Don't Pay to Much for HDMI Cables.

    When I purchased my Playstation3 I grabbed one of the HDMI cables on the shelf right next to the systems.  At the register I almost pooped a little when it scanned at $69.99.  I politely told the clerk that i wouldn't be taking that, which was my way of saying FU.  I went to a neighboring store and found that prices weren't much better.  Cheap ones were $40.
    Like with most situations I decided the internet would have the answers.  I found that I could get a cheap 10' cable for under $10.  I had to wait 5 days but I couldn't pay so much for something that should be one-fourth the price.
     The cable arrived and worked amazingly.  The reason theses stores sell them for so much is because consumers are willing to pay it.  The same used to be true for USB cables as well, not as much these days. Don't get taken advantage of.

Creating A Bootable USB Drive

Creating a bootable USB thumb drive has always been a little complicated. Sometimes it worked for me and sometimes it proved to be difficult. Lili USB Creator (http://www.linuxliveusb.com/) allows you to easily create a bootable USB drive from your favorite Linux distribution. If you haven't use Linux before, don't be scared it's pretty easy to use these days. You use this to boot your computer into another operating system without changing anything existing on your PC. If you have a virus you just cant get rid of you can use this to get rid of it.
All you need is a thumb drive and Lili USB Creator. The program will even download the version of Linux you choose. I chose Knoppix 6.2, it has great features built in and its easy to use. I used a 2gb thumb drive and set "persistence" to 500mb, this gives you room to install and make changes later.
Once my drive was created, I booted from it and installed and antivirus program called BitDefender (http://www.bitdefender.com/), it runs from Linux but scans Windows drives as well. Knoppix comes with gparted and testdisk already, so now I have a great set of bootable utilities.