Lack of Posts Not My Fault

My computer is dying. For the last three days, it wouldn't boot. Posting may be even more sporadic than usual until I can replace my PC. Tonight, after 7 tries in a row, it decided to allow me access. How nice of it!


~~~o0o~~~

New Addition

Her name is Ruby (for no particular reason other than I like the name) and she's an HP netbook, much more convenient for travel than a heavier and larger laptop.

On the TV front, Stargate Universe and the season premiere of Sanctuary rocked tonight.

Feeling: stressed

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: netbooks

Cyber Sundae

Hanna blew in, dumped a lot of rain, and blew out, and today is gorgeous, but I stayed home to finish setting up my new PC. Except I can't add all the software I want because I'm still waiting for Wordperfect and Photoshop for Vista to arrive. And I need an adaptor or such for the printer to plug it into a USB port and then I need to hope I can find drivers for it to work with Vista. But otherwise, all is well, and I got back online without a problem.

Here are some fun links for a lazy late summer Sunday.

This Wordperhect wordprocessor might be on to something. I'm just not sure what. But it is fun. ;) Found on The Thinks I Think, which is a very cool blog, btw; if you're not reading it, you might want to check it out.

Now this looks like fun. Print out these TV Character Cubees and make your own paper figures. No glue needed. Found on Neatorama.

The Presurfer draws our attention to this Death by Chocolate post on Purple Slinky.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: tagnamehere

Topsy Turvey Day

Aside from thinking yesterday, a holiday from work, was Sunday, I spent a fair amount of today trying to convince myself it was Tuesday, not Monday. And I wasn't the only person a bit discombobulated. A couple of staff members got their schedules confused with other days.

The public elevator which went out of commission on Friday hasn't been repaired. Our work PCs now have yet another level of security to get through in order to log in. And yet, I'm sure someone will let a virus or worm in at some point, because really, the only people being stymied are the dedicated staffers trying to do their jobs, not the hackers.

My new PC has arrived. Depending on when hubby and I can unpack it and set it up and whether it and the cable modem can play nice, there might be some internet disruption at some point over the next few days/week.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: work

A Computer Poll

Now that I have my new laptop, I need to replace my desktop computer, and no, I won't be getting a Mac/Apple. So, I've put the two main choices in a poll in the sidebar, so please vote. And if you would recommend something else, leave your suggestion in the comments here.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: polls

New Toy

My new laptop, a Toshiba Satellite, came yesterday and I spent this evening setting it up. Mostly getting Firefox and my camera software loaded. It's such a slick looking machine. I think I'm in love. ;)

During lunchtime, I got these chocolicious treats from The Treats Truck which was parked near work today.


Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: computers

The Not-So-Much Joy of New Computers

New PC at work. Running XP. Security on the network was beefed up, so we can't change wallpapers. :(

I wasn't there yesterday when it was set up, so first thing today, I had to have the tech guys unlock my account. Then the beefed up security tells me the macros for our electronic timesheets won't work. Another call to the tech folks. The fix is pending.

They've also cluttered the desktop with close to 2 dozen icons, of which I regularly use 6 tops, and I can't delete them. The network security won't let me. The plain blue desktop is an ugly mess. I ended up locking all the programs I use to the Start menu and once I get into the first program, I plan to not have to look at the desktop for the rest of the day.

Grrrrrrrrr......

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: work

In the Cards

This is the new video card to go with the new monitor and new cable and the damn computer, which boots now mostly, still won't acknowledge the monitor. Oh, and the outlet blew when we tried again this morning. Forget the surge protector. The outlet just shorted out. The electricity in this building sucks.

Glad today is over, still have work tomorrow. Gave up plans for tonight to see Air Supply at BB King's cuz I feel like crap. I was all ready to take pics, had my camera, raring to go. But the stress of the computer at home and losing 20 minutes of work at work and other work stress, and I was pretty much a basket case after I got home. But I get a 2-day weekend. Goodie. Finished the last of the yummilicious non-pareils. Not goodie.


Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: computers, stress

It's Not the Monitor

*sigh*

Was having problems with the monitor -- trouble getting it on -- so we got a new monitor. Which won't go on. So we think it's the video card causing the problem. So we're getting a new one. The new monitor is very nice and has USB ports which I've been wanting, so I hope we can get it to work. I've managed to get my laptop working and online, which is always a hit or miss endeavor. I might be blogging a bit sporadically until we've got Moya, my PC, back up and running at full cylinders.

I so need chocolate. Gonna be a long day tomorrow.
Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: computers

Mother Board

Mother Board
Originally uploaded by ShellyS.

I couldn't resist. Here's a photo of the old mother board. It looks a bit like a miniature city, doesn't it?

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Because, really, nothing's going to stop it from snowing.

Tech guy came, but the mother board hasn't arrived yet. He did fix the slowness problem since the meltdown on Wednesday night. Seems one of the memory sticks wasn't in all the way after the Gateway guy had us pull them and reinsert them. Tech guy said he couldn't tell if both were in, but the PC said only one was, so he removed both and shoved them back in and things are better now. He thinks the mother board should probably be replaced even though the PC is working. Clearly, something was and probably still is amiss.

For the library-minded amongst you out there, I offer up scanned photos of my old book exhibits. Most are YA-oriented. The older pictures, the ones on the matte paper, are very faded and I fiddled a bit with them in Photoshop, but the color is still off. I'm going to scan pretty much every photo I have so I can have them on CD.



I feel like I have a gazillion projects and don't know which way to turn first. But at least, I finished scanning in the Hawaii photos from 1995, so I feel as if I accomplished something. There were a couuple of hundred of those suckers.

And for once, I remembered to watch Hustle, a British import which is on Saturdays at 10 p.m. Of course, I didn't remember til 10:15, but at least I finally have seen this show. I like it a lot.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
computers
photos

Kudos for Hubby

AKA, Computer, Heal Thyself

Kudos and props for hubby. He tried the PC this morning, and though it took much longer than usual, the thing booted! Tonight, when I got home, I tried and it booted again! So when he came home, we plugged peripherals back in, including the cable modem. Everything seems to be working, except the scanner which was acting up the last couple of days. I think I wore it out or something and now we're wondering if there was a power surge of some sort in the system. So, I'm back, for now. Yeeha!

It's been a long 24 hours, let me tell you. I can check only so much during work. I even got back early from lunch so I could check blogs. And thanks to those of you who offered your sympathies. They were much appreciated. I still think the computer has a problem, but not as dire as it first looked. I won't be scanning more photos for a while, though. And I so wanted to get finished with the 1995 trip to Hawaii batch.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
computers

Money Well Spent

For the extended, special, 3-year warranty for my Gateway PC, which will cover the replacement of my dead mother board. *sigh* So until the part comes in, probably on Monday, and I get someone here to replace the dead one with it, I likely won't be blogging much, as I'm stuck on the laptop with AOL on a dial-up connection. *gasp*

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
dead computers

PC Blues

Updated Norton Security and Systemworks on Sunday, all was fine. Mouse has been a bit odd. It and the keyboard (which I've worn the letters off many keys) are wireless and I think the mouse is dying. It gets hyper, like it's been clicked 2 or 3 times for each click. But it's manageable.

Last night, I had a virus scare. Clicked on something on a LiveJournal graphics community before I realized it was a spam post and Norton jumps up and says, "Hi, there, I just stopped a virus. Aren't you glad you updated to the 2006 edition yesterday?" (Well, it didn't say that exactly, but that was the gist of it.) So I caught a break. Whew. All seemed fine last night and this morning. Then tonight, everything's running in slow motion, programs are freezing, especially the graphic stuff, which with Photoshop is a problem. So rather than scan and have it tell me there's nothing (and it was saying the programs were all working fine), I used Go-Back tonight and set it back to last night when I got home from work and put the thing on. Seems okay now, but I'm really glad I had emailed a couple of story files to one of my writing partners because those were the only backups. I easily retrieved them from the email. I hope all stays okay here. I really don't have the patience for problems right now. Can't even blog about the weird patron with the .... well, I really don't like to blog about work specifics. Let's just say, 6 hours later, I can still sorta smell him.

I'm not really all that grumpy, anymore, but I had to do this mood graphic twice because I lost it via Go-Back since I'd made it just before doing that, and I'm determined to show it off.

Feeling:

computers

Computers

From April 2005.

I think about this a lot. How much tech has changed over the nearly 52 years I've been alive. The topic first came to mind a few years ago when I realized/discovered I had staff young enough to not know what life was like BC (before computers). Talk about an eye opener. I can still see the dead-eyed stare from a young woman born after 1980 when I told her I studied Fortran in college and learned out to keypunch. She then rushed off to her cubicle to look up "keypunch" online.

My first encounter with computers was at the 1964-65 World's Fair in NYC when we were able to get printouts from Univac. I got a biographical sketch of Abraham Lincoln. I was thrilled.

In 1969, my senior year in high school, instead of advanced algebra/trig, I took a new class called Computer Math. We learned to program something like looked like a desktop calculator (I don't know if calculators even existed yet and I sure hadn't seen one) on steroid. It was programmed with strings of pairs of letters and numbers that included some symbols that now look like ASCII. It could do math functions and we programmed it to generate Fibonacci numbers.

We also had a larger device that could do big (ie, wide) printouts of such things as programmed blackjack games. It could play up to 6 or so hands at a time. It also had lights blinking on its face so we could watch it break the programming code into binary.

The best part of the class was the visit to nearby Aqueduct Racetrack which was computerized. The computer took up an entire, large room in the basement and we were given sample punch cards as souvenirs. They were punched to say Welcome, and the class and school name.

By the time I was studying psych in college, computers were a big deal. Hunter College didn't have its own, but paid for time on the mainframe at SUNY Albany. I took Fortran in 1973 because it was the programming language of the social sciences and after punching my program cards, I had to hand them in for transmission upstate, then pick up my printout the next day, only to discover sometimes, that I'd mispunched a card on line 82 of 160 and the program bombed and I had to repunch the card, resubmit, then wait another day to see if the program worked so I could hand in my assignment. The professor was from India and hard to understand. It's amazing I completed that class and got my assignments in, even if often they were a day or two late.

I didn't continue with Fortran and by the time I was in library school in 1978 and working in Columbia U's library, computerized circulation systems were coming into vogue. I got to work on CU's batch system. Then I went to work, in 1981, in a big urban library system that was first exploring computerization. Over the next decade, the library automated, got the first PCs (well, Apples) for public use, and new hubby and I got our first PC in 1985, the year we were married. I had asked for it in lieu of an engagement ring. An IBM PC bumped up to an AT, it lasted 5 years. Hubby knew BASIC, a language I'd never heard of, and programmed the thing to have a menu in DOS. I loved that thing, and it's successors.

By the time the early '90s rolled around, Gopher and Archie and Veronica and a host of other cool names were being bandied about along with the brave new world of the Internet. I was lost. The seminar I took at work didn't help clear things up. Then, in Dec. 1995, we got a new PC with enough memory to load AOL. And I discovered cyberland. The World Wide Web came into my life a few years later.

And now here I am, with a website and a dozen blogs, revising html in my primitive fashion, working on the library's website and creating and maintaining the library's own blog. When I look back, I am stunned by how fast and by how much my life has changed because of computers, things that no one in my life could imagine back in 1953 when I was born, things that no one when I was growing up could imagine being part of our everyday lives, at work and at home, getting smaller and smaller.

Just a few weekends ago, I sat in the lobby of a hotel in Baltimore, my laptop chugging away, catching a WiFi wave while I happily surfed the web. Can life get cooler than this? Probably. And I can't wait to see what's next.

Addenda: I majored in psych, ended up becoming a librarian, want to be a writer, and never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. I just fell into things, knew after college that I liked jobs that had to do with books. But I think if I was starting out today, in college now, I'd study web design and computer graphics. Back in the '60s, I couldn't see how I could make a living with art and the options for women, even the encouragement of women to go into certain professions, was lacking. And of course, web design was beyond science fiction. At least, I get to enjoy it as a hobby.

Feeling:

technology

Techie Talk

Well, not really. I'm no techie and I sure can't talk the talk. But I just responded to a comment on another of my Blogger blogs and discovered a nice new interface that lets me see the comments as well as the original post. Very cool.

Got my new PC at work (another Dell) and already, I have a love / hate relationship with it.
Things I love:

1. It's black and silver and very sleek looking.
2. It has a writeable CD / DVD drive.
3. It has 2 USB ports in front, as well as 4 on the back.
4. Nice, sharp monitor.

Things I hate:

1. It's a Dell.
2. It, as with every other Dell I've had at work, has the crappiest CD holder. Unlike my Gateway at home which lets me just drop in the disk, on the Dell, I need to snap the disk onto the spindle thingie. The little button to open the CD drive is teeny and hard to push and the button for the 3 1/2 disk drive isn't much better.
3. It's still on the old, slow server (made worse since yesterday due to a virus attack that forced the tech guys to shut down most of the system ports. Kinda like when the express and local trains all run on the local track and make all stops. argh)
4. I didn't get the monitor with the built-in speakers. I had saved the speakers from my old PC so we could put them on one of the reference desk computers, but I'm keeping them unless I get a monitor with speakers (which are pretty cool, btw). I hate using headphones. They make my ears itch and fill with fluid.

The tech guy still has to come install some stuff, but otherwise, I'm operational, after being computer-less for a couple of hours. I hope it's still working tomorrow.

Update on my cold: It started to break today. Sore throat eased up, nose blowing commenced, head congestion is starting to drain.

Incommunicado

I was cut off from the cyber world for nearly an hour! The cable modem apparently went out. First, it looked like the Norton Firewall had blocked AOL, but my IE was down, too, and I rebooted three times, but that didn't work. Aargh. It was probably the cable company, though the cable TV service was fine. And there's no dial-up modem on this thing. An hour! And already I was suffering withdrawal when I got IE back up.

Wil Wheaton is going to guest star on CSI, which is pretty cool. I like him. I especially like him as a writer. His blog, WilWheatonDotNet, if you don't know, is very entertaining. His entry on auditioning for CSI was a nice slice of Hollywood for a working actor. I recently bought his book Just a Geek.

Watched Man From UNCLE and I Spy after Alias tonight. From ABC in the present to GoodLife's trip down memory lane equals a fine night of TV viewing.

He Had My Hard Drive in His Hands

Our super techie at work, that is. He got my f'in computer up and running by restoring it with the original image map, but IE isn't loading properly — some of the features are missing, plus most of my bookmarks despite showing up on the hard drive — so it's back to the "lab," but he took the whole hard drive case this time.

I was able to enter new descriptive videos into our circ system this morning at the reference desk before we opened, but once we opened to the public, I was computer-less again, except to sneak onto PCs of staff to check my email. What a pain.

Kirk over at my-so-called-strife made this quiz over at Quizilla. And I suppose I should go on record as saying that while I like tomato sauce, and ketchup, I hate tomatoes. And that looks supsiciously like non-kosher mayo on the bottom slice of bread. But still.... Actually, my comfort food tends to be a bacon cheeseburger with fries. Or, you know, a chocolate malted. heh


You have multiple layers that, when combined make
you a force to be reckoned with.


What Comfort Food Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Dark Tuesday

All I did was go to lunch. My work PC was fine, well, as fine as it ever is. When I got back, the internet radio was still playing, but the PC was dead, dead, dead. When I tried to reboot it, it went into an endless rebooting loop. Damn thing's at least 5 years old, maybe 6. And everything I needed to do today required the computer. It's amazing how dependent we got on the f'in things in only a decade or so. Even our timesheets are electronic now. And the main techie for our district has another week of his vacation. I used someone else's PC to check email while he was at a meeting, but it sure was a long afternoon. I was even eager for my hour on the telephone reference desk so I could get my fingers on a keyboard. Now that's an addiction.

"House" seems to be over (I hope they bring it back next season), so I watched "Veronica Mars" for the first time. This was a show I'd wanted to watch from the start, but didn't for some reason that now escapes me, then "House" was on, and.... well, I liked it. She really is a "Nancy Drew" for the 21st century, more realistic, tough in a whole different way. I think I'll be watching it from now on, or at least, when it's not opposite something I like more. I can't tape it; I already have too many tapes to watch. And books and comics to read. And....

I think I need a couple of months off to catch up. Maybe a year.

Brave New World

I think I mentioned that I wanted to repost some of the entries here from the AOL Cyber Chocolate, Jr. blog. Most of what's over there are links and comments on my day and so on, but a few entries are of more lasting interest. This is one of them and while I suppose parts of it might be more suitable for Occasional Blog, I'm posting it here.

Originally posted: 4/20/04
As I slide into my second half century, I'm amazed not just by how much things have changed in the world (and how, in too many ways, they're the same--violence and war never seem to go out of style), but by how well I've adapted. Yes, I'm talking about tech. While far from an expert, I and the rest of my generation of boomers have gone from life without computers to all manner of technological wonders such as PDAs, personal computers (and yes, that includes you Mac folks), cellphones that take pictures and do text messaging, laptops and notebooks, ebooks, etc, etc, etc.

When I was a high school senior, I took a relatively new class called Computer Math my last term. We learned how to program a device that looked like what I can only describe now as a calculator on steroids. By using simple, two-character codes, we enticed strings of mathematical functions from it, including the calculation of Fibonacci numbers.

In college, I took Fortran, the computer language of the sciences and social sciences, fitting for a psych major. I learned how to punch cards that I handed in at the college's computer center. There, my cards were read and sent zipping up to the mainframe in Albany and if I were lucky, the next day my printout would be waiting for me. And if I mis-punched one card or mis-wrote one line of code, I'd have to redo and submit the cards again. One assignment could take days to complete once I'd written the code.

And now I supervise some young people who have never known life before computers. They stare in shock as I describe life back then and they look at me in puzzlement as I explain what keypunching was. At such times, I feel a lot older than I am.

Yet here I am, happily surfing the web. I have a website I designed and created myself with Dreamweaver, and I have blogs I built with templates online through AOL, LiveJournal, and even BlogSpot. I converse over computer networks via IMs and I send and receive email. The fax machine at work is a marvel, yet I fuss when it takes more than a second to transmit or receive a document. And WiFi means I don't even have to plug in or dial up to access the internet. People with disabilities have more options today, thanks to everchanging tech, than they ever had.

I haven't used a typewriter in years, preferring to type on the computer--but I'll never call it keyboarding! I'm mostly comfortable in a world that would have seemed alien to when I was growing up and I wonder if today's 20-somethings and teens will get to see their world rocked by such dramatic change.

But every technological advance has its downside. The more we can do, the more everyone else can do. We can shop online.... identity thieves have more means at their disposal. We can chat with family across the globe for pennies.... terrorists can recruit and scheme over that same internet. And as more and more of our lives is digitized, we become more and more vulnerable to loss of privacy due to more and more ways for someone to gain access to our most private affairs such as medical or school records. How much freedom are we willing to give up for security? Is that even the question that should be asked?

I don't have answers. I suppose that's one reason I love reading science fiction--to see the possibilities played out in novels that work with those themes and settings. And perhaps, that's part of why I write.... to explore the possibilities, even if subconsciously, because I just can't seem to plan it much ahead. But before we can try to answer those questions, we need to make sure we're asking the right ones. And then we need full public debate and leaders who understand the full ramifications. Laws enacted in reaction to events, without careful thought, often do no good and can even do harm.

Previously, I mentioned a coalition that is petitioning to have the Patriot Act modified. Personally, I don't mind giving up some freedoms if I thought that would do some good. But who am I to say that would be right? And if the best the law can do is provide a false sense of security, what good is it? Letting the government gain access to library circulation records or bookstore sales records without accountability is just plain wrong to me. Worse, it ignores all the other ways terrorists can gain info--online, by paying cash, by sitting at a table and quietly reading without borrowing or purchasing.

The Patriot Act hasn't made me feel any safer. The world is a dangerous place, moreso now than ever because violence is as portable as everything else today. I didn't mean this to end on such a depressing note, just to offer up some food for thought, things that have been on my mind recently. Maybe some of them have been on yours, too.