The Geeky Way

After bragging that I hadn't had to rebuild my computer for eons, the universe got back at me. I was sitting on the couch with RT, watching TV and blowing my nose (yes, this cold may be with me forever), when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my computer reboot. Huh?

I got up, logged in, and darn, right as Windows opened up, it happened again--only this time, it happened before it got to the log-in screen. RT and I did all the usual tricks (boot disk, safe mode, last known good configuration, bios crap) and nothing worked. Our diagnostic disks wouldn't even run. 

Every time I would try again, the time between boot-ups decreased, until  there was basically no time between them at all. This was on a machine that I knew to be free of both viruses and spyware, having done thorough scans for both earlier that day as part of my usual Monday routine.

The only changes I had recently made to the machine involved installing the updated java engine.

I finally gave in, and rebuilt the sucker yesterday. Even with a current back-up, a library of all of the programs I had installed over the 'net, a spread sheet with all of my license keys, and a task list that guaranteed that I wouldn't forget anything, it was an all day affair. 

And as I did it, I wondered if it was just one of those off things that happen, or if something in how I set my particular machine up was incompatible with some update from Microsoft or the java engine and would just happen all over again. So far so good.

Because the order in which you install software matters in weird ways, I did it the smart way. I got all of my updates done (54 from Microsoft alone)before I started adding in programs. I also made sure I was running the latest versions of all the freeware, before installing. I then was very, very careful as I worked, creating restore points as I went along, cleaning out the extra bits leftover from installs before adding new things, and rebooting even when the program didn't require it.

Still, it's a crap shoot.

It also involves a level of skill that the average person shouldn't be expected to have.

As we travelled throughout Ontario visiting friends for the past two weeks, we spent a fair amount of time fixing things for our hosts. We installed hardware, set-up Email accounts, secured wireless networks, updated software, cleaned various infestations up--all the usual stuff Joe and Jane Geekfree run into and either avoid doing until they end up buying a new problem free machine, or shell out relatively big bucks to have someone like me come in and fix.

Digital life shouldn't be like that. And no, the answer is not a Mac.

 

posted by taming at 03:59 | link | comments (3)|
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Just when you think..

it can't get any better, Don Rumsfeld resigns Buh bye.

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Almost on the Road

My dining room table is piled high with all sorts of stuff. It's the gathering place for things I am taking on my trip to Toronto on Friday. It's also a pretty odd assortment of items, which taken individually are not all that strange, but when viewed as a collection, might make someone wonder about my sanity.

Fortunately, I don't have to worry about the customs and immigration people on this leg of the journey, and by the time I am crossing the border into Michigan, most of the truly odd things will be dispersed among my friends. It's not that I couldn't explain why I am traveling with five bottles of Auntie Bev's Authentic Jamaican Jerk BBQ Marinade & Sauce or 15 silver one-way valve bags filled with home roasted coffee or the mightily peculiar things I am bringing as faux-bridesmaid gifts for the ten or so of us who have turned our friend Val's wedding into a five day event.

Nope, I can explain all of that.

But, by the time my heat gun, roasting and brewing toys, anti-jiggling underwear, various beauty enhancing potions, and green coffee beans have been added to the mix, it might be a little more difficult to avoid looking truly nutty.

My choice is to embrace my inner nut, but that might just be the afterglow of yesterday's election in the states.

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posted by taming at 07:59 | link | comments (2)|
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Fat

I bet I'm not the only woman who rearranged her schedule yesterday to watch Kirstie Alley strut her (considerably less voluminous) stuff on Oprah yesterday.  And whether you believe she only weighed 220 pounds when she started or not, there is no arguing with the fact that at 55 years of age, and after a mighty big weight loss, the woman looks great.

I wouldn't want her thighs, but she wouldn't want my belly.

Body stuff is hard. It's hard when the battle to maintain a reasonable weight is a private matter between a woman, her scale, and the refrigerator, and it has to be harder when it takes place in a more public way. After all, I'm pretty sure no one googled "fat Taming" yesterday, and I was fascinated by the "fat Oprah" search I did.  It's just not the number on the scale, either.

Kirstie says that at this point, she feels comfortable in her own skin. If so, she's got me beat, at least in terms of the relationship between my sense of self and my perception of the body I lug around. This is what Kirstie said on the day she appeared on national TV in a bikini, and I spent the morning at Sears looking for some variation on a girdle designed to make me look less fat.

From the Oprah website:

I don't think women ever feel like we're good enough," she says. "We don't feel like we're thin enough or pretty enough or smart enough or work hard enough … We all are good enough and we look good enough and we are not our bodies, you know?

I found the magical undergarment, btw. I don't know that I can wear it for more than an hour at a time, but after putting it on, I definitely understood why even fat Oprah doesn't look all jiggly on TV. Neither one of us would appear on TV wearing a bikini, like Kirstie did, but, maybe we don't have to.

That bit of self-knowledge may be as close to seeing myself as "good enough" I'm likely to get.

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posted by taming at 04:47 | link | comments (2)|
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But Did He Inhale

This is the first time since my move to Canada that I am not voting in one of the important US elections. I can still vote in Missouri, as an ex-pat, but it doesn't feel quite right to do that anymore. It's just too local to be any of my business.

As hotly contended as the Missouri senate race is, and, from my perspective, as important as it is to send Jim Talent back home, where he can do far less damage than he has  in Washington, it still didn't feel right to me to cast an absentee ballot. I just hope that my Canadian citizenship application is approved before they call an election here in the spring.

That doesn't mean I haven't been watching the antics going on in the US during this most recent silly season.  We get US television stations, and the blitz of negative ads has been astounding.  And lucky us, there is new fodder for the machine now.

From the LATimes:

Just a massage, pastor says
By Stephanie Simon
Times Staff Writer

November 4, 2006

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. — One of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders admitted Friday that he visited a male prostitute for a massage and bought methamphetamine for personal use — though he said he threw the drugs away without using them.

The Rev. Ted Haggard denied the prostitute's allegation that the two men met for sex as often as every month for the last three years. But he did say that he had visited the prostitute for a massage and later called him more than once to buy methamphetamine — a drug used in some gay circles to heighten sexual sensation.

"I never kept [the drugs] very long," Haggard told a TV reporter who questioned him as he was leaving his home in Colorado Springs, a short drive from his 14,000-member mega-church. "I was tempted. I bought it. But I never used it."
 

 

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