How feeble am I?

For a second there thought I'd lost another one. The computer I'm using, both at the moment and "generally".. not my computer, not that the other one or any of "my" computers have ever been mine really, but this one isn't, this is just what I'm using until I get a monitor that works so I can get back to using the other one which isn't really mine but for all general purposes, which is not a lot at the moment without a proper monitor for it, is mine.

That was actually the middle of a sentence, so getting back to that, this computer almost succumbed to the me curse. After destroying 2 monitors in rapid succession and.. well nothing else but 2 monitors died, or ceased working in a way that makes it possible to be on a computer one right after another, and then today this one acted all weirdly.

It started when Cooley, the cat decided to get on the keyboard when I walked away from the comp for a bit, as she is wont to do, and often does and even more often tries to and I need to hold her off.. but there she was sitting on the comp so I got her off there and the screen was weird. Not really weird, like with 147 browsers open, or with a random selection of letters typed in Quicksearch or open in carat browsing whatever that is or upside down which are all things this computer (well not necessarily this computer but a computer that I've used in the last few years) has experienced, courtesy of the very Cooley which we speak, but it was weird. The bottom bar was different with half the stuff missing and things were just stuck. I managed to get back to something I was doing but it dragged, and I don't like it when my settings get all different and stuff and I couldn't change it back so I restarted the comp.

So it closed down, didn't restart though.. odd I thought, I'm sure I selected restart anyway I'm going on about this way too long already and basically it wouldn't turn back on. Oh how Cooley felt my wrath, or tuned out some serious scolding anyway, and I tried and tried again.. thinking shit.. what I'm I going to use now? Because not using any comp is well.. unthinkable.. what would I do.. I need it for.. communication, finding jobs and stuff and I don't even do that stuff.. like, ever, well not very often and I'm still at a loss for not just what I'll do all day but what I'll do at all.. ever!

Well I let it rest a bit and it came back on.. but really, it's not ideal.. oh so feeble am I, and really, it didn't take this incident to know that.. I'm more than aware of my total reliance on the humble comp but, sometimes you just have to think about it, you know.

Now that's written I won't be bothering myself about this issue again. Until next time.

And the word of the day is..

I dunno.

Purgatory? It's kind of where I currently am, that is if you overstate it severely and call something a thing that is very unlike what it is. I guess.

Right now I'm in between things, I could say. I've been trying to get things done, because I'm off again in a few days, and have things I need to do before then, and other things I'd like to do but it doesn't help when the monitor just stops working in the middle of stuff does it? Well? Does it?

It doesn't. It does give me an excuse for not getting things done which, tbph, would likely not have been completed or even began had the monitor kept on going as it should. I have other reasons for not getting round to stuff. Well not so much reasons as it's what I always do, monitor or not monitor.

The monitor is working again now, btw. Not on this comp,m it's working on the other one though, and the other one is one this one, which works.

I really shouldn't say anything..

so I won't, because it's all going to come crashing down around me anyway, probably as soon as I hit "post". Or just as I'm doing it so the draft is waiting for me to go and post tomorrow.. or something.

Ok so I will. This morning I got into the computer.. I mean I didn't literally get in it, I'm much too big to fit in a computer.. silly, but I did more stuff, I took the front bit of and poked around behind the bit on top of the hard drive near the power switch, or something and when I turned it on it beeped. So I connected the monitor and turned it on and have been having relatively little trouble all day so it seems to work..

however..

it may not continue to work. And before I get accused of being negative again, I'm actually quite cheery about this I'm just protecting myself from getting burned again :) it's done this to me before when I thought everything was going ok so I don't really trust it.

But it's been a pleasant enough Sunday, overcast and rainy but for me, it mattered not one whit!

Another post! Oh my...

I've been persuaded to post again today by a reader.. rather by the very fact that someone is actually reading and commenting.. so here I am.

So Erik left this morning. It was a relatively tearless parting, I'm quite stoic and able to amuse myself for 2 weeks (that's if I have my stuff, you know.. like computer.. internet.. but none of that now) and Cooley appeared to be blissfully unaware of just what was going on.

So how have I been spending this Easter Sunday on my own? Well, for the first half of the day mostly pissing about on the internet, having fun tracking the flight and my usual stuff. After about 6 or something the computer shut down (as it has been wont to do occasionally since time of purchasing but usually hasn't caused too much drama) and it didn't restart itself as it does when it usually shuts down (see previous brackets). It sorta did this the other night too but it came back and started working normally again (occasionally restarting itself for no reason or alternatively giving me the blue screen of death for no reason).

So anyway, it just did that no signal thing and the screen went black. So I had to shut the comp down with the button. I tried to turn it back on and it gave the black screen. So I waited. After waiting it still did the black screen. Oh shit am I going to go through all this again.. well I did that again a couple of times. I took the side of the comp and fiddled around in there and cleaned the fan, then I turned it on and heard the beep so I thought cool it's working but it got stuck on some screen and that was it. For a few hours I alternated between waiting, fiddling around inside the comp, turning it on and getting the black screen, or turning it on and getting it starting up and getting stuck on a different screen every time.

Then I started it and it worked normally but turned itself off after about 4 minutes. Fortunately it came back on normally and that's what I'm working on now but who knows how long it will last.

So anyway that's what I've been doing with myself all day. Well.. and this..

The most annoying thing about having to be online in a public place..

like an internet cafe.. apart from not being able to get online whenever one wants with ease, numerous times a day, and having to pay, using an unfamiliar computer and not knowing what you're going to get (seriously some of these computers are shit) and the people smoking in them, having limitations on what sites you can get into (not so many but there a couple of things I need to know that I can't find out) not having your own customized stuff in front of you, people chatting on skype or just on the phone with each other, people who have headphones on through which you can hear the music in a tinny high pitched tone and people sending long messages on their phone (twice) without changing the settings to get rid of the beer sound is...

actually, I think apart from that it's just fine.

Oh and sometimes not being able to get your language on the comp. That too.

Hmmm, that's odd.

The internet is behaving very oddly, very oddly indeed. For about the last hour now I haven't been able to get into anything.. anything I tell you!

Anything that is, except for this site, any google sites actually, and a few random others. The others however, (the others being not google or the others I managed to get through to) I simply cannot access. It includes Flickr and *mumbles a bit* Facebook and a few random others, and it's extremely odd. At first I thought it was Yahoo, as that site itself was inaccessible as well as Flickr which is a subsidiary (if that's the correct term) but... the random others aren't, I don't think.

It's very odd.

Kay, that went well.

I am now the proud owner of a discarded shell of a computer. An old computer with no hard drive.. and there's a hard drive out there that has a bunch of my stuff on it that I cannot access until I get the next round of stuff done (read, get anything done).. there's also another bunch of data that is trapped on an inaccessible hard drive but that one's here, it's just inaccessible (refers reader to previous comment inferring that naught is getting done).

So now I have to get a hard drive, like buy a hard drive. Like I have the first clue how to do that. Well I do, I even have a place that's supposed to be good for those sorts of things. After that I need to get it installed with some system thingy and I will have help with that but I'm not sure a new version will work well on this old comp with not enough ram so I might have to continue struggling with the one I've been "using" (yes I say that in it's broadest possible sense) the one that's a hodge podge of different.. er.. systems and and old version of Linux that doesn't even have Midnight Commander. If you can believe that.

Anyway.. I'm strangely and quite stupidly optimistic as if there's the slightest chance that I'm a) going to actually get my ass out and get this thing soon, b) that fixing it to the comp is going to be without incident and c) well... that the whole thing is going to turn out to be as unfathomable to me as all the rest has been and d) that it just won't happen which is covered by the other points but I think it's worth mentioning in a point of it's own... as it won't happen. You'll see.

Still, I'm quite looking forward to going down to techland and looking at all the goodies and knowing exactly what I want and bringing it home and making it work and getting the system on and getting it online and downloading and installing all those programs and having a working computer, that'll be cool.

So it went pretty well.

Oh FFFS!

Bloody computer bloody crap bloody fuck it to fuck.

Ok not this one, although it's doing it's working annoyingly slow and freezing up often which I've almost become desensitized too except for when it pisses me off but I'm talking about the other one. The one that I got to replace the other one that died mysteriously with a hard drive (on loan) which was installed with Linux which I couldn't for the life of me make head or tail of and which the adaptor thingy I had wouldn't operate on so I wasn't online.

So, I finally got an adaptor thingy which works on Linux and waddaya know... you need to go through all sorts of fiddly building kernels and long lines of text and bla bla bla fuck it to fuck for fuck's sake.

So we invite a friend over, ok so he comes over so we can all go bowling because it's my birthday and we're gonna bowl and drink and whatever but he comes over and during the time he's there we casually accidentally mention that we got the adaptor thingy and can't figure out for the life of us how to make it work.

He gets on the comp... fiddles around. Decides he doesn't know how to configure it or whatever but stays on looking up what we got there, doesn't recognize the version and tries to bring up Midnight Commander.. and fry my knees like a flounder... there is no Midnight Commander on the system.

Well.. I was flabbergasted. Ok so I'd never heard of this jazz before.. but apparently it's on every single system there is, not just Linux or Windows or whatever it's on everything so it doesn't matter that this is a sort of custom made Linux-esque operating system because they simply all have Midnight Commander.. something like that anyway. Except for this one of course..

He fucked around a bit more, but the only thing he could discover is that it isn't a standard Linux version it's a sort of custom made Linux-esque operating system... and didn't know how to work this one. So he fiddled around more on it but the sun was going down, and the end of cheap hours at the bowling alley was becoming nearer and there was only one response to this.

Fuck it dude, let's go bowling.

So he fucked around on it a bit more.. we tried the line again, in fact a few times because there really aren't enough opportunities in real life to use that line and have it make sense in the current context, unless you're someone who goes bowling a lot which we aren't.. and finally we went bowling.

So now.. oh, here's the best bit, the dude who the hard drive is on loan from now really really needs it back and is coming to get it tomorrow, and here's the better bit, I have a bunch of stuff on there, photos and whatever, and being lazy, penniless and clueless about all things computer I haven't done anything about it and it's pretty much stuck there. I could transfer them over to this comp but get this... and this, wait this is the best bit, there isn't enough room on this comp for it all, or even a significant percentage of it so fuck knows what now.

I think I'll take up bowling as a regular thing. Or maybe drinking Oh wait...

so...

It's working, there's usually an issue with starting up or shutting down, but it seems to stay on, at least for a few hours.

*crosses fingers and everything crossable*

The current bi-monthly misshap..

Not sure if these misshaps... computer related or general happen weekly, monthly, bi-monthly or 4 daily, but they happen a lot. A lot!

The most recent (current) one is this very comp. Yes, I'm using this very one right now, obvs.. but it's been giving me problems.

All weekend it kept shutting down, it would start up mostly normally with a blue screen informing us there were problems to be checked, usually got fully started up but it wouldn't stay started for very long. Not long enough to do anything.

We tried everything.. everything! That is, the 3 things each we know how to do and did those things over and over again though those things proved useless in this case. I don't include the things I tried to do which usually worked for me before when I had computer problems, as it wouldn't let me do those.

So.. at some point we tried similar but slightly different things (this is the not me part of we, all my attempts were pointless) and it seemed to do something different. Shut the computer down and slept on it.

Monday it worked like a charm. Well, like it did before which is slow and clunky but it stayed on.
Some time in the evening it shut down, but came back again.

Yesterday.. expecting I'd have a fruitful day of doing stuff on the comp, seeing as Monday it had for the most part worked.. I logged on. Unfortunately it decided to do a repeat of the weekend. I did a repeat of the things I'd tried which had never worked, and they never worked.

In the evening Erik came back and did something slightly different again and it did something a bit different. It looked promising, and today, I expected to have another Monday.

No such luck, it kept shutting down. I repeated a few times, left it, repeated again and one of those times it stayed on and this is one of those times. We'll see what it does next.

Damn, I thought I was all clever n stuff..

I've been having a few computer issues over the last month. Not the one I'm currently using.. well there are issues with this, but those are not the issues I'm talking about now.. well the issues with this computer contribute to the importance of sorting out the issues with the other one, but those are not the issues I'm going to focus on in this post.

The other computer is at this time running on what is little more than a kernel. I'm not sure if that sentence is correct or if I know what it means, but it's running on Linux, (Ubuntu or whatever) and at the moment most programs just won't work. I was able to put my photos on, and a little bit of editing, and Erik managed to configure Realplayer to play music, some anyway but further than that, I have no clue.

It's humbling. All this time, whenever I thought of it anyway, which admittedly is very little, I thought I'd be one of the clever, openminded people who'd take to Linux like something that takes very well to something else, and not one of those Windows minions who complain that it's not usable and Windows is better.

Well.. let me say this. I don't know if "better" is the right term, but at least for the moment Windows is much more me friendly. I mean.. progams are actual programs, and they work. And if you need to install something you click install.. and it installs. I wouldn't mind something a tad more complicated if there was no choice.. but a page full of lines of script that I'm supposed to do something with.. and talk about kernels and terminal emulators and configuring the command line with patches while fabricating the port for uxb app.1. Oh, and starting from System/Applications which I couldn't even find on the damn thing well.. That's not what I ordered. And my wifi thingy won't work on it because it only works on Windows.

Not to mention, my only experience with a Mac recently while I was in Italy didn't turn out well either. Something about automatically creating a trash folder when I wanted to delete stuff off my memory card and making it invisible so my card was still essentially full.. and when I got back on the dumbass' Windows comp it immediately showed the folder. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Anyway, there's not much hope of this, but if there's anyone out there who understands this stuff and is able to explain it in any known human language that would be great, but I reckon it won't happen, so wev. I just have to face the fact I'm one of the crowd, the many, the common folk who like to click and play, and aren't capable of much more than that.

I tried to do stuff today..

Well, I did stuff today, and I'm still doing stuff but..

It's taking so bloody long! In all honesty I have about 1 hour's work to get done in total, but so far it's taken something like... real long. It just takes so bloody long to get anything done on this damn computer that.. fuck. I mean I'm not complaining, except for the complaining bit.. in a way it's a way to make me feel like I'm doing something, as it is taking up some time, and an excuse to not do other things, which isn't exactly a problem for me because 3 days ago, 2 days ago and yesterday I didn't have a problem not doing them and I didn't have this excuse, or any excuse really.

What's my point. There is none. The point is that I'm damn lazy, that's the truth of it, and I've spent a morning taking a long time getting very little done and I'm milking it for all it's worth. Obviously I lead a life of relative leisure that there's nothing too pressing to get me to go out and get this all done, that I have this to go on about at all, so there's that, and there's the fact that moving between 2 computers and pottering around a lot is what I'd be doing anyway, whether I have stuff to wait for the computer to do or not. The point is...

I did stuff today, and I'm still doing stuff! So there!

One word.

Grrrrrr.

That's not really a word is it. Well, in short. It's still not working! It didn't actualy happen the way I thought it would, I went there, got my money, got another thingy at another shop, that didn't work, I took it back, got it exchanged for another one that worked on the computer there and I brought it home a it's doing something different but IT'S STILL NOT WORKING. I MEAN WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?

And of course the people in the shop have to act surprised like that never happens, it's so unusual and we never have people return these.

Well you've met me now. Deal.

I thought it was too easy.

A few days ago I went and got myself a wireless adapter thingy in order to be online on the other computer, my computer. I mean, I'm online on this one, Erik's comp, the laptop and that's fine, but there are photos and programs and stuff on mine which I like to be able to access, it's also a desktop, which is easier for me to do stuff on and it has more space, runs smoother.. all sorts of things.

Now, you might be wondering why I'm referring to "this" computer being not the one I'm speaking of, seeing as I got an adapter for that one, well, read on.

I brought it home, stuck it in, immediately got a little icon pop up and a wizard asking me to install new hardware, I installed the driver, etc etc etc. Did all that and was online. Amazing. I know that's supposed to happen, and they make things simple nowadays, for folks like me who spend most of their time on a computer but nevertheless don't know much about hardware and the nitty gritty sort of stuff, but it still surprised me, as every time I try to do something new it gives me a hard time before (usually) inevitably working, but not as easy as they always tell you in the shop.

Here again, you might be wondering about the "other" computer reference, seeing as I succeeded in getting online on this "other" computer. Keep reading.

Well, Friday and the weekend I coasted on happily, getting used to being able to use the mouse, revisiting all my old links that I forgot about, having more room for stuff, accessing and being able to upload all those photos...

then yesterday (Monday) as I was doing whatever I was doing, there was a little message I got saying if I used a high speed port I could get a faster connection, so I thought hmm, why not" and tried it in another port. I didn't get to find out if it was faster or not, because after about half a minute my icon disappeared and the internet went off.

I didn't know what it was at first so I tried a bunch of stuff, don't remember the details now. I tried all the other ports and none of them worked. I uninstalled and reinstalled the program but it made no difference, no icon and the light wasn't coming on. I tried all sorts of different things but it doesn't matter it didn't work. Today after turning the computer on I tried again just in case it would magically come back but no. Gone.

So I'm on this computer, and I know it's a bit of a whine, as I'm obviously online and it's not the worst thing in the world, but a) all the reasons stated at the beginning, and b) I just bought the fucking thing and when you buy things they're supposed to fucking work, and keep working.. at least for a few months or years or so for fucks sake!

In a little while I'm going to take it to the shop and see what they say, if they either replace it, fix it, or tell me the mystery of why it's not working. I still have the receipt, the box it came in, with the little cardboard holder, and the bag they gave me with it, one of the benefits of having the thing fuck up on me so early, so I should get someone to give me the time of day, but I already know what's going to happen, so I will now do something a little unorthodox and give you the history of what will happen when I go there. Ready?

"Hi I bought this 3 days ago and it quit working on me, it was working fine until (etc etc etc, story I told you already)"

"Oh, that's odd" *looks at receipt, takes the whatsit and sticks it in a usb of a nearby computer, thingy lights up and computer shows an icon* it's working fine now"

"but it wasn't working on my computer, it didn't work yesterday, I tried it in every port, and today again it didn't work, it didn't light up, it didn't do anything"

"Well it's working now"

End scene.