A Little Monkey and Tails.

I had this cute munchkin visit me yesterday for a bit. Her father (my nephew) was passing through.  He and his wife have a set up where he takes this little one to visit his friends from around where he grew up (they have children also) for the week-end, and her older son (from another relationship) goes to his father's grandparent's for the week-end - resulting in the Mom getting 2 days all to herself. They call it a mental health day (or something similar). I think that is wonderful! Although I am not positive when my nephew gets any totally alone time.

She is the cutest little 3 year old and she climbed the neighbor's swing set/fort like a little monkey.

I am going to try harder to post more often. I have so many things I can do on-line that almost all of my time is spent sitting here at the computer. Almost everything I do can help me in my job in one way or the other. Helping people is still one of the biggest areas in my life for me. Online, I am a reader of redd!t and have several divisions that I read to see if I can help. I also get several ideas and tips from readers to benefit myself.

Just last evening I was reading the area about Tor (The Onion Router). This one has been an example I use when I am instructing the techs about the filter. Most of them have no idea what it is, or how it works. Sigh. But that is an entire book in itself and if you know me, you are probably aware that I can get very long winded when I start talking tech.

Anyway, the user mentioned Tails.  I had not heard or read about this one. So, I had to investigate and of course I had to have it. For testing purposes and to present to the techs how end  users (the savvy ones) are getting around the filter in the schools and endangering their network.

I had to find 2 USB sticks with 4 GB available. (I had always referred to them as flash drives, but I kind of like this term). So I did have one empty 4 GB one (how did THAT happen?), and the other had just back up data on it - so I moved that to one of my external HDDs.

So, I started this new endeavor.  Four hours later I went to bed. LOL!  I am learning a lot, but I am also being very, very cautious. I have screwed up my system before trying this stuff and I should have known not to start this after 9 p.m. I was much too tired to think this through and follow long, intricate instructions.

It is one of those deals where you are going through the steps one at at time, and you come across the step that reads "If you don't have such and such, click here to set that up (or install it). So, you follow that link and you start installing that program. You get halfway through the steps and you come across another one that reads "If you have never installed such and such before, you need to change this or that before you can enable it". And I follow the link to THAT site. It went about 4 sites deep and I was getting very tired.

Well, it didn't work my first go round. But hey, I did learn a lot. And, I will try again today. Maybe. Of course I will - I am too excited to get this puppy on a flash drive and see what I can do with it in my work environment so I can bring it to their attention to watch out for this work around.

I run into the techs who have the attitude "So, what? They are always going to find a way around the filter. I can't stop them all."  This might be true, but I can see that he/she has given up the fight. This saddens me. Yes, there will always be a rogue student who knows so much about technology that he will consider this a challenge (sometimes they don't mean harm, they just want the ego boost that they were able to beat the system) and brag to his friends and share his knowledge.

But once in a while, guys......once in a blue moon - I get a tech who gets that look in his eye, the "Oh really?" look and they write this down. They hopefully are going to take action to block or attempt to block this activity in his or her district.

And that is why I do it. That is why I share what I know with others. I want to make the schools safer for the students. It may be a losing battle, but I can't just say "Screw it. Let 'em see it. They're gonna see it anyway."  Well, I'd prefer them NOT to see it in an educational environment. In other words "Not on MY watch."

Did anybody watch the movie "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?"  You know how I love my movies and I have so many I can talk about. I like Tina Fey in MOST of her movies. I am not a HUGE fan, but at least she does not make me cringe. For this movie, they delicately add humor to a horrifying situation that so many live through. But then there was MASH. I know the humor was exaggerated, and there were only a few times when the show brought us back to the reality of the horror of war.

It is slowly coming back to me. I had trouble remembering my password today. I had trouble finding spell check. But it is coming back. I need to go and ready all of YOUR posts this past year (or has it been longer) to see what is going on with you.

I have a lot more to write (tell). This year seemed to be a bad one for cancer hitting my friends. They are fighting the fight. A lot of little children in my family. I always like that. I was the youngest of 8, and I was 12 years old before any of my siblings had a baby. They then came thick and fast, but that first grandchild (for my Mom) and first nephew (for me) was doted on. My sister was the type who packed up her husband and baby and drove 50 miles one way EVERY week-end to stay with us (at my Mom's house). And on Sunday evenings drive 50 miles back.  Well, her husband drove. Her husband did everything for her. Nice in some ways, but over the years (as she has told us) it can be very smothering. We used to chide my sister when the gas stations changed over to self-serve. She had ALL the gas stations marked out who would pump the gas for you. It was ages before she was able to pump her own gas. I'm not sure she can, even now. Hmmmmm..... LOL!

Discreet

I may have mentioned a week or so ago about some techs having issue with a new feature our organization's filter has. It is a reporting feature. A school tech can run several reports to see what is going on in their network. At a school district you want to stay on top of things.

Here is my dilemma. I have to learn about the report features so that I can tell our techs that they have this, this and that available to them. So  I run plenty of reports to see what they are.

In doing so, there is one school district, the end user is logged in as an Administrator and several hundred hits are searches for p0rn.

Now, this is where I have to be discreet. The first thing I did was to run a report on just that end user for the past seven days and hand it over to my superior.

Remember - this could be an Admin user who is not logging off of their machine and a student is doing all the searching. Or, the student may have stolen the login credentials. The searches are very young-ish school age searches. The age of the girls searched for etc.

Now, what will be interesting to me is to see what my superiors instruct me to do. Of course, I am not the person to do anything as far as the school goes, but do they want me to continue to turn over this type of report or am I to turn a blind eye?

I mean - nobody was doing this for the dozen or so years before we purchased this feature. This feature was not purchased to do this. It was purchased to make the lives of our district techs easier. The tech should be the one pulling this type of report but this is all new - we are still in a testing phase.

Every end users signed an Acceptable use policy.

Here is my view. If the admin is viewing p0rn during school hours on a school owned computer - they need to stop and possibly be reprimanded. If a student is using the computer under the Admin's login - that needs to stop. Either way - to me - it needs to be addressed.

What I will really hate (and this is what I expect) is that it will be totally ignored. As if I did  not even send the message. Time will tell.

Just a "J"

I am on a tech list serve and today the entire list received a message with just the letter "J" in it. Well, most of them did, anyway.

Do folks who use Outlook (Express) even realize that their smiley icons show up as just the letter "J" if the receiver does not use their brand of e-mail application?

I have received several "J"s in my e-mails.  ☺

Secede

I have worked with computers and people for years. YEARS.

I have been praised up one side and down the other for my teaching ability and my demeanor when training or explaining how to do something.

I always thought I was stellar in this respect.

I love what I do and I genuinely want to help people.

Yesterday, Wachte1 has proven me wrong.

Yesterday,  I seceded the session over to her.

Her ability to play dumb to win has completely squashed my ability to succeed in getting a program to work. Now, this is over the telephone.

If I were sitting right there at her laptop, it would have worked.

Me thinks she was blocking our success for whatever reason. I have worked long enough to recognize when somebody is playing dumb about what they are actually doing on a computer.

At one point she has no idea how to do something, but forty minutes later she did that (and more) with no prompting from me.

Hmmmmmm.

Towards the dock

This is the opposite view from the Lighthouse photo from yesterday. The sun was setting quickly and I did not have much time left.

Here is what I have been dealing with this week. Tweaked a paragraph from a Micr0$0ft training course (some poetic license has been used on my part):

The name of the GPT folder is the GUID of the
GPO that you created. It is identical to the GUID
that AD uses to identify the GPO in the GPC. The
path to the GPT on a DC is a PITA.

Seriously? The verbiage is not too far off. This is how they write the course.

On a funny note, I heard this in the move "Think Like a Man". Three rings in a relationship. Engagement ring, wedding ring and suffeRING. LOL!

Another world

I had my head stuck in subnetting at work yesterday. It took my mind off all the other problems I was having. When dealing with this it is like you stick your head into this big tree that is full of leaves and you can see nothing else around you until you pull your head out of that tree. That was how it was for me. Very intense.Four long hours with one bathroom break.

The tech on the other end of the phone was super fantastic. We started off slow because I did not know what to expect and neither did he. By the time we were done he and I had shared dog stories and we were laughing and calling each other awesome.

I actually only had him on the phone for maybe two and a half hours. The first hour was prep work on my part. The last half hour was pack up and get out of there.

Yes, my head hurt by the time I was done. It may have been from no lunch. This tech is on the west coast so we began at 11 a.m. my time and finished at 3. I did have a helper - he ran and bought me a bottle of water during the marathon.

I was not "properly" trained. I have never been to formal schooling or training for computers. I have been to a few week-long classes - mostly two to three day classes. I did learn the hexadecimal numbering system - on my own. I  did not need it for work - for some reason that one just clicked with me.

As for subnetting, I did write a paper on it back in 1997 or 1998. I understand it, I just cheat and use an online calculator. I do not know how to figure it out in my head. Yet. I may learn, still.

In high school I was the artist or the short story writer. I managed B's in math but I only took as much as I would need to get into college. First level algebra and geometry. Nothing higher. It made me sick to my stomach. So did the teachers. Then, I did not even go to college. To this day I have not come across a math teacher that I liked. I did pick up a college refresher course (when I thought I would go to college back in 1992). His name was Lovejoy Das. I sort of liked him. He was from India. He said as a boy they used to do math problems in the dirt with a stick. WTF? I would have drawn pictures in the dirt.

Anyway, the day (yesterday) ended with a huge success.  I (we) pulled off a minor miracle as far as I was concerned. I had no idea how to set this unit onto the network and we did it. It required the wonderful world of subnetting, but I did not give up. I figured out the necessary changes and they worked. By god - they worked. It certainly made me feel better than the last few days of holy horror I have been through with another district. I have another job today and I am going to try my hardest to be successful with that also. Then tomorrow - back to the horror mess. Who knows? Maybe I will hit them out of the park all week. LOL!

My headache. I did take some Advil. By the "bewitching" hour of 9 p.m. it was completely gone. I have mentioned before that strangely, a lot of my headaches seem to dissipate by 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. By the time I went to bed I felt wonderful. I had taken a sinus Advil maybe that was the ticket.

Empty

Nothing, I've got nothing. The photo above was taken at the work parking lot when I saw cloud reflection in the Volkswagen beetle parked next to me.

Seriously though, I have had nothing to write about. Have not read any blogs - I am so far behind. Either my week has been very boring or very busy. I can't decide because I can't remember. I know that I worked on my brother's computer yesterday and nearly rendered the darn thing useless. There was so much wrong each time I tried to fix something, I found a new problem I had to fix before I could continue and I never even got to any original problems. Sheesh.

Just plodding along. I have to go and read all your blogs now because I can't remember the last time I did. I don't know if I am running out of steam or if this is just a lull.

Wait, it's coming back to me. I had a busy week. Ah.

Whoops!

When I comment on somebodys' post and I am not logged into Google, I get this error. I have then - lost my entire comment. I have gotten (I hate using that word) into the habit of saving my comment before I post so that when I do get the error, I can log in - and  re-comment by just pasting it in.

What a pain!

Bloggers are bailing out of blogspot.com to wordpress like rats running from a sinking ship.

http://welcomeyoutomyworld.wordpress.com/

Celebration

However you celebrate it  (Independence Day) - have a good one.

As for me - quiet today.

A crew is coming in on Saturday (the 7th) to grill. I told them I was not 'doing' the fourth this year. Sigh. They said they will bring everything. Go for it.

I am on some new medication for migraines. And am scheduled for an MRI. I called earlier in the week when I got yet another headache. They are not full blown migraines but my quality of life really sucks. I am trying to find a solution to this "staying home and staying quiet all summer" theme that I have committed myself to. Until I find out what the hell is causing this or what is going on, I am laying low. If it is menopause then I may just have to deal with it until it all passes, but I am not taking it laying down. I will fight but only when I can muster up the energy to do so. I look like shit.

The ones coming in this week-end do not get headaches. I love them and I hope I do not get grouchy. Screw fire works. I hate the noise.

Okay, enough for the negativity. My new med is for seizures but also is believed to help with migraines. Anticonvulsant. Two days in and so far so good. Time will tell. I am certain the MRI will tell nothing, but at least I'll have gotten it out of the way. They seriously asked me if I had any pins or bolts in my head. Really? What am I? Frankenstein? I said the only metal I had were teeth fillings and my mouth is full of that. That is another story. Welfare children do not get to pick much from the dentist arena. Every dentist I have been to since I turned 20 has cursed the dentist that pulled one of my molars at 12 years old.

Okay - back to quiet. Seriously - have a good one. Grill outside if you must but get back into the shade or the Air or a big blue pool. God Bless America. And anything/anybody else who wants to bless us. Every one.

I think I'll go online and try to find an American song by Andy Griffith. I like to hear him sing.

Oh, and wonder of wonders. My computer sputtered on me this morning. I swear! Every fourth of July or close to it (you can go back in my archives and look for yourself) this damn computer crashes. WTF? It is back up and running but it gave me a good scare. I immediately backed up a lot of stuff. I am running out of external hard drive space. Prices are coming down, I think I'll get a 2 TB one.  Newegg has a WD for $129.

Time

Time to do some cleaning on my keyboard at work.

Trauma

The first move that I ever watched in a theater (to the best of my knowledge) was a comedy called "Monkeys Go Home".  Disney, funny, entertaining to a (then) seven year old. I was with other siblings, I don't recall all that went, but I do know my older brother (1953) was there and I felt safe and happy. All was good. We were kids on our own while my Mom and older sister did some business downtown so we sat right down in the front row, because we didn't know any better. :)

The second movie I ever watched in a theater (to the best of my knowledge) scared the bejesus out of me. I would have been eight years old by now and having filled up my days with stick horses, baby dolls and Dick and Jane books, my oldest brother (1942) decided to take my (1957) brother and me to see "2001: A Spacey Odyssey."  I know by today's standards this movie (rated G, by the way) is so low on the horror and scary scale it is beyond ridiculous. But in 1968 to a small girl who could barely keep her eyes open through a Twilight Zone episode and mostly watched the westerns with her dad, I was wracked with fear.

I came away from that theater with a memory of looking at the aisle lights. I recall seeing beautiful red lamps that were high up on the wall (a dim light to help people find their way, I suppose). Now, as I think about it - they probably looked an awful lot like HAL.

Who remembers or knows what relationship the letters HAL has with an infamous computer brand? Kind of neat. Many years later in a training session in Pittsburgh, I found out about a similar naming of computer related acronyms.

Finger surgery... what finger surgery?

For some cruel reason my body decides to conjure up every pain it could think of. If it were just the procedure of removing the cyst I would not need any pain medication. My shoulder pain shows up about every two days. It wakes me up in the early morning and I can barely move as I stumble my way to the Advil bottle and recently the Vicodin. I manage to wrap the heating pad over my hurting shoulder and bury myself in my TV chair until an hour or so passes and I can finally move without sounding like an animal caught in a claw trap.

After a couple of days with the shoulder pain, my right wrist begins to feel like it had been twisted backwards and also begins to complain. I found this wrap and managed to wrap it around the wrist so I can type. What the hell is going on? I feel as if I am falling apart.

I fixed about three dishes for my family Thanksgiving get together. My daughter did come over. She did help me. She did all my dishes. She mixed the cheese ball mixture and found out how hard it was to stir it. She sliced up all of my cheese for the cheese tray.

As I pulled into my sister's house, my nephew and his wife pulled in behind. They jumped out of their van and demanded that I go into the house - they would unload my car. I protested, but caught myself. "Let them, let them." 

All day long family asked me about my finger. When I told them it was actually my shoulder, I got shoulder rub after shoulder rub. All day! The shoulder was not in it's severe pain (I cannot stand anybody or anything touching it when it hurts like that) but during it's down time, I can bear the rubbing.

I was a hit with the new baby. He really likes me. I "hogged" him.  I had lots to be thankful for.

There is a baby shower on Sunday. I have to make 50of these:

Aren't they adorable? Except mine will have blue ribbons of course. I had hoped that we could get a start on them Thanksgiving day, but it did not happen. You cut out the bottom of a Styrofoam cup (my apologies for not being very green, here), cut slits to create the tongue, punch holes and begin with the ribbons.

I am not exactly certain how I am going to tie those little bows, but I will figure it out.

So, I woke up this morning and not only does my arm hurt - but my legs would not move without significant pain. I attribute this to walking around the mall yesterday (to find cute baby stuff for the shower) and walking around two grocery stores. I had my cart full at the first one and needed help finding two items. There was no help to be found. I finally tracked down a guy stocking shelves. He was rude and just kept telling me "We don't carry that!" I returned all my items and walked out of that store and drove to another where not only did I find all my items, I saw lots of workers in the store that were more than happy to give me help.

I had banned that first store for five years before for a very similar reason. I will probably stay away another five years again.

I did manage to make it through the day without beating up any grandfathers. Good Gawd!

This morning I stumbled out of bed, swallowed Advil and Vicodin - wrapped myself in my heating pad and my TV chair. It took a good hour but I was finally able to get up and get out to walk the dogs. The strange thing is, after the meds wear off, I do not have as much pain. I may require only a couple of Advil later - but nothing like the pain when I first wake up. Of course, I probably just jinxed it.

Well, my daughter is out of town this week-end and my sisters live too far away. I am on my own. I have a sinkful of dirty dishes (cannot get my finger wet) so I will be using my leaking dish washer. Oh, well.

Time to go and look for my glue gun. I found one of my camera battery chargers and have taken pics, but my usb ports all fried in my computer months ago, so I cannot download them, whereas with my phone I can e-mail them to myself and get them on here.

Maybe Santa will bring me a new USB card?

Need to retrain myself

The above photo is taken from the internets. Not my kitchen. Mine was much worse. Heh, heh. Anyway, I need to retrain myself. Why is it that when we have a dishwasher we tend to "waste" dishes? "Who cares?" I would ask - "use another plate/glass/fork....I have a dishwasher!"

Yikes. Dishwasher is  now leaking and I must stop using it until I get if fixed. IF I get it fixed. With just me in the house should I even bother? I finally got caught up on my dishes today. It must have been that extra hour, I don't know. I was kicking myself. I told myself 'Look  here,  you have to conserve dishes now. This is a P.I.T.A.' Well, it was more like a pain in the lower back because that is where it gets me with the height of my sink when standing washing dishes. Ugh! 

Six hours yesterday with the techs in California and I am happy to report that the filter for my area schools is functioning again! YAY! I called tech support at 1:00 p.m. They finally called me back at 3:30. While waiting I began to study the log files. I found that I could tell the exact hour that the filter began to have problems. I also noted this was the same hour that a filter tech had applied a hotfix to our appliance. I told them that and mentioned the fact that I had the numbers on reports to prove it, and "voila" they removed the hotfix and all is well. Okay...when I asked the tech for details he would not commit to removing the hotfix. He said that they removed a binary that was applied on the day after the hotfix. My ass!

Come Monday if all is working well, I will discuss this with my manger to see if she wants to lay into them or if she wants me to lay into them. I will have to fill out a customer satisfaction report. Funny thing. Sometimes when it is a problem that goes on like this they mysteriously do not send out an automatic survey. Heh, heh.

Malware mindset

Above is a map I lifted from the Internet. You can read the article here.

First of all, let me reiterate the fact that I am by no means an expert on the issue. I don't claim to be. What I do tend to be is patient and capable of explaining technical jargon into laymen terms. That is what folks say to me. That I explain things to them that they can more readily understand.

How many of you (especially those of you still working) run across a tech person who rolls their eyes and snorts when they see you using the computer or come to help you with a problem? It sort of makes it hard to ask them for help again, doesn't  it?

I truly want to help people. I truly empathize with the average end user. I've made some crazy mistakes with the computer and I never put anybody down. For a tech person to help an end user and "LORD" over them is rude and just shows how ignorant they really are. Disclaimer: I do rib friends and family. I can't help it. That is who I am. I laugh "with" them - never AT them.

Now, for the mindset. I feel that this topic is too massive to bore you to tears with one post. So my first post will be about your mindset. Fear. Fear of the unknown.

Let us step back into the past and think of the automobile. When it first came out on the market. Did anybody foresee all the accidents that would happen 100 years later with the advent of this machine that we cannot live without? Once you start driving a car, do you just say - "Oh, it's too dangerous, I am going to quit."  Not likely. Of course there are the few that do stop, but it is not common. Once we begin driving we are hooked. It is a necessity to live in our part of the world. 

The computer seems to have become a necessity, also. Like it or not. A lot of folks would say "Buy a Mac - then all your (virus/malware) problems will disappear."  Again, not likely. Reverting back to my automobile analogy what if people told you "Buy a diesel, your fuel pump problems will be a thing of the past!"  How many of us would ditch our gasoline-fueled vehicles and opt for a diesel? Eh? Yeah. That's what I thought. If everybody purchased a Mac (Apple product) then the devious attackers would just focus on a way to infiltrate that machine. Thieves find a way.

This ends my first post on malware. Your mindset. Is there a solution? Not likely. Just as there is no solution to the vehicle accidents that happen all the time. Your best defense is to be vigilant. You take a risk each time you drive your car. You take a higher risk if you drive your car without insurance. If you run your computer without anti-virus you are being foolish. I am not convinced that the "free" anti-virus programs are worth the risk. I could be wrong. I purchase Norton Anti-virus religiously and update it. I purchase the 3-pack license and put it on all my computers. Note: I am not an advocate of their 360 product, however they may have improved it since I ran it on my machine.

McAfee/Kaspersky/Sophos/Trend Micro and many other products are surely just as good. I prefer Norton because that is what I was first exposed to when I began working with personal computers. Problems? Sure. But they were ironed out and Norton went above and beyond to help me and then they throw in an extra 100 days or something equivalent to compensate you for your trouble. That's kind of hard to beat in my book.

With that being said - a virus is different from malware. Your better antivirus programs will protect against both.

To be continued.

HP TouchSmart = Epic Fail!

Here is a picture of the box. We took it out of the box and NO hdmi port. nada. None. Nil. Zilch. After a few calls to HP - they stated that the hdmi needs to be a special order. They said they could not control what was on the outside of the box. When I complained about the box, Natalie attempted to connect me to the Phillippines. That is where I would have to lodge a complaint. Needless to say the call got disconnected in the transfer. Surprised? Me, neither.

Epic Fail to Best Buy salesman, too. Not a clue. No idea. Each one I spoke with was "What? There is no hdmi port? Are you sure?" They wanted to see for themselves so we took it back. All of it for a full refund. They had to see for themselves that the box read hdmi digital input. Nobody on the phone would believe us. Try harder Best Buy. My daughter says it is not their fault that HP has false advertising on their box. Whatever.

We purchased the Sony make believe. This purchase increased the processor but we lost the TV tuner. Not a problem, my daughter didn't care much about that. A tuner adapter can be added any time. As long as she got the hdmi. Sony has the input AND the output hdmi. Take that, HP. You only offer the input. Put a sock in it.

My daughter draws with PhotoShop on the touch screen. HP had the nice braking feature on the monitor, but hey - you bombed out, hp. We ditched you. Epic Fail HP, epic.

Drawing

My daughter likes to draw. I did to. I still doodle, but do not do much serious drawing. I really need to get back into it. I purchased a tablet for her a few years back. Now, I have helped her to set up purchasing the HP Touchsmart. We will see how it goes.

Nugget

I remember these. Little nuggets of gum. I loved 'em. 

I am so-o-o tired. I can't stay focused. I have been either working on a computer or in a computer all day today. My hands are all scratched up and nicked up. Like a Saturday mechanic with busted knuckles. I am brain dead. Time to go and find a pillow. Especially since I have to keep backspacing over my misspelled words and re-type them.

Oh, hey. Has anybody out there ever worked with vi editor? Ain't it a bitch? I don't have to use it much anymore and I forget from one time to the next what the commands are.  I need to read THIS tutorial before I work in it the next time. Yes, there are easier editing tools, but I could not load them until I changed two files on the Ubuntu box and to do that without gedit or any other easy editor, I had to resort to vi. Good grief! I mean, just take a look at the guy who wrote it!

WWBD

A blast (of snow) from the past.

I am not pictured in the photo above. I would have been 3  years old. I was probably inside eating playing with my brothers' trucks.

The photo is taken either by my Mom or sister 1944. Brother 1942 was off in the AF during this time. I think. I don't know.

He and sister 1944 are having computer problems.

You get an update or do something or the power goes out and your computer needs to/ or has to restart. You get  a black screen with one line of text. Windows cannot start because the blah.dll file is missing or corrupt. What do you do?

WWBD? What would Bill do (as in Bill Gates)? I know what Bill wants you to do. He wants to you run out and purchase the latest and greatest version of Window available. Preferably the Ultimate Professional edition of his OS and install it and begin using it.

My brother came close to hauling it off to the nearest repair center. He does not have very much patience (although he is very thorough and diligent).

After finding the installation disk I was finally able to walk him through installing a new version of XP onto his spare hard drive we purchased a month or two ago.  We would have repaired the Windows that was on drive C: but he did not recall his Admin password. Oops. After we installed a new version of XP on the D: drive my sister found the folder with the lost password. Figures. Heh, heh. Murphy's law and all.

We get that installed and I advise him to call the cable provider to have them set him up with Internet access. They can give  him all the numbers he needs to plug in, etc.. I also warned him about the time it would take the system to update that version of XP (four years of updates can take a while) once he does get back on-line.

The tech with the cable company says that he needs a new driver and a new cable and he will have to go to the nearest (insert greedy cable company name here) center and purchase them before he can get him access to the Internet. They probably did that when they first set him up... but who knows where that update is, now. What cracks me up is they told him he now needs an Ethernet cable to the cable modem (which I thought he was using)... whatever.. I guess he connects USB to the modem? Yikes.

Anyway, I was walking him through trying to access Word/Excel files and the phone kept cutting out. They have cable/Internet/telephone all through the (insert greedy cable company name here). My sister (who lives with him) let him use her cell phone and he told me he had enough of computer troubleshooting and was going to give it a rest after he called (insert greedy cable company name here) and got the phones and cable television working again.

Wow. What really scared me was how lost they were w/out the Internet. I would be lost, but I have four computers and two cell phones in the house that can access the Internet. I also have four machines at work, plus access to a lab of 25 computers that can access the Internet.

What do we do if the Internet goes away? Or collapses? Or the traffic gets so bogged down we can't move? When mine goes out I revert to reading the newspaper, etc... I know this subject has been beaten to death, but seriously what would YOU do if you lost your Internet access? And it wasn't coming back anytime soon.

My sister drove to Akron (her daughter's house) to check her e-mail (she needed a count for cookies she was baking for a Christmas lunch) and to take my daughter's dog out, also. E-Mail was not the only reason. :)

I had set her up with e-mail on her daughters' PC when she stayed there after her daughter's surgery. She did not know how to access her e-mail anywhere else but at home. My brother had set her up so that all she had to do was to click an icon and it opened Outlook Express and she went from there. Imagine me showing her (insert greedy cable company name here)'s webmail and trying to explain to her how Outlook pulls e-mail off the cable company's mail server and places it on the PC hard drive at her house. So that when she goes to her daughter's house and accesses her e-mail she can no longer see her messages. Where did they go? She did get it though after I drew pictures. Seriously. I do that for everybody when I explain things. I think it helps.

Now, I am trying to explain that to my brother when I suggested that once he does set her back up with her e-mail to not set up Outlook Express because she is always going places. To visit family, motels, libraries and she checks her e-mails at their computers. He is not getting it. Of course he has a lot on his plate right now. And I was not there to draw pictures. ;)

I told him tomorrow. Tomorrow I could work with them some more. Between Thanksgiving and New Years I do not have a lot of time. I am late already. I am supposed to have about a dozen things done this morning to get ready for today and I have not done a one. Sigh.

A Broken Shortcut

General shortcut

Do you know what to do  if a shortcut on your desktop is broken? What I mean is, if you double-click the shortcut and you get a message similar to "can't find...path has moved..." something along those lines.

I had an episode yesterday where the network guy at a school called me to say that the school Treasurer was not able to access the "name of the software that enables her to work with the state database".

I worked with him to troubleshoot over the phone and all it was- was a broken shortcut.

I talked him through the steps of how to go to Start, All Programs, Name of the Software, and begin the program that way.

I also walked him through how to right-mouse-click on the Name of the Software from the menu and send a shortcut to the desktop. (After deleting the broken one).

I was just a little bit perplexed that the guy they have hired to work on their school district network was not aware that this is what needed to be done if a shortcut did not work. A regular end user, I can understand. But the tech guy?!

Above are the steps I would take to put the Solitaire game shortcut onto my desktop. The Games menu with Hearts, Internet Backgammon, etc... is where I used the right-mouse-click option once I hovered over Solitaire to get the Options menu. Then back to the left mouse button when I  hovered the mouse over "Send To" option. It gets a little tricky for new users to try and figure out when to use the right mouse button and when to use the left mouse button. And sorry, but the directions here are for XP only. Not Vista or Windows 7.

You can usually tell it is a shortcut because it has the little white square with the black curved arrow in it. Although, there are exceptions. I once had a little program I found that actually removes that white box with the black arrow. What kind of TIME did I have on my hands back then?!

And,  hell! I didn't even KNOW there was such a thing as Internet Checkers!

The "out of gas" story

My brother (1942) and I went to shop yesterday for an extra internal hard drive for his computer. He has  a 160 GB and it was getting full. He deleted stuff and cleaned it up, but thought he should still add one. That's where I come in. I went to his house, we opened up the PC, gave it a good cleaning. I made sure there was a cable for the extra drive - power, yes. Cable for data - no. His was SATA (like mine) and I just did mine (wait, how many times? LOL!).

Leaving the store and in the parking lot a nice young lady asked me "Can I ask you a question?"  Besides the fact that she just did, I said "Yes."  She began, "I ran out of gas...." and pointed across the parking lot. I snorted (or something to that effect) and shook my head. "No way!" I said.

She said "Oh, okay."  As I walked away I told my brother   "I'm not falling for THAT one!"

In the car I explained to him that just this past month both our brother 1953 and his wife's niece were ripped off by somebody claiming to have run out of gas. They both gave the guy money (his wife and kids were still in the car out on the freeway, for goodness sake!) and never saw it again. The stories are much more complex, but you get the idea.

Then they told me there were crack addicts walking around (the city my brother lives in) the parking lots telling the woeful store of running out of gas, so they could score some drug money. When we got home and told our sister 1944, she said "That's a shame. Those people are ruining it for people who actually do need help."

Well, I told my story on facebook and wouldn't you know... a friend of mine said "That was my cousin, and she really DID run out of gas!"  I apologized and told her why I did what I did. I also told her (and my sister) it was strange because this girl did not look like a drug addict (but who am I to  know what one looks like?). She had nice hair and clothes and she looked healthy.

So I have learned a lesson. I should at least listen to the person before I make such a harsh judgement again. I should have said "I have my cell phone, can I call somebody for you?"  I know better than to hand my phone over to them. 

I also was a bit perplexed by the way she started her story. My reasoning was (before I discovered that she was my friend's cousin) was that 1. - who does not have a cell phone with them? (I know some folks don't but it is rare).  2. If I ran out of gas, I would not ask people if I could ask them a question, I would just blurt out - "Can you help me?" or "Do you have a cell phone, can you call somebody for me?"  - my first words out of my mouth would be "I ran out of gas".  Of course I probably would have stopped her right there, but if you need assistance, I don't know - I don't think  you start out with "Can I ask you a question?"  That is more like starting a conversation about "Is this restaurant any good, or do you know the directions to somewhere?" Or even worse - 'Who are you voting for and can I give you my opinion on the candidates?' Yikes.

So, next time (if there is a next time) I will listen first and let my instincts tell me if that person in need  IS on the up and up. I still remember Tabor's story about the nice looking lady in the drug store.

And a quick recap on yesterday's post about facebook in the classroom, here is a page that I thought has some pretty good pointers.  http://www.heppell.net/facebook_in_school/.