A Word Or 6 On Fixing Computers, And Happy Birthday Carin!

I'm not a hardcore tech support guy, but enough people look in my direction when bad things happen to perfectly good computers to make this seem like a worthwhile article. 5 Things You Should Know Before Trying to Fix Your Computer.

There is much great advice to be found here, but sadly most of it is going to fall on deaf ears, I'm afraid. I'm not sure what it is, but completely smart, reasonable people are just not capable of understanding anything when it comes to computers. You can put things in the simplest of terms and they're completely lost. Sometimes it looks like they get it, but you're fixing the same damn thing for the same reason within a year, usually a lot quicker than that.

The malware section I find particularly amusing. That, more than any other computery thing, is my department. And it really is that hard to get people to click the fucking button...whether that button be fix or update.

Which, I should point out, brings me to another problem. Those free programs are awesome. They've saved many a system that I've set them loose on. But as with anything else, there's a catch. The free version's don't run in the background and more importantly, they don't update automatically. You can install the best software there is, but if nobody's updating it and running it now and then like you've told them to, you're no further ahead. It's hard to fix today's infections with 5 months ago's detection routines. I really can't fault the software companies. They have to make a buck to keep development going and selling automation is a good way to do that. But it's a serious pain in my ass when somebody gets one of those no, I'm not letting you update anything kind of infections and I have to find a way around it.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at here is people, please do what I tell you. If I say it's ok to hit the button, hit the thing. If I say please update this program once every week or 2 and then run it when you won't need the system for a while, it won't kill you to wait on putting up that awesome Facebook status for a while. In fact it'll save you lots of waiting when you don't have to pack your system off to Mr. Fix it again. Please, just listen to me. I'm trying to help.

Ok, I'm off to buy Carin a birthday dinner at Guelph's new Works Burger. I hope not to think much about computers while I'm gone.

Happy birthday, Carin! I hope it's been a good day even though they made you work through it. And I'm happy I could help you win the DQ cake from CJOY. Yes me, involved in winning something. I can't believe it either.

Thanks again to all of you who threw gift suggestions at me. Something is coming, albeit a little late. But that doesn't mean I shafted her on gifts. She got something today. Not that, you perverts...at least not yet.

Ok, I've said too much. I'm seriously going for food now.

An Old Poem Has A New Reader

Sorry I haven't written much over the past while. Believe me, I have a pile of stuff that caught my attention, and hopefully I won't completely forget it all. Plus, I want to have something in the Assistance Dog Blog carnival, and the deadline is coming up...fast. So hopefully that means more posts from me...unless life has other plans.

But here's something to ease me back in. Remember that old Dr. Seuss-style poem about computer crashes? Well, here it is again, only it's spoken by Dectalk, and augmented by a few sound effects. Enjoy.

You Did What To Your Computer?

I saw this on Twitter, and after I finished smacking my fist, laughing, and making noises as if someone just strangled me, I felt it had to get posted up here. 6 Reasons the Guy Who's Fixing Your Computer Hates You

Why did it make me do all of these things? Because it's, so, true. Steve and I have seen levels of it firsthand, and neither of us are computer geniuses. But we've tried to fix enough small to large computer problems to know all of this is true. Yeah, mom and dad, that porn on your computer? It didn't come from my sister. You have yourself a nice infestation there.

Allow me to add a seventh blind-guy-centric reason the guy fixing your computer hates you. It gets really frustrating when people tell you what an error message says, and you google what they say, only to find that they didn't actually spell it out, they just sorta guessed at what their screen reader said. So, you spend a whole heap of time barking up the wrong Google tree.

I sent it to Mr. Do a Good Turn and hoped that he'd get a good giggle. I also hoped that he didn't hate me for pieces of no. 5 and no. 1. I've been known to think a problem is a quick fix, only to find...um...uh-oh...that's a lot of googling you've got to do there, dude. And no. 1 simply because I didn't have backups, remember?

Um, yeah, about that...let's get ourselves an external, you dumbass.

Anyway, have a chuckle or 6 if you can relate to any of this.

Everything's Gone, Gotta Carry On

You know how I said on Thursday that my computer was in the hospital? Well, according to the guy at the store, my hard drive is dead. Nothing is retrievable. Nothing can detect it. It makes grinding noises. He says it's a paperweight.

Crycrycrycrycry, gasp, crycrycrycrycry.

As the full weight of this set in, I realized just how much I have lost. Every license key for everything I've ever bought, everything I wrote down about Trixie, every email address, every email, everything to do with this event we're planning, every, freaking, thing.

Bawlbawlbawlbawl!

And to make this worse, I *know* what I *should* have done. I know I should have had backups. I know this. I friggin know! So, this makes me feel like this is all my fault. I have noone to blame for this but little ol' me.

Sobsobsobsob!

Because I'm desperate, I've asked Mr. Do a good turn to have a look at the paperweight and see if he can make it sing. I have my doubts, but one can dream.

So everyone who hasn't done it, pleasepleaseplease back your shit up. I would love to prevent others from becoming sobbing heaps. Just look at me, and hopefully that will remind you to make a backup.

Now I'll go cry some more.

No mountable Boot volume: That Can't Be Good

Well here I am writing this from my phone. Why am I doing this? Because apparently yesterday my motherboard thought it was a good day to die. Not only did it cash in its chips, but it decided to commit murder suicide, taking my hard drive down with it. It's amazing what a couple of extra volts will do to a hard drive.

I got next to no warning. The computer was acting a little weird so I rebooted it. Er. I tried to reboot it. I saw all kinds of text on the screen so I knew there was trouble.

The knfb reader was able to deliver the bad news. No mountable boot volume. Um, uh-oh.
So now my compy is in the capable hands of PC Trust. I have to pray that he can salvage my data. *slaps self for not having backups*.

So you probably won't hear from me much until I have a working computer. I'm glad I can do this whole posts by email by phone thing but it's tedious.

Aside: it's funny to watch the phone guess at words. I was writing suicide, and before I wrote the final e, it suggested quiche. Now I know how the phone feels about quiche.

The Cozycast Is Finally Here!

Sorry this is going up so late, and sorry for the general neglect of this place over the last little while. Laziness, busyness, illness, hung overness and going out and having funness haven't made for the best of reading lately. Hopefully things can start getting back to normal soon, but to hold you over until that happens, have this.

About a year ago, Carin won a homemade blanket from Ro in a contest. At long last, that blanket and a bonus gift arrived at our door on Friday. So Saturday night, as we promised we would, we hit record and opened it. We also opened some drinks and managed to turn a simple blanket unboxing into a couple hours of fun and stupidity. Don't worry, it's split into 3 parts in order to make things easier for everybody.

I was going to write up detailed show notes with links to all the stuff we talked about, but to be honest, I'm so not feelin' that right now. If you're curious enough about something to want to know more, just ask. There are lots of ways to ask.

Part 1runs about 32 minutes. Topics include but are probably not limited to why we're here, Carin's dog difficulties, how the hell UPS works, why Steve doesn't track packages, the usage of tweeps and words like it including calling a specific person out on the problem she doesn't want to admit she has, why we both almost didn't get on Twitter, why Maggie Laidlaw sucks now and a bit of Guelph city politics, the blog is moving, new slogans and political ads.

Part 2clocks in at 49 minutes. Carin explains the contest and we open the box. Then things go wrong. Actually things kind of go wrong before the box is even open, but that's just because I'm an asshole and enjoy tasteless jokes. There's also some other random talk including religious douchebags on Twitter and things that annoy us about them and religion in general, replacing the C word with a K word, 1000 Ways To die, a horrible injury, the KNFB reader, why technology isn't perfect and an epic fail.

Part 3,AKA the part we didn't think we'd have. the KNFB unbroke within about 3 minutes of us signing off, so we hit record again and did the colour identifying thing. We also talk about why it's kinda dangerous for blind people to wear winter hats, things sighted people do to the blind, blind people who don't represent us well, people who can't text and a couple of huppy stories. We went about 52 minutes here, or about 20 or so minutes longer than perhaps we should have. Ah well, can't win 'em all. Still sorta neat if you've never seen a KNFB reader or a phone that can recognize colours. Besides, a bunch of this was done mainly for a few people so as long as they enjoyed it, I'm ok with that.

Happy downloading.

An Unmanageable JAWS Keyboard Manager

Edit: It's not Thunderbird's scripts' fault because a demo of JAWS 12 even crashes when I try and open the keyboard manager and it doesn't know about those scripts. I'm so confused.

Here's a weird one, and I haven't been able to find the answer anywhere, so hey, why not put it up here? Maybe the answer will come to me.

This morning, Jen was screwing around with Qwitter. She discovered that when she hits the keystroke for follow, it brings up a select a language dialog. Hmm. Qwitter doesn't have one of those. So, I figured out that something else had made the keystroke and tied it into JAWS somehow. I managed to get her to hit pass key through and then hit the keystroke and it worked.

So I thought the solution would be to go into keyboard manager and see how easy it is to find that keystroke and change it or remove it or something. I hit keyboard manager...and...my computer went down with a thud. Even the Dr. Watson postmortum thingamabobber came up. That thing only comes up when it's bad bad times for you.

I thought "well hmmm this is perplexing." I tried everything, and no matter what I did, any time I tried to open JAWS keyboard manager, either through run JAWS manager or through the utilities sub menu of JAWS, my computer went into a hairy conniption. This happened if I used either JAWS 9 or 10. I can open the other managers no problem, it's just the keyboard one.

So I asked Steve to do it too. Ker smash! Down he went, seemingly even more thunderously than I did.

Hmmm. So why are both of our JAWSes broken in the same way? We have lots of things in common, but that's just weird. The only things we've both done recently would be install the scripts for Mozilla Thunderbird and we installed Qwitter. But this happened even when I closed Qwitter, so I'm really wondering if it's Thunderbird's scripts.

I have downloaded a demo of JAWS 12. I'm going to try and see if its keyboard manager crashes too. Then I'll know it isn't the Thunderbird scripts because they don't live there. But if it doesn't crash, then I'll know at least where to begin.

Has anyone else seen this? Please comment. I'm really stumped.

You Can Trust PC Trust

Yea! I have more happy posts! Happy posts make me happy! Yeah, and I love having fun, because it's fun!

Today started off badly. Remember back when Steve lamented his USB keyboard issues? Well, they came back with a vengeance. He was still using his PS2 keyboard, but every so often, the computer would yelp that a USB device had malfunctioned, and windows could not recognize it. This was annoying, but the system still worked. We would figure it out some day...

This morning, it would yelp that a device was not recognized every 5 or 10 seconds or so! That does it, we were going to fix this son of a bitch come hell or high water.

I got down on my knees and pulled out every blasted USB device he had. It still was yelling and crying and moaning. So, I shoved my memory stick in every port he had. Every port took it! We were really mystified, so I turned to ye old google. I found this article, which described his problem perfectly! It said the solution was not reinstalling drivers or restoring the system or any other assorted goo. It was, wait for it, unplug the machine, wait, and plug it back in!

Ecstatic, I ran to his beast, turned it off, and unplugged it from power. I gave it a good 5 minutes to adjust to lack of juice and get its panties out of a bunch. Then I plugged it in, ready for success, and confident that I would have it.

...

...

And I could not get any power to his machine! What in the blue hell happened? It is not possible to break a computer by unplugging it!

After lamenting that I had broken Steve's computer, I put my problem out to the Blind Tech list, hoping for wisdom. We got it, to the tune of a chorus of "bad motherboard, bad motherboard, your motherboard is in trouble. Hope you're not too attached to it." Well, they didn't say that, but that was the sentiment.

So, I was desperate. Mr. Do a good turn had already come through for us a month ago. There was no way in hell I was going to call him again. He's awesome, but he should not be abused, especially since he doesn't charge for his services. I love that, but there comes a point where he might not be so available if I asked him for favours too often.

So I took a large gamble. I had heard good things about PCTrust, a computer shop downtown. They're the ones who, sadly, put their business hours in an image. We will work on that. One piece at a time.

I called them up, and got the same fellow. Does he work seven days a week? Jeebers! I told him my problem, and he listened intently. He told me if I brought it to him, he would pop it open and look at it for free, and then we could decide a price. That made me feel good. He didn't appear to be in the business of ripping someone off.

I called up the huppy's mom. She has a car now, so I begged her, pretty please, could you drive Steve's injured compy and I down to the computer doc? I said I'd even buy ice cream for her after as a small thank you. She said sure, so off we went.

After a brief look, he confirmed what the chorus of blindtechers had said. "The board...it's dead." He agreed to cut me deals on every part of the process. It was still expensive, but that's what happens when your motherboard pukes. But he said he would put it in, test it, and repair windows over top so it could find everything. Yes sir, I would like that very much, sir.

And ya wanna know something? Steve has a working compy back in our house! Tonight! We delivered a comatose computer to PC Trust at around 1-ish, and by 4:30, he had it fixed! Now that, that's speed!

So, if you live in or near Guelph, and your computer needs help, take it to PC Trust. This guy is thorough, and knows his stuff. He also has a lot of patience. If you're blind, here are his business hours, courtesy of RAIVE.

Monday 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.
Tuesday 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.
Wednesday 10:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
Thursday 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.
Friday 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.
Saturday 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.
Sunday 12:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m.

He's a hard-workin', fast-workin' man. He also offered to blow the dust out of our compies for free every few months to hopefully allow the poor things to live longer. What an awesome guy!

So that's my plug for the day. Go PC Trust. You make compies sing, and the blinks who depend on them dance.

Dream CAPTCHA

When our computers broke the other day, hopefully we'll have a longer post about that when we figure out exactly what happened, we had to call in our friend and super tech. He's the one who likes to be paid in good turns for someone else, although this time he had a beer, so we're gettin' somewhere. I wish we could say who he is and how awesome he is, but we'll just have to stick to saying how awesome he is. Anyway, after he resuscitated our pair of computers turned paperweights, he told us about something he had seen somewhere. He said he saw something resembling a dreamcatcher, you know, one of those wooden things with yarn in a spider web inside it? Well, inside this circle were some twisted letters and numbers, and it was called a dream captcha. We laughed and thought that was the funniest thing ever.

Well, here's the guy making these. Here are the two pictures that were on his page.

This is what RAIVE says about them:

It looks like a wall decoration with feathers hanging from the bottom. I can't figure out the code in the round part of the decoration. Almost looks like a captcha code.

Poor RAIVE folks, they've been solving CAPTCHAs for way, way, way too long. I wonder if they tried to solve it, and/or how long they tried. I wish I could reply and tell them what this was, just so they can get a chuckle along with us.

I guess these have been around for a little under 2 years, so I'm late to the party.

I Think I'm Gonna Cry. Please, Don't Make Me Cry

I hate computers! Just...fucking hate the things!

Carinmentioned earlierthat my keyboard decided to die out of the blue this morning. Well, we did the logical thing and bought a new one. so what do you suppose happens when I plug it in? Come on, guess. Yeah, same goddamn thing that was happening with the old one. It won't respond after Windows XP recognizes it, and if I unplug it and plug it in to try again I get a message saying that the USB device is not recognized, that a device has malfunctioned and that if I'd like help fixing this problem I can click this message. I'd happily do that if I could use a mouse, but the keyboard is my mouse, and without it I'm effectively mouseless.

So now I'm worried, not to mention ripshit pissed off. Have my USB ports failed? Nothing else plugged into them is yelling at me, but I can't really do a whole lot of tests if I can't use the keyboard to run anything, so that might not be a reliable fact on which to hang my hope. I tried the old keyboard in 3 of the ports and this new one in 2 and none of them worked, so unless there's some kind of driver wackiness at play they're probably hosed. If that's the case, what do I do, and how much money is itt going to cost me to do it? I want the answers to those questions but I really don't want them, if that makes any sense. In my head I'm picturing computer techs with dollar signs in their eyes, and this upsets me.

If anybody has any suggestions or somesuch I'd love them, and if anybody else needs me I'll be in the other room hopefully not throwing a computer off a balcony.

Raving About RAIVE

I just have to write this quick post before I get a move on.

Ok, so this morning, Steve woke up to find that his computer was acting like a dork. He couldn't figure out why. We're pretty sure that his USB keyboard has bitten the biscuit, but we'll only know after we buy a new one and try it. So anyway, I was trying to find a computer store to hit that hopefully was staffed by people with a little more knowhow than the ones that work at some of the chain electronics stores. I remembered hearing something good about a place called PC Trust, so went looking for them.

I found them, but for some reason that I cannot understand, they put their business hours in a graphic. Seriously, who on earth does that? I had tried calling them, but their blasted fax machine kept picking up and squealing in my ear. So Steve had a brainwave. Why don't we run the business hours graphic, which funnily enough was labeled "business hours" *way to taunt the blink*, through Solona's RAIVE service. And it was a great idea.

Basically, you send a picture to RAIVE and ask them a question about the picture. They send you back an email response and answer your question. My question? What are the business hours? Within 5 minutes, I had my answer in my email! I hate to say how cool is that again, but are there any better words?

That was basically all I had to say. Go RAIVE. Everybody should try it out. It's unbelievably easy, and cool.

Oh, and USB keyboards that die without warning can eat a bag of hell.

The Need To Do A Good Deed

Remember what I said about pay it forward? Well, who knew I would be in possession of a pay it forward bracelet? And now that I have one, why has it become so hard to do a good deed for someone?

Let me back up a bit. Steve's computer decided the other day that na, it just didn't wanna turn on anymore. Power button shmower button. Poor Steve was not around to start setting the poor beast right again, or finding someone who would, so I called a guy who has saved me countless times in the past. He has been my angel in all things computer. He has revived Steve's old computer after the event we refer to as the great crash of 2004, he made it so Steve had internet when he moved to that little apartment back years ago, he has put ram in my computer, he saved my computer when one day it made horrible sounds and spat smoke from the back. Hell, he even saved the shoe thief's computer! Whenever really bad things happen to a computer of someone close to me, I call him.

The man will not take payment. I think the most I've been able to give the fellow is a slide-scanner that I wasn't going to use. We've given him a beer or two, but that's about it. The only time we gave him money was when he got Steve a new hard drive. He's just awesome.

So, when Steve's computer ceased to turn on, I emailed him, um, asking for, um, a little help. Sure enough, boing! There he was saying he could come get it the next day.

He came and scooped up Steve's computer and took it back to his office. I asked him what I would owe him, and he said "a good turn to someone else. Here. Give this to someone after you do a good turn for them and then they can do a good turn for someone else."

So now I have a bracelet that feels like one of those "Live Strong" bracelets. It's so big that I've almost lost it a couple of times. But I swear the only way I will no longer have it anymore is after I've done something for someone.

But here's the problem. For the last few days, I haven't been able to do something nice for someone. The closest I came was I paid for dinner when Huppy's mom and I went out for dinner, but I felt that was only paying her back for helping me walk all over the wild blue yonder in search of a battery for my cordless phone. So that didn't count.

And then there's the magnitude of the "good turn". He revived a dead computer, and for nothing! I can't say I've paid it forward by holding a door for someone or something. What I would consider equal would have to be pretty monumental. I'd have to rescue someone's kitten or help someone out who's in pretty huge distress to do something equal to what he did for Steve.

And here's the even funnier part. Over the past couple days, I've needed help with a few things. Just today, someone had to help me carry things because I had too many and was having huge trouble managing all the stuff and the Trixter. All I could think is "Wow, there's another nice thing done for me. I'm even deeper in debt." Don't get me wrong, I appreciate them all, but I really notice them when consciously looking for a chance to help somebody else.

And, even if I did do something pretty huge, I have a real problem handing the bracelet to them. I mean, I'd feel pretty cheap. They don't know that I'm paying back a debt from someone else. Plus, I probably would have done it anyway if I could at all.

I hope I find a way to at least in my mind make up for this guy bailing me out of computer hell once again. It's official, he has succeeded. Steve's computer is back where it belongs and, as far as I can tell, is functioning like it always did.

One Screen, Two Screen, Dead Screen, Blue Screen

this must be internet day or something. I got this in the email a couple of days ago but didn't feel like putting it up. Now I do.

Dr. Seuss - WHY DOES MY COMPUTER CRASH?

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
and the double clicking icon puts your window in the trash
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse;
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk
and the micro code instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory
and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer
and be sure to tell your Mom!

Yeah, it was lame, but I'm feeling lame today. blame it on the cold I have.

The Clearing House of Carin's Head

Well hey everybody. You've probably noticed it's been kinda quiet around here. Well, there are a couple of good reasons for that, and I decided to write about them, along with a couple of ideas that have been floating through my head. Long, long, long post ahead.

The main reason is because Steve and I were both clonked by the worst flu to come along in a long time. I think it's the worst flu I've ever had. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was horrible. I hope I don't gross anyone out by what I'm about to say, but off I go. There's nothing like heading out for the usual final visit to doggy potty land for the day thinking "Hmmm. I feel a bit off." That's what I thought last Sunday. Then, as the elevator went down, it quickly changed from "Am I gonna hurl?" to "Yes, in fact, I am gonna hurl. I just have to make sure I get to the snowbank outside." to "If I'm going to make it out before this happens, I'd better runrunrunrunrun." to "Oh crap. I didn't make it." Nope, I didn't make it at all. Right at the entrance to the building, all hell broke loose. There was puke all over me, all over Trixie, all over the lobby. It was a bad scene, a scene that was caught on the surveillance camera thingy...that some people can tune in on their TV. And that was the thought that was in my head. "Great! Someone could be watching me barf right now. Just dandy."

Luckily for me, a man who wasn't disgusted by the sight of me wiped off Trixie. I didn't realize how badly she got covered. I also didn't realize that somehow, I had gotten it on my forehead and nose! Whaaat? After trying to clean us up some, he called maintenance, who were nice about cleaning up the war zone, er, lobby. I was fully prepared that I'd be down there with a mop and bucket.

Incidentally, getting the puke smell out of a leather leash is horribly difficult. I don't even know if it's all gone. I didn't have leather cleaner, so the leash has become hard from cleaning with water, and soap and water to try and get rid of that horrid stench, and I still have to buy something to moisturize the poor leash so it doesn't crack. It's been suggested that I use water and baking soda, a product called "Goo Gone," saddle soap, leather-cleaning wipes, all manner of things. The trick is finding some of them. Everyone tells me to go to a place that sells horse products, and then promptly says "I don't know where that is." I haven't tried the water and baking soda thing yet. I almost want to have something on hand to moisturize the leash before I put it through more drenchings of water.

After I dragged myself upstairs, the real agony started. For the next 12 hours, well...let's just say both ends were not happy, and even when there wasn't anything left, they were still not happy. I was very afraid that this was far worse than a flu.

But things settled after that, and I slept and slept and slept, only waking to stagger out to doggy potty. I honestly don't remember much of Monday. I just know that when you feel like crap, going out to uneven ground while your dog circles and does her business is freaking difficult. This was the first time I was so sick that I actually hoped someone else would relieve the dog. Poor Steve wanted to do it for me, but he can't stand the smell of dog doodoo, so he said he couldn't.

Even when this bastard of a flu is gone, it doesn't leave you alone. Your appetite is shot to hell and you're all weak and easy to tire out. So Tuesday, the only thingI managed to do was go out and meet a bunch of people who wanted to get together to speak french. By the way, if anyone's from this area and is looking for an opportunity to speak French, why not join us?

When I came home, Steve had been smashed with the flu brick and so it began with him, almost in the same way. Thank god we didn't get the flu at the same time. We only have one bathroom! The only thing that worked out better for him was he didn't harf all over the lobby.

Here's something infuriating I've noticed people do. I'll say I got the flu, and it's a doozer, and they'll say one of two things. "Did you get your flu shot?: or "Oh I won't get it, I got my flu shot." No I didn't get my flu shot. I haven't for years, and I hardly ever get the flu. And the flu shot is not iron-clad. It's a guess of what strains they think might hit us. It's like a flu-forecast. That is not a 100% guarantee against getting the flu, even though they say it is. So to everyone who feels invincible because they got their flu shot, you may not be so protected.

Then, just when I was pretty much over the flu except for my lack of appetite, my computer decided it was going to hurl too. I installed the new version of Spybot, version 1.6.2 and it asked me to reboot. Why sure, why not? Well, when I rebooted, my computer was not happy, not happy at all. Somehow, my video drivers got destroyed. I had about three windows screaming at me. JAWS was crying that it had been kicked in the balls because it couldn't have a merry chat with non-existent video drivers, there was a hardware wizard claiming that I had installed VGA drivers, which are kind of the most primitive video support there is, and JAWS was also saying that since my hardware had changed significantly, it needed a new authorization. Oh yeah, and I couldn't read all of this with JAWS because it was busy bawling its eyes out over a lack of video drivers. But it was giving me just enough information to let me know that I was in big, big trouble. Oh, and add to that that my screen was black, so I could forget getting sighted help to get me out of this one. for once, I was actually at an advantage even though I didn't feel like it.

I couldn't figure out what could have eaten my video drivers. The only things I had installed were a couple of game demos and Spybot that I just finished installing. It couldn't have been Spybot, I was convinced it has to be a game.

Let me say again that I love, love, love System Access to Go. It is the most awesome thing in the universe when your main screen-reader goes. Sure it can't do flash or handle Firefox or do anything very complex, but it gives you enough functionality to check and send email, including pleading messages for help, search on google, probably for why your video drivers just ran away, and do anything else basic with your computer so it's not a buzzing paperweight. I love it so much. Some day I may get a paid account just to show my gratitude.

Eventually, someone said I should do a system restore back to the time when the computer last ran as normal. After some botched attempts to get my firewall to cooperate with system restore, I got it to go, and discovered my video drivers had been revived. Stupidly, what was the first thing I installed after I was up and going? Spybot! After all, I thought the game ate my video drivers! Boom! My video was gone again.

I seem to be the only one who has had this problem. I don't know what's up. I've sent a report to Spybot. But that took me two days of trial and error before my computer was happy again.

I mentioned I tried out a couple of game demos. Steve said he'd buy me a game for my birthday, so try out a few. I finally decided on Sarah and the Castle of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I like it. It has so much cool sound. I could play this game forever. I just wish I wouldn't get stuck in the broom cupboard so much. Any ideas on how to get out of the fucking broom cupboard? I'd like to achieve a grade better than dreadful or troll.

Lately I've had a few dreams about failing and I don't quite know why. In one of them, a little kid managed to rip Trixie out of my hands. I chased the kid down, somehow losing my shoes in the process, only to have the parent angry at me that I was chasing the kid who had my dog. Then I got Trixie back and couldn't find my way back to my shoes. then somehow I lost my best pair of mitts down adrain pipe and my brother saw them go and somehow kicked them down further. Then I got in his car, and he asked me to hold this giant container. Somehow I didn't realize it was open, and we went over a bump, and I spilled soup all over his jeep. . When I started to cry about how I am such a failure because I couldn't even hold a pot of soup, he told me to shut up and stop whining. What?

thenI dreamed that I was back at school and trying to help out at a bunch of events, but was never really helpful, and in the process of getting involved in all these events, I managed to miss all my classes. What the hell's up with all these dreams about screwing up? Is there a part of me saying I'm a failure?

Here's something I've been wondering about for a little while. I kept hearing a commercial that sounded like it was encouraging everyone to enjoy a green tea and trail mix cookie from Tim Horton's. Every time I heard that, I wondered why people would put green tea and trail mix together in a cookie. On Friday, I went out to Tim Hortons, and decided I was going to find out what all the fuss was about this green tea and trail mix cookie. So I asked for it. Then the girl behind the counter said "What size green tea?" Oh! So it's a tea *and* a cookie! That makes more sense! I don't know what it is about that commercial, but I was convinced it was all in the cookie. maybe if I'd paid attention to either the price or the end of the commercial, I would have figured it out, but I think I was too busy laughing at the guy who gets mowed down by the "approaching mail cart" to pay attention.

So that was our week, and all my crazy thoughts. Hope it wasn't boring.

Friggin' Weird

Hello!

So that's pretty odd. For most of last week I was unable to log on to the site, or the blogger site which allows us to post. I tried several times over the course of the week and kept getting that "This page cannot be displayed" thing which was getting fairly irritating, since I believed that the site could, in fact, be displayed. So it was to my surprise this afternoon when I tried to get on and it worked with no issues, whatsoever. Oh well.

Isn't "whatsoever" a weird word, when you think about it? I mean break it down in your head and then try to explain to yourself what it means. It makes no sense, whatsoever.

Hallowe'en was good. I ended up going as a Ceiling Fan. There are two ways to interpret that and if you're currently thinking to yourself "wow that's lame" than you've got it correct. If you're wondering how I walked around in a giant ceiling fan costume or are thinking "did he spin at all during the night?" then you are way off and should probably rip out a pube or two as punishment. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Done whiping the tears from your eyes? Good. We all got costumed up at my friend's place and headed off to the party which was a kegger. It was a blast. Some really funny costumes and got to see some friends that I hadn't seen in quite a while. So, all in all, it was a great party. I guess my costume achieved my goal. I had reactions that, in actuality, ranged from some guy telling me I had the best costume there to another guy muttering that I was a fucking moron. So we'll peg it somewhere in the middle and call it a success.

The Leafs are still impressing. The game Saturday was something to behold. The Leafs were dead in the water until the 10 minute mark of the third when they exploded for 5 goals and beat the Rangers 5-2. Sunday was almost an exact flip of luck. They came out flying and ended up falling flat, blowing a lead and losing 6-4 to Carolina. So you call it a draw this weekend as they should have beat Carolina and should have lost to the Rangers.

That's all for now.

Updates About Stuff And Stuff

Well, it's time for a post full of ramblings about the mundane details of my life. Anyone who wants a nap could probably get one now.

Grandma's service last weekend was really amazing. The service itself was pretty ordinary, but it was all the feeling around it that made it so incredible. We showed up a half-hour early so that we could be there to shake hands and talk to people as they came in. But when we arrived, there were already 15 people there to greet us! Like woe. The church was full by the time the service started. Yup, Grandma was known and loved in the community. The minister was really cute, and included his own personal stories about Grandma. You could tell they actually knew each other. My cousin and my mom got up and made little speeches about Grandma, talking about all the cool stuff she did and the way she was. I think they conveyed a nice picture of her. It's funny. Mom made an effort not to talk to my cousin or the minister about the eulogy she was writing because she didn't want them all to start talking about theirs and then have them all sort of bleed together. Even so, there were still a lot of common themes. there was Grandma's love of gardening, cooking, and people in general and her need to keep busy. That came through loud and clear in all the eulogies.

It's weird to see neighbours you haven't seen in a long time. I know that time marches on, but in my mind I always have people frozen at the same age they were when I last saw them. Then I remember that they're the same age as me, so it makes sense that they're now married and have a couple of kids. but for a second, I thought it was absolutely unfathomable that they're all grown up and gone.

While I'm home, I end up texting more than I do here. I don't use the dialup at home much to check email, and if I just want to send a message to Steve, it makes more sense to text. This weekend, I thought I'd try the whole t9 predictive text thing, and am I ever glad I did!

Before, when I wanted to text, I'd have to spell every word out. This could mean a lot of presses of the same key just to get one letter. It would take me forever just to send a simple message. Now, I only press each key once for each letter I want, and as I go, it takes guesses at what word you want to say. For example, in the old mode, the word message would have been 6, 33, 7777, 7777, 2, 4, 33. Now it's 6 3 7 7 2 4 3 and it changes its mind about what word I'm going for as more digits get added. It's surprisingly accurate! If it doesn't have the word I'm looking for, I can just add it.

Sometimes it's a bit of a brain-screw when you have to add a word and you have to go back to the old mode. Even though you know you're spelling a word the old way, you still try and write it the quick way and wait for the guesses. How quickly it's getting me to adjust.

My new computer is here! My new computer is here! And it's a dream! I got so used to waiting for the old, stupid computer to come to its senses every time I asked it to do anything new. This one actually responds instantly, and it's awesome! It's been so long since I've had a decent computer that it feels extra good.

I did have an annoying experience with the Freedom Scientific ILM activation scheme. Remember how I bitched about how you couldn't remove JAWS authorization keys yourself? Well, I officially got burned by that, although not too badly. Apparently, they're being more generous nowadays than I thought, they're just being annoying. The way it works is when you install JAWS on a computer, it sort of looks over the computer to see if hardware has changed significantly from where it was last installed. If it has, it assumes it's a new system, and asks for another key. When this computer first arrived, something happened when everything was being installed to make the CD drive get jostled and it wasn't installed properly. Steve got JAWS in anyway, and finally got it authorized. Last night, I got the CD Rom drive fixed, and apparently, putting a CD drive in is considered a significant hardware change, and I didn't have enough keys. So I had to email Freedom Scientific and ask for my number of keys to be reset. By early this morning, they did, without asking for any money, and all is good, but it was a tad bit frustrating.

I think that's about it for now. Hopefully people weren't too bored.

Brain Dump

Well, I'm tired. I didn't sleep much last night. So I'm hoping this random pile of stuff will make me burn out so maybe I'll catch a nap.

For people who were wondering, I'm doing ok. There are times when I climb the rollercoaster hill and I'm at the top, like when I manage to get a bunch of stuff done, and there are times when I realize why they have those strap thingies over my shoulders because I'm upside down, going down, down, down some more, like when I googled my own name and found Grandma's obituary. Now that, that's weird. I head home tomorrow and the service is Saturday. Mom and dad seem to be doing ok, I think because they have to be.

You probably think I'm an insensitive bitch for posting stupid shit over the past few days. But it kind of helps to do something, because I don't have a lot of ambition to go out walking around. So, at least I can write short, easy posts. I've been meaning to write this one for a while, but it seemed like too much work. Now I think I can do it. Looking at that, I feel like an overdramatic whiner.

Here's another old blindy thing. Do you remember the really old braille books? Do you remember how they used to have strings right in them that you could use as a bookmark? That was cool! I wonder why they stopped doing them. Was it too hard to repair them once they broke? Speaking of which, I have to tell them that one of the strings on the book I just finished is non-existent.

Like I said in another post, I'm getting ready to go to the GDB reunion in September. For people who don't know, if you have a guide dog, or I guess a dog of any kind, and you're going between countries, you have to get a health certificate to state that the dog is free of disease, up to date on vaccinations, etc. Customs doesn't always ask for it, but they can. This got me thinking. Why don't people need to have a certificate stating that they're healthy too? I mean, maybe that would have prevented the whole Andrew Speaker thing. I know I sound paranoid, but hey, if my dog has to jump through hoops, why not us humans?

A little while ago, a couple of people said their eye doctors told them to stay far, far away from Visine eye drops, but the people couldn't tell me why. That made me wonder, because the damn things are everywhere. Were the doctors just trying to get the people to get a perscription instead of over the counter stuff? Or are the things evil? It's not likely that I'd have a need for the things, but I'm still curious.

Apparently, I look like the girl on some cigarette packs. I think Steve's stepdad said Canadian cigarettes, I think that's a brand. Yeah, you can tell I don't smoke. The picture is a side-view of a girl wearing a striped shirt and she's looking at her mom or something. Anyway, he looks at me and says, "Has anyone told you you look like the girl on the cigarette packs?" Of course, I've only heard of scary pictures on cigarette packs like yellow teeth, black lungs and disfigured fetuses, so I started laughing and asked if the girl's growth was stunted or something, and wondered what he was trying to say about me. Was he saying I was an ugly, scary woman? He finally convinced me he was serious, and the picture wasn't ugly. So eeewww, I'm on a pack of cigarettes. That's just weird. If anyone sees her, let me know. I wish I had a good picture of me from the side and a picture of the cigarette pack, but I have neither.

You know POINTTS? That organization that helps people fight traffic tickets? I've heard their ads on the radio for years, but never have they said that POINTTS has two t's. Why the hell not? It's radio! People can't see the screen where they can write it down. But I guess back years ago, there was no internet. But there was a phone book, and I could see a lot of people looking up "POINTS" and getting really mad that it wasn't there. Then maybe they'd speed somewhere to ask someone where the hell it was and get another ticket. Maybe that was the plan.

Speaking of police stuff, the Crimestoppers ads always made my head spin with this one piece. "Your call is anonymous, we dont' subscribe to call display. If your tip leads to an arrest, you are eligible for a reward." Um, how would they find me to give me the reward if I'm anonymous? Nobody's been able to explain that to me.

Man, candidates in the by-election, which has probably been rendered useless, seem desperate. They've hired telemarketers to call me and ask me if candidate x can count on my support. Not if they keep this harassment campaign up, and especially not if they can't pronounce his name. I got to tell one candidate that his campaign drones had better sit down and have a lesson on how to say his name. I mean, even JAWS can say it properly. Guys, it's Frank Valeriote! But one woman went, "I am calling on behalf of Frank...V...V...Val...are---ee...yat?" Yeah, ok. That's really convincing.

This is a small pet peeve of mine. Have you ever heard people say "\" when they mean "/"? They always do it with web addresses. For example, they'll say "www.itsaslash.com backslash yourestupid." I wrote out backslash, because this happens all the time on the radio. A Backslash looks like this: \ Take a good hard look at it. I'll show you again. \ Got it? That does not appear at the end of web addresses. A slash, like this, / does. Take a look at that. / Now this one. \ They go the opposite way. See? Here's the right one. / Here's the wrong one. \ Stop mixing them up!

Here's a piece of good news. I got an email yesterday saying my new computer is on its way. Yea! Now poor Steve agreed to help me reinstall bunches of stuff that I had on the old computer so when I came back from my grandma's funeral, it was sort of like the old one. So if he doesn't post much, that's probably why. Or maybe he'll post just to curse me for causing him to pull his hair out.

And that's about it. Kind of disappointing, isn't it?

R.I.P. My Stupid Computer

Well, it's official. my limping computer can't limp anymore. It is a large paperweight. Today, it shut off three times while I was trying to click links. The third time, it would not turn on. the other times, I had to reach back and hit the direct power switch that supplied the juice to the power supply to get it to remember how to turn on. The last time that happened, the bios forgot everything it had remembered and I had to press f1 to continue. After that, it shut off for the last time.

I made the mistake of going to get laundry, and when I came back, my computer would only power up for about half a second. Then it would power back off again. I think it's official. It's time to say it's gone. I was hoping it would wait until June of 09 when I came due for ADP, but that's not to be.

I should have known it wasn't going to make it. Let's go through the times I have cursed this beast from hell. I had it less than a month when the scanner broke, and the fan whined like a jet engine, sending it back to the repair shop, such as it was. Four months later, it blew a regulator. Do four-month old computers blow regulators? Well, mine did. It dragged its arse along for a while, until it consumed about 12 hours' worth of Steve's email, and I noticed other files going missing. I dragged my feet until I finally took it to a repair-shop. For a while, I thought it was healed! It seemed to be all good...until...August of that year when I had to take it to another shop, which profoundly sucked. Amazingly, the stupid thing hummed along until February of 2008 when I got it new ram. Again, I thought it was cured. Not so much. All of this was for nothing. Now, it appears to be dead, and Steve and Trixie's second lover drank a toast to the now deceased computer.

Anyway, now that everyone's thoroughly bored, my only point I had was posts may be a little thin since we'll be sharing one computer. Steve, le'ts hope I don't manage to break yours too, like what happened to you when you were using my old, good computer while yours was dead.

The Cheque's In The Mail

If any of you reading this sent me an email yesterday and you haven't heard back, you're not going to unless you send it again. My mail program decided that last night would be a good time to crash and take all of my mail with it, and indeed it acted on this idea. I tried to get back what I could, but that turned out to be nothing. I don't know how much I lost, but I'm back up and running now so if you think your message might be among the missing and presumed dead, feel free to resend.

A Big Pot Of Pooch Thoughts

Well, here comes another doggy hodgepodge. I warn you, this one's much longer.

Something happened to me months ago, and I keep forgetting to put it up. I was getting on the city bus, and a kid yelled "Hey! That's Midas! You stole Midas!" It was either Midas or Linus. I don't know. Anyway, he was convinced that Trixie was in fact his family pet, and that I had broeken in and grabbed his beloved dog. His mom had to keep saying, "Well it sure looks like him, but it's not him." I couldn't help but giggle.

I saw another dog toy that seems even more evil than the tug chihuahuas I saw last year. There were two types of dolls. One had a postman's uniform and the other was a nondescript figure and was called "the ex". the Ex one had the words "You're a jerk." written on the back and you were supposed to write your ex's name at the beginning. Both of these dolls were chew toys for the dog!

Ok, first, the postman one. Don't dogs already want to come for the postman? Why give them more insentive? And the X? What is that, some kind of voodoo where you use the dog's teeth as the pins? Yikes!

I had something funny happen the other night. My ailing computer is ailing more. If I shut it off for any length of time, it will post beep. It even has a repertoire of post beeps that it likes. There's a slower set of beeps that go hi, low, high, low, and there's a faster set where the new low beep is the old high beep from the other set. Ooo! It's trying to sing a song, and the tune isn't a happy one. I've had techs in to look at it, they've reseated the CPU, looked at my bios, cleaned my fans, everything they can think of, and they can't fix the beast. I think all that's left for it is to limp along until it can't limp anymore.

Anyway, the point of this rambling mess is I dreamed that I had to shut off my computer, and when it came back on, it made a new beep, and a voice said "CPU failing in 2 minutes." I woke up with a start, and as I did, Trixie was dream barking. I had to wonder if we were having simultaneous nightmares.

Well, I'd have to say that since my last post crying about Trixie's work taking a poop, it seems to have gotten better. Could it be the weather staying the same for a while? Could it be the pumpkin? I don't know, but I'll take it. But it's almost creepy the way her work has gotten better. It's like she's reading my mind.

For the last little while, she's been making me catch my foot in this weird sewer grate thing in the sidewalk. I was out for a walk with her to try and rebuild my confidence in her, and she veered so far around it that we had to get back on the sidewalk and out of the parking lot. Then on the way home, she made it so I barely touched the thing. Then I got a little nervous because it seemed she wasn't paying as much attention to cars as I like. It wasn't that she wasn't paying attention at all, I just felt she was gambling a little too much. Then, she went overcaughtious and we stood and waited while 4 cars pulled out of a parking lot. Am I sending signals I don't even realize I am? Probably. Well, she got the message.

It looks like I got my wish about talking to Chuck, the guy from the school. I got the letter that said the magic words. Chuck is coming! It says he'll be in my area from the 5th to the 19th of August, so somewhere in there, he'll drop by and see me. This time, I'm not nervous about him coming. I have about azillion things I want him to do/see. I want to see if those Barkn boots he sent up for us to try during our boot troubles are even the right size in case I can't get more Mushers' or something. I want him to try and show me how to put them on properly to see if I'm half the problem. I'm thinking about getting him to show me how to do the clicker thing with Trix, and I want to make sure I'm doing all I can with dog destractions. She's not horrible, but every now and then, she gets really interested in a dog, and my corrections don't seem to mean a thing. Yeah Chuck! You're a good man.

This whole thing about my classmate having to career change her dog must have really bothered me. I mean, I knew it did, but I started dreaming about it. I dreamed that I had to retire Trixie way early, she just didn't care about me anymore, and I was back in training. I felt so miserable being there. I felt I had let Trixie down, and I was afraid of starting over, etc. And then for some reason, the trainers asked me what my classmate's graduation speech was, and asked me to repeat it. There I was, crying, repeating her speech. What a strange dream.

With it being so goddamn hot, I really want to take Trixie for a swim. I can tell she would get in the pool if she could. but I don't think my landlord would be down with letting her in the pool, since her hair may clog the filter. I don't think her nails would do damage to the pool since it's all cement and in-ground, but that doesn't stop the hair problem. So someone said I should take her out to Guelph Lake. This creates a whole bunch of other logistical problems. How would I let her swim and know she was safe? I mean, I would go with a friend, but sometimes other people don't notice things that I might need to know about. I think I would have to let her loose, since I would think a flexi leash would just get tangled. But I'm not the greatest swimmer, so I don't know if I could go as far as she might if she loves the water. I'd get her to do her duty before making the big splash, but what if she peed or crapped in the lake? Or worse, what if she found another dog's crap? She's eaten other dogs' crap before! *gag*. I just wish she could get in a pool. I would feel a lot safer with that. For one thing, it would be easier for me to get in and swim with her. Swimming in a lake just makes me nervous. So if anyone out there has ideas on swimming with their woofs, that would be awesome.

This is just a curiosity. I was watching To Serve and Protect, and a police officer got out with his tracking dog. He was looking for someone, and every so often, he would say something to the dog that sounded like "sue". Either "sue or "zoo" or "soup", but mostely "sue". What is this? Is it German? what's it German for? I'm so curious. Does anybody know?

I think that's about it for this installment of all things woofer. That was definitely better than the last one.