I haven't had a chance to post much about my trip to Florida. I attended the Nebula Awards for science fiction and fantasy writing, and watched the awe-inspiring final launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis from one of the official NASA viewing areas. I don't have time to go into details here, but here's a photo.


( Read more... )

The Comcast technician came out last week to get our wireless cable Internet hookup working again. When he finished, he tried it out on my laptop. He was able to get online, so he said the problem was solved and left. Unfortunately, he never bothered checking on the other three computers in the house, and they still couldn't get online. So I've ( Read more... )

I bought a laptop computer today. It's a Sony VAIO VGN-Z750D, it weighs in at less than 4 lbs, and I paid way below list price. Woo hoo! We're still configuring it, so I haven't actually used it yet. My new baby does have fingerprint recognition, for security. Very cool. I feel like Agent 99. I just taught it to recognize my fingerprints. Now, if ( Read more... )

My online time has been sporadic lately because my computer was sick. For the last few weeks, it experienced frequent seizures, suddenly freezing up for no reason and refusing to respond even to Control-Alt-Delete or any other keyboard commands. I know that happens to everyone now and then. But it was happening to me constantly, and the only way to ( Read more... )

A few months ago, we finally got broadband, with a wireless network for all the household computers. Since then, I've had frequent trouble accessing the internet from my computer, though it usually worked on the other two computers. Many days I couldn't get a connection at all. I suspected the signal was being blocked by the several plaster walls ( Read more... )

Has anyone successfully installed a counter on a LiveJournal page? I'd like to track how many hits I'm getting. I know that LiveJournal doesn't offer counters but that there are sites with free counters that can be installed on blog pages. Unfortunately, the only directions I've found for doing so on LiveJournal seem to be out of date. If you have ( Read more... )

I spoke (or wrote) too soon. My computer is still haunted. Or psychotic. Or both. It's slow and erratic and keeps doing inexplicable things. And my broadband service works only when it wants to, which isn't often. As before, it claims that my computer can talk to the wireless router but that the router can't find the Internet. This is the same ( Read more... )

My computer is recovering. It had more "malicious code" (different from the earlier spyware), which is now gone. But some of my most vexing problems were caused by a new backup system we'd been trying out. During the 30-day trial it was OK, after its first few tedious days of copying everything in my system. It worked fine for a few weeks, until  ( Read more... )

My computer is having epileptic seizures. It suddenly got very...very...slow. I suspected spyware. When the regular scan didn't turn up anything, I used a more thorough scan (took hours) and finally found the nasty little spy and blasted it away. That improved things, but then new and bizarre problems surfaced. Among other issues, the computer is ( Read more... )