About a year and a half ago, lightning struck CrabAppleLane. It did a lot of damage. The surge hit our two computers but it didn't go through the power cord. It went through our network cables and fried the network port on both machines. Our insurance company asked us to have them examined to determine whether they should be fixed or replaced. The ports on both machines are integrated into the motherboards, which had "spots" all over them. Replace. Patsy chose to replace her desktop with a laptop and that ran a little more than they gave us so I decided to wait on mine for a while. My computer was working fine except for the network port so I just went wireless through a USB port. Over the last year and a half, I've noticed some erratic behavior from my PC. It doesn't always boot all the way up, it doesn't recognize things that I plug into the USB ports until I plug and unplug several times, it loses the printer, etc. It is dying.
The replacement arrived yesterday. First time I've ever replaced just the CPU and not the complete system. It has Windows Vista on it. So far, I haven't had any trouble except finding some of my software disks. One old program I own, Visual Page, doesn't want to install. I think I'll be looking for a new HTML program. Any ideas that won't break my very fragile bank?
Patsy and I both had the afternoon off yesterday. Decided to watch a movie instead of immediately getting to work on the computers. Fool's Gold was the choice. The first half of the movie was fun. It was funny and interesting and Kate Hudson is just fabulous. It has a very underused Donald Sutherland and a very overused Alexis Dziena but I could have forgiven that. It's a treasure hunt movie. Kate and Matthew McConaughey, newly divorced but still in love, are searching for the same treasure that Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset searched for in The Deep. Both films built a nice story around what they think happened. Unfortunately, at about the midway point, Fool's Gold goes way off the rails. What started as a light-hearted adventure comedy turned into a shoot-em-up killfest. What a disappointment. What a waste.
Quote of the Day
Hey, boats sink. No one knows why.
Finn Finnegan, Fool's Gold
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "Sleeve art by FG's own Dust La Rock ain't too shabby either! Cop and enjoy."
I only lasted about fifteen minutes with this movie. For one thing, neither of the actors are favorites and he, especially, annoys me. I liked it at the very beginning, the fire on the boat and so forth, but very soon it became tiresome. Do you have Encore? Their movies are really entertaining for the most part, a really good selection each night. I don't watch television during the day, so I indulge myself at night. I check out MSNBC, Animal Planet, National Geographic, and if nothing appeals to me, I'll check out the movie channels. HBO has the same poor selection for at least a month, maybe more. Cinemax and Encore are much better, but I won't give up HBO because of -- you know --Big Love!
The first 45 minutes or so got us hooked. It went downhill when the gangster brought in the new guy. We liked Encore but it was sacrificed on the budget altar. I keep HBO for its original programming but that might find its way to the altar soon, too.
Just saw Vista for the first time the other day on a refurb PC that my Dad got for a friend. That's the Home version and it didn't seem as clunky as I expected.
I expected some clunk here, too, Dave. The shear horsepower of the CPU might be compensating for some of the clunkiness but it could be Vista isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be ... and I probably shouldn't say that out loud after just one day.
Hi Rob, long time no comment from me! Good to be back blogging again, have cranked up good ol' Kiwifruit and
moved Photografiover to Movable Type. So far so good, frequency of posting is helped due to me being "in between" jobs at the moment!
My laptop has Vista and I don't find it too much of a change. I'd love to upgrade my PC as it's getting very, very slow (I've got far too much running on it - I just installed the latest Photoshop Elements and that was pretty much the nail in the coffin) but funds aren't going to stretch to an upgrade just yet.
Good luck finding an HTML editor, no doubt Google is your friend there!
Yes, great to see you, Fi. A new PC was not an expense I wanted at the moment but a full-fledged crash would have been disastrous for me.