Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Seriously Bummed
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
The computer tech was just here.
Not a hard drive problem; not a power issue.
Her assessment: it’s the motherboard.
She placed a call to Lenovo, and they are sending me a box so I can send my laptop to them (a.k.a., “The Depot”). Getting the box will be 1 to 2 days; then 7 days after that it should magically reappear, in full working order.
I am seriously bummed. No laptop love for me for at least 7 to 9 days.
On the other hand, I now have my “old” hard drive in hand, so when I send my ‘puter off to The Depot, no one will have access to information on my hard drive. If they “lose” it (I have read way too many articles on The Consumerist), I will at least only be losing a computer, not my information. They can always replace a computer… it’s the information on it that is harder to come by! Plus, if they can’t find the problem, they can just ship me a new computer, right? Right!
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R.I.P. Hard Drive
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
Yes, folks, my hard drive is dead. This, just after I did a reinstall two weeks ago.
So now I am tethered to The Hubby’s old desktop. No more can I watch TV on the couch and surf the wonderful web. No more can I work from the comfort of my bedroom. I have to sit at a desk and use a desktop. Don’t you feel sorry for me?
No?? Not even a little? Geez, what a tough crowd!
The bright side is, because I just did a re-install a few weeks ago, I know I have a fairly up to date back up of my emails; and since I back up daily at noontime I know I have most of my files available. The computer is still under warranty, so the labor and cost of the new hard drive = $0.00.
The down side – I have to install a bunch of stuff on The Hubby’s computer so I can work this week while I wait for the replacement to happen. Plus, you know, the whole working at the desk thing. Which, I do all the time, but now that it isn’t optional, feels like a jail sentence.
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OMG
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
I absolutely love the service I found last night – http://install4free.wordpress.net/.
They got me all set up – using the most current version of WordPress.
And I figured out how to import all my blogger entries! Yippee!!
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Dang Computers!
Saturday, May 31st, 2008
I am getting very frustrated. My “surprise” from a few posts ago was that I purchased a domain and am planning to move my blog to it.
Unfortunately, that involves a computer and a brain, and apparently I am lacking one of those. I have installed, uninstalled, and generally mucked around with the dang thing and don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I bought Word Press for Dummies and have started to go through that.
I heard a saying sometime ago – I/you know just enough to be dangerous. And that is where I am now… I know enough to get me into more trouble. Of course, it may get me out of the trouble I was in, but now it will get worse.
Anyway, Hubby pointed out that it had been awhile since my last post, so I thought I could vent a bit here while trying to get the dang thing to work.
Hope you are all having a pleasant weekend!
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Gone, Baby, Gone
Friday, May 9th, 2008
Step 1:
Step 2:
Step 3:
Step 4:
Step 5:
16 boxes, gone in 10 minutes.
Beautiful!
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Scanning My Life Away
Friday, April 4th, 2008
I am a hoarder. I come from a long line of hoarders. Well, maybe hoarder is a strong word for it. We’re Yankees, thrifty, savers, re-users, recyclers, frugal, cheap, packrats. Yup, I am a packrat. Although I am a semi-reformed pack rat. I CAN get rid of things – give them away, have a tag sale, donate them, etc. This is totally the influence of the Hubby.
But one area I have difficultly letting go in is PAPER. I have tax returns from 1990. I have paystubs from when we lived in CA (1990 – 1992). I have paperwork from Hubby’s job in 1993 (anyone need a memo on the new guy?). I have grocery store receipts from 10 years ago. I have invoices from Hubby’s salesman job in 1993- 2001. I have boxes and boxes of PAPER.
Part of my issue is fear. I am afraid I will need this information sometime, so I keep it. But I also need SPACE in my basement. So I have found the perfect solution. I convinced my bosses I needed the ScanSnap550.
This thing is awesome!! It scans to pdf – in color, double or single sided, and has an option for OCR (so I can search it for keywords later – so when I want to find the receipts for Walmart, I just type in “walmart” as the search word and viola! there it is!).
So, I have gone through the 14 boxes of old paperwork, culling out the crap, recovering the binder clips and rediscovering how stupid we used to be. It was amazing to look at what we paid for things, the interest rates we paid, and how long it took to pay things off. I found the appraisal for the heart pendent and earrings Hubby bought for me for our 6th Wedding Anniversary. I found the paperwork for when we bought our dog Chewie ($600 cost – financed for $900). I have pulled out the important stuff to scan and have about 15 boxes of pure crap that needs to be shredded.
I found a company that will come to the house, shred all the boxes in front of me (15 to 25 minutes to complete the job) and then be on it’s way. I have easily met the minimum amount of boxes.
So now, i need to scan all the “important” stuff that I normally would feel like I need to hold onto. Then they can go into the shred pile. So I tackled the bank statements the other night.
I scanned 3 INCHES of bank statements in 45 minutes (black – not color; double sided; not using the OCR option). All that – years of information – now digitally stored and searchable (after I change the files to OCR’d files). AWESOME!!
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A camera, a camera!
Sunday, March 30th, 2008
I have been wanting a digital camera for awhile now. It was in the back of my mind, one of those things you want, but never seem to get around to getting. Since starting this blog, I thought it would be cool to have some photos, but the only digital camera I could use for it was the big camcorder we have. Hubby has a digital, but it is with him most of the time for business. Plus, since I don’t use it much, my photo taking skills with it are very lacking (one might say I take bad pictures no matter what, so I guess I can’t blame it entirely on the lack of exposure to Hubby’s camera!).
Anyway, I have had my eye on some cameras lately. I went Target and checked out their selection. They had some stuff on clearance (clearance is my best friend!) so I went home and checked the models online. I narrowed it down to a Sony DSCW80 and an Olympus model. They were about the same price on clearance and were pretty comparable in most features (7.2 pixels, sureshot/steady hand feature, etc.).
So The Family went to Target yesterday to buy The Boy some shoes. We were not successful in our quest for shoes, but he got the first season of Flight of the Conchords on DVD. While we were in the electronic section of the store, Ihalf-jokingly said to Hubby – maybe I should get a camera. He said I guess we could look. So we looked at the models I had researched. I was leaning towards the Sony since I thought the memory disk it took was the same as the one we had for the camcorder at home. So we waited for a sales person to finish up with another customer who was trying to buy a camcorder. Once we got someone’s attention, she looked for the model in the locked drawers.
No luck.
Except…
they offered the floor model at a 30% discount off of the clearance price. So a camera that originally sold for 199.99 was purchased for …. $118.99.
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