Still Off

The technical difficulties collided with an unexpected family visitor and my carefully organized day went all to Hades. Just now I recalled that I promised to post something today, too. Please consider this something, even if it is 1:42 am. My sincere apologies, but I will be off dealing with all this until Monday.

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Off to Tinker

I'm bailing on you all today to try and fix what the malevolent Windows update wrecked. And try not to slam my head on my desk too many times. And try not to insult the unhelpful help people.

You know, I don't mind the fixit blues when I screw up things, but when others mess with my hardware? Without permission? And then tell me it's my fault when I didn't do anything?

I'm trying to work here, Microsoft.

Anyway. I'll figure it out. I always do.

See you on Friday.

Up & Running

I've finally got the new computer up and running, and the usable parts of the old one here will be donated to our pubic high school. I'm also checking with a local group that recycles old/scrap computer stuff to see if they can do something with the old tower.

It's always a bit of a wrench for me to say good-bye to a computer, especially one that worked so well for so many years. Any computer I've had has served as my work partner, secretary, creative collaborator, idea safe and window to the world outside my little corner of the country, so I usually get pretty attached. On this one I wrote a lot of stories that made me happy; probably more so than any other computer I've ever had. I was pretty hard on it, too; I moved it all over the house, and the dogs even knocked it over once. Add to that all the power failures, virus attacks and software glitches it survived, and still it never gave me a bit of grief.

Time to move on and figure out all the stuff that came with the new one. Farewell, old pal. You will be missed.

Rebuild

An update on the technical difficulties: after five years of faithful service my old computer is not fixable, so that's the bad news. The good news is I managed to find a new tower -- on sale, no less -- and swapped it out last night. Today I'm transferring files and software to the new system.

A couple of early observations:

Overall I think Windows 8 is beyond stupid. I already hate the jumpy picture thing that replaced the start and program main menu. It took me like an hour to get rid of all the vendor crap that came factory-installed, including the idiot XBox games. Don't even get me started on how much fun it is to try to get out of a window you don't want to be in, or the fact that every living thing I close still saves itself as a miniature window on my task bar, so I have to close it twice.

I have nine zillion apps. I don't want any of them. Why are there apps on my damn computer anyway?

I'm now having to jump from using Word 2007 right into using Word 2013. Prayers requested.

I love Adobe Acrobat. I pop in the disc, install, done. No problems. No having to go online and register my life away. Adobe should be designing Windows.

My ancient photoshop program installed and is operating with no problems, which was kind of a miracle when you consider it's almost ten years old. I expect this will be the last computer I'll be able to install it on, so I'm going to have to make an effort to learn the Adobe photoshop program now.

I'm on a connected cloud thing now -- I don't know how, why, or even what that is -- but they connected me. To something cloudish. Look, don't tell me what it is, okay? I'll probably freak out.

Semi-Scorched

I hope you're all having a good weekend. I am except for one problem -- last night my main computer crashed repeatedly, and while I've mostly gotten it back it's definitely getting ready to take a more permanent dive. Luckily I keep everything backed up, and I should be able to keep limping along until I get a new tower. That will hopefully be today, but just in case I'm putting PBW on technical hiatus for now.

Let me use this opportunity to nag you all about backing up your files. If you haven't in a while, stop reading this post and go do it, please, and try to make it a regular part of your weekly routine.

See you once I get this sorted out.

Offline for Now

It's June, which means it's either raining, thundering, lightning or all three here -- and our broadband doesn't like any of them. Once I can keep a connection long enough to upload my posts I'll be back to catch up. My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Technical Difficulties

When you live in the country bad weather creates chaos with the power and broadband, which is keeping me offline. Once I can get a connection for longer than two minutes I'll be back to catch up. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Technical Difficulties

Bad weather and what it's doing to our power and broadband has been keeping me offline, but once I can boot up for longer than two minutes I'll be back to catch up. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Off to Tinker

I have to replace the hard drive on my internet computer today, so I'll be unplugged until I download all the updates and transfer my backups (have you backed up lately? If not, go, do it now.) I should be back up and running by tonight, and I apologize for any inconvenience this causes.

Technical Difficulties

We're having some problems with our internet connection, so I'm effectively unplugged until the service provider can figure out what's wrong. They tell me it should only take a day or two, but I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this causes.

Blogger Up & Down

Blogger is having some problems and has lost or erased some of my posts (since it's Friday the 13th, I guess that's to be expected.) While I'm waiting to recover what's missing, here's a look at some new German edition cover art (click on image to see larger version):



Be back once my host works out the bugs.