Technological Dinosaur Living In Technology Hell

An Old Friend Dies...

So I hate to report that  late yesterday afternoon I stumbled into my neglected Home Office for the first time in a couple of days, intent on printing out an AutoCAD file I had e-mailed myself from my company laptop sitting out on the coffee table in the living room.

But upon arrival I learned some bad news...

Earlier I had noticed that the slightly more than 4 year old  machine had been rebooting itself for some reason almost every day or so in the past weeks and I just assumed that stupid Windows Vista was doing automatic updates, BUT...

not this time...apparently...

Either the computer has some sort of Alzheimer's type disease else the primary hard drive has crapped out.

Dang it...

But any way...

I'm supposed to have a couple of versions of back up files on a 400 gig external drive and a newer Terabyte drive, along with "recovery disks" and possibly a "recovery partition" available somewhere in the building but you know what?

Bottom line is that I don't have time to worry about this old friend of a computer which has served our household very well since November 2007 when we were living in bliss down on the Georgia Coast on St.Simons Island.

I have things to do and people to meet and talk to and a new hard drive and the associated installation and cursing will just have to wait until sometime in 2012.

Regards's Y'all...

Steven Jobs...RIP

A Great American...


Let me start out by saying that I didn't agree with Steve Jobs' politics or that of most of those working in his company, but I think that you have to agree with me when I write that the company that he founded in his parent's garage--Apple-- with a guy named Steve Wozniak, has fundamentally revolutionized the world as we know it today.

I'd also like to say that the jury is still out as to whether all or any of the changes will end up being positive as more and more people become Internet addicts wasting time or i-phone addicts walking around like zombies in airports and other public places staring at their touch screen phones, but still...

I have to admit this morning that guys like Steven P. Jobs, Steve Wozniak (and another fellow named Bill Gates) fundamentally changed the way the world does business and communicates with each other.

Although I've never owned an Apple "anything," Steve's influence on the advancement of computer technology in general has allowed me to make a good deal of money and has been instrumental in my overall professional success...

...and for that I am thankful for his brilliance, and grieve his death this morning. Here's his picture as shown on the front page of the Apple Website today.

RIP Mr. Jobs

Windows XP Recovery Scam Feckless Under My Wrath

(Only) Three Hours Later...


Well Ladies and Gentlemen, the good news this morning is to my surprise only three hours after my earlier posting, things here on the old HP laptop aren't back to 100%...but close to 95%...

And I guess that the Jury is still out...

But...

In this latest "Computer Exorcism Exercise, I managed to make a couple of executive decisions (the quality and substance of which is something I'm not Internationally known for in the past), and instead of downloading some stupid free "anti-virus/spyware" software or electing to run screaming down to the local computer repair store populated with "experts" 30 years younger than my ever greying, ever balding head...

I simply booted the whimpering computer up in Windows "Protected Mode" and then used the real "Windows Recovery" program to reset everything back to the way it was last Friday before all of this current BS started.

Then I dumped Windows Internet Explorer 7 off the hard drive, ran a back up of my data files (including recovering my latest ParaChem PLC software Rusty), and right now things seem to have been improved a great deal although there are still some strange quirks that need to be worked out.

For instance, most of my data files had been converted to "hidden files" so I had to handle that situation, and my Internet Explorer favorites all disappeared but I had a good back up in Mozilla Firefox and I also exported the favorites from the Server PC and moved them down here to the Basement International Headquarters of Plastics Engineering Technologies (or BIHOPET for short.)

So any way, by and large a successful evening I guess.

I still want to go out and find the idiots responsible for crap like I've just gone through and either draw and quarter them or keel haul them after beating them to the verge of death with a "Cat 'o Nine Tails"

Is it just me?

OK...Holiday's OVER...Back To The Real World

Please Don't Throw Me In Dat Briar Patch...


This week could be fairly troublesome interesting. 

I thought that I already knew what to expect when the Memorial Day Holiday started last Friday, but as is usual around here things have changed a little bit due to unforeseen circumstances--computer related.

My poor little old HP Laptop managed to catch the latest Trojan Bullshit Computer Crap called Windows XP Recovery Scam .

It's the same old spam scam where something jumps on your computer off of an infected web site and proceeds to change things in your Windows registers so that all you see is a fake screen telling you that your computer hard drive is about to crash and offering to scan the drive and repair the problem.

Problem is...the Spam program is the PROBLEM.

And of course after it gets through scanning, even if it finds nothing it still tries to get you to give it a credit card number to pay for selling you a program to "FIX" the situation.

I never let it get past the first few seconds of it's presentation, but I made the mistake of turning the machine off with a hard stop press of the power button, and then in the process of rebooting the INFECTION just wrapped it's tentacles further around my operating system.

Now when you boot up in even "Secure Mode" it only lets you get so far before popping back up with the same BS warning of non-existent problems and an offer to fix things...FOR A PRICE.

So now instead of doing productive work on some new software modifications for a PLC and working on basement wiring, I expect to spend the next 24 hours screwing around trying to act as "Computer Exorcist" removing this evil spirit.

Like I said before, I think that the government should pass a law making it legal to hunt down and maim and/or KILL the idiots out there in the Cyber World that think it's funny or profitable to break into my house through wires and damage my property.

I have to go now before my head explodes.

Hey Bill Gates...

Pay Me For My Time?


Well, here I am this morning, looking at the calendar, and reminiscing about being on about day 1001 of my love hate relationship roller coaster ride from hell living with Windows Vista on my Server.

Looking back to November 2007, there I was, with a pocket full of cash some semi-surplus funds in our checking account, looking pretty much like this guy:

when I wandered over to the Hewlett Packard website a couple of times and was finally seduced into purchasing a new "custom built" server PC with all of the bells and whistles and whirly-gigs I wanted to handle our personal and business needs for the foreseeable future...

...except...

HP had sold their soul to the devil knuckled under to Gates/Microsoft and ten days later I had a living breathing spastic metal box running...

"Windows Vista Home Premium Edition."

D A M M I T.

So now for the past nearly three years I've felt like this gentleman:




...and in spite of my best efforts and consultations with people like this young fellow:



and this guy:



and this dude:



and even this man:



...this morning after great effort and expense it seems I will have to live with the realization that I still can't shake the curse of Windows Vista.

Worst of all, just like the "Borg" on Star Trek Next Generation, me and my computer have apparently been assimilated into some sinister Microsoft Network, because I even VOLUNTARILY RE-INSTALLED VISTA last week because I couldn't get Windows 2000 XP Professional to work on the intentionally designed and corrupted machine.

And so now this morning, after doing extensive file restorations and back-up, I'm now forced to sit in my shop in my basement on my old reliable HP 17" wide screen laptop (running Windows 2000 XP Professional Media Center Edition by the way) doing my news reading and blogging because the "Server PC" is busy installing "Service Pack 1" and whatever other crap Microsoft wants to force me to download to correct the screwed up software they sold me in 2007.

And of course I'm inundated with ads trying to get me to "upgrade" to the latest and greatest product--"Windows 7"...

...a product named "Windows 7" because everyone with any sense knows that "Vista II" or "Vista 2" would have sold like a new version of the Chevy Corvair or the Ford Edsel.

So any way...I love being an American, I love growing up free until about 20 years ago, but right now I hate the state of our economy and the idiots running Adams and Jefferson's and Franklin's government and the way things are going in the computer department around here I might just buy a Macintosh in 2011.

I have to go now and soak my head in ice water before it explodes...

...and Y'all have a LOVELY day now...if you will...

Living In Computer Hell

Where's My Really Big Hammer?


Have I mentioned that I live in a household with two adult humans, one tiny little long haired miniature Dachshund going by the alias of "Missy...the Turbo Pup", and...

FOUR COMPUTERS?

ok...six computers if you count the back up scraps laying around in various stages of construction, and EIGHT computers if you count the two PLC's (Programmable Logic Controllers) sitting in my shop right now.

Any way...

Only one of the machines is acting completely sane right now--Pat's corporate machine--on which I only handle the Internet and networking operations there of because her company does the security and VPN work remotely.

Then there is my old HP 17" laptop which has been relegated to the workshop and that's served me well over the past four or five years before I bought the "server PC" which currently occupies space in my office upstairs.

Since the "Server PC" has lost it's mind over the past couple of days and I've been wrestling with getting it converted backwards from Windows Vista to Windows XP Professional, a little Dell laptop that I rebuilt has served my needs in working a few feet from the sofa and my bedroom when I'm too lazy to walk down stairs to the shop.

So any way...with my menagerie of machines sitting around here I have more problems with computers farting and belching and barfing right now than any single human should have to put up with, and in my old age and chronological incompetence having lost the urge to stay on top of every single detail and development in the computer business (I let my subscriptions to Byte Magazine and PC World expire long ago) I'm not sure if I can weather the storm before me.

Right now I'm about ready to gather everything up, put it in a pile in my wheelbarrow, and haul it all outside to the compost heap.

I guess if it was easy everyone would be doing it, but managing a real network of computers designed to do something besides blog and goof around on Facebook and Twitter is a damn hard proposition from my perspective.

A Week In Computer Hell

My Face Has Been Removed From Facebook...


(Blogging live from my underground dungeon computer complex somewhere on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River)

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I started out the week with some kind of stupid little piss-ant computer hemorrhoid on the server PC which spent all day and night popping up telling me it was on my computer's butt and wanting to sell me some kind of salve to smear on the hurting area of my technical life.

Norton/Symantic couldn't find it and therefor couldn't fix it within the first 36 hours of infestation, but somehow either by being on the ball for once or accidentally Microsoft offered a "system update" that my Vista operating system downloaded and installed all by it's stupid self and as a result the festering computer canker sore/rectal intrusion seems to have gone away, although the machine is still belching and farting a little when I try to run important things like AutoCAD.

Then this morning an old friend from High School reported that someone was impersonating me on Facebook saying that I was stranded in London and asking for money to get home.

WTF?

Anyone that knows me knows that the last place on the entire planet I would go is London, England, with Paris, France following along a close second...even behind Opp, Alabama or Morocco or Turkey or Greece or anywhere else on the European or Asian Continents.

Then another friend down on our little island called me and said some woman had contacted him, referencing me, and wanting to offer her services.

Dangit, where were these women when I could have used them, and why didn't they call me first?

Then I got this e-mail from "the Facebook Team":

Hi ,

Your account has been temporarily suspended for security purposes. Our systems indicate that your Facebook account has been compromised by cybercriminals attempting to impersonate you. These criminals often will try to trick your friends into sending them money by claiming that you are stuck in a far away location and need assistance. It is possible that your email account was compromised as well. As such, we have sent this email to all email accounts recently associated with your account. Obtaining access to a victim's email is one of the primary ways these cybercriminals have been operating. Please take the following steps to regain control of your account:

1. Select new, unique passwords for any email addresses associated with your Facebook account.

2. Respond to this email to get the account verification process started.

3. Closely follow the instructions provided in our follow up email. We also encourage you to visit the following page for more information about Facebook security and how to report suspicious material: http://www.facebook.com/security

Thanks,
Facebook Security


By the time I re-read their correspondence...realizing that FACEBOOK was having a problem and requiring ME to take action to correct it...I was tired and cranky and as a result I wrote this back to them...

**** you ***holes...I hardly used your stupid "social networking" service and if it takes more than 5 minutes for me to jump through the hoops to correct something which happened on your system and servers then I won't be back.

I write my own blogs and own and pay my own domain names and I didn't do anything which caused YOUR SYSTEM to be compromised, so get it fixed and get it right and make it easy or let's just say goodbye...

DAMMIT



at this point I assume that I'm probably banned from Facebook for life, even though whatever happened happened on their end of the Internet universe, not on my machine I don't believe.

Regardless, I did follow up and changed all of my passwords on important stuff like bank accounts and stuff but here's my point with Facebook.

I DON'T REALLY CARE.

I write this blog and my cooking blog The Redneck Gourmet, and I'm on the verge with a little more financial success in 2010 of buying my own domain names for my company and my personal use and leaving Blogger and Intuit behind. While many of my friends and family are just now discovering the Internet and beginning to do simple blogging by using Twitter and Facebook, I'm an old man in the Internet world.

My ex-wife had an Internet account while working with the Georgia Tech Research Institute way back in 1984, and I had a MCI mail account I set up with my company in 1985.

I remember when there was nothing on the Internet but a bunch of nerds sending Wordstar files and Lotus 123 spreadsheets back and forth in between comma delimited Dbase III database files.

There was no "social networking" and no "retail transactions" and no pictures of naked women to be found unless you liked printing out something on a dot matrix printer produced with periods, commas, and other ASCII characters.

Something like this made a young computer nerd's day back then...



So any way, right now now I'm afraid to use the server for any financial transactions for fear that there might still be some keystroke logger or something lurking around under the surface.

I'm tempted to buy a new small external hard drive, do a full back up of all of my photos and word processor/spreadsheet files, and then wipe the hard drive clean and re-install a copy of Windows XP professional which I bought last year and be done with Vista in this building...because Vista SUCKS.

Did I mention that MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA SUCKS?

It not only SUCKs, it TOTALLY SUCKS.

Only problem is I'll have to spend half a Saturday re-installing things like Photoshop CS3 and AutoCAD and then downloading Google Earth and the latest editions of Adobe and all of the zillions of other programs I use on a daily basis.

I swear people, it's times like this when I'm tempted to rip off my clothes, put on a loin cloth and moccasins boat shoes, smear my face and chest with colored mud and clay, and go live in the woods for a month just to prove that I can do it again (picture the scenes out of the movie "Predator" with me being the Arnold with a ever greying, ever balding head and a pot belly.)

...shudder....

I don't LIKE it, but I realize that we're all in a world of hurt when the sniveling, bed wetting, tye dyed, booger eating, tree hugging socialists finally overload our infrastructure and it all comes crashing down around our heads one day.

I admit it...I'm ADDICTED to my COMPUTER(S).

OH...oh...ah....eee...oh...OH..OHHHHHHH...AaaaaaaahhhhHHHHHHHH

THUNK (the sound of me falling over backwards out of my chair)

Back To Reality?

Where's My Chili Pot...


Well, I've been home less than 48 hours and I'm already tired of FOX News and the Internet in general, and now I have yet another stupid "Anti-Spyware" virus on the server PC.

It popped up late yesterday afternoon and refuses to turn loose...it even screws with Mozilla Firefox.

It won't even show me any Boobs or other Porno as a consolation prize for putting up with it, it just keeps on telling me that my computer is "infected" with "Malware" and "Spyware" and "Trojan Software" and offering to sell me their software to fix the situation.

To me it's sort of like that dipstick Michael Moore making a movie in which he warns everyone about "obese, unshaven, loud mouthed, ignorant, ill-informed, socialist/progressive tree hugging patchouli stinking tye dyed malfeasants" making movies about "obese, unshaven, loud mouthed, ignorant, ill-informed, socialist/progressive tree hugging patchouli stinking tied died malfeasants."

Any way, I've done a complete Norton 360 scan coming up on twice now in the next few minutes, and with a half terrabyte drive that takes about a week and a half about two hours each and when I get through posting down here I'm going upstairs with my 10 pound hand sledge hammer and a caulk gun full of construction adhesive and threaten my computer to free itself from the Internet transmitted computer deamons...or else.

Just for the record, the Chinese or Koreans or Ethiopian or Cuban hackers or 15 year old pimple faced kids in Paduca, Kentucky that wrote the shit that's presently contaminating my computer go by the name "Vista Antispyware 2010"...and if it were up to me I'd vote to pass a law where the government tracks down these ingrate bastards, captures them, brings them back here to the US and puts them in the Moat in the Gorilla habitat at Zoo Atlanta.

Then every Saturday if the Gorillas haven't killed them violating various bodily orifices the owners of computers which have been infected with the products of their insidious efforts would be allowed to come to the Zoo and bombard them from the pedestrian walkways with damaged computer hard drives, useless desktops and laptops, and weeks worth of Septic Tank waste stored in Glad "Force-Flex" trash bags.

If anybody has a better idea for a punishment, feel free to let me know, and in the mean time I have to go take a nap now and stop thinking about this before my head explodes...

Y'all have a LOVELY day...if you will...

Laptop Woes

My Old Friend Is At The Doctor In The Shop...


I sorry to report that I finally had to drag my old HP Laptop Computer over to the computer shop yesterday.

I've had it so long (October 2006) it's like my alter-ego...and with each day creeping toward full blow Alzheimer's it serves more and more like part of my brain because it has so much stuff in it.

I paid near $2000 for it back then and used it as my primary computer until I bought the HP server PC, and it has been everywhere from Chicago to Key West to Pennsylvania to Kansas City and most places in between with me and never once let me down, so I finally was forced this week to give it a break and let it go see the computer doctor just this once I guess.

It had been limping around with power supply/cord and battery "issues" for the past couple of years but it was too important to me to give it up for any length of time because in spite of being...get this...A SIX COMPUTER HOUSEHOLD...it is the second most powerful computer in the building right now.

Pat's new company machine might have a faster processor...I haven't used it and checked the specs yet...but my HP is a "Media Center Edition" with a 17" screen, weighing about 100 pounds 11 pounds, with every kind of port and cable connection known to man on it.

I can hook a cable TV connection to it and watch Food Network on it if I want to

It has 4 gigs of RAM and not one but TWO 120 gig hard drives, and I have two versions of AutoCAD, a full blown version of Photoshop CS3, and a whole bunch of other technical software which would take about a month of time to either download or install from CD's if something happened to the machine.

And that's right, with the addition of Pat's latest business laptop--another Dell--we have six computers here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.

We're up to our ears in laptops, because in the past, before Pat went on "fur low", every time one died...

hold on...the phone's ringing...

GREAT NEWS...that was the computer shop (seriously) calling to say all I needed was a new AC power supply adapter and the machine would be almost good as new.

any way...every time one of Pat's corporate laptops died they just sent her a replacement, and since she worked remotely from the Island they didn't bother to pay to have the old one shipped back.

So you know what I...Mr self proclaimed computer nerd (in another life) did?

I hoarded those suckers and then I bought parts on line on e-bay and in the end managed to replace crashed hard drives and broken displays and keyboards and so now I have a little fleet of notebook computers varying in age dating from 2003 to 2007...and the cost me on average about $50 each.

When I started writing this posting, before I learned that my primary HP laptop was going to be OK, I decided that it would be a pretty good idea to take one of the other machines, upgrade the hard drive from 20 gigs to something larger, and put copies of Autocad and Photoshop and my PLC programming software and other important stuff on there so that when and if the day comes when my lover the left side of my brain the old HP has to go back to the shop or ...God forbid...it dies, I don't go into full panic mode like I did over the past few days.

I absolutely have to get this latest PLC programmed and out the door before we head south to the Chili Cookoff, and I also have four more three-way valves to re-build, and now I have to go out the door and go pick up my old friend, Mr. HP laptop, and bring him home and order a new AC adaptor on line because I refuse to pay $89 for a new one.

While I agree that dogs might be "Man's Best Friend", in today's technical world a good laptop computer is worth it's weight in gold in my considered Redneck opinion.

Thirty Days In The Hole Overnight In The Basement

Wrestling With My Own Inadequacies...


So after ignoring PLC Panel #2 a.k.a. "Eva" for about 24 hours (Ava arrived at the job site in the midwest yesterday morning), I wandered back down into my basement about midnight last night with a new resolve to conquer my mental programming demons.

I managed to avoid fooling around with the "beach chair sled project" and the endless balsa wood model airplane project and the scale model wooden canoe debacle and, with one eye cast on Fox News and the other on the laptop monitor, nearly seven hours later here I am with substantial progress made toward having the Beta version of the hardware/software for my Horner Touch Screen PLC based blow molded PET bottle panel (HTSPLCBBPETBP for short) ready for shipment.

Right now the target ship date is MONDAY, but things could change if the last 1% of the software effort takes as long as it did on the last epic saga.

Basically the new has worn off the fun I found in my initial panel design/programming efforts, and now I just want to get this thing finished, packed in a box full of foam peanuts, and launched toward Maryland so someone will start writing me a check in the next year and one half.

Of course having started a company in 2009, spent a bunch of money on government mandated fees and licenses, the obligatory office supplies and the materials/hardware needed to actually build something to sell, but not collecting one thin dime in the process (did I mention working about 500 hours in the past three months?), my guess is that my only reward will be the added government benefit of having to file a Federal and State tax return for the Business in addition to doing taxes for me and Pat and the Turbo Pup.

Isn't that just a lovely howdy do?

Meanwhile, in other news, just as it pissed me off that Obama was younger than me when he was elected president, it thoroughly pleases me that Senator Brown graduated from high school the same year I did--1977.

Isn't it nice to see the mongrel bitch Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's transition from Pit Bull to yapping ShitsuShiz'Su puppy this week as a result of the Senatorial Election results in Massachusetts?

Dingy Harry Reid and Dick "Turbin" Durbin and Mad Jack "Eyebrows" Murtha and Barbara Boxer can pretty much kiss their cushy government jobs goodbye in November if the current trend of public opinion continues.

All I say is that the stupid "Moderate" Republicans better keep their pandering butts in line or there could be some more shake-ups in 2012 if they give us three more years of "reaching across the isle" acting like tax and spend Dems.

Ok, I got all of that off my chest and onto my keyboard...I feel like reading the Newspaper and taking a nap now.

Y'all have a LOVELY day...

I Put That Sucker In A Box...

And Shipped That %$#@#er Down The Road...


If you read this blog you probably know what I'm talking about this afternoon, and if you don't you probably wouldn't care or won't understand.

Time for a half bottle of Bourbon and a Cigar, if you will excuse me...

Dead Internet Service

Creative Juices All Backed Up...


I think that I need some "Mental Liquid Plumber" this morning as I look at the back yard weather station display showing a temperature of 19 deg F.

That would be because my synapses are starting to feel clogged up if not frozen for a variety of reasons beyond my control this week.

If you stopped by here before 8 AM you only found yesterday's ramblings because by the time I got through working on fine tuning PLC #1 (a.k.a. Ava) I couldn't get to the Internet to write anything.

Comcast apparently was performing maintenance and had a "system outage" allowing me to still have cable TV so I could watch Food Network reruns with Alton Brown--at the same time preventing me from accessing the www since some time around 3 AM until just now.

I'm probably only one of two people over the age of 45 in Knoxtown that regularly gets pissed off when my Internet provider decides to cut a wire or fiber optic cable in the wee hours of the morning...of course all of the perverts and college students are inconvenienced because they have to log off and stop looking at photos of naked strangers and Twittering about what they ate for dinner or the hot babe/guy that made eye contact with them walking down the street.

Then of course after the outage I had to perform my usual ritual of bowing down to the Technology Voodoo Gods, scurrying around the house with a painted face, splashing goat's blood on random surfaces with a petrified Rooster's foot & chanting gibberish while rebooting the server PC and two laptops and two VoIP boxes AND the wireless router to get things back up and running.

In the mean time the lost couple of hours of Internet time not only stopped my blogging, but also ended some work I was doing putting together the owner's manuals for the PLC's (a.k.a. sisters Ava and Eva.)

As you probably know, very few companies actually send you an owner's manual these days when they sell you anything made from China or Silicon Valley no matter whether it cost $9.99 plus shipping and handling or a months salary...they make you go online and spend your money on paper and printer ink if you want a real hard copy of the instructions rather than clicking on the "Help" button and wading through a list of unrelated topics a couple of miles long.

So now it's time to try to chase my programming consultant down on the telephone and get back to downloading some stuff for Ava and Eva's documentation and other than that...

y'all have a FANDAMTABULOUS day...

If you will...

Basement Blogging

I'm The Emperor Of All I Survey....


I'm just finishing up a successful session of programming this evening...something that was mandatory if I'm going to get this contraption out the door and into my customer' hands this week.

In the past five hours I've managed to re-write a substantial portion of the front end of my PLC program and really cleaned things up--in the process jumping across a couple of logical hurdles I've been wrestling with for a few weeks now.

I've had to tear out a bunch of optional "gee whiz" stuff which wasn't in the original specifications or the purchase order and concentrate on the core program code and making the thing sing and dance in the manner it was sold.

It's not really Rocket Science, but realize that it's been nearly thirty years since I last worked with PLC's and it's been nearly 20 years since I spent time writing software on any substantial basis.

Today finds me back on a ladder cleaning gutters and hanging Christmas lights and doing other home owner stuff...then there's still three or four pounds of Boston Butt that needs pulling and further processed into ...get ready...

T A M A L E S.

With real Masa dough wrapped in corn husks and steamed to perfection.

My stomach is growling just writing about them (the Tamales.)

Free At Last...Free At Last

Thank Anyone But Bill Gates...I'm Free At Last...


Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I have to hand it to the Norton 360 software people, because after FOUR full scans lasting about 15 hours over THREE days, today's Virus Update Download finally caught up with the bull crap that had my old HP laptop tied in knots since last Friday.

A quick scan after downloading the newest descriptions took care of things, and then I ran the free download version of the software from Malwarebytes and it found another EIGHTY things lurking on my hard drive and after evaporating them with the click of a mouse I feel Twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter.

I also ran the Malwarebytes program on my server and it found another five things Norton didn't find.

I swear if you use your computer for anything but Facebook and games and you're online with any frequency you absolutely HAVE TO have a strict anti-virus and spyware program and further...

you have to use it regularly, if not EVERY DAY.

Look at what this recent BS has cost me...and what it could have cost me if I didn't have three computers or if it had happened a week earlier when I was out of town in the training class.

Just remember if you're a spammer or virus writer or other sniveling booger eating purveyor of computer diseases and I ever find you that there is a high probability I'll be spending three or four years in prison while you spend the rest of your life with my amputated foot/tennis shoe up your ass or sticking out of your ear.

That will be all...for now...

Blogging From The Bottom Of The Mighty Tennessee River

My Mature Judgment Saved My Computer...


I swear if I were twenty years younger (including my propensity those days to throw mis-behaving electronics items like remote controls and phones) and still had a boat I'd have taken this computer out to the river and used it for a boat anchor or created a new artificial reef.

It just crashed a few minutes ago for the second time since midnight and about the fifth or sixth time in the past TWO days.

What really freaks me out is that I thought things with the pitiful useless Vista operating system had self medicated themselves over the past couple of weeks because I was sometimes getting through three days in a row and entire weekends without a crash.

Needless to say I've become the most diligent person in Eastern Tennessee at hitting the save button before I walk away from the beast and I save often in longer sessions where I'm writing.

When I find a web page I like or need for future reference I either bookmark it or copy the URL to an e-mail and send it to myself with a descriptive subject line. The e-mail method keeps from cluttering my favorites listing which probably has two or three hundred entries in sub-folders.

So any way...closing detail progress continues on the deck, fence, and the new Turbo Pup Exit door with the second coat of paint going on the wall trim and some other detailing being finished around the freshly cut opening in the brickwork on the outside.

I pace myself (in other words I'm distracted and lazy) to only three or four hours a day due to the heat so a project which could have been done professionally in three days has now extended itself to nearly a month.

Quality over quantity is my motto, and having a good time in the process is job #1 at all times.

Time to go smear paint on wood and myself...regards y'all...

Obscene Vista

Someone Send Up A Flare...


Well, I reluctantly let my computer wander all by itself out onto the Internet last night.

I told it to go to the Microsoft Website because I was tired of the machine crashing every 22 1/2 hours and otherwise unexpectedly rebooting in the middle of the night and sometimes at the worst possible moment before I hit the send button on a three page E-Mail.

So it did, and I waited like I was waiting for my sixteen year old daughter to come home from the senior prom.

Then it came back saying Mr. Gates was wanting to give us a bad dose of "Vista Service Pack 1."

Hummmmmm...I thought for a moment, then replied.

I said that I already had luggage, but it turns out this "Pack" wasn't actually of the "backpack" variety, and since God Bill Gates' company said we really needed it here in our house I reluctantly said go ahead and get it.

After all...IT'S FREE.

By the way, so's the Flu and several of Miss Pelosi's dreaded STD's, but this was supposed to be different.

It's an OFFICIAL MICROSOFT PRODUCT, by God.

So things proceeded to whirl and bang and clank and spin and vibrate for a while with unexpected messages popping up with progress bars and such, and I wandered around the house looking at yesterday's unread newspaper and FOX News and a couple of engineering texts I had laying around the office, then after a half hour and a couple of warm boots...

here I am again on the Internet this morning.

Just in case, I got out my Abacus and my stone tablets and chisels, and if you don't hear from me within the next 24 hours...

somebody please call 911...

And I Thought A "Vista" Was Something Nice To Look At...

Not At My House These Days...


Here's my the view from my office "Vista" at least once every 24 hours...



What's even more infuriating is that when you click on the little box that wants to go look for a solution on the Internet, all it ever does is act like nothing happened in the first place...

it does make you hit the "Save" buttons more religiously after you lose a couple hours work a couple of times...

Who Do I Complain To?

Anyone Got Bill Gates Home Phone Number?

My regular readers and lurkers may remember that last November I ordered a new custom built HP Tower PC online with the intentions of letting it do the server duties in my ever growing five computer home data processing empire.

In addition to gobs of Hard Drive and RAM capacity, I winced and bought the then new Windows Vista product because that's all HP was offering factory installed--but my my heart and soul and what's left of my mind inside my ever greying, ever balding skull wanted XP Professional.

Since then, approximately every 24 to 48 hours beginning the day I unpacked the pieces of shiny metal and plastic from the cardboard and Styrofoam I'm greeted with this little love note which causes my bowels to rumble and my spleen to argue with my liver and hypoythalomus gland :



For those of you too lazy to click on the image, here's a larger view of the important parts of the screen shot.



Twenty years ago I'd be coming home from the doctor with my right hand in a splint and getting out my wallet to pay for a new monitor, but fortunately like fine wine age has mellowed my temperament or maybe I'm just too tired to get all worked up over the antics and misbehavior of a dumb machine.

Expensive TV With Battery Back-Up

Technology Continues To Take Over My House Balm My Ego...


Well, the good news is that I can finally spend the evening in my office at home working and watching FOX News on TV at the same time.

The bad news is that it cost me an extra $130 for the TV receiver card and a fancy gold colored RG-6 splitter for the cable signal.

After two hours spent cracking open the CPU cabinet and fooling around getting Vista and the new software to cooperate with each other, I gave up and let Windows Media Center handle things.

Now I have a 22" color TV (with remote) which cost me nearly $1,500 if you include the computer, monitor, UPS, and other goodies.

I'm a certified Genius, aren't I?

Careful... I said Genius, not accountant.

Stranded In Internet Pergatory

DSL Slower Than Christmas Nothing?


Yes, I'm still alive, although technically I'm living in the stone age, brought to you this morning by Centurytel DSL Internet.

Stone age might be a complement...who in their right mind has to "log in" to their own network, has the wireless features of the modem/router disabled--all courtesy of the people in "technical support" (and I use the word technical loosely) at your Internet Service Provider.

I hate coming back home to Alabama a few times each year to find out what the so-called professionals have done to my Mother's computer and network.

It looks like I'm stuck in her bedroom with her old Compaq laptop until I can untangle the mess they've made here.

Wish me luck...if you will.