Banished to the Basement!

 I've had so many things to write about the last couple weeks but I've been kept busy battling a number of issues with technology lately. The most frustrating and my topic for today being our two laptops.

The Mr's Toshiba has been a dream as far as computers go, until recently when the keyboard decided to frap out. You can read all about that if you so wish in my post from  November 25th, 09    called "Sticky Keys ".  A new replacement keyboard is on order and must be either coming on the back of a donkey or lost somewhere between China and our front door because it's still not here.

My laptop, the cheapo Dell that we were offered from Telus when we *finally* got real highspeed here (but that's a whole 'nother story!) has decided to cause me extreme aggravation for the last month or so. It's not worth putting any amount of money into, even to pay a tech to take a look at it, because they're cheap as borscht these days. However, it's unusable in it's current state. Some days I swear it is seriously close to being sledgehammered. Good thing I'm such a calm, level headed person  ...(don't laugh too loud there)

It runs for oh, about 10-15 minutes and then abruptly shuts itself off. I try turning it on again and it'll shut off faster. Repeated tries result in the system not even booting up at all.

Virus scan shows nothing, Windows Defender detects nothing. Chances are one of the kids clicked YES to download/install something without really knowing what it was.
If it is a virus in there, it's a nasty mutant tricky little one that avoids detection,rewrites itself,and prevents deletion. I haven't been able to keep the laptop operating long enough to complete a spybot search, or chkdsk, or a registry clean which would probably fix the problem.

So I said all that, just to say this: I'm banished to the basement.

The next few sporadic blog posts will come from the outdated desktop computer running Win98 in the ch-ch-chilly downstairs office. They will also contain no (Zero, zip, nil, nada)  photos, which no doubt is dissapointing for the 2 people who may read them ;p   I know, terrible. This dinosaur doesn't have an SD input slot, and I've  misplaced the old fashioned cable that originally came with my camera.*figures*

Cross your fingers I get this sorted out quickly :D ...  Feel free to leave a comment, in fact - Please do -  if you have any suggestions on where I should look or what I should try next.

Sticky Keys

Ever wanted to throw your computer out a window? Smash it into a million-billion-trillion pieces?  Then you know how I felt yesterday after hours of tinkerin away on the Mr.'s laptop.

He had a sticky O key - not just a key that is hard to press, or stays down, but a key that repeats when you don't want it to, hundreds - if not thousands - of times in any possible way it can.

Open an Internet Explorer window and it would fill up the address bar with ooooooooooooooo's so fast you couldn't erase them in time to input what you wanted. Surprise! There actually are search results with a hundred o's! Who'da thunk it?

Click on File in ANY application and it would automatically try to  Open , or switch On or Off. Want to save a file? It'll be named "oooooooooooooo" or similar.  Open  a text document and your screen will be filled with.... you guessed it  .... o's!

And the kicker? The Joy of all joys - if there wasn't an open area for o's to be input it would error continuously. You know what I'm sayin'? Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep - between the Ooooo's and the BeepBeeps  it was nearly drivin me CRAZY. Mute only solved the problem temporarily - if you wanted sound you were hooped. Or perhaps I should say "hooooooooped" ;p

The Mr. pryed off the bad key and ripped out everythin remotely related to the o key and yet the problem remained. How is that possible? There's a problem in there somewhere that only a new onboard keyboard, a usb keyboard, or a hammer can rectify.

Want to shut down? Apparently the "O" key is for lOck ;p. That's just lovely. Want to visit a site in your favorites? Well you can't, because "o" only lets you Organize.

My temporary solution was to disable the "o" key with a nifty solution called SharpKeys found at http://www.randyrants.com/2006/07/sharpkeys_211.html  It can remap any key on your keyboard to any other key, or disable a key completely. Apparently useful for people who can't stand the caps lock key when playin online.  Wonderful! I could have chosen to use one of my arrow keys or whichever key I never use but this works for now.

Since there are now other keys startin to FRY on the keyboard ( littlest chitlin spilled hot chocolate on it many months back) I enabled the onscreen keyboard in Vista's  Control Panel - Ease of Use so we can at least use the mouse to click letters and somehow input information where we need it. Very handy in situations like this one. 

Stupid, Stupid Computers!
:O !!

Free is GOOD!

Gleaning. Scrounging. No matter what you call it, the end result is the same: Free Stuff!

Now I'll be the first to admit that we suffer at times from an extreme case of "packratus maximus." There's stuff we've been packing around forever that we'll never use. This time, however - is a different scenario entirely!

Today we hooked the flatdeck trailer onto the truck and headed out west to pick up a large amount of perfectly good metal cladding. A large barn on a family member's property was being renovated and before they took it off to the dump or tried to sell it, they wondered if anyone could use it. It was in nearly perfect shape, in long lengths, and was *really* close to the color of our home.

It was free for the taking if we wanted it. If we wanted it. Seriously? Of course we wanted it! YAHOO!

As an added bonus, when we arrived this morning (admittedly later than we had originally planned but still during breakfast hours) we discovered that more than half had already been unscrewed and stacked neatly in a pile for us. Double YAHOO!

 We will put it to good use, we assure you! It'll more than likely end up being used to build a chicken coop and a shelter for our hardworking old antique tractor to keep it out of the weather.

Speaking of tractors, while we were there we checked out this old Farmall tractor. Wonder of wonders - they found this old relic  buried amongst the blackberries in the back 40. Somebody actually parked this thing and left it! Crazy!

They're not sure if it runs or not, but I'm sure if  it did and they cleaned it up a little that it would belong in a parade or antique tractor show of some kind! I know I'd be putting it out front in the garden as a lawn ornament if it doesn't.

Yup, Free is Good!

No Swine Flu Vaccine for Me!

Tomorrow is the big day.

"For what?" you ask.

Why, the highly publicized clinic offering swine flu (*ahem*) H1N1 pandemic vaccines to those in high risk categories and the dozens of queue jumpers that inevitably show up along with them. Hundreds of people will spend hours waiting in long lineups waiting for their vaccine. I will NOT be among them.

Never mind the conspiracy theories that abound on public sites like YouTube. Although there may be a shred of truth somewhere in the arguments for this being an engineered epidemic disease that runs rampant and kills off the weakest links of world's population. I'm not a fruitcake or a nutbar, honest!

I just have a wee bit of an issue with willingly rolling up my sleeve and letting people inject me with a toxic chemical soup full of such tasty ingredients as mercury and squalene. I've had other vaccines - and so have my children. But this is a brand spankin' new vaccine produced, shipped and stockpiled throughout my country before it was even approved. (after very limited trials and testing I might add.) A vaccine with no guarantees - and zero liability for any side effects it may cause - including death. All this risk associated with the needle for a flu that for most people is relatively minor.

Nope. Not for me. Time to start doubling up on the vities.