in the lower left corner of the main window
• Right-click on "Computer"
• Select "Manage" from the resulting menu
• Select "Disk Management" from the left pane
• Right-click on the device of interest
• Select "Change Drive Letters and Paths..."
• Click on the "Change..." button
• Select the desired letter from the pull-down menu
• Click the "OK" button to save your work

The process for Windows XP is very similar:

• Click the "Start" orb in the lower left corner of the main window
• Click the "Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management" menu selections; alternatively, open Windows Explorer, right-click on "My Computer," then click on the "Manage" menu option
• Select "Disk Management" from the left pane
• Right-click on the device of interest
• Select "Change Drive Letters and Paths..."
• Click on the "Change..." button
• Select the desired letter from the pull-down menu
• Click the "OK" button to save your work

Voilà! Using this method, I have set all four external hard drives to the same letter device designator. My unreliable memory is no longer taxed when I manually copy individual files for backup, and I am able to remove all of the condition statements from my batch programs for bulk backups.

And it only took me 5+ years to stumble onto this technique!