Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Well not quite, but I must admit a new innovation in our library system has made me quite a bit happier. The library system has brought in Library 2 Go which allows you to sign out ebooks from the library to your 'Supported Ebook Device'. This can be to a computer or to a mobile device such as iPad, Libre, Nook, Kobo, Sony or to many smartphones such as Android, BlackBerry, iPhone or a windows phone 7.

I use a BlackBerry Torch which is a touch screen but I have also set it up onto a BlackBerry Pearl Flip. The beauty of this is that you can download an ebook from the library onto your smartphone and read it whenever you want. Even if you are in an area where there is no mobile coverage you can still access your ebook as it is stored on your phone.

When you download the ebook you have it stored on your device for 14 days. At the end of 14 days the ebook is automatically returned to the library system. Of course if you finish the ebook prior to the 14 days you can 'delete and return the book' earlier. If you have not finished the book prior to your 14 days, then you may be out of luck, however, I have had success in returning the ebook and then resigning it out right away for another 14 days. This works as long as no one has put a 'hold' on the book you are viewing as you need to have the book available for downloading again.

Prior to downloading an ebook you do need a few things. One is you need Adobe Digital Edition Account. It is a free and only takes a minute or so to set up your account. You need the account to authorize your ebooks to be downloaded to your device. If you are using a smartphone like BlackBerry then you need to download a free app called 'OverDrive Media Console'. Once you have the OverDrive Console you open it up on your smartphone and then 'Add in a Library'. Of course you will need an actual library card number to access your individual library. You can search through and find your local library and then be able to search through the system once you have signed in with your access.

I find it is a bit easier to search for new books by using a computer as the screen is a little easier to use as it is larger than the smartphones and it is easier to use a full keyboard. Once I find a ebook I want to download, I then open up OverDrive on my smartphone and do a search through the smartphone and continue on downloading it that way. The downloads are fast as it normally only takes less than a minute using the 3G network. Using 1X is a little slower but not by much.

Once the ebook is downloaded you can start reading. Individual smartphones utilize different methods of changing pages. On my Torch I can just use my finger to touch the screen and go forward or backwards. On the Pearl Flip you can use the 'space' key to go forward or the 'p' key to go backwards. You can also use the trackball for this. Either way is fairly convenient.

In my younger days I always used to carry around a pocket novel in my back pocket so when I had a few minutes to spare I could haul out the book and read a bit. Now a days pocket books have gotten so large they just don't fit in a pocket any longer. I normally have my cell phone with me at all times I'm away from home so it is very convenient say when in a doctor's office waiting room to pull out the cell and in seconds be reading my ebook.

I've found the font on the smartphone are quite readable as well and you can actually increase the size of the font to your liking. Even reading in the dark is no problem as the smartphone has a backlight to highlight the screen. The text is only black and white, but it is sufficient and quite easy to read.

As stated, almost 'Best Thing Since Sliced Bread' but not quite . . .

What a Bad Blogger I Am :(

I have had so much on my plate of late, I just haven't been able to get my fingers around the keyboard to put up much on this blog. . .

I got involved with the beta of the new Windows 7 and have it installed on one of my computers. Then I decided to pick up a new computer (8 GB RAM, 1 GB video card, etc), so then I had to try and transfer all my files etc to the new computer and get Sam set up on my old one (the one with Windows 7 on it). There was a learning curve for Sam as she had recently been using the XP system. So she missed Vista and the new 7 is very much based on a Vista computer. Actually if I read correctly, anyone upgrading to the new Windows 7 and using XP, will have to format and do an install. There is no upgrade available from XP to 7. If you are using Vista, then you can upgrade to 7 though. Now I'm not certain of the XP thing, but that is what I have read a few times. Anyhow, computers have been taking up a bit of my time of late.

Then because my days are not busy enough as it is I was convinced to take on a new task of creating a website for the Town of Hanley. The Town wanted to get their presence out on the Web. I did some work on the site and now the powers to be have to decide if they want to go ahead with the site or just what.

I also created and run another blog for the Hanley Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion and it decided to get corrupted the other day. So I have been frantically trying to get it back up and running. I tried and tried, however, I couldn't retrieve previous posts so I just started over. The feeling is that I'd rather get the blog up and running and I can always try to recover previous posts later on.

Add to the above, I have been very busy with computer repairs of late. Lot's of new customers which is nice.

Of course I'm also into curling at this time of the year. Predominately I enrolled in the Senior curling for Monday's. But then I was used as a spare on Tuesday evening and on Thursday evening on a fairly regular basis. So lots of time has been spent at the curling rink.

My Tuesday mornings have been taken up with the Seniors Center and playing pool. There is about 7-8 fellows who go down and shoot 3-4 games every Tuesday morning. I missed as I was so tired after papers I went back to bed. They called me and insisted I come down for a few games. So if I'm home I try and get down for 9:00 a.m. and keep my shooting skills up.

Of course I'm still delivering the Saskatoon Star Phoenix every morning. Thankfully that usually only takes an hour or so. The bad part is that the papers are supposed to be deliver prior to 7:00 a.m. Monday to Saturday. I usually get up between 5:30 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. and get them done. The cool weather has not been nice lately, but at least I do see a warm up in the weather forecasts to come.

Then just because; I also was convinced to take on the caretaker position of the Centennial Hall effective today. The person currently in the position wanted to move on as they had held the position for quite awhile and their life was getting so busy. The feeling is that it should only take me 15-20 hours a week out of my time. Of course that is once I get used to doing what I have to do on a daily basis. Then when there is something going on for the weekend (ie curling spiel, etc) I'll have a few more hours. I'm not really sure of the time commitment, but I'll definitely give it a go and see what I can do.

So all in all, I just haven't had a lot of spare time to actually sit down and compose something for the blog. Lot's of thoughts, but just not the time to get it submitted. Hopefully my time will start to slow down just a bit as it seems like I'm running out of steam just about every day.

That is not what retirement is supposed to be like, is it? Hope not anyway . . .

Time Just Flying

It appeared that I just got over the Remembrance Day ceremonies and then I was getting prepared for the Legion bonspiel on January 2nd, 3rd & 4th. Trying to get bartenders lined up (impossible task), ordering the liquor & beer, picking up the orders, purchasing items at the store, etc. etc.

Before I knew it, Friday the 2nd was here. I started going just after lunch and picked up all my orders and got them delivered to the Hall. The fridge stocked up and got everything ready to go for 5:00 p.m. This year I really didn't want to curl as I just run out of time as it is. Having to curl at least 3 games only impacts the time shortage more. But, because of the weather for the weekend, I did indeed end up curling. We had hoped for 32 rinks, but had to settle for 24 (ours included). This is still a respectable number of rinks though. I did hear that a town east of Regina also had a bonspiel scheduled for the same weekend as Hanley. They could only muster 7 rinks. It certainly is hard to run any kind of a bonspiel with that few rinks.

Back to our spiel though. At 5:00 p.m. we got the bar open and everyone was getting ready to curl. Our team had to hit the ice at 7:00 p.m. so I got a couple guys to man the bar and out I went. Of course we got our butts kicked, but we scared the other team for the first couple ends when we scored. After that we just were not strong enough to keep up. Go figure :)

Then it was back to helping out in the bar area, picking up more beer, etc. All in all I got home at 3:45 a.m. Saturday morning. My head hit the pillow at 4:00 a.m. and I tried to get some rest. At 5:45 a.m. my alarm went off and I was up and at em to do my papers. Of course it had snowed and blew overnight and the temperature was sitting near -55 C when I headed out. Slogging through the snow just about did me in. Within 3 blocks my legs felt like they had lead weights on them.

However, I did manage to get the papers delivered. Got home and took a few hours of rest and hit the hall again near 11:00 a.m. We curled once again and of course got severely beaten. That meant we had to curl again at 9:00 p.m. Saturday night. We were able to get in a great roast beef supper though. This was in between watching the bar and sitting at the door selling tickets. But the supper was delicious.

The team headed out for our 9 p.m. appointment and immediately felt we were in away over our heads. Chalk up another loss. That's three strikes (games) and your out. So it was back to the hall and watched/listened to RJ & the Boys. We got to close the place up earlier than Friday though and we were home by 3:30 a.m. The nice part was no papers on Sunday so I got to snooze a bit longer. Even so, we were back at the hall shortly after 11:00 a.m.

Throughout the whole weekend, the cold was just brutal. I really appreciated all the people that came out and curled, watched, or just visited. Without them, the bonspiel would not have been a success at all. Sandra and I made it home right around 9:00 p.m. A whole lot tired, but not overly so. As I said earlier, it had blew and snowed all weekend and of course I did not find the time to shovel or snow blow the driveway out. I was dreading trying to plow through the drifts when we got home. To my surprise, one of my great neighbours had snow-blowed the sidewalk and the driveway, so it was clean driving into the garage. You just have to love super neighbours like that!

Monday morning of course is the senior's curling, so I was up early doing the papers, then down to the rink and some more curling. At least I ended up on a winning rink for a change. Prior to heading off for curling I had already received 8 computer repair calls though. After lunch I returned my supplies to the various stores and fixed up two computers. Then I got to rest at home for a bit. Of course I had laundry to do, but heck that is just loading up the washer and then folding after drying. Nothing too tasking other than time.

Onto Tuesday and off we went to the city so Sam could get her INR checked. I also had a computer to look at in the city and a new HD TV to hookup for a fellow. Got that all done and home by supper time. Success both with the TV and with the computer.

Wednesday I got a couple more computers done and not much else. Thursday the same.

Then the weekend hit and I could hardly believe it that here I sit typing and it is already January 11th. Half the darn month is just about gone.

Seeing as today was a nice quiet day I got back to doing my normal laundry today, and decided to clean the oven. It had gotten a bit dirty from cooking over the holidays. Of course yesterday I finally got around to taking down the Christmas tree and putting the decorations away. As I was pulling down the tree, I must of turned the wrong way or something as I must of stretched something in my back. It hurts like all get out. Every time I rolled over last night in bed I woke up from the pain. It almost seems like a 'stitch', so I'm hoping I can work it out. And actually after reaching in and doing the oven it does feel a bit better. Hopefully that is a good sign.

Tomorrow, we have curling in the morning and then as expected we have to head back to the city for Sam's INR. With last weekend being so screwed up, her levels are out of wack, so we have to go in and get it checked again. Hopefully they are back in sync once again after a more normal week.

I normally don't make any New Year's resolutions as you just never seem to keep them up, however, I do want to try and hit the blog a bit more often this year. I have been trying to set up a new blog for the Legion (which seems to be working fine) and a web page for the town. The town still hasn't decided whether they want to go with what I set up or not. If not, then maybe we can get something else set up for them. I told them I was no pro, but I would do what I could for them. We'll see.

Even with the month tearing by, I do seem to be finding a bit more free time. Heck, I actually sat back and read a book for a couple hours the other day. That doesn't happen too often as I just don't seem to get the time. So maybe we are on a roll and I'll find a bit more free time to spend on the blog.

Hope so :)

I Thought I Forgot :(

As I was walking along this morning at about 5:30 a.m. delivering my papers I got to thinking of this and that.

This morning I was thinking about how much I had forgotten about my previous occupation after just about 4 years of no contact.

As we all think our brains can only hold so much information and then we have to get rid of some of the garbage so to speak to make room for new information. I figured after almost 4 years I should have made a bit of room with deleting a few unimportant items from my former career. So I figured I'd give myself a run down of former Detachments in the former NB S/Div.

As expected I remembered all the Detachment names which is not a bad thing considering I used them every day for over 21 years. Then I decided to try and remember ORIs for the Detachments thinking that no way I could remember such a minor thing after this length of time and absolutely no contact with the former profession.

So I listed in my mind:

Battleford = 20030 (Defunct now)
Battlefords = 20035
Cut Knife = 10025
Glaslyn = 10035 (Probably defunct now)
Green Lake 10032 (Probably defunct now)
Goodsoil 10038 (Defunct now)
Hafford 10040 (Probably defunct now)
Lloydminster 20016
Loon Lake 10060
Maidstone 10062 (Probably defunct now)
Meadow Lake 10065
North Battleford 10076 (Defunct now)
Onion Lake 10078
Pierceland 10081
Radisson 10086 (Probably defunct now)
St Walburg 10092 (Probably defunct now)
Spiritwood 10097
Turtleford 10104
Unity 10105
Wilkie 10114 (Probably defunct now)

As I listed them off in my mind I figured I'm was probably about 95-98% correct (which means I might have 1 or possibly 2 wrong but I didn't think so). Of course this was just the former NB S/Div. My mind also flooded in with previous ORIs that were common in Saskatchewan at the time; ie 10125 10126 10127 10128 10129 10130, 10057 10061, etc etc etc. These were just Saskatchewan ones, I also recalled a few Alberta ones (ie 10102, 10120, 10115, 30009, etc); Manitoba ones (ie 100700; Ontario ones (ie 10000, 10078); New Brunswick ones (ie 10045)l and a few others throughout the country.

This told me that I hadn't really dropped off this lot of useless information in my mind so I moved on to plan "B".

I thought I'd try phone numbers... Ah success... I could only remember 1 or 2 (or maybe 3 or 4) from the previous years. But then I remembered that these numbers had not stayed the same throughout the years. They had changed 2 or 3 times in the 30 years. But at least I had forgotten a few of earlier numbers. . .

Zenith 50,000, 445-9441, 445-9461 of course are burnt into my mind and I'll probably never erase them. But there are some that are just gone. Thank goodness.

I thought I might be filling up the old hard drive too much :) Now I know I have a bit of extra room to add more useless information in the future!

I wonder what kind of information will be stored away in the next 10 or 20 or 30 years ??

Free File Hosting Service

I just received an email regarding a 'File Hosting' service that is just starting up. This new service is called "File Savr" and can be located at:

File Savr

If you create an account prior to September 15th, 2008 you will receive a 'Free' account for life. This allows you to upload and store 250 gigs for free for life.

This is sort of neat if you ever want to save a file and then download it from another computer (music, docs, pics, etc). The sign up is as easy as creating a 'user name', a password and an email address (a GMail or Hotmail works just fine). You never know when this might come in handy.... But hurry as the freeby is only until the 15th.

The price is sure right :)

Busy Time

Something tells me that the summer is coming to a close and the restart of school is right aroung the corner.

It seems every day I'm getting a call or two about fixing up a slow computer. When I ask a few questions as to what the computer is doing, how long, etc; I'm invariably told 'oh it has been like this all summer' and 'just too busy to look at it', etc.

My favourite is 'well the kids are going back to school so I thought I should put an antivirus program on the computer'. I ask, "what have you been doing since you last had an antivirus program". 'Oh nothing, we figured it was the summer time and we wouldn't have to worry about a virus showing up'.

OK, I'm with you on that one all right :)

Needless to say my first job is to install and update an antivirus program for them. Then run a 'full scan'. Invariably there are some trojans and other great stuff sitting in their computer. After getting the little mess cleaned up, I can then go in and attempt to clean up the slowness, etc.

Fun, fun, fun.

Staying Busy

Sheesh it has been a fairly long time since I've sat behind the keyboard of late. There are actually a few reasons for this, one being the amount of travelling I've been doing (going to and from the city). The main reason for the travelling is that I've run into a sore shoulder in the rotator area. So when I was in at my annual medical I mentioned it to my doctor who decided I should see a physiotherapist. On my first appointment for the physio the guy wasn't too hard on the shoulder. He sent me home with some exercises to do to help with the rotator muscles.

Of course once you get into to see a therapist, they want you back fairly often so they can work on you and judge if you are gaining or loosing. That has meant 2 trips a week to the city for the therapy. Of course at home I'm doing the required exercises to help strengthen up the muscle and get the blood flowing in the area. The therapist feels I probably have a small tear (or more than one) in the rotator area and that I may need surgery. Still he wants to see if the physio will help prior to surgery. For the surgery you need to visit an orthopedic surgeon and they have a fairly long waiting list.

Some days the shoulder is fine and others it hurts like the daylights. Even on the fine days if I happen to stretch or reach the wrong way, the shoulder gives me quite a jolt of pain. I try and remember not to reach or stretch that way again as it hurts, but of course you forget in a day or so and you do it again.

I have another 2 appointments this week with the physio and then the therapist will decide if it warrants continued sessions or not. I do think it has helped to a certain degree, but it is a small degree in my view.

The other thing that has kept me going is working on a bunch of computers. Fall is coming and folks are wanting to get their computers tuned up for the upcoming winter months. Of course the computer needed help all summer long, but you never want to get work done before you actually need the computer. However, for the most part, I have had no problem keeping up with the demand. What is a little maddening is when I get the computer fined tuned and it is working top notch and then get it back to the customer and they do something and it crashes the whole thing again. Trying to figure out what happened and how to rectify it so that it doesn't happen again is a guessing game at times. One such computer is one that I'm working on from a person in the city. I got it all set up and it was purring. Got it back to the customer and she found a trouble spot so the next trip into the city I fixed that up. Now it seems her younger son felt the computer was locked up or something so he powered it off and now it won't restart. So tomorrow on my trip to the city, I'll be stopping by and see if it is a quick fix or a 'bring it home' job. Hopefully it is just glitch that I can fix up on site.

No one likes to be without their computers now a days...

Lots of Driving Lately

For the last week and a half I have been putting on more than normal amount of kilometers on the truck. This all started when Sam's warfarin levels decided to go wacky so we have had to make a trip into the city every couple days to get her levels checked.

Finally today we got word that the levels seem to be settled back down and we can go back to our previous routine of getting her checked once a month. I do believe the problem was some older meds (ie warfarin). When the doc was on holiday her replacement decided to drop the daily rate from 3 mg to 2.5 mg. Now it is darn difficult to cut up a 3 mg tab so I used a 1 mg tab and cut in half a 4 mg tab. After looking at the bottle closer, it could be that the 4 mg tabs were a bit old so they may not have had their full potency.

Then on the long weekend we decided to travel to Christopher and close up shop for another year. We have had a few nights where the temperatures have dropped fairly close to zero, so we decided it would be best if we drained the water lines etc at the cabin. It is a lot easier to drain the lines than trying to fix burst ones. As it had been a bit cool of late, we didn't know what we would face when we got up north so we weren't sure if we were going for the weekend or just a day or what.

Last Sunday we headed out in early in the morning and followed Craig back into the city. Sandra and I then continued on north. As we got closer to Christopher you could see where there had been a fair amount of rain of late. On arrival at the cabin the ground was still moist but of course this is forest country so it wasn't muddy or anything like that. When I opened up the door to the cabin I sure could feel the cool air rushing out. I then opened up the windows and within an hour or so it was fairly nice inside for Sam. I commenced to take down the lights, and started stowing away everything for the winter hibernation.

At noon I took a break and cooked us up some dinner. As we were sitting down eating, we were looking out the window and it sure was nice and peaceful. No wind at all and of course the leaves starting to change colour and fall to the ground. We were tempted to stay the night, but after a bit we decided that we should probably just close up shop and head south again.

After we washed up the dishes and got the fridge cleaned out, I headed outside and started on the water lines. Of course I had to empty the storage tank of water which I did with the pump. While the water was pouring out I was shaking my head on the wasted effort I had done to get the tank filled earlier in the summer. A lot of useless extra effort, but if I hadn't filled the tank we would have run short. So better to be prepared than having to play catch up.

Once the tank was empty I got the pump disconnected and serviced and commenced to blow out the lines. After that it was just a matter of cleaning up and loading the truck and we were heading southwards once again. We did have one stop in the city on our way through as I had to pick up a hard drive for a computer I was working on. I made it to Office Depot with about 5 minutes to spare before their closing, picked up the drive and we headed for the home stretch. We pulled into the garage just prior to 6 pm. Both of us had sore butts from so much sitting, but at least we had the comfort to know the cabin was ready to face another Saskatchewan winter.

Next came more driving to the city as I had to go visit a physiotherapist for my shoulder that has been bothering me of late. I had the shoulder xrayed during my annual medical and there was no sign of arthritis, so the doc wanted to see what a therapist could do for it. So into the city again we went and the therapist pulled and pushed the shoulder until it really hurt. He gave me some exercises to do for the next while and told me to come back next Tuesday and Thursday for followups. So that means two more trips to the city next week.

On our initial trip to the therapist I also took in the computer I was working on. Once I was done with my pain class I headed over and setup the computer for the customer. I had to do an install on the printer, and a final virus scan, and then I was done. This trip only took about 45 minutes or so and then we headed for home once again.

I think all told in the last week and half I put on about 2,000 kms or so. Hopefully that is not going to be my future mileage counts. Let alone getting 'TB' out of the sitting, the cost of gas is certainly not going down any.

Too Hot Outside


Seeing as it is just a way too warm outside, I've been couped up in the house all day. When that happens, my fingers always want to play on the keyboard. Some days are good and then some days are not so good.

As you can tell already, I've been playing with the templates on the Blogger Blog. The old template just wasn't doing it for me of late, so I figured I'd try something new. Now whether I'll keep the current template or move to something else, I'm just not sure.

Depends on how warm it gets outside in the next day or so as to whether I get to play on the keys :)

Blogger and Blogs

I have been using Internet Explorer 7 to type up and view my blog entries since August 2006. This has been working fine as Blogger does have some neat stuff that you can use. Then I opened up my blog (and a few others) in Firefox. The blog definitely needs some work as the type face are different etc. The formatting in Firefox is the same as IE, but there are other subtle problems with viewing in Firefox.

With that in mind, I thought I'd state that as well as using Blogger to publish my blog I have also being using another blogging program, WordPress. I actually started my blogging life off with WordPress and then converted over to Blogger, however, I have kept up both blogs. They have for the most part identical content, however, there has been the odd thing that I haven't been able to convert over directly. I'm working on these small glitches to see if I can figure them out.

One thing I like about the WordPress blog, is that the actual blog seems to be a more clean type looking blog. That being said, I do like Blogger for what can be done with it.

So for any of you that have trouble reading the posts in Blogger, may I suggest you try my WordPress blog. It can be found at:

Old Red Jacket Talker

So Slow

Yesterday I was over at a customers house doing some work installing a video cam for them. They wanted to use the cam with MSN or Windows Live so they could set up video chats with their extended family.

This was fine and I felt probably about a 30-60 minute task. Little did I realize that they were still on dial up. So of course I had to download Windows Live for them prior to setting up the cam. Now this is not a large program as it is only 17.2 mb in size.

Prior to departing for the customer's house, I had downloaded the Windows Live on my laptop to ensure I knew what to do at the other end. As I said it is a 17.2 mb download which took about 70 seconds at my house. However, with dial up, this same 70 seconds took 2 1/2 hours to download. Just watching the download creep down was just so painful.

I actually was going to zip home a couple times, burn it on to CD and then head back to the customers. However, I used my time to update a few other programs on the computer and get everything ready for the vid cam.

After what seemed like hours (well yes I guess it was 2 1/2 hours), the file downloaded and I got the Live up and running. Then I set up the audio and video and all was working just fine. The only problem was that the customer had never used MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Live or any chat type program. So of course I had to do a quick tutorial in the opening/using of the program.

After I figured the customer had it down pat, I headed for home with instructions that I'd give them a phone call back and we could then go for a trial run from my house. Once home I fired up the laptop (which zooms right along after the recent format/reinstall), opened up Live and then made my phone call.

Now you have to remember the customer used their phone for their internet, so I had to wait a few seconds for them to hang up the phone, fire up the dial up internet and get logged on. I was impressed that within a minute or so the customer was online in Live. I immediately sent out a text message to show that we were both up and running and then advised it was time to go for the audio/video.

Once again, I was impressed with the customer as they had the camera right up and we had a quick video chat to ensure all was fine. There was just a bit of adjustment with the camera to get the picture centered, but other than that all was just fine. With that all taken care of, we closed out and I watched to ensure the customer had followed the instructions to close out Live by actually 'exiting' and not just closing down to the 'task bar'. This was all done, so I was a happy instructor for the day.

As I sat back and thought about how things went for the day, the dial up slowness certainly made me thankful for a high speed availability. But then I thought back to when I first started this 'computing' thing back in the early to mid 90's. At that time SaskTel wasn't even in the internet field. I used Prodigy as my internet ISP. My closest access was Edmonton so of course I had to use long distance to sign onto my account. If I remember correctly I normally only used the 'net' at night after midnight when the cheaper phone rates were in effect. It cost approximately $10.00 per hour of use. Let me tell you, you didn't do a lot of sitting around on the 'net' playing games etc. You got on to the 'net', found what you were looking for and signed off.

Oh yah, I had a blazing fast modem at the time of my Prodigy use. It was a 2.4 kbs dial up modem. Yup the top speed was 2.4 kilobits per second. Now a days of course the dial up modems run at 56 kbs with Flex or V90 protocols, but most setups hardly get quite that high. Case in point is the customer from yesterday computer dial up was running at 45.2 kbs. That still is a long way from 2.4.


Like the old saying 'We have come a long way'.

Bored or What ???

Frik I must be bored.... Out of nowhere I decided that I would stick in my 'Restore disk' on my laptop to see what would happen. No you have to realize that I know what a 'restore' disk does. Duh! It formats the hard drive and reinstalls the operating system back to when you purchased the computer.

Knowing this I still went ahead and 'restored' my laptop which has been running fine for the last 5 years. Yup, it wiped everything off the hard drive and we started over again. Now this is not as bad as it seems as I have a backup DVD of the hard drive and I have backups of the important information on my main computers.

But it is darn interesting to see what you have when you start over from scratch. You know what, the darn computer sure runs a way faster than it has been of late. It doesn't have all that garbage of programs on it, so zip zap and away you go.

I must admit the laptop is about 75% faster after the reformat. When I click on the IE button I'm connected to the home page a way faster than ever before. Well that is not quite correct. When I first purchased the laptop it was very responsive and the IE would load up quick as all get out. Of course over time I added different programs and the computer slowed down considerably.

Oh wouldn't it be nice to not add any programs and just use the computer with just the basic IE and maybe an EMail client. Overall it sure would save you time throughout the day.....

Vista Compatibility

It would seem that the majority of people in the world are not taking the giant leap and upgrading to Microsoft Vista. There are a variety of reasons for not upgrading not the least being the cost of upgrading. As well the possibility of your existing programs not running on Vista is a real concern. This is a very valid reason for many as there are many programs that refuse to run in Vista (or cause problems).

With that in mind, Microsoft has put out a list of programs that are 'Certified' for Vista and those that 'Work' with Vista. You can view that complete list at Applications that have earned the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo or the "Works with Windows Vista" logo.

Interesting Computer Repair

On Tuesday I had an appointment to look at a fellow's computer in town. This is an older PII 266 computer with 160 megs of RAM that had been running fine up until recently. The fellow doesn't use it for much other than surfing on EBay and the odd email message.

When I sat down in front of the keyboard I immediately saw there was a problem of lack of hard drive real estate. The computer has two hard drives installed. One is a 2.3 gig model and the other is a 512 meg model. Now that adds up to less than 3 gigs of room on the hard drives and the fellow was running XP Home.

I did look around in the computer and found that someone tried to help him recover some room by deleting certain unused programs. Of course they just used the 'delete' key so the registery was a total mess.

After prodding around for an hour or so I advised the fellow that the best thing he could do (other than buying a new computer) would be to reformat and start afresh. I told him that I could do it for him but it would take a day or so to get it all back up and running. He was agreeable with that so I unplugged the tower and headed for home.

Once home I reformatted both 'C' and 'D' harddrives and commenced installing XP. Oh yah, the fellow couldn't find his own XP copy but he knows he had one somewhere. No problem as I had a couple CDs I could use and just needed his Product Key. I have a full version of XP so I started the computer with it and commenced the install process. The process went fine and was booting just ducky. I then got a new version of AVG 7.5 antivirus and put that in the computer so we could keep out some of the nasties that show up every now and then.

It was when I put in the AVG that I realized that the amount of room on 'C' was going to be critical. So I installed the program onto the 'D' drive. Of course you still get all kinds of DLL files etc that programs insist must go on 'C' so I did loose some space.

With that all in place it was time to look for some updates. When I checked on Microsoft I found it needed at least 73 updates. So I started downloading the required files and watched the hard drive get less and less room to play. Eventually all the upgrades were down and the beast was still functioning fairly well. Then I looked and realized that XP was still sitting at SP1 and needed some more upgrading to get up to SP2.

Well I started downloading the update but the computer immediately started to balk at the size of this puppy. A stand alone download of SP2 runs about 266 megs of space. However, the update download is a bit smaller than that, but it still takes up a lot of room.

About half way through the download I could tell it was not going to work so I cancelled everything. I then reformatted the computer and started over with an Upgrade XP SP2 disk I had. This went better as Microsoft had at least fixed the 73 upgrades that were needed from the original XP disk so I didn't need to download the files.

I continued on and also installed the AVG over on the 'D' drive. I also installed 'Crap Cleaner' on the 'D' to assist with cleaning out some of the extra update files once I was done. This worked out quite well and once I had the XP all up and running and updated I still had close to 940 megs free on 'C'. This isn't a huge amount of room, but it would probably work for the way the fellow used his computer.

Then I figured I'd go whole hog and install the new IE7 for him. After downloading and getting the program updated I was fast running out of room on the hard drive. The program was complaining that there was not enough 'free space' left on 'C' and that the program needs at least 200 megs to function.

I looked around and there really wasn't a lot that I could remove that wasn't needed. The fellow stated he wanted email, be able to browse and to be able to play solitaire. I did have a bit of room sitting over on 'D' so I then figured I'd move the 'Page File' over there. This worked just great and did free up some needed room over on the 'C'. I had over 450 megs of free room left on 'C' which is plenty to allow for temporary internet files and the odd email that was expected.

I tested the computer out and surprisingly it worked fairly well. Now remember this is only a 266 computer with 160 megs of RAM. But it was definitely peppy enough on opening up the browser or the email. The solitaire worked just fine as well.

After running a final AVG scan and finding everything was clean I bundled up the computer and headed for the customer's house.

Once I got it all hooked up and purring right along, the guy says 'Oh yah, I have this 'All In One Printer/Scanner' that I would like installed". So I grabbed the CD and started installing. As I watched the files fly into the computer, I knew the free space was fast declining. But I continued on and ensured everything worked just fine.

I took a peak at the 'Explorer' to see that there was about 350 megs free on the 'C' drive and about 250 megs free on the 'D' drive. But the printer, scanner, fax machine now worked just fine. Well not quite fine, the customer hadn't used the printer since last summer sometime so of course the print cartridges were dried up. But the printer did go through the printing process as well as scanning in a document, etc. So it appeared everything was good to go. The customer was going to pick up a new black print cartridge to ensure he could print but he was satisfied that everything was in order.

I wasn't sure it could be done on such a small hard drive, but at least now I know, you can have XP Home with all the recent updates installed on less than 3 gigs of hard drive real estate.

My final comment to the fellow before I left was to ensure he kept his 'Temporary Files' cleared out and don't be saving huge attachments in his email messages. Oh yah, keep your eye out for a good deal on a new computer. PII 266's are getting fairly long in the tooth and you never know when it would decide to die a silent death.

Vista Programs

Today I had some good news and some bad news. The good news was that NOD32 is now Vista compatible and so I should be able to install the program on the new computer with no problem. The bad news is that ZoneAlarm PRO is not yet compatible and ZoneAlarm themselves advise against installing it until they have got a Vista compatible upgrade available.

Then I read a few other spots on the net and there is some question as to the actual need for a further firewall as the Vista firewall is much better than the previous XP firewall. Vista's firewall does check for outgoing connections from the computer whereas the XP version did not. That was one of my main aims for using ZoneAlarm. It prevented programs from accidentally being downloaded and clearing the virus scan and then installing themselves and sending out information from the computer (ie Trojan programs). So if the Vista firewall does in fact do as good a job as ZoneAlarm, then I would wonder why I would in fact need ZoneAlarm.

I still have the 60 days (57 now) Norton Internet Security version up and running on the Vista computer for now. I'll be leaving it installed for a few more days until I can read up a bit more on the firewall program installed through Vista. As my time counts down for the end of the Norton's then I can install my NOD32 program (which has been paid for) and go with the Vista firewall until ZoneAlarm comes out with an upgrade.

Other than that the Vista computer is humming right along and I have most of my files (that I wanted on the new computer) copied over. Thank goodness for routers and the ability to network the computers together. I've not run into any more programs that do not work on the Vista operating system yet.

One of these fine days though, I'll have to get Sandra's computer transferred over. She inherited my old 2.8 Intel tower and we'll replace her 800 Duron. I've tentatively transferred programs, but I just haven't gotten all of her emails, favourites, etc transferred. I keep telling her soon just after I finish doing something on my computer...

Sometimes I don't really think she believes me though :)

Eyes Are Falling Out

I haven't been on the blog of late because I've been working in the computer room on a couple new computers. Lo and behold I've had 2 Vista computers in the office to play with. Of course one of the computers is my own new HP Pavilion Media Center with 2 gigs of RAM, a 400 gig hard drive and a AMD 5000+ processor. The other computer is an Acer system with a 3800+ AMD, 250 gig HD and 1 gig of RAM. I've been working on the systems for so long my poor eyes are having a bit of trouble focusing of late.

My first impressions are that Vista is different but nothing earth shattering.

Let me tell you though, I don't think I'd be running Vista with only the minimum of 512 megs of RAM. The computers I'm working on are brand new and have only had Vista Home Premium installed on them so I haven't tried an upgrade just yet so I'm not sure what can of worms the upgrade would bring into it.

For my own system I had the computer up and running in a few short hours with most of what I had on my previous computer (ie Email, Favourites, etc). It did take me a couple hours to figure out how to network them all together so I could go back and forth and transfer favourite programs, pics, tunes, etc. Looking back at it now it was a relatively easy task. The major stumbling block was the firewalls (ie ZoneAlarm Pro and Norton Internet Security not playing nice). But after I got them sorted out, it seems to be working quite fine.

On my own system I have only found one program that is causing a bit of problem. That is the EPrompter Email notifier program that I use. It takes it's updates from the Windows Help system and Vista does not use this Help system at all. So of course my program won't update so I can't receive notification of my Windows Live account. This is not a great problem as I don't really get very much email through this account anyhow. I haven't tried switching over from the supplied Norton Internet Security to my preferred ZoneAlarm Pro as of yet either. I've read that there 'may' be a problem with ZoneAlarm and Vista. I don't foresee this as a large problem as I'm sure ZoneAlarm will have a fix out quickly. I do get 60 days to play with the Norton Internet Security before it dies. As well I haven't installed my preferred NOD32 antivirus either. I'll tackle that in a couple days and see what transpires. Once again I'm sure that if NOD32 does have a problem it will get fixed quickly. As a side note on the other computer I did install the free AVG antivirus and it works quite fine.

On the second machine I did run into some problems with the printer however. The fellow had bought a brand new HP Photosmart C3180 All In One printer just recently. There were no drivers available for this printer for Vista so I had to go to the HP website to get some. Even at the website HP only had basis drivers available so the full function of the 'All In One' will not be able to be used until the drivers are updated. But for now the printer does print as it should.

Overall I would have to say that the largest difference I've found between XP and Vista is the file system and where each operating system stores their defaults. Another thing with Vista is that the program pops up dialogue boxes questioning if you are actually doing a certain task or not. If you are, you click on 'allow' and away you go. In one way it seems to be a little more security conscious that XP was.

I'll play with the system a bit longer to see what other problems may occur. So far so good though.

New Customer

Just as I was sitting down to watch some fine TV viewing tonight with 'Prison Break', '24' and 'Heros' the phone rings. The caller was having some computer problems and wanted to know if I could help. As she sounded a bit frantic I sensed that she wanted some immediate help. So I said I could be right over.

I was over at the residence in a minute or so and found the problem appeared to be with the printer. It had been working fine, however, it just stopped working with this particular program. I went to the manufacturer's web site and downloaded the correct printer driver and did an uninstall and reinstall of the printer driver.

The driver went in fine and all programs were working fine except the program that was needed to print a report. I felt that it could be the actual program that got a glitch and needed to be reinstalled. Of course nowadays most computers come pre-installed with all the programs they need. The backups are on a 'Restore' disk which is a pain in the butt to use to reinstall just a single program.

I was fortunate in that I had the program at home on a separate disk. I drove home and got the disk, returned and reinstalled the program. All was well once again with the program and the printer. However, while I was doing the printing I noticed there were some errors in the report. The report was created by using a spreadsheet and there were errors being shown where the equations were not working properly.

With a bit of searching I got the errors fixed up, but then found some more errors. It looked like every line of the report would have to be gone through with a fine tooth comb. Sadly the owner was not a spread sheet expert, but at least she had the report all printed out. She could go through it and see if she could fix up the errors on paper.

While I was working I was speaking to the folks about slowness of their computer and how they should be maybe looking at some anti-spyware software, etc. Then I asked if they had cleaned out the junk (extra files) out of the computer lately. Well yes, they had the computer in to get cleaned only a year or so ago. I then quickly downloaded Crap Cleaner and did quick check. The computer only had 670 megs of junk sitting there so we cleaned that up for them and recovered the real estate on the hard drive.

I then re-explained about spyware and whatnot that they should be looking at. I could tell that we were overshooting the knowledge base on this one. So I asked if they would rather have me do the installing and cleaning. This was definitely a better plan than them doing it themselves. So now I have a date to go work on their computer on Wednesday.

Gee, word of mouth in a small town is great :)

The Hype is On

It seems that everywhere you look in the last couple of days, all you see is ads for Microsoft's new operating system Vista. This system is going to be a bit different in that it will have more flavours than we are currently faced with in the XP version.

I have been searching around and doing some reading on the pros and cons of the system. On the surface, the system sure does look nice, but then tell me one thing that doesn't look nice when it is a brand new?

For anyone that hasn't yet checked their system out to see if they can actually upgrade to Vista, here is a link to check Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. You need to download a 6.7 mb file and then run the program to install it.

Once installed, you run the program and it checks your computer for any glitches it may find as it pertains to Vista. I have read that it most definitely does not find all the problems you may have with hardware and software on you systems. So those that are contemplating upgrading, do some homework first. As well Microsoft says that you need as a minimum 512 mb of RAM. From what I'm seeing, I wouldn't even be thinking of upgrading without a minimum of 1 gig of RAM. 512 RAM is about the minimum amount of RAM that you need to run an XP system with any proficiency. The system will run with less RAM, it's just that with all the upgrades etc, the system has a tendancy to run like a snail.

If you want to get the 'hype' on Vista from the horses mouth so to speak, you can go to Microsoft's own site of Windows Vista and read all about it.

Slow Computer - Update

The slow computer that I was working on just prior to Christmas came back for another visit yesterday. When I had returned the computer to the owner, I explained that I wasn't happy with the computer speed although I had cleaned it to the best of my ability. My suggestion was for a bit more RAM as the computer only had 128 megs.

The owner called me and wanted to know if I would insert a new stick of RAM for him as he wasn't comfortable doing it himself. Some computers are a bear trying to get the RAM in, however, this E-Machine was great. Everything was out in the open and I had the new 512 meg stick of RAM in before the fellow backed out of the driveway.

While I had the computer opened, I noticed there was enough dust in there that I could probably knit a sweater or two. I thoroughly cleaned up the dust bunnies and made sure all the plugs were snug as bugs. I then fired the computer up with the new RAM installed and low and behold the beast zips right along.

From my view, it definitely was the RAM that was needed on this computer. The owner should be quite happy as it is peppy as all get out now that it has 640 megs of RAM.
Of course another 512 meg stick would do wonders for the computer. Mind you the computer will only accept two sticks of RAM, but 512 + 512 = 1 gig and that would definitely help XP, SP2 with all upgrades in place.

Customer is now satisfied which makes Dale satisfied.

New Version IE

After talking to various people about the new version of IE, some folks hate it and want to go back, and others love it. For myself I actually prefer the new version, but it did take me a while before I warmed to it. Some people like the idea of the new version (ie phishing, etc) and better security, but are not comfortable with the setup of the top of the page (the menus, etc).

When I found a neat workaround for the setup of IE7 to look like IE6, I was intrigued. It is a very easy method of having all the IE7 upgrades (phishing, etc), yet continue to use the IE6 menu lists, etc.

Using an XP system you need to 'Show Desktop Icons' and then right click in the middle of the screen and click on 'New" and then 'Shortcut'. You then type in 'c:\windows\ie7\iexplore.exe 'in the dialogue box, click on the 'Next' button and for a name type in something that makes sense to you the user (ie IE6, old IE, etc) and then click on 'Finish'. After a second or so you should get a new icon on your desktop that is familiar to you as the Internet Explorer.

Now for those that do not show their desktop icons, you only needed to drag the icon to your Quick Launch and place a copy there. For those that always show their icons, then you can place the icon anywhere on your desktop you like.

If you double click on the newly created icon, your Internet Explorer will open up with all of your 'Favourites', etc exactly as you had. The only thing is you now have the IE6 menu bars etc that you formerly had. If you check under 'Help', 'About Internet Explorer' you will see that you are indeed using Version 7 IE.

This work around works great with one caveat. If you click on a url link in a program, then the newer version of IE7 will open up. However, everytime you click on the new icon you created, you will open up the old version of IE6. You can keep both icons on your desktop (or Quick Launch) as well. The newer version of IE has the 'gold' coloured banner going around the blue 'e'.

To me it is the best of both worlds, you get the updated IE7 and it's benefits, but you have the menu bars that you have been familiar with for so long.