Tag Archives: Personal computer

Early Morning Thoughts

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I am working on a story to tell, but a few other things popped into my mind this morning.

  1. I turn the local CBS station on the television in the bedroom as I get dressed to check on weather and traffic. It is peppered with commercials for local businesses, etc. Although we stereotypically tend to look down on car salesmen with regard to integrity, when their ads interspersed with negative political ads – well, just say I’m really starting to like the car guys and their ads.
  2. Progress on Windows 8.1? This morning I was greeted by the Blue Screen of Death. All I need is enough time to back everything up and re-install Windows 7.

I know – get back to work on a story!!

Another Windows 8 Frustration

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Windows 8 has another little fluke that drives me crazy.

You see, I never, EVER use the “Tap” function on the touchpad. Ever.

Widows 8 periodically turns it on, and even though I go to the appropriate applications, and it says that “Tap” is deactivated, it isn’t.

So when I type something, the cursor bounces around and I have to keep correcting things.

Or else my typing looks

Things ome this

Like

(It should read, “Something like this.”)

The Computers are Dropping Like Flies

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I’ve been playing with computers a long time. I go back to Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) with mechanical teletypes and punched paper tape. My first personal computer arrived as a bag of parts and had a whopping 256 BYTES and require programming in hexadecimal.

Since then, the computers have gotten smarter while I’ve remained static.

Today my house is rife with computers. There are 3 people with laptops, including me, although I also get the leftovers and castoffs. There’s a ham radio/weather computer; if you want to know the weather in my world you can see it at http://wx.findu.com/ke8yn.

There’s my son’s gaming computer, my desktop and 1 iPad, 3 other tablets plus cell phones. That’s, umm, something like a lot of computers.

My son had picked out a new laptop for my wife, but after she tried it, she decided she like her old one better, so even though it was old, she went back to it and I got her new computer as my laptop.

(If you can’t follow, don’t worry, it’s not really important.)

In any case, my desktop computer began to act weirdly. This computer started as a Hewlett-Packard, but over time, the motherboard, hard drives, case, power supply, etc. got changed. It’s kind of like “Grampa’s axe.” It’s had three new handles and a new head, but it’s grampa’s axe.

I replaced it once, but my son adopted the new one, so I went back to the computer-that-used-to-be-an-HP.

That computer, my desktop computer, began to exhibit strange symptoms recently, especially after upgrading the operating system. I realized that it was time to replace it.

I perused the “barebones” computers to find just the right mother board, CPU, memory, case and such and made my decision. I chose a combination that would make my son jealous. I ordered it.

One point zero zero nanoseconds later, my wife’s laptop died an immediate and painful death. It too had to be replaced.

So, I’m spending the remaining portion of the weekend transferring files and settings.

And how did you spend your weekend?