Technology

I am so very pleased with myself

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

I have conquered the technology in my house.  Bearing in mind that I no longer have in-house tech support (and, in fact, that the same tech support designed the system and that I didn’t really know what was involved), this is a Big Deal.

Email from said ex-tech support were involved in order to explain the system, but still I had to reset the puppycam, the wireless bridges, the main router, and the Audiotron.  Then I reconfigured the Audiotron to use a local source for its internet radio stations (nice tool provided online here to create the necessary file — many thanks to Jon00 in the UK), ran all the scripts to change permissions, copied over all the files and restarted everything.  Thanks to thebroomecloset for helping me test.

It all works!  Everything works!  And I took a fresh backup in case everything ceases working again!  Yah me!

Calling all geeks

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

Ok, I’m at my wit’s end. I have spent the better part of several months now trying to figure out an install problem. I have a legit (Dad gave me for Christmas) copy of Photoshop and it won’t finish the install process. I’ve tried manually uninstalling (including touching the dreaded RegEdit), installing from the hard drive, installing as a new user, etc.

I think the problem is that Jeff upgraded a lot of my hardware over the holidays and something has gotten messed up in the system. I *think* I need to do a Repair Install (and I even have an OEM XP disc that I borrowed from a friend), but “Repair Install” isn’t an option on the disc. (Even if it were I think I’d be leery of trying it myself, ’cause I know my machine is oddly configured [something about the boot drive being different, maybe?] and I’d be afraid it wouldn’t work again.

Help. I am officially stuck (and, yes, it’s pissing me off). I’ll buy you dinner, take you to a movie, (heck, I’ll even COOK you dinner) if you can help me figure this out.

(help?)

Failing is not as bad when it’s not your fault :-)

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So, last night, in an attempt to lessen the quantity of “broken” I set about to disassemble a large-ish portion of my car interior in order to replace the failed iPod hookup.

First I removed the “downtubes” (plasticy pieces that cover the middle upright supports for the dash)  — far more complicated than it sounds *and* required use of “force it”! —  then removed the head unit.  Plugged in the wiring harness and tested it and …

no love.

Removed the fuse for the radio (in the process dropping the fuse into a deep dark hole… thank heavens for spares) in order to reset radio so it could “find” iPod…

still no love.

Called Tom at EAS (nice, nice guy — thoroughly recommend ordering from them!) and he had me take some pics of the back of the unit so he could check wiring.

He called me back just now — turns out that the cradle connector had changed (same number of pins, but different config) and that’s why the replacement module was working.  I had even suspected I didn’t have the same model as everyone else, as I’d ordered my original iPod hookup *right* after they started making them (again, with the woes of the Early Adopter) — yah me!

New cradle on way.  Head unit temporarily stuffed back into hole in dash.  Report to follow.

My favorite sentence ever:

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From http://www.crmlowdown.com/:

Thus firms have realized that connectivity needed to stretch beyonde-mails or so. ADERANT wants to address secure data exchange mechanismwithout connectivity botheration, which would support offline capture,online retrieval and synchronization of data.

How much do I love the word “botheration”?

My life is full of botheration!

My letter to PayPal

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Dear Paypal,

Today I received an email from your regarding fraud and how it could be avoided. I double-checked the source of the email, then followed the link to your article on Paypal spoofs, from which I followed another link to the “10 ways to recognize fake (spoof) emails” article,” which launched in a pop-up window.

How ironic that #9 in the list in the pop-up window was:

“Pop-up boxes. PayPal will never use a pop-up box in an email as pop-ups are not secure”

I recognize the difference between a pop-up in an email (which this was not) and a pop-up on a web page (which this was), but *in the context* of giving people information to make them suspicious *and* knowing that people often skim lists like this (and would therefore skip right over the “in an email” bit), it seems to me that putting this information in a pop-up is likely to cause needless worry, and perhaps even cause people to discount your good advice as spoofing.

My $.02, YMMV, of course.

WANTING!!!

/ lintqueen / 4 Comments

iRobot Scooba

oh my. Perhaps a little flying duster next, and my life would be complete.

/ lintqueen / 2 Comments

Via trillian42 and repeated here ’cause one day I’ll want to find it:  Tact Filters.

Updates

/ lintqueen / 2 Comments

yowsa.  Apparently, it also understands how to do actions that are in the program window.  For example, I use Semagic to post my blog entries.  When I said “post entry”, it understood that I meant to post the entry to LiveJournal.

Okay, okay.  Enough being amazed by technology.

Knee updates:
the pain, for the most part, is much better.  I’m down to taking one OxyContin (time released version of oxycodone) at night, and lots and lots of ibuprofen during the day (which will help with the swelling, I’m told.)  I am doing my physical therapy, though honestly not as much as I probably should. (It hurts). Next week, I see Dr. Higgins again, and hopefully at that time he’ll clear me to unlock the leg brace, which might mean I’ll be able to drive again.

Other than the pain, the helplessness and trapped feeling that results from being unable to leave the house has been the worst part of this.  Most of the time, I’m really happy to be an extrovert, but times like this, I wish I could be happy just sitting at home “with time to myself”.  Again, counting my blessings, I really was out of it for the first week and a half (if you called me and I don’t remember it, don’t be offended… it’s because I’m not remembering anything from that time… sorry), so the passage of time wasn’t so excruciatingly slow then, but the last two weeks time has dripped by like molasses that’s been cooled in the fridge for several months.  All of this has been exacerbated by the fact that most of my normal craft pursuits are impossible in my limited mobility state.  The sewing machine — she is upstairs.  The stamps and paints and grommets and scissors — they are upstairs.  The beads, they are downstairs.  However, they are in a place where non-bendy leg space makes them inaccessible.  Oh so sad.  Plus, beads really need to be done over a desk or table or some other flatness, which my lap is not, so that they don’t all goes skittering away.

So that leaves me with knitting, which is well and good as I like knitting; however, I don’t yet have the mental stamina to tackle anything more complex than going round and round and round in a circle.  So I’m making a purse to be felted.  I had run out of black wool, but thankfully, my friend Kim is coming over tonight and bringing both Chinese food (yah!) and black wool.  And company.  Blessed, blessed company.

Dictation software

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

As most of you know, I hate typing.  This is probably the single most important reason that I don’t update my blog very often.  All day, every day at work, I type, and by the end of the day I am just plain sick of it.

… and my fingers hurt (moan and whine)

So, this is a test.  I have bought Dragon Naturally Speaking Version 8.  I am attempting to to dictate this entry, though I’ve had to cheat twice.  I’m not sure yet how to make Dragon soft used to my parenthetical statements, as they seem to be confusing it.

That being said, for the most part, the bloody sucker seems to be working very very well.  Many moons ago, I had purchased a speech recognition software package, but it didn’t work at all.

I still have to talk more slowly than I would normally, but that’s not saying a lot since I’ve been told.  I speak to quickly anyway.  It’s probably not a bad thing for me to learn to enunciate and speak more slowly, at least when I want to.

Theoretically, this will get better the longer I go on as long as I’m patient with correcting it, which I will try to be.  At least it doesn’t sass me.  ;-)

Color me astonished.  It knows what I mean when I say quote “winky-face“