The Nightmare Before Christmas, 2016

My Nightmare Before Christmas, 2016

Well, 2016 was a nightmare for many of us: terrorist attacks, the disaster in Syria, all of the music superstars we lost, Trump becoming the leader of the free world, etc. Total bummer, right? But this is all about me, so...

Although i didn't realise it at the time, my nightmare began at the end of October, when i ordered some Christmas cards from the Prostate Cancer Foundation. A worthy cause for sure and my new favourite singer, Dan Fogelberg, died from it nine years ago. Dan's widow, Jean, who's an artist (http://www.jeanfogelberg.com/), designs cards for them every year and she's really good: at the website, the cards looked beautiful. The shipping alone cost me about $33 Canadian, but what the heck, you can't put a price on art.

By the first week in December, though, they hadn't arrived and i was starting to worry: mailing deadlines were fast approaching. I went out and bought yet more cards and sent off the overseas ones. Second week in December, still no sign of them and i sent off the cards to the USA, and then, in a fit of controlled panic at the end of the week, sent off the domestic ones. I'm very afraid that many of them won't have arrived on time.

Jean Fogelberg's cards arrived on December 28th. By FedEx. Two months to the day after i ordered them. Two months from California to Ontario. They really are beautiful, though, and, looking at the bright side, i won't have to spend any money on cards next year. (Always thinking ahead, that's me!)

Two weeks before Christmas, as the nightmare continues, my phone died. When i arrived at work that morning, i powered it off (as i always do). When i finished my shift i tried to power it back up and ... nuffing! Nada. Zilch. The warranty expired in October and there was still ten months left on my contract. So i took it in to town to the office of my provider, Mornington Communications and spoke to Tyler there (i love being with an independent -- i may not have 24-hour tech support but there's an office in town and i know the techs by name) (and they know me). We determined that the battery itself wasn't the problem, that is was more likely the motherboard, which may or may not have been repairable. Did i want to spend $60 to discover that it wasn't? Well, no, i didn't, particularly, so off i went to Staples and bought a new phone -- just an inexpensive one, $150. It only has to last me for six months or so, when my contract will become renewable. (Samsung Galaxy phones are the only kind i've ever used.) It works all right, i suppose, although it's not as fast or as multi-featured as my other one. But at least it works.

The next day -- the very next day -- the monitor for my Windows 7 desktop computer died. Arrrgh (i said to myself), why me???? I had an old monitor in the closet so i hooked that one up, but, nothing, and now that i think about it, the reason it was in the closet may well have been that it had died, too. So, back i trudged to Staples and spent $300 on a new wide-screen monitor -- a very nice one, too. Too bad it didn't fucking work!

It hit me that maybe the monitor hadn't been the problem, but the PC -- its graphics card not sending a signal or something? So i hooked up my old Windows XP machine -- which i'd retired when Microsoft dropped support for XP -- to the new monitor and yay! it worked fine. Whew, and least i'd have an Internet connection for Christmas.

Worked fine, did i say? Yes, until Dec. 23rd, when it died too.

Well, this was an untenable situation. I couldn't be offline over Christmas. If i took the Windows 7 machine in to be repaired, it would never be fixed in time, so, the best solution i could think of was to make the snowy trek back to Staples and drop $500 or so on a Windows 10 laptop. (Staples loves me.) (Must explain why i receive so much spam email from them.) This was, in fact, the first time in my life i've ever bought a brand new computer -- previous PCs and laptops have all been pre-owned. My, i was impressed by how inexpensive they are now. (My first Windows 95 PC, with its magnificent 2 G of storage, cost over a thousand bucks. For half of that, i now have a laptop with 1 T of storage!)

I think that my techno-nightmare has subsided now, and i shan't even mention how ill i was on Boxing Day! (It was alcohol and over-eating wot dun that, not technology.)

My Love/Hate Affair With Computers, Part 287

Quotation du jour: Joseph Campbell ~ Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

A month or so ago, my desktop computer's display turned a rather nauseating shade of green. I knew for a fact that it wasn't a problem with the monitor – i tried two different ones. So i brought my old laptop home from work (the PC's display was really vomitogenic) in order to remain connected. (I only ever use the laptop at work, to listen to an Internet radio station in the mornings [http://www.slcr.tv/] -- the machine is old and frustratingly slow and besides it runs Linux, an OS i've never really been comfortable with.)

Some quick research into my desktop's problem suggested that i probably needed a new graphics card so, in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, i set off for my favourite computer shop (http://onsitetechnology.ca/) only to find that they had closed early due to the weather. Terrific.

It was a few days later before i was able to make the trek again. The young man there took one look, moved, with some difficulty, my graphics card to a different port, and everything seemed fine on the shop's monitor, so all was well. He only charged me $60 for the diagnostics (didn't charge for labour) and $20 for a DVI cable (which the new port required) and all was well!

Until i got home, and had no display at all! OK, i thought, i've done something really stupid here when i plugged it all back in. But what? I quite frankly couldn't be arsed to think too hard about it and went back to the clunky old laptop for a few days....

Then grasped the unicorn (or was it the narwhal?) by its horn again, the slowness of the laptop was driving me doolally, and plugged the desktop all back in again. Still no display. What, i said to my cat, am i doing wrong? Or is it me? Maybe the DVI cable is wonky? Just started playing with the buttons on the front of my monitor, just to see what would happen, et voilà! I had a display again! Three colours, too, not just green! I wonder which button i pushed to pull off this coup...?

I took my laptop back to work and was able to listen to the radio again there, but at home that evening i discovered that problems remained. Whilst waiting for a particularly slow web page to load, i decided to pass the time with a game of Solitaire, and received the message “hardware acceleration is not enabled, ensure that your graphics card driver is up to date” or something like that. I could still play Solitaire, but it was painfully slow. (Watching the web page load was actually more entertaining.)

Back to Google did i go and eventually, after a misstep or two – installing a program that was supposed to scan my computer for out-dated drivers and install them for me, for instance, but it was useless – i went to the NVIDIA website – my graphics card is one of theirs. I should have thought of that first, really. They scanned my PC, found the driver i needed and i downloaded it. Easy-peasy.

But when i tried to install it i received the error message, “Driver could not be installed. For help installing, visit the Windows Help And Support Center.” So i tried, but apparently it's not one of my Windows components. Arrrgh! I said to myself, not for the first time. A bit of further Googling proved to be of no avail, though, so i just left it. Apart from not being able to play Solitaire easily, some (but not all) of my music videos (and porn videos) (oops, did i write that?) wouldn't play properly, but otherwise, everything was okay.

Well, maybe not. A lot of my programs started giving me “not responding” messages. Well, thanks, that could mean anything! Nobody know da trubble i seen...

The next day, when i booted up, i saw that the driver was trying to install itself. WTF? I said (not for the first time). Again i went through all of that nonsense with the Windows Help And Support Center. Bah!

The same thing happened the next day, and the next and the next and then, toot toot “driver succesfully installed”! Yay, i was able to play Solitaire again! But, but, i was still having too many “not responding” messages. I tried everything i could think of – AV and anti-malware scans, i defragged, ran a registry cleaner, cleared my cache, emptied my Recycle Bin, stroked the cat, had a beer (well, several actually), watched an episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” went to The Beer Store (because i ran out).... Nothing made any difference.

Then i ran Windows Update. (It was Patch Tuesday.) All now seems to be well, although i can't think what difference that would have made....

I have no idea what happened. I'd love to be able to say that i'm a tech whiz and solved the problem myself, but nothing i did was of any avail. It sorted itself!

Here's my playlist:

Runrig -- The Story

Big Wreck -- The Pleasure And the Greed

The Jeff Beck Group -- Rough And Ready

Pyewackett -- The Man In The Moon Drinks Claret

Jeff Beck -- Official Bootleg U.S.A.

Loggins & Messina -- On Stage

Various Artists -- Rattlesnake Guitar: The Music Of Peter Green

Sharon Shannon -- Out The Gap

Rita Coolidge -- The Best Of Rita Coolidge

Stephen Stills -- Stephen Stills 2

Paul Simon -- The Rhythm Of The Saints

Pete Townshend -- Psychoderelict

The Beatles -- Revolver

The Motors -- Airport

Just (Just?) Music

Quotation of the day ~ P.G. Wodehouse: "I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

Ok, okay, or, if you prefer, ok-eh, it's been a while since i posted anything and that's because i was planning a post about my transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 but i haven't actually made it yet. I backed everything up to an external hard drive, this one, in fact:

but it's been tough scraping up the dosh for a new PC, i don't earn a lot of money -- which is fine with me, i don't normally need a lot, but a major expense like a new PC creates a definite strain on the fambly budget.

So, really, all i have today is the next installment of my CD collection (Jeff Beck section), and a playlist. So here ya go:

And the playlist?

Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick
Camel - Breathless
The Beatles - Beatles For Sale
The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
King Crimson - Thrak
Steely Dan - Katy Lied
Steely Dan - The Royal Scam
Tolo Marton - Stage List
Paul Rodgers - Muddy Water Blues
Steely Dan - Gaucho
Jeff Beck - Jeff
Sandy Denny - Sandy
The Records - The Records
Mike Orlando - Sonic Stomp II (twice!)
Martyn Bennett - Bothy Culture
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Los Angeles, 1969-04-26 (shhh, a bootleg)
Van der Graaf Generator - World Record
Various Artists - The Black Keys And Friends
AC/DC - Black Ice
Jack Bruce - Silver Rails
Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick - Skin And Bone
Chris Foster - Outsiders
Runrig - In Search Of Angels
Rush - Vapor Trails
Virgil Donati - In This Life
Saga - House Of Cards
Jethro Tull - Roots To Branches
The Pretty Reckless - Going To Hell
Jethro Tull - A Passion Play
Van der Graaf Generator - Vital
John Miles - Stranger In The City

F.R.E.D!

Quotation Of The Day ~ Ian Rankin:  Daytime drinking was special. In a bar, time ceased to exist, and with it the outside world. For as long as you stayed in the pub you felt immortal and ageless.

In case you're unaware, the acronym F.R.E.D. stands for f*ck*ng ridiculous electronic device and, yes, folks, i'm here to tell you about the latest computer problem i've had. For the umpteenth time....

Actually, i blame myself for this one. I don't know if i've complained about it here, but i know that i've been moaning a lot elsewhere about the amount of email spam i've been receiving lately -- "reduce your mortgage" (i live in an apartment), "$25,000 loan, low interest" (only available in the U.S.A., unfortunately), "Hot Girls In Milverton Want To Meet You!" (my ISP is based in Milverton) (how'd that little fact slip past the $25,000 loan people, i wonder?), you know the schtuff.  I normally just delete them, unread, but if i do happen to open one, i certainly never, ever click on any links.

But, last Monday, i received an email with no subject line and no sender's name and i opened it and ... my anti-virus software (Avast, probably the best of the free ones) immediately went nuts. Basically, a great huge boxing glove sprang out of the DVD drive and bopped me on the nose. Avast started a boot-time scan, but that self-aborted after a minute or so, the computer re-started itself and ... nothing worked.

I tried to open Avast, i couldn't. i tried to run HijackThis!, it wouldn't open. So i thought, why not uninstall and then re-install Avast, maybe that'll work. It didn't, i couldn't open the .exe file. So i tried to run System Restore. Oh, guess what? I couldn't.

I booted into Safe Mode to see what i could do there and -- woo hoo! -- to my amazement i was able to run a Malwarebytes scan. It detected, along with a few PUPs (potentially unwanted programs) a trojan -- Agent.V26 to be precise -- so of course i deleted the lot. Rebooted. Still couldn't open the Avast executable, so there i was, my desktop computer unprotected and potentially infected. There was no chance i was going onto the Internet like that, but thank god for my laptop.

I Googled, i Googled, and then i Googled some more. Didn't have a lot of luck, though, finding a solution. (Why is it, he asks rhetorically, that while there are around three billion computer users on this planet, so often i have problems that no one else -- judging by the forums -- has ever had?)

Confession time: my desktop PC runs Windows XP. Yes, yes, i know -- sentenced to death next April. Maybe my predicament would force me to buy a new desktop now rather than later, although it would place a terrible burden on my already-overstrained cash flow situation. But one does what one has to do (is my philosophy). And after all, i still had the laptop (and the smartphone) -- not like i would be completely isolated by any means.

But i tried one last thing. I ran Spybot Search & Destroy. (http://www.safer-networking.org/) Yes, it opened!

Now, at one time, Spybot had an excellent reputation as a malware-remover,  But then they changed their entire user interface, i didn't like them any more and evidently i wasn't the only one: i read quite a few poor reviews. But they've turned themselves around: it cleaned out everything that was stopping me from opening security software, i re-installed Avast! and now all seems well, whew.

Still and all, though, i see a new desktop PC in my very near future -- this old gal is definitely showing signs of age....

My Love/Hate Affair With Computers, Part 196

It's been a week in cyber-hell.

I use LibreOffice (www.libreoffice.org) as my document / spreadsheet reader and i'm very happy with it, but  a couple of days ago they prompted me to download the most recent version, and i'm a firm believer in keeping my software updated, so i did. Downloaded it and installed it.  Except that the d/l apparently failed and when i tried to open a document, i couldn't.

Okay, there i was without any way to open document files and / or spreadsheets, and becoming extremely frustrated. I tried to download the new version of LibreOffice again; after more than an hour at the stellar rate of 32 KB/sec, my Internet connection died. The download failed.

So, when i had a connection again, i decided to try Open Office. I used Open Office once, i prefer LibreOffice, but i thought, any port in a storm. Nope. Connection died, download failed.

So, thinking maybe i have more problems with my poor old desktop computer than i had imagined, i
plugged my network cable in to my laptop, and attempted to download LibreOffice again (figuring i could transfer it to a thumb drive and install it on my PC that way).

The download failed. This was NOT how i wanted to spend the evening....

And, just to make things even more fun, i seemed to have an eyelash embedded in my left eyeball, which turned it a fetching shade of red and also, rendered me basically monocular.

Jeez, how much longer do i have to do penance for the sins of my previous life...?

Then i had a thought. (Yes, thoughts do occasionally slither into my brain-pan.) What if i downloaded LibreOffice as a torrent...? That would eliminate any failures due to my wonky Internet connection. Tra, la, i had the software in a couple of hours, installed it and am now happily grappling with spreadsheets once more.

But wait! This tale isn't over yet.

The LibreOffice fiasco aside, my system had been running really slowly anyway. My Internet connection kept failing, but on top of that, everything was loading soooo slowly. (Does smashing your head into your computer desk in frustration, damage the CPU? Probably not.) And then, last night, my keyboard stopped working. My primary input device wouldn't input anything. I could open word documents now, but when i tried to type anything into them, nothing happened. Keyboard kaput. I couldn't take any more, i watched a movie and went to bed (after sending a few messages of despair to Facebook via my phone).

Today -- my day off. Sorting out the keyboard was easy. I simply used the Device Manager to remove it, and re-booted. Windows found it an re-installed it and now it's back to normal.

My connection -- in fact my whole system -- was responding even more slowly than usual and i was
getting super-frustrated (this was around 4 a.m., great start to the day) and i started to think, why is everything so slow? Is there something that i don't know about chewing up memory? My daily AV scan showed nothing nasty. So i went to the Task Manager and checked running processes and ...eureka!

Sometime ago, i installed some Samsung software that was supposed to help sync my PC and my phone and i discovered that it was using a huge amount of memory -- far more than anything else, and i didn't even know it loaded automatically with Windows! So i uninstalled it and ... ah, bliss. All is well. I haven't even lost my Internet connection since.

And i never used that damned software anyway, i'm not one of those people who wants their entire life on their phone. I'm old, i'd rather have in the PC....

I'm going to seriously have to consider a new PC soon, though. This one is definitely showing signs of age (and i'm still running XP, which has been condemned to death next year). Or at least a reasonably-priced refurbished Windows 7 machine (are you reading this, Troy?).

Anyway, here's a few additions to my CD collection series:

 And  a very brief playlist (i've been busy):

Rory Gallagher -- Notes From San Francisco
Rory Gallagher - Top Priority
Def Leppard - Yeah!
Various Artists -- The Great Grandson Of Morris On
John Fogerty - Blue Moon Swamp

Vacation Diary -- Overview

Quotation of the day ~Tom Carey: The ultimate metric that I would like to propose for user friendliness is quite simple: if this system was a person, how long would it take before you punched it in the nose?

Hi, everyone. Here, on the final day of my spring holiday,  i have to say that it's been great. I think that i am eminently suited to the life of leisure. Anyone interested in financing this for me, please leave a comment and a contact address. Thanks! (I don't need much: $1000 a week would be ample.)

The week, in some ways, was also extremely frustrating. My long-term reader (i.e., me) will recall that, the last time i took a week off, back in October, i spent a great deal of time working on some drastic computer problems. During that week, both my desktop PC and my laptop had to go into the shop, and the PC had Windows re-installed, and, while i didn't lose any files, i lost most of my program files, and it took a great deal of time to re-install and configure them.

This week, another, albeit less serious problem arose. Something was corrupt in my email program (Thunderbird). Sent messages wouldn't appear in my Sent Items folder and in one isolated case, a message appeared there five times (when, of course, i'd only sent it once). And sometimes, the font size would go doolally, so that messages would appear to the recipient looking something like this. I went to various Thunderbird user forums and tried to solve the problem, i uninstalled and re-installed it, all to no avail. So i decided to find an alternate email client. I tried Sea Monkey. I liked it, it looked good, i successfully sent a test message and so i imported all of my settings from Thunderbird and ... must also have imported whatever was corrupt, because from then on it was useless. So, i uninstalled it. Then i tried Opera's built-in email program (i already use Opera as my secondary browser). Same thing -- as soon as i imported my Thunderbird settings, it was useless.

I tried, believe me. For three days.

Then i gave up and tried to find some workarounds in Thunderbird. And, not just another pretty face, i did. And then gave up, i was tired of working on it. Some holiday!

Well, that took me up to Wednesday. What did i do on Thursday? Don't remember, got drunk probably....

Friday i went to Toronto for the day. Via Rail has free Wi-Fi so i was able to listen to my favourite radio station, K-SHE, all the way (i have their app on my phone). Had lunch with my old friends Julian & Andrea, nipped over to the HMV superstore and bought the new CD by Paula Cole and Big Wreck's second album, and thereafter mostly took a walking tour. And it was a beautiful day for it -- nice and warm. Stumbled upon a charity book sale at the Church Of The Holy Trinity, a beautiful old (1847) church in the heart of downtown Toronto, and look, there's its picture:

I only bought one book, though: "The Child In Time," a title i'd never read by one of my favourite writers, Ian McEwan.










And then i just walked more and more, stopped in a pub whenever i got thirsty (and there's no shortage of those in downtown Toronna!) and then it was time for the train home.

One of my Toronto traditions is to buy some street meat -- generally spicy sausage on a bun -- from one of the vendors in front of Union Station before boarding the train home. Unfortunately, this time, it was not to be: there's so much construction going on around there that the vendors have been forced to relocate, and i couldn't find one in time. Bummer! So i had to settle for a can of very nasty beer and a very small bag of chips on the train -- for eight dollars, they must have seen me coming. At least i was able to listen to K-SHE all the way home....

And really, that was the end of the holiday: on Saturday, Sunday & Monday i had to go into work for just a couple of hours each day, but still, it meant that i didn't really have those days to myself, and this, then is it. Back to what we laughingly call "normal" around here tomorrow. Blah.

Oh, one last thing, my last post i said that my CD collection was complete for the letter "A." Wrong again. Somehow i missed this album by Kevin Ayers, Mike Oldfield, Robert Wyatt, David Bedford, Lol Coxhill & Six Beautiful Girls:

Now, onwards to the letter B.

Love, light & peace, y'all...

Here We Go Again, Grrr...

Quotation of the day: Ken Olson (president/founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977) ~ There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.

Gosh, it's been a while. I've just had a week off and i was hoping to get this blog updated but it was not to be. The week has been chaotic
-- computer problems, two days in Toronto followed by a case of the flu (or something) from which i've only just recovered.

It actually all began a couple of months ago, when my laptop died on me. The little fluorescent lights or whatever they are (little gremlins carrying
torches maybe) that are attached to the back of the screen burnt out, whether due to a power surge or to the fact that Cate sleeps on it, who
knows. So i'd boot it up, it would appear to start normally but the screen would go dark after a minute or so. Useless.

But i felt no urgency about having it repaired. I really don't use the laptop that much. Basically, only when the desktop PC is on the fritz....

It's called "Sod's Law." Three weeks ago, the desktop failed.

Or, should i say, Windows failed. I would start up the computer, the Windows splash screen would appear, but then, Windows would stop loading and the machine would go into an endless cycle of restarts. At first, i thought maybe the BIOS chip had failed; i mucked around with the setup for a while, restoring defaults etc. (not really knowing what the hell i was doing) but nothing made any difference.

But -- and aye here's the rub -- it was not a hard-drive failure. I was able to boot the machine using my Linux installation disc. Using this method, i could look at Windows files, edit text, look at pictures (all that
Russian porn, woo hoo!) and so on. As i was between paycheques and had the Toronto trip and its concomitant expenses coming up, i had to
postpone the repair and as it was running (after a fashion) anyway, i was only badly inconvenienced (as opposed to desperately
inconvenienced).

Toronto was great, Toronto was super. I went to see Oysterband for the 3rd time in four years and i'll be writing about that later (if i remember to). I returned on Wednesday evening, on Thursday morning i felt as sick as a dog. (Cate loves that expression.) I had collywobbles to the max (and i love the term "collywobbles" as a synonym for "lower digestive tract disorders.") I dragged my sorry self and my laptop on down to the shop on Friday afternoon but, it was a long weekend here, nothing could be done until at least Tuesday. Grrr, i hate long weekends, they disrupt everything.

(I took the laptop in first, before the desktop, because at least the desktop was usable. Otherwise i would have been without a working computer entirely, and obviously that would have been an untenable situation!) (I might have actually had to clean my apartment or something equally silly.)

So, this past Saturday, i took the desktop in and retrieved the laptop (upon which i am now writing this). $140 for a new screen, which i thought was fairly reasonable.

Now, as you may know, i run Linux on my laptop.
It's an operating system that i've never really become comfortable with. To do a lot of things requires opening the terminal and running
commands -- like DOS in Windows -- but i can't remember most of the terminal commands most of the time, so in general i can't do much in
Linux.

That aside, Linux has "Update Manager" (equivalent to Windows Update) and on Saturday, in a fit of geeky madness, i ran update
manager. Oh, dear, it was a mistake.

It took two hours (!) to d/l the updates, during which time the laptop slowed to a crawl and was virtually useless, but fair's fair, i don't use the laptop often as i said, and i hadn't updated in a while. But then i clicked on "install updates."

The progress bar indicated "13 hours remaining," and once again the laptop slowed to a crawl and was virtually useless.

One of the very few things i ask out of life is a computer that works. It looks like it is not to be.

When i went to bed, the progress bar
indicated "one hour, seventeen minutes remaining." And that's where i left it when i crept into the arms of Morpheus. When i awoke, 6 / 7
hours later, the progress bar indicated ... one hour, seventeen minutes remaining. Yes indeedy, woo hoo, etc., everything was frozen.
Frozen solid, i couldn't do a damned thing.

So i had to re-install Linux. It only took most of the day.

On Sunday i was as sick as a parrot, and didn't do much. Watched a movie, "A Prayer For The Dying." It was all right. Some very good actors
(Mickey Rourke, Liam Neeson, Bob Hoskins) making the best of some fairly mediocre material.

Monday, i called Troy (at www.onsitetechnology.ca) and he had determined that Windows was corrupt and would have to be re-installed. He could back up all of my files, all that Asian porn and stuff (or was it Russian porn?) but all of my program files would be lost. Right. A nightmare task of re-downloading and re-configuring, but what choice had i?

So i picked up the computer on Thursday. Troy demonstrated that it was working well – he even downloaded my default browser for me. I got it home, fired it up and ... no Internet connection.

It worked superbly at the shop. I plugged my network cable in to my Linux laptop and the connection is fine. I booted my Windows PC with my Linux installation disc and ... the connection is fine. So, er, wtf?

And that's the problem that has been consuming me for about a week. I've been Googling like crazy, but all to no avail.

So that's where i am now. Troy is getting married this weekend so he's not going to be available for a bit, and my grey hair is rapidly turning white ....

Update: after a morning of really intense Googling, i found and ran this:

@Echo on
pushd\windows\system32\drivers\etc
attrib -h -s -r hosts
echo 127.0.0.1 localhost>HOSTS
attrib +r +h +s hosts
popd
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset all
netsh int ip reset all
shutdown -r -t 1
del %0

It worked! I am back!

My Bleeping Computer

Quotation Of The Day: Julie Burchill ~ Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

As i may have mentioned -- probably ad nauseam -- i was on a fairly mediaeval work schedule for almost three weeks.  It ended on Sunday thank goodness, and i now have two days off, whoopee!  I see beer & pizza in my future....

But last Tuesday -- allegedly my day off, i only had to work for three hours, starting at stupid o'clock in the morning nonetheless -- i came home, booted up the PC and was typing away happily, when ... the machine shut itself off for no reason that i could see.  I tried two different power cords -- the extent of my technical expertise, la la -- but ... nuffink.

And so i took FRED (effing ridiculous electronic device) in to the best computery shop in town, Onsite Technology. (www.onsitetechnology.ca)  The owner, Troy (about whom i have probably written before) is the most tech-savvy man i know, and he immediately diagnosed the problem: the power supply had failed.  (He had replaced the power supply a year or so ago and had since discovered a problem with that particular model, but doubted it would still be under warranty.)

But!  He also diagnosed a possible hard drive problem:  the potential failure thereof.  Now, let this be a lesson to us all:  i have everything vital backed up to discs or thumb drives, but still, there's "stuff" (to use the technical term) on my hard drive i'd hate to lose.  Re-imaging and replacement of the hard drive could have been a real blow to the weekly budget.  As Astrid once remarked, i work more and make less than anyone she knows, and in the five or more years i've been writing this blog i've made about ten dollars from it (so keep on clicking on those ads, boys and girls!).

Cost to replace the power supply: $90
Cost to re-image and replace the hard drive: $200.

The former i could have managed.  The latter would have meant a diet of cheese sandwiches and roll-yer-own cigarettes for a week.

So, on Monday, i went to the shop to collect it, fearing the worst, heavy of heart and light of wallet.  And the total bill was ... ridiculous.  It was absurd.  It was (can you stand this suspense?) it was ... $18.25!  I spent more in cab fare getting the machine there and back!

The hard drive was fine and it turned out that the power supply was still under warranty, so all i had to pay was labour, and i had a $10 gift certificate.  $18.25.

And here, for no particular reason, is one of my favourite album covers of all time.  It's a solo album, in Swedish, by Frida of ABBA, and it's called "Frida Ensam" (which, i believe, means "Frida Alone").

Here's the playlist for the past few days:

Rory Gallagher -- Jinx
Roxy Music -- The Best Of Roxy Music
Mike Oldfield -- Incantations
Jethro Tull -- Heavy Horses
Terje Rypdal -- The Singles Collection
Propaganda -- A Secret Wish
Free -- At Last
Colin James -- Fifteen
Rod Stewart -- A Night On The Town
Colin James -- Fifteen
Van der Graaf Generator -- The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other
Mike Oldfield -- World Premiere Of "Crises," disc 2
Bill Bruford -- One Of A Kind
The Kathryn Tickell Band -- Instrumental
Sheryl Crow -- Detours
Humble Pie -- Performance: Rockin' The Fillmore
Rod Stewart -- Live (Not Authorised) Bootleg
Rod Stewart -- Blondes Have More Fun
Various Artists -- The Roots Of Rock 'n' Roll, discs 1 & 2
Keane -- Strangeland

Back To School

Quotation of the day: Roger Waters -- We don't need no education / we don't need no thought control / no dark sarcasm in the classroom / teacher, leave those kids alone

Well, Mr Waters (above) notwithstanding, i firmly believe that, once you stop learning, you may as well curl up 'n' die.  Plus of course keeping the brain active is a good way to prevent Alzheimer's.

And so i have just enrolled in a part-time, online college course in computer programming.  At my advanced age, this isn't (likely to be) a career move, but i love everything about computers and it's a brain exercise.

Unfortunately, i only have a very limited amount of time to work on it and i'm stuck on lesson #4, i may have to backtrack.

It's fascinating, though!

Spriggsblog Goes To The Book Shop

Quotation Of The Day: Steve Jobs -- Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

And so, on Saturday, i needed something to read and was wandering aimlessly around a local book shop and came across this:

Now, i've never used a Mac in my life, but i'm fascinated by the early days of computers and he seemed like an interesting dude (and besides, it was on sale) and i have to say, "woot!"

I'm only up to page 100, but it's a fascinating and compelling read.

Mr Jobs wasn't a brilliant engineer -- and he could sometimes be a very abrasive person.  But it was his partner Steve Wozniak -- who was a brilliant engineer -- who invented the personal computer.  I didn't know that.  I supposed that it was Bill Gates, or someone at Microsoft.  Wrong again!

Mr Jobs was, however, brilliant at marketing.  The alliance of Jobs & Wozniak appears to have been one of those brilliant synergistic partnerships that only arise once in a decade, like Lennon & McCartney or, um, Graham Linehan & Arthur Matthews.

The book is highly recommended.

My Love / Hate Affair With Computers, Part 195

Quote of the day: William Shakespeare -- O, woe is me, To have seen what i have seen, see what i see!

So, after all of the hassle of two weeks ago, on Wednesday morning my e-mail client, Thunderbird, decided to stop working.  I could no longer send or receive e-mail.

I awoke at my usual time (which is 4.30 a.m., kids:   i lead a monkish life).  I checked my overnight messages and all was well -- the usual 30+ offers of Cialis -- but at around 5 a.m. all went a-gley ("a-gley" being the Scotch word for "kerflooey"), when i tried to write a message.  Nuffink happened. (Apart from an error message, "connection to SMTP server failed, check your connections and try again" or something like that.)

Huh?  I tried to send again.  Same error message.  So i clicked on "get mail."  Same error message.  What the hell happened to Thunderbird between 4.30 and 5.00 on Wednesday morning?

On Wednesday evening, when i returned from my job at Justin Bieber's favourite restaurant (he loves my cooking) i spent half an hour or so playing with settings, until i was able to receive, at last!  30 + offers for Cialis, and cheaper than the last 30, woo hoo!  But i was still unable to send (mope, grope).

On Thursday morning, frustrated as bejaysus, i effed around, Googled like a maniac and haphazardly played with my settings and ... eureka.

Seems that on Wednesday morning Thunderbird updated itself and reset everything.  All  (all?) i had to do was revert to all of my previous settings and everything was hunky-dory.

I hate that, i hate it, when something on my computer changes without my knowledge or permission.  It happened yesterday, too, now that i think about it.  When i returned home from The Little Shop Of Horrors, i booted up and ... my wallpaper had disappeared.  I use Manet's "At The Folies Bergere," one of my favourite paintings.  Oh, look, there it is there:








 

What i had instead was a boring blue screen (not the dreaded BCOD, i hasten to add!).

Stoopd compooters!!!!!!!!

The Adventures Of A Linux Newbie, Part 2

Oh, dearie me.

I got my desktop PC back from the shop on Tuesday, and it's so nice to have it again, after two weeks or more of struggling to learn Linux on my laptop.

I'd noticed, after two weeks on the laptop, a significant slowdown in its speed.  What would you do in Windoze? Defrag, run a registry cleaner and delete the temp files, right?  Uh, uh, not with Linux.

First of all, it doesn't store its files in a fragmented way, so defragging would be unnecessary.  Secondly, it doesn't use a registry.  But i found a way to remove the temp files.

So much in Linux requires the use of the Terminal (the equivalent of running Command Prompts in Windoze).  To clear temp files i had to open the terminal and enter "sudo apt-get clean" (without quotes).  Hey, it worked well, but i had to Google for that information, as none of my Linux help menus seem to work....  ("Sudo" stands for "super user," i.e., adminstrator, and something else.  In my case it's probably "d'oh!")

Ah, well, it's been a learning experience, this Linux lark, and i really believe that when one stops learning, one may as well lay down and die.  I shall persevere with it.  But it's so nice to have the desktop back, large screen monitor, and a keyboard i can use (i was friggin useless on the laptop's touchpad, fortunately i had a spare USB mouse lying around...)

Another Day In Paradise.....

Oh, sorry, that should have read "Another Day In Computer Hell."

It's my day off, and i've been having a pretty crappy morning, really, thanks to a frightening combination of my own stupidity and Windows Live Mail -- i am really annoyed at Tweedledummy at tech support who thought Outlook Express was corrupted when i had my email probs a few weeks ago, and Tweedledummer who proposed Windows Live Mail as an alternate email client.  I hate WLM!


So i downloaded Thunderbird instead but for the life of me couldn't figure out how to configure it to send email.  I was able to receive ok, but not send.  Does any of this sound familiar?

But, i'm not just another pretty face: I finally configured it so that i could send mail with it, set it as the default and couldn't wait to uninstall WLM -- but before i did so, i imported everything (emails, address book) to Thunderbird.

And then had a heckuva time uninstalling WLM -- bits of it are all over the place, deep inside the system.  Even after an allegedly complete uninstall, i could still find traces -- its icon still appeared in my Start menu, for instance.  Took about an hour and there's still probably remnants of it polluting my system.

But why, oh, why, did i neglect to check that Thunderbird had imported everything before i uninstalled it?

WLM exported almost everything.  Almost.  I lost about two weeks' worth of emails -- including a couple of very important ones....


On a happier note, remember how my Linux laptop's keyboard had been set to Canada Multingual which meant that when i hit the apostrophe key, an É would appear, and other such curiosities?  Well, i fixed that, thanks to a Ubuntu support forum -- it was really easy to change it to Canada English but as Linux is all new to me, i hadn't a clue where to start.  I eagerly await the arrival of the book i ordered last week, Ubuntu Linux For Beginners.

Anyway, none of this is getting the laundry done, so i'll take a break from this nightmare and have some lunch maybe.


I watched this for the umpteenth time last night.

Great film

Technophobia Part x

So, that's it, there to the left: my new laptop.  An IBM ThinkPad 42. And i discovered something interesting.  Although the Internet connection on my desktop PC is crap, when i plug the modem in to the laptop's network card, the connection is 100% ok.

So, tech support and i have been barking up the wrong tree, apparently.  It's not the modem, or the 'phone line:  it's the PC.  I'll be giving them a call on Monday....

Anyway, i installed Linux on the laptop, to heckers with Microsoft, who needs 'em -- so that is going to be a learning experience, familiarising myself with a brand-new operating system.  I'm having fun with it already.

(I also enjoyed discovering that my two favourite pubs are wi-fi hotspots!)

But, on a serious note, i truly believe that when you stop learning, you may as well curl up and die.  No, really.  Keep the brain active:  it's a muscle and will atrophy if you don't use it.  In my job, i have no opportunities to learn new things.  Now i have a project!

I have to go now.  I was at work at five o'clock this morning....

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

Technophobia Continued

I must be a masochist: i went out today and bought a new laptop, with wi-fi.  I know nothing about wireless -- when i took my computer courses all those years ago, it wasn't very prevalent, and i don't use it at home, so i've never seen a need to learn about it.  I will now!  (Actually, a new laptop has been in the back of my mind for a while now; my old Windows 98 laptop, while it still works, is pretty much useless for any serious computing, with its 2 gigabyte hard drive and no working modem.  The connection probs precipitated the purchase.)

Anyway, i pick the machine up on Friday; i intend to uninstall Windows from it altogether and install Linux, and then hang around wireless hot-spots;  but, further, i also intend to hook it up to my modem; if i can connect properly using it, then that will mean that the problems lie with my desktop PC.  But if i can't, then that would seem to me to indicate that Bell Canada is, indeed, the culprit. 

By hook or by crook, i'll be back!

My Love/Hate Affair With Technology, Part 187

Someone once said that, the more complex a system becomes, the more that can go wrong.

Last Tuesday, my Internet connection started going up and down like a whore's knickers ... or, like a yo-yo, if you prefer.  It had been fine, it just decided to act up, i dunno.  On Wednesday morning (my day off) i was trying to listen to online radio (www.therock.fm, of course!) and, between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., the connection failed every five minutes (very disconcerting, as it usually failed in the middle of a song i liked). After that it was fine, but i was so frustrated i called my ISP's tech support (for the umpteenth time)....

(Perhaps a bit of history -- i've had connection problems for a while now, my ISP has replaced my modem a couple of times, and they now think that the problem is with my telephone line -- excess noise or somefing.  They actually placed a trouble ticket with Bell Canada for me the last time -- apparently a Bell techie showed up a few weeks later, when i was at work, received no answer and cancelled the ticket, grr.)

So they replaced my modem again and now my connection is ok, but ... i am unable to send e-mails or log on to my accounts at encrypted web pages! I can receive e-mail fine (god knows i'd hate to miss out on all the spam and phishing attempts) and ordinary web pages load ok (if a bit slowly).

So i called tech support again -- twice.  Half an hour on the 'phone each time, to no avail, so now i guess we have to place another trouble ticket with Bell Canada....  Things may be back to normal in another few weeks, unless of course the Bell techie shows up when i'm at the shop....

Honestly, this has been so annoying and now, just to make my life even more miserable, both my digital camera and my DVD player's remote control have quit on me (and no, they don't need new batteries).

(signed)

Tearing His Hair Out In Stratford

The Catieboo Seal Of Approval

Ah, right, Cate-cat approves.  There she is atop the new PC -- so i guess i'll keep it.

And i've been keeping busy with it an' all -- configuring, downloading apps, and configuring some more, hampered no end by the fact that my Internet connection has been really wonky lately.  It always seems down on Sundays -- my only day off! -- i can't imagine why this would be but am willing to accept the possibility that i've screwed something up.

And i haven't had much time for watching films recently, but i've managed these:

I know....

Happy Birthday, Your Computer's Dead

March 13th: Today is my birthday. This morning, when I tried to boot the computer, nothing. Windows wouldn’t load. Of course I had plans for the morning, but that rather stuffed them up. I spent about three hours troubleshooting the problem, then went into town, to the Public Library, and spent an hour on one of their computers – responding to some (not all) of the greetings on Facebook, looking at my e-mail, the rest of the time Googling my problem. And it looks like a hardware, rather than a software problem. A catastrophic hard disc failure. So, until I can afford a new computer – or, more likely, a second hand (or “pre-owned”) one, I’m having to write this on my old Windows 98 laptop … which doesn’t have a working modem.

What a fuck**g pest! We truly don’t realise how dependent we have become on our computers until we lose them, as Joni Mitchell almost sang, once.

I mean, I do everything online: listen to the radio, check the news and weather, pay my bills, find out what day it is, even….

Anyway, after the library I went to Kelsey’s (my favourite pub) for lunch: a plate of their “suicide” nachos and a couple of pints of the foaming ale. I don’t call them “suicide” nachos because they’re particularly hot, but because the serving is so huge … but I made it through and didn’t turn into Monty Python’s Mr Creosote LOL

Right, well, guess I’ll play some Free Cell on the laptop.

Later: this is very sad. I’m trying to remember how I amused myself before I became seriously addicted to computers, back in the days of Windows 95. Well, I played the guitar and the mandolin a lot – but my guitar and mandolin now have many broken strings, I haven’t picked them up in a long time. I used to read about a book a week (I now read maybe one a month). My apartment was a lot tidier then, too. Maybe I’ll go and clean the toilet bowl or somefing….

Later still: I just discovered, or remembered, that I have Pac-Man installed on the laptop. Played Pac-Man for the first time in probably ten years. Man, I suck at it! (I used to be pretty good….)

March 14th: No Internet, Day Two

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first casualty: radio.

Normally, I listen, online, to 94.9 The Rock out of Oshawa, Ontario, a fabulous radio station (www.therock.fm). Where I live, in a bit of a hollow, I can only receive one terrestrial radio station, Kool-FM out of Kitchener-Waterloo. It’s … ok in small doses but I listened for three hours this morning and they played the same song by Bryan Adams twice, and Bon Jovi three times (each time a different song, admittedly). I can handle Bon Jovi, but I don’t like Mr Adams’ music particularly (I did like “Summer Of ’69,” but that’s not what they played), so it’s radio off.

Later: I thought I had my computer working again. A while back I sent off for a (free) Ubuntu Linux installation CD, intending to install Linux on this laptop, but I discovered that it (the laptop) didn’t have enough hard drive space (I told you it was an old one!), and I didn’t do anything with the disc. Until just now. I thought I might be able to boot into Windows using it or, failing that, install it and have an operating system again. But the first idea failed miserably, so I tried to install it and … it seemed to be working but the install failed at 51%. I was online, a GUI appeared, but my cursor was dead. I was able to use one or two keyboard shortcuts, and managed to search Google for Facebook, but then couldn’t navigate to any links…. I thought maybe a soft re-boot, but then got this message: “Boot Failure: System Halted.” I’ll try a hard boot next but I’m not optimistic. I’ll do last night’s supper dishes first.

Later still: nope. A hard boot resulted in the same error message and I have to face it – my $1000 PC is now a paperweight. Fortunately – as I’m more than just another pretty face – I had almost all of the important stuff backed up.

March 15th: No Internet, Day Three

I’m not feeling quite as disconnected from the world – or from cyberspace would perhaps be better – as I have been. For one thing I spent a lot of the day in “meatspace” – i.e. at work, it kept my mind off it, and then went into town after that gruelling experience and (a) went to Blackcreek Technologies to look at their selection of second-hand computers and (b) went to the Library and spent maybe three-quarters of an hour on one of their PCs, checking e-mail and discovering what the “Fn” key on a laptop does ROFL.

And the good news is … I found a very nice (and affordable) PC, and hope to have it by Friday. Yay! I need to be back online.

I am a man of action. Well, OK, you might be surprised to learn that, as most of my spare time is spent in a lethargic state with my butt parked in front of the computer – or at the bar at Kelsey’s. But when there’s any kind of problem with anything that’s really important to me (cat, computer, music, Jen from Kelsey’s) (well, I had to add Jen, she reads this blog) (yes, amazingly, someone other than me reads it!), then I jump in head first and solve the problem. Damn the torpedoes!

March 16th: Day Four

For better or worse, I am a man of routines, and many of those routines involve online activities. Now I’m all at sea, and that sense of confusion – what do I do now? – is probably the most difficult part of this. Well, that, and some of the music that Kool-FM plays. I mean, Avril Lavigne? Oh, save me! (I do like some of what they play, of course.)

Anyway, I went to Kelsey’s after the day’s slog at the beanery, had a couple of pints and told them that, if they don’t see me again for a couple of weeks, they’re not to worry. I may have spent all of my money on a new PC, and even if I haven’t spent all of it, I’m expecting it will take a while to configure the thing.

So what do I do now? Play Solitaire on the laptop? Read a book? Play with Cate? Make dinner? Play a CD-R? Oh, well, there’s another problem … I have well over 800 CD-Rs full of music, all numbered and catalogued, but guess where the catalogue is – well, it was on my hard drive, fortunately it was also something I backed up assiduously to a thumb drive. What a shame that my laptop is so old that it can’t read from my thumb drives. I don’t know where anything is!

St Patrick’s Day, Day Five

Well, St Patrick’s Day doesn’t mean anything to me, not even sure why I mention it. To anyone who is not Oirish and uses it as an excuse to drink green beer (vomit) good luck.

One of the things about Kool-FM I heartily approve of, is that they play Chantal Kreviazuk (which 94.9 The Rock doesn’t), and our regular reader will know that I’m a big fan of Ms K. Sure it’s AOR. Call it a guilty pleasure. I like ABBA too. But, really, I can’t wait to get back to 94.9

“I can’t wait” is really a pretty stupid expression though, isn’t it. I can’t? But I am going to have to. Until Friday. And then such an expense at such short notice will require some of what, in the accountancy trade, is called “juggling.” But on Friday I shall be back online.

March 18th, Day Six

One more day to go, and I have booked the afternoon off tomorrow, to make the trek into town….

I'm Back (Bet You're Excited)

Right, well, here we are again.

I've been having horrendous computer problems ever since i installed my new DVD burner.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. The problems began when i installed the software that came with it.

OK, long story. This computer has a DVD drive, but not a burner, and the DVD drive hasn't worked since the warranty ran out anyway. (Typical!) But this wasn't a major problem, as i rarely watched DVDs on the computer -- i prefer to watch them on the TV, feet on the coffee table.

But i had downloaded a few movies and videos, and wanted to be able to watch them, feet in fuzzy slippers and back against the cushions of the sofa. So i bought a DVD burner, installed it, and then installed the software that accompanied it: Nero 8.

Nero 8 hates me. No, really.

After the installation, the simplest tasks would cause Windows to crash, i was having to re-boot constantly and getting error messages i'd never seen before.... I Googled the error message(s) and, oh, guess what, found myself at some Nero forums where loads of people were having the same problems. Ahem!

Some solutions were offered on these forums, but none seemed to work for me, and so ... i tried to uninstall Nero 8 and it wouldn't let me. Grr. So i had to run System Restore :o(

A time consuming pain in the arse but hey, it worked! All is finally back to normal.

And i downloaded some free DVD burning software ("Burn4Free") which works very well.

So, thanks, Nero, thank you for ruining my week

Cowtown -- Mo'

https://download.yousendit.com/ZW9CSXR3UzhmVGJIRGc9PQ

That's the link for "Bullfrog Blues" -- a real cracker it is, too.

I meant to post this this morning but the Internet connection was down. Schtoopid computers!