Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Second Test

We were hopeful until today. Let's see...
Awww... isn't s/he cute? (And the picture upload still works, too!)

Photo test

New machine, testing whether or not I can upload pictures... What do you see below?

(If you said "Bruce!" you get a gold star!)

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Evil Cupertino vs Evil Redmond

Thanks to everyone who suggested that we should be getting a Mac instead of an(other) Windows-based PC (ChickenKnittle, Kadootje, Roberta, Mark, RP - the list goes on...). Believe me, we've thought about it, especially these past few weeks.

Unfortunately, there is no built-in Mac "Geek Squad" in this household. We've both been PC users since 'way back (KW goes back to before I knew what computers were, I've been working with them since at least 1981). Switching to a Mac now is only going to frustrate us more in the long run, especially since the 4 other computers in the house are Windows-based and we have no plans to convert over the household. At least with a PC, KW knows where to go for help and we can make our way through the maze of solutions.

Having said that, though... if the third Win7 PC doesn't do what I need it to do with a minimum of fuss and "accommodations" to Redmond's bizarre thought process, I admit I have been thinking about Macs and their double-barreled promises of simplicity and stability. Unfortunately, my built-in Geek Squad (aka KW) says if I take that route, I'm on my own. Should it come to that decision, it will be a hard one to make. I'm beginning to like Kadootje's suggestion of stone and papyrus...

In other news, the stupendously wonderful plays in TheatreWorks' New Work Festival are all rolling around in my head. They all made me cry - not surprising since all of them touched on death in some way. Most of them with physical death, but one ("Variations on a Theme") with the loss of love. They've all brought back the summer of 2009, which I spent in Florida, tending to my aunt. She'd been in my thoughts a lot even before we saw the plays; the constant themes have pulled those thoughts up further to the surface. I miss her greatly and still wonder if I couldn't have done more; if I had stayed longer, would she still be with us? I know the rational answer is "no," but the question still lurks in one of the folds of my brain.

The plays also brought up my continual fear of losing my One True Love. When he doesn't check in after driving to a client, when he can't hear me call his name in the house, when he leaves his phone in the restroom and so doesn't know I'm trying to text him and get no response... My over-active imagination thinks he's gone - crashed, fallen, stricken - and I have a little mini-panic over losing him. He usually checks in a few moments after I've tried to talk myself down off the ceiling, and it's often with a "of course I'm fine, why wouldn't I be fine?" tone in his voice or in his text (for as much as you can tell tone from a text, that is). It's hard to be very Buddha-like about the impermanence of all things when you have this kind of love. I try, but I don't succeed, at least when it comes to him.

Enough soul-searching. The plays are great. Go see as many as you can.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Trials and Tribulations

Good golly, miss Molly, it really shouldn't be this hard. Every time I try to do something new with the new beastie, there's yet another problem. The latest PITA is that for some reason, some file klonking went on and the PC thought that the boot drive was on my external (data only) drive. Not gonna find it there.

So KW manages to resucutate the thing back to a recovery point last week (the data's okay, though.... I think... I suppose I should go check). He did that fine, then I tried to access my email on AOL. It's just a browser, www.aol.com. I can see my email in the in-box but when I click on a note, I get the spinning hamster wheel. Forever. Great. He managed to fix that by opening the email in the existing window, but why won't it work the other way now? I like having a separate window open with the email in it; what the hell heppened that it won't do it now?

On the plus side, I installed Adobe Acrobat 9.0 and it hasn't exploded itself or the machine yet.

On to better things... The Tomato socks are almost done; I started the cuff ribbing yesterday and will go until I've had enough. The Tulip socks are coming along slowly (primarily because I haven't been knitting them... don't suppose that has anything to do with their slow progress, do you?). Haven't really touched any lace in a couple of months. Good god, has it really been that long? I hope I remember.

Went to see some shows in the TheatreWorks New Works Festival this weekend. They were all terrific. "Variations on a Theme," "How to Write a New Book for the Bible," "Great Wall," and "Fly by Night." I cried. (Yes, I'm a mushball.) Next weekend we go see the last one, "Red Clay." If you have any spare time whatsoever, go see one. Or two, or three. Fantastic.

Now, let's see if I can attache pictures this time...

Friday, August 6, 2010

Sock Summit Memories

Ah yes... it was a year ago that the first Sock Summit was held, Sock Summit 2009. A sock knitter's Woodstock, without the brown acid. (Well, there may have been some brown acid, but it was probably acid dyes for someone's homespun.)

Next one in slightly less than a year, July 28-31. Unfortunately, most airlines won't let you book flights that far in advance. I have 5 trips between now and the end of the year, and still find myself like women in the old Mervyn's ads... "Open, open, open..."

SS09 was so awesome, so huge, so ... indescribable. To be among your sock-knitting peeps, to understand why everyone was looking at your feet, to learn from people you revered, to hear a panel discussion with people you thought were dead, to be part of breaking a Guiness world record... No words, just a big pack of happy when I think back upon it.

(Great, another thing to add to the stupid computer problem list - I can't add photos to blogspot, either on the 64-bit version or the non-64-bit version. This is going to turn into a very blah looking blog soon if I can't get pictures uploaded!)

Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Price of Modernity

Ugh. So after the new Dell PC fiasco of early July (Windows 7 incompatibility issues), we decided to see how long the old PC would last before replacing it. As luck would have it, that was exactly 4 days. Not that it completely crapped out, mind you, but the noises started again (whirrrrrrring very loudly when you turn it on or restart it) and everything on the machine was S-L-O-W and my C: drive had run out of space.

So, we got a new machine. It, too, has Windows 7, and after our experience with the Dell (3 days of trying to get it to work with ... well, just about everything ... including about an hour with the Geek Squad - to no avail), we thought we were prepared for the big changeover. This one's an HP Pavilion, and we've had good luck with HPs before.

Yeah, that was *before.* As in "before Windows 7." Good golly, I'm very glad DH is heading off to Ottawa tomorrow; I swear, one more 'issue' with this freakin' thing and I'm going to kill someone. I'd rather it not be him, so I"m glad he'll be out of town.

Here's what we've had to replace (or will have to):
  • Laser printer (no driver upgrade available for the old one)
  • Inkjet printer (ditto)
  • Adobe Acrobat Professional (no driver upgrade available for 7.0)
  • My beloved PDA (double ditto)
  • Speakers (no power source on new machine)
  • My old AOL email account (because I thought I couldn't send emails from new machine)

I'm planning to replace my old (2005!) PDA with an iPod Touch, but now I'm reading all sorts of forum posts on how it's not compatible with Win7, only Vista and XP. Great.

I'm sure there's more; when I tried to launch Pandora a few hours ago, nothing happened. As it turns out, there is now a 'regular' MSIE 8.0 and a 64-bit MSIE 8.0. Some things work on one but not the other (like sending AOL webmail), or vice versa, and some things work on both. Luckily, I haven't found anything that doesn't work on either.

Except gmail. Now I can't load gmail up on either browser. Oh, and here on blogger? I can't cut and paste. In 'regular' browser mode. Maybe I can on the other one. What a PITA. And I can hear my wireless mouse through my new speakers. *sigh*

Yeah, we're keeping the old PC alive on the other desk. I have a feeling I'll be using it a lot in the next few days. Weeks?

If you see me in the near future, steer clear and try not to piss me off. It's a very short leap from where I am now to manslaughter.