. Spinning .

Ah, it’s not a question of tradition or romance. And the prices have come down within reach. It’s not a case of fighting the onslaught of change or resistance to modern technology.

The Book rises over the Kindle, the Nook, et al, for this: it can be safely left on the table beside a hospital bed without fear of theft or confusion. It can be picked up by anyone, any of his visitors who are willing to sit and read to him. A continuing narrative stopped not by button but bookmark, a thin slip of paper holding the place.

Wife, son and brother, sisters and an occasional temporarily-approved friend. Each know the mechanics of opening a book, flipping a page, reading. Even an aide may get antsy herself, go through the motions, her voice carrying the story on through conflicts no worse than what the man goes through just lying there on the bed. He gets tired, frustrated, scared in uncomfortable, pinned down like a butterfly day after day. His vista a wide-open expanse of the ceiling with the occasional head popping through like a cloud in his sky.

He escapes into dreams in his sleep. But he needs more to escape while awake.

When faced with the cost of a new PC (really, the Mac Mini for $700 plus insurance) I did one more run through of J’s PC. It really felt like the problem centered on the on/off switch, but with this Acer Aspire layout, it was nearly impossible to check it out, or completely eliminate anything else as the problem.

I’m glad I gave it one more try. It was indeed the damn button. The on/off button is a flat triangle about an inch large that is on one corner of the top of the case. There is very little resistance when you press this “area” which is really what it is, since it’s not really a button. I imagined something beneath the surface made contact with a certain amount of pressure, but even looking at it from the inside gave me no real indication of what was contacting what to turn the machine on. I made a wild guess, put on a dab of hot melt at a point where a bit of a lip held in the chip, and voila!

But this kind of thing annoys me. It is just another example of the poorly design and engineering that goes into something these days. The whole case is a farce. Even the side panels which can be tricky until you learn the proper way to hold them while sliding them in place are ridiculously aggravating on this machine.

Oh yeah, I’m happy that all it cost was a week of my time and a dab of hot melt glue, but I was already getting excited at the thought of a new Mac Mini.

Well I’m trying my darnedest to not only find the problem but to somehow fix it at a reasonable cost, but J’s Acer PC is built to work only with what God gave it.

I did get the power supply tester and it shows that the power supply is working just fine. That leaves the possibility of the on/off button and connection, or the whole motherboard itself. Sounded like I should be able to transfer the innerds into another case (which have gone up considerably in cost lately) but Acer builds to Acer, and then changes design so that the new cases don’t quite work with the motherboard configuration of this PC. The connections from the on/off switch are also a bit odd–and in an all-in-one plug though I suppose I could rewire it. The other problem is that it doesn’t have a reset switch, nor a main on/off to the power supply (which is why I had to spring for the p/s tester). I also managed to get a connection adapter kit that may allow me to grab some data off of J’s nearly empty 320 gig hard drive.

So once again, as happens every two to three years, I’m at a crossroads of decision. Right now, with the price of PCs I’m looking at the long term (again, two to three years is long-term) picture. I’ve got a Dell Laptop, a 2-year old but rarely used main PC, the clunker in the shop just for internet really, the MacBook, and J’s Acer Aspire with some hefty power but a serious problem. Now the MacBook is what I use daily, almost non-stop. It’s got a warranty that expires in January (naturally!) and after 3 years, is starting to slow down and throw some curve balls now and then. It won’t, of course, die before the warranty is up, and it’s not sick enough to send in for repair. It’s the typical pain that stops hurting in the dentist’s waiting room.

What I’m thinking (looking into, researching, pricing out) as the best possible solution is to hand over the Main PC to J, backing up my own files on it and copying the most important over to the Dell Laptop as another backup. Then, perhaps getting a Mac Mini for myself that will serve as a backup should (when) the MacBook dies an irresurrectable death, then consider a small MacBook or MacBook Pro at that point. This would give us two Mac systems and two PC Windows systems that back up each other. Plus the three external hard drives and the multiple USB thumbdrives for all my creative work.

And yes, I’m probably a borderline obsessive compulsive.

Back into the hardware end of things, J’s PC (on the right) suddenly won’t go on. It’s got the worst “On/Off” button system I’ve ever encountered, a flat section on the corner that doesn’t really depress externally but rather touches something off inside, so I don’t really know if it’s the button (did check the wires and they seem okay) or the power supply. The only way to check it is with a power supply that is known to be okay (the PC on the left, whose problem I’ve forgotten but I think it was the hard drive or the monitor or some such thing). Before I go out and buy a new part, I’d first like to see what’s actually wrong so that I don’t have to purchase the whole barebones again.

Finally forced a friend to read one of my latest stories and judging by the response, I think it can just go in the file.

Been scan-reading some of the 5000-plus posts as I’ve been putting in the images and making all the necessary tweaks required by the move from Typepad to WordPress and it seems that in some ways I’ve lost a part of me in the voice. There is a freshness to the old posts, an honesty. Even as there is an improvement in the overall style and language, something is missing from my writing now.

What I’ve noticed is a lot of poetry–a lot of poetry–in the early postings. While I haven’t gotten a great response to my poems, though I’ve a couple published, I’m also taking into consideration that I don’t get a lot of response or encouragement to my writing from those who know me and have come to depend more upon new readers for a reaction. There is a distancing in online writing–weblogs, social services such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook–that build that fourth wall of artistic separation, turning readers into an audience. And when you’re sitting in a crowd, the actor doesn’t know you’re there and not applauding.

So on to reading literature that spurs my instincts rather than just reading for the sake of it. That, and drawing in the circle a bit tighter.

Just a note because I’m sure I’ll need this information long after I’ve forgotten how to do it.

When uploading a large file, i.e., media, and WordPress uploads gives a 2M limit, upload directly via Lunar’s cPanel into wp-content/uploads/2009/12 (or whatever year and month)

To upload it into a post, upload via the URL with the http://www.susangibb.net/(etc.)

I’m duplicating this post in Hypercompendia because I’ll likely need it there more often than here with audio, video, flash, etc. files.

I’ve got to admit, Vista looks really neat, and, they’ve been smart enough to include Tai Pei in their free games. 

As a refurbished unit from Acer via Tiger Direct, I didn’t receive any software disks but there’s a backup feature that automatically saves to a "secret" place on the hard drive. Now this is fine with me since Jim was using Win 98 with a 3 gig main hard drive and an extra 5 I stuck in for games and he had plenty of unused space. The problem with the "secret" place as a backup is of course, if the hard drive goes, you’re screwed, and I’ve had more hard drives die on me than any other computer part.  But I did make a copy of the default factory set o/s to a couple of DVD’s, and I’ll backup the hard drive to an external drive as I’m doing with the other pcs.

Aside from the lack of a wireless adapter (why?), and that wasn’t a big problem because the hub and stuff are right in the next office "cubicle" next to mine so I could wire it in, Vista found the internet and the network with absolutely no problems.  As a matter of fact, this installation went so easily that I realized I hadn’t written anything down (like serial #, duh) in my "Building Computers" notebook that dates back to 1997.  I love that notebook, even though it’s generally useless since the stuff’s so old, it does have lots of quickly drawn blueprints of computer guts and connections of all the pc’s I’ve put together over the years.

As with any new operating system, you sort of get a bit stubborn about accepting it (though Lord knows why, since Bill G only gives us a year or two to get to know one well enough to form a relationship before he comes out with another). Vista’s really visually well presented though, and that feature overcomes some of the sense of loss such as Outlook Express.  I really like Win XP, but I’ll tell you, if Jim has any complaints about this new setup when he’s coming off of Win 98, I’ll clobber him.

No, not the debate. They’re each just spouting off the same script so it’s not worth listening.  I’m talking about the new PC.  Can’t believe I bought a computer without a network card installed.  It takes fifty different kinds of data input right in the front but it doesn’t include a network card and wireless?

It’s been so long–relatively, since in computer technology a year away from the hardware means you’re hopelessly behind–that I can’t remember what I need to make it work.  I sort of expected that with all the waves floating through the house it’d just connect to the internet automatically. Vista doesn’t mention LAN though; instead it’s looking for VPN or some such thing. Since I intended to transfer and hopefully save Jim’s email account and all its data directly, I wanted to have both PCs working at the same time without pulling the plug on one first.

So those are the problems I’m solving tonight, fiddling with the new to replace the old. Vista’s neat looking though, and I hope Jim’s as psyched about it as I am since I had to take his resistance to change into consideration and he’ll be hopping from Win 98 to this O/S directly. I’ve already had to gently explain how he may not be able to get some of his games to work on this, so I really need to get him on the internet asap or he’ll lose confidence in my abilities to make him happy.

The new pc with a new monitor does absolutely nothing. I’ve built from scratch and gotten a beep at least. Just hoping it’s something I’ve done wrong–which means plugging in a cord incorrectly at best.

Eventually there comes a time when the old cannot be saved and rebuilt cost-effectively or efficiently and so a new computer lands at my door.  This time, for the man, and a refurbished one that was so reasonably priced and included Windows Vista as well as high-flying memory, hard drive, and all the trimmings (cept a monitor which should be in tomorrow) that I couldn’t pass it up.

It’s sad though, too; with the last couple of purchases being laptops and the last upgrade to a PC a year ago, I miss the physical fun and satisfaction of building one from scratch the way I always did through many, many units over the last dozen years. It’s sort of the same feeling you get when making wine from your own grapes, or picking apples into a pie.

It’s been just about exactly six months since I got my MacBook and though there’s plenty to love, there are things that I dislike a whole lot too.

The worst, I suppose, is that scary screen thing where it turned into an interactive patchwork of things wherever I clicked.  This has happened twice already and I suspect the screen is going to be the problem.

It freezes when it gets hot.  I’m guessing that’s the problem anyway, though I really don’t know and it happens more often than Win 95.

I hate what it does with photo images.  I never can find them when I go to include one in a post and this is immediately after I’ve saved and named it in Photoshop.  The Images file doesn’t seem to recognize the events I’ve named, and it’s covered with blank black boxes that I can’t get rid of.  Or a circle with a question mark.  I’ve no idea what these are.  It also for some reason makes duplicates in different sizes though I’ve not requested them.

The worst–and maybe the best thing I’ve done–is the $400+ insurance policy that claims to be 3 years but in truth seems to include the first year that’s already covered, so you’re really paying that for 2 years of additional coverage.

Maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges; the Latitude is a heavy duty machine and probably its counterpart would be the MacBook Pro rather than my little MacBook (non-Pro).

Yes, I know: if I could free myself of the damn thing I’d've* not had to worry about a hot laptop on my lap. Last year I realized that while the Latitude was nice and comfy in winter, it was hell to work on in summer, even with air conditioning.  Wasn’t good for the machine either, I assume, as I’d noticed that the pc’s did strange things in an overheated room and ran super hot themselves until we added the a/c.  So I bought a laptop fan plate that you plug in via usb connection and that has worked wonders; for the Dell, as well as now the Mac which has taken over the fan unit as well as my computer time.

The only thing I need to modify on it is the sharp edge which cut into just above my knee.  A strip of foam glued to this should solve the problem.

I realize that we get unsolicited snail mail that requires a quick look at the envelope and if it’s from Wilmington Delaware it gets tossed automatically.  I know that you can’t watch TV without commercials or read a newspaper without ads.  But these folks are using an acceptable medium and are paying for the space, to sell their wares in exchange for payment to support the venue.

Spammers have not made that contract.

I am strongly against capital punishment and torture, but I’m beginning to soften and believe that caning could be an appropriate punishment for both email and weblog spamming.

Okay, so I get a phone call and a robotic voice tells me that it’s from the online pharmacy and is asking for Jim (who really doesn’t know anything about this online stuff) regarding his recent order for prescriptions.  Then it asks, "Is this James Gibb?" 

Well, I thought about it for a second and figured that if I honestly answered "no" they’d cut me off faster than as if I were a terrorist instead of his wife.  So I said "yes."  And it all worked out.

After I hung up, I thought about it and laughed; I’d actually lowered my voice to sound like a guy!

From Lifehacker, a program that will count the frequency of a particular word within a piece. All I could think of was Calvino’s Lotaria and her own method of reading for content.