Ahira's Hangar

I don't think much about spam. My ISP now puts in quarantine about 90% of the spam, so I'm not wasting time downloading all that crap. All I got to do is go through it about once a week and quickly scan the headers to see if something isn't spam, and throw the lot away.

What I do hate is Real Audio. I downloaded it and sure enough it screwed up my software. Some application in there fouled up my shutdown. I had to spend 3 hrs talking to Dell about how to fix it. That's not the first time Real Audio has done something like that to me.:"> <i></i>

Yep, Real Audio and Real Download both suck. If they would just do what I dl'd them for, they'd be great, but no, they're way to effin grabby. I play one RA file, and suddenly, hmmmm, Windows Media Player won't work (and I don't mean just selecting the media types; I mean having to reinstall the damn thing 'cause it won't read my disk drive). It must be a coincidence. I got so sick of it, I kicked 'em both off my computer. Eighty-sixed for life!

All I use right now is hotmail, and man does that suck. I keep my addy listed in the vain hope that one of my "friends" ever decides to look me up and e-mail me. I get at least 30 spam msgs a day.

As far as tech support, yeah, they're morons. All they have to do is read a flow-chart to get the job. Lateral thinking will get you fired, I think. ________________
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured within my shadow. Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory. Contemplate what I've been clinging to. -Tool, "Forty-Six & Two"<i></i>

I tried 2 put up Real Player once cause I liked an obscure station they said they carried. I listened 2 it 4 4 days then it disappeared, then they told me I didn't have enuff bandwidth, but I could buy... And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i></i>

I have QuickTime and Real, but I never download their new stuff.. Further up, and further in! <i></i>

Fellow hangarites,
well, the W32MasterBlaster worm attacked my XP box last Monday, Aug. 11, and I got infected. This is not an E-mail worm so it is not passed around by infected E-mail, a problem I had last summer. Infection is through other infected machines that scan IP addresses, even those dynamically assigned as in dial-up situations, and looks for vulnerable targets. Consequently, one would never know where you got it from or who it was passed on to.

I dled the removal tool from the Norton site, symantec.com, and it worked just like it should. Then from microsoft.com I installed the patch, to prevent future infections. Now my PC seems to be infection free.

On my XP box, the manifested symptom was after being connected to the net for 5 to 20 minutes I would get an NT Authority/Security message and I my system would go into a reboot sequence. Very annoying but not catastrophic.

Not really sure if I am posting in the right spot or not. taraswizard
Allan Rosewarne N9SQT/WDX6HQV
Chicago area
W/T forever, always
Plan C - http://planc.bravepages.com/main.html<i></i>

This is definitely a rave. While I was in California in early July, I came into possession of a Toshiba Satellite 1555CDS. It runs Windows 98SE and it's pretty cool. Anyway I bought a Zyxel PCMCIA wireless card for it. So earlier today I was at one of my local libraries that's WiFi equipped. So to anyone who'd listen, Wireless High Speed rulez. So I'm sitting at one of the library desks and I get all set up and I connect, and then it's up and away High Speed starts up and it's away we go. Except for the extra drain on the laptop's battery so having access to electriical outlets is almost a necessity, this is ultimately cool. So now I'm ready for Wireless anywhere, Staarbucks, hotels, bookstores, local schools. taraswizard
Allan Rosewarne N9SQT/WDX6HQV
Chicago area
W/T forever, always
Plan C - http://planc.bravepages.com/main.html<i></i>

Continuing my RAVE regarding Wireless High Speed, IT ROCKS (throws the goat). Yesterday took laptop to local comm. college and surfed the WiFi high speed highway (WOOO HOOO this is cooking with gas). DLed a largish PDF (>2.5 MB) file in about one minute, installed MSN messenger in less than five minutes total time from begining DL to installed program.

IMO, if you own a laptop and you're not taking advantage of this usually free access, WHY not! taraswizard
Allan Rosewarne N9SQT/WDX6HQV
Chicago area
W/T forever, always
Plan C - http://planc.bravepages.com/main.html<i></i>

I've been getting an error -36 message when I try to sync my ipod and imac. Looks like I'm going to have to take it into the shop for service, since it appears to be either a hard drive problem or a usb port problem. <i></i>

I have some very serious questions about quality control and ipods. I have wanted to buy one for awhile but we've had to replace my son's twice in a year because it just stops working. I think I will wait for the technology to be perfected before I spend that kind of money. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i></i>

Wireless Broadband and a laptop. OK, your local community college will not let yuou surf their network unless you're a student, your public library thinks going wireless means using a portable telephone handset, and McDonalds and Starbucks want money before letting one use their wireless access. Well, there's still a way to surf wireless highspeed for free, Panera Bread cafes. Many of them have high speed wireless access and it's free, IME, they're even cool if you do not buy any food. (OTOH, I was in one on a Sunday night surfing and they cafe was just about to close, and an employee offered me a free loaf of sourdough bread and their sourdough is real good). taraswizard
Allan Rosewarne N9SQT/WDX6HQV
Chicago area
W/T forever, always
Plan C - http://planc.bravepages.com/main.html<i>Edited by: taraswizard at: 11/28/05 1:18 pm
</i>

I love Panera. In the winter I drink their hot chocolate. In the summer I drink the green honeydew melon iced tea. And their three cheese bread rocks!!

I just spent a frustrating half hour or more trying to renew my anti-virus subscription with Norton. I finally discovered that they no longer support the program which was installed on my three year old computer. What kind of crap is that, that they will not support a three year old program??? I had to order an upgraded version for 2006, which is filled with all sorts of bells and whistles like blocking spam emails, which I do not even need because my ISP already does all of that stuff. On top of that, I had to order it to be delivered in a box because it would have taken at least overnight to download the "upgraded" version with my slow dial-up connection.


Ay yi yi. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i></i>

rant:

I upgraded my iMac G5 to Tiger last week, and my husband and son told me they were having trouble printing things. Last night my husband yelled at me about it - it was obviously my fault, since I had the nerve to upgrade my computer's OS.

I was so aggravated, I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning troubleshooting the problem. I got it to print things from my user name, but the long web document that my husband was trying to print out from my son's user name wouldn't print. My husband's airline comfirmation, which he was trying to print out from his user name also wouldn't print, until I copied it to a word processing document.

I have tried a bunch of things, including reinstalling the printer driver, deleting and reinstalling the printer, reinstalling the printer software. I am officially frustrated.

/rant "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"<i></i>

That does sound very frustrating!

We had some serious trouble with our printer, as well, when we got our computer back from the repair place. It worked fine until we took the computer in - and somehow the printer software got messed up when they upgraded the AOL program from 7.0 to 9.0.

No matter what we did, it kept telling us we had to plug the printer into some sort of port we do not even have on our computer, and then it would scream that the printer did not exist!

We finally reinstalled the printer software, but we still have some problems and have to dink around a lot before we can actually get anything to print. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i></i>

I'm kind of going through the same type of problems myself, MsMary. The motherboard on my iMac G4 fried out last month - the third time it has happened. Of course the warranty ran out in April. CDW wanted $600 to fix it. In any case, I decided to buy a new MacBook and Airport setup so I could go wireless. (I'll go find a motherboard online for about $100 to fix the iMac myself)

After trial and error, I got the wireless to run. That works great! The problem that I now have is that a lot of the software out there isn't yet set to run with the new Intel Macs. For instance, I can't run MLB's Gameday Audio or Sirius' Internet feed off the MacBook yet. This year, Gameday only runs on Windows Media, which Microsoft no longer supports for the Mac. There's a program out there which will allow Windows Media files to be run on Quicktime, but I have to study a little more the procedure to make the Gameday files work on Quicktime.

I do have a minor printer problem in the change. The printer won't work attached to the Airport. But since it works with the USB cable attached directly to the MacBook that problem can wait.

<i></i>

Yeah, I hear you about the Intel Macs. I am not in a hurry to get one until more software is brought up to speed. On the other hand, I worry about how soon my iMac G5 PPC will become obsolete.

I got the printer working. Turns out HP says you have to uninstall and reinstall the HP printer software after a major OS upgrade. So I downloaded the latest software for my printer from the HP site - 5 hours on dial-up, and the first two times, the download was lost due to an internet glitch - only to discover that the updated HP software does not work together with the ReadIris Pro OCR software that came on the original HP software disk that was shipped with my printer.

Back to the drawing board: I uninstalled the up-to-date HP software and reinstalled the old software, after which I installed an updated printer driver compatible with OS 10.4, also downloaded from the HP site (that was a quick download, relatively speaking, about an hour). I repaired permissions and test printed, and the printer seems to work now. A test scan OCR to text-edit did not work, but I am not panicking yet, cause I sometimes got errors with the original set-up, also. I was able to open up the document directly in ReadIris Pro to edit it and, come to think of it, I could probably have done the same thing with the latest HP printer software, too. But after uninstalling and reinstalling and troubleshooting all afternoon, I am not in the mood to test it or do any more fiddling with my computer.

Time to go do something else. "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"<i></i>