Riddle Me This

My old laptop died unexpectedly in 2024. I had a large hard drive, but it was nowhere near as large as the drive I got on the replacement laptop. With all this extra space, I did not expect to run into issues with storage.

Silly me.

It began with my backup service. It restored files that were already on my computer, stopped running because the drive was full, and then (after I fixed some of the duplication) despite claiming it would resume where it left off, it wanted to start all over again! I downloaded the files I wanted to make sure I had, and a couple months later, when my subscription expired, I let it lapse. This headache was not worth the money.

Some of my storage problems might still be related to this because I haven't gone through and deleted every duplicated file yet. It's on the To-Do list, but there are a lot of other things on that list ahead of it.

But my 1 TB hard drive was nearly full and balking.

Last week, I finally had enough. Pictures, videos, graphics, music--they were all coming off the hard drive and going onto an external drive. I just needed to buy one. After weighing size versus cost, I chose a 5 TB option.

I moved photos first. Apparently, not the problem.

Music went next. Nope.

Then I did my graphics folder. There was the issue.

I'm not sure how it didn't choke my old laptop. I bought that one in 2016 and I know I didn't have 1TB of space on my hard drive, yet somehow, I had space there. The new laptop? It was screaming I'm full!

I have more stuff I need to move and even more to organize, but at least I can work on my laptop again without worrying about things not saving because of space issues. Sigh. I guess I should have paid for the 2 TB laptop, but since I was already like doubling my storage, it didn't feel necessary.

Next time, I'll know better.

Algorithm Hell

I'm sort of in algorithm hell on YouTube.

I like to listen to music to help me fall asleep and stay asleep all night. I've found a few live sleep stations that I like to listen to.

When I'm writing I sometimes like to listen to focus music, usually geared toward people with ADHD, but not always. Sometimes I like a pomodoro timer with music to help me write.

Sometimes when I have a headache or have had a stressful day, I will put on some relaxing music. A few weeks ago, I put on something that I think was called soothing cello.

In no way, shape, or form do I want the algorithm to recommend more of these videos to me. When I want them, I will seek them out, thank you very much.

And then it got worse. I watched a video on how to clean my oven without chemicals. ::sobs::

My suggested videos are 90% stuff I don't want to watch and don't care about. Maybe 95%. Watching without being signed in is not an option. I pay to watch YouTube without ads. I'm not logging out and being subjected to the constant interruptions.

I could probably go through and delete these videos from my history except that I kind of don't want to do that. If I want to rewatch that video on how to clean my oven with baking soda paste, I want a fighting chance to find it again.

There should be a check box that says something like check this box to exclude this video from your suggested videos.

It's so bad right now that I'm afraid to watch a video I spotted on how to organize my craft room for fear that my suggested watch list will become 99% videos I don't want to see.

Big algorithm is making it really hard for me to enjoy YouTube.

Epic Fail: New Laptop

When I blogged about my laptop crash and was supremely confident everything would go well, I was still downloading files from my backup service. I learned my confidence in them was false.

What happened?

After a week of downloading, while we're cruising along, it sudden stops and throws a message about running out of space on the hard drive. I bought 1TB of space, more than double the previous laptop, there is literally no possible way this program could run out of space.

Unless it downloaded hundreds of thousands of duplicate files.

I had to delete all the repeats, I went to restart the download, and it wanted to begin all over again! That's right. Instead of picking up where it left off, it wanted to begin the whole week's worth of downloads all over again.

I went to the company's website, tried to find answers there, finally used their online form to send a message asking for help and it would not send! I got an error message. That's right. The messaging service on their website doesn't work.

It has been an endless frustration trying to get the new laptop setup. Everything from the computer not recognizing monitor 2 on my set of external monitors, to me not remembering which programs I had loaded on the old laptop, to trying to even post on here! My pictures were missing.

And you know what else is missing? All my custom autocorrects for my writing. Gone. Lost forever.

I'm trying to get this laptop configured, but it's slow going and I have so much other stuff I need to do. Including find a new backup service. The one I had isn't worth the money.

Upgrade Hell

I have a scanner on my desk. It's not a flatbed scanner, but something with a much smaller footprint. I don't use it often because I usually scan with my phone, but sometimes there are too many pages and it's easier to just let them feed through the scanner.

A few weeks ago, I needed to scan a package of papers and decided to use the real scanner. I turned it on, put my pages in the feeder, and went to open the software.

All I get is a notification window telling me that the software has been discontinued and replaced with a new program which doesn't do as much as the software I'm used to.

Whatever. I don't use a lot of the features anyway. Just let me scan my papers because I need to leave the house and I want to do this quickly.

There was no quick about it. The software would not open. Okay, I'll download the new software. Small problem--my scanner isn't listed as an option. I scroll down and find it in a discontinued section. Well, I'm not buying a new scanner when there's nothing wrong with this one. The only problem is their damn software.

The name of my scanner is a link and I click it. And end up in some weird loop where it says there's a version of the new software available for me, but when I click, I end up back on the page I started at.

I'm not sure how long I kept circling. I'm not sure how I ended up finding something that would download, but I get the new software installed. Now I can scan my pages.

Wrong.

The scanning software opens, but throws an error message telling me to try again later, or if the problem persists, to reinstall the software. The problem persists. I try to reinstall. It tells me the software is already installed and when I click okay, the box closes and no other option is available.

I end up using my phone to scan the document because I'm cursing the scanner company at this point.

The next day, I try again. This time I get a notification window saying that my anti-virus software is blocking their scanning software and to whitelist a list of program-related files. I do that, although I couldn't find one of them.

Same error message and I still can't reinstall the software.

Somehow I find the old software. When I try to open it, I get a message about a firmware upgrade. I run the upgrade and try to scan the document. This time it works. On the old software.

I never got the new software to work. Epic fail.

Serendipity

I use OneNote along with an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my series. If you'll recall, I've blogged repeatedly about trying new ways to stay on top of my books, but I keep coming back to the same two. Maybe these are my tools? I reserve the right, though, to try the next best thing when I find it.

But for all that I use OneNote, there is a lot I don't know. I'm aware of this because I've accidentally created things like Subgroups without knowing how I did it, which means I can't do it again.

This is where serendipity comes in.

I have a headset with a microphone plugged into my docking station. I was working from home and in a Teams meeting when everything froze on my screen. I couldn't move the cursor or get the keyboard to work. I had to turn the docking station off and back on again to get things to work again, and when I did, my headphones were squealing.

Not cool. I made it through the meeting, but only because I realized the left ear wasn't as bad as the right one. I would have done some troubleshooting on my work computer, but there's only one USB port and my docking station is plugged in there.

After work, I plugged the headset directly into my laptop, but I needed something with sound. I headed to YouTube and found a video made by someone who's an expert in Microsoft products. I think it was recommended because of all the Excel searches I did as I tried to figure out a formula that I'd never seen before.

So I played her video and no squeal on my headphones. They weren't the problem. I closed YouTube and started to work on other things when I had a thought. What if it's the USB plug on my docking station that's causing the squeal?

I unplugged from my laptop, plugged back in to the docking station, and headed back to YouTube. They recommended another video from the same woman titled: How to Use OneNote Effectively.

She talked about the subgroups that I'd accidentally created. Now I can purposely create them. She talked about subpages and I was like, whoa! That might come in handy. So I can do that now, too. And in the sidebar, YouTube suggested other OneNote videos. I watched a couple more and realized there's a heck of a lot I could be doing that would help me stay organized.

I'm excited to try some of these new skills out.

I Can Make That: The Excel Story

I've reached this point where I see things and think, I can make that. I might have blogged about this in relationship with knitting and (now) sewing. Although, let's be honest here: When it comes to sewing, it's probably wishful thinking. Knitting is another story. As long as I have a pattern, I'm confident I can make it. Somewhere along the line, I became an intermediate knitter.

There's another area of my life where I always think, I can do that and it's computer related.

I already bought a planner for my day job, but I thought it would be nice to have it online, too. That way I could have it with me whether I was working from home or in the office. That would keep me from needing to put the spiral-bound version in my bag.

I don't want a digital planner. I've had one of those and it didn't work for me.

My first thought was maybe there was an online kind of thing available. Um, the closest I found to what I wanted was for students to plan classes, homework, papers, and exams. (Think college student.) I could probably make it work, but I didn't want to pay for it.

Then I thought about using the online kanban board service I bought a while back. I logged in, and yes, I could use it, but then I thought, Excel spreadsheet! Perfect!

I headed over to Etsy because I'd found some pretty impressive spreadsheets over there for personal use. There were a number of hits on my search, but they were either too simple, too complicated, too geared toward traditional project management, or they were in Google Sheets. I don't want Google Sheets, I want Excel. The two programs are not completely compatible.

And then I found one I was pretty sure would be close enough to what I wanted, but it was $20 and I was like, really? I already bought a 2022 planner, this would be like buying two of them.

I did some online searches to see if I could find something online that wasn't Etsy, but while I found other things that were cool and discovered that as an Office 365 subscriber, I could download premium templates, I didn't find what I was looking for.

This is when the light bulb went off in my head. I'm pretty good with Excel. I bet I could make one.

YouTube, here I come.

One of the first videos I found looked promising. I started watching it. I had to back up again and again and again. I slowed the speed down. And I had to back up again and again and again.

This guy knew his Excel backward, forward and upside down, but because he knew it so well, he was flying through everything. And I realized that while I'm competent at Excel, I am not good at Excel. And formulas? Yeah, go really slowly, please.

The image at the top of this blog post is the calendar I made. This was the simple part of the video. The planning part was barely covered and appeared far beyond my skill level.

Now I'm thinking I should just pay the $20 for the one I found on Etsy.

Docking Station Surprise

I've had a docking station for my Windows laptop for a long time. I bought it and a pair of monitors so that I could have two screens going. I was able to use this same setup when I work from home and this was a huge bonus.

The only negative? My MacBook Pro wouldn't work with the docking station. Not completely. I could use the keyboard and the mouse, but not the monitors.

Recently, I started searching online, wondering if someone made a docking station that would work with both a Windows and Mac laptop. I found one and was checking it out, when I saw a link to the same brand I was using currently and it was cheaper.

I clicked the link.

Imagine my surprise when it said that I'd bought this docking station already. This was my docking station? I checked which Mac OS versions it worked with and mine was listed.

I plugged in the MacBook again, but still no monitors. Epiphany struck. Maybe I needed to download some drivers. I headed to the manufacturer's website, downloaded the Mac drivers, and it worked! This is hugely exciting because formatting my ebooks just became much, much easier.

No more plugging and unplugging one monitor from the docking station to my Mac. Now I can use three screens! The two on my desktop and the MacBook's.

The timing of the discovery was also awesome because I'm about to start formatting Wicked Salvation as I write this (Saturday).

Google Drive Oops

I can't remember what I was doing online, but somehow saw a download Google Drive to your computer option. That's cool, I thought. I'll do that.

The download and install went fine, but then Google Drive decided it was going to back up my entire computer. Something I didn't realize until I got the "you've used up all your free space" message.

I didn't want Google to backup anything. I already have two programs that are backing up to the cloud and a third is overkill. If I had been presented with any kind of option after it installed, I would have said, NO! DO NOT BACKUP MY LAPTOP!

Looking on Google Drive on my laptop only showed two files that I'd created. Nothing else. Where were all my files that were clogging up things?

I started to Google online, looking for help. It was ridiculously difficult to find. I tried so many different search terms, it was crazy.

At one point, I believed I had the problem solved and started deleting files off of Google Drive only to discover that it was SYNCING with my laptop and deleting the file off my hard drive, too. WTF, Google?!?

Finally, FINALLY, I found instructions on how to break the connection between my laptop and the Google Drive. They should never have been this hard to find, BTW. Once I did this, my laptop stopped overheating and the fan stopped blowing at 100 mph. Two problems solved.

Problem three is still looming, though. Somehow, I have to get the files I deleted on Google Drive back onto my laptop.

I have the files in the trash on Google Drive and I have two online backups, so I'm confident I can restore everything, it's just going to take some time and probably be a major pain. Grrr.

Comeuppance Time

Recently, I blogged about how time is valuable and how I hate to waste it doing things like yard work or cleaning the house. I couldn't understand why someone wouldn't hire it out if it was at all possible with their financial situation. I also had a very hard time with someone referring to doing it all themselves as "work ethic."

And then I had my moment of comeuppance.

My issue? I'm really good with computers and computer-related stuff. I'm not a professional, I don't have an education in this area, but if I find instructions online, I'll do it myself and I'm almost always successful.

Soooo anyway, I realized (belatedly) that I needed to get an SSL certificate for my website because Google is penalizing sites without this in their search results (or so I was told). Someone on a writers' loop even referenced a site that does free SSL certificates. Of course, my webhost isn't one of the sites using them.

I began searching out how to install this free certificate myself. It included getting a dedicated IP address (additional cost) and doing a manual configuration. I literally have 20 tabs open on my laptop trying to get all the information together I need to do this.

And then I thought, WTH are you doing? Do you have time to muck around with this? The answer is no. I have a full-time job, an elderly father who lives with me, and I'd also like to write and sleep. I literally could click to add the certificate and pay the price the webhost charges and it would be done for me. Um, yeah.

I still don't call this work ethic, but I do understand where that other author was coming from a little better right now. I hate to pay someone to do computer things that I know I could figure out on my own and manage to do successfully. If I had the time.

Reluctantly, I decided it would be smarter to pay and not deal with it all. Which ended up not being as easy as I'd hoped because my name servers weren't pointed to my webhost and I had to update that. Now I have to wait for that information to propagate over before I can spend money on the SSL certificate. I also need to wait for my dedicated IP to kick in, but I think that's on their end rather than mine. In any case, once I pay, they can deal with it all and I don't have to worry about it.

Six Years Five Months

After six years and five months, I finally had to get a new laptop. This made me very sad as I loved my laptop and it was still near the top of the line on speed. Not so much on hard drive capacity, but I hadn't filled it yet. But it had other issues.

I kind of had a problem, though. I'm hard on laptops. I kill them at alarming rates--or at least I did until I discovered the Sony Vaio. That baby could take everything I could throw at it. Sadly, Sony sold off their PC division to some other company, and at the time I checked, they only had a couple of models available in the US and none of them even remotely interested me.

After researching, I finally made my decision. I went for a 17 inch screen since I don't move the laptop too far or that often. Two hard drives. Yea! A solid state drive that isn't huge, but can hold all my programs and a 2 TB regular hard drive for all my files. It also is souped up.

I know a lot of people buy the cheapest PC they can find, but now that computer specs aren't going obsolete as fast as they did fifteen years ago, I've developed a new strategy. Buy the most laptop that I can afford. That's why my previous laptop was still near the top of the line after more than six years. It's more cost effective than having to buy a new one every couple of years and I would with a cheaper one. Writers are very hard on computers because of all the typing we do. It's also time consuming (at least for me) to setup a laptop with all the files and programs I need, so only doing it once every six plus years is a huge win.

So I've had the new laptop for nearly a month now. I'm still slowing adding programs I use, but the files are all transferred. I have a cloud backup and I downloaded from there. I also used up 90% of my Comcast cap for the month so I couldn't stream movies or baseball for the last 10 days or so of May. Sucks since I almost never use even 15% of that damn data cap. But that's a rant for another day. :-)

Anyway, I do like the new laptop, but I loved my last one more. The nice thing is, though, that this one is quieter because the fan isn't blowing at maximum for the entire time it's running. I also like the extra screen real estate. My Sony was 16 inches and I didn't think one extra inch would make that much difference, but it did.

I'll have to use the laptop a while longer before I render it a fit substitute for my beloved Vaio, but so far, so good.

Organization Tech

It's no secret that I love taking online classes. I'm always ready to learn something new, and since I'm a geek, who loves to make technology work for me, a lot of the classes I've signed up for are related to some computer program or another.

One of the programs I really would like to learn is Microsoft Access, but it's not an intuitive program at all. For years, it's sat--unused--on my hard drive. I found a class, though, that claims it can teach me Access by comparing it with Excel and I do know Excel kind of well because of my day job. And since this class was on sale, I signed up.

I've hardly gone through any of the lectures yet, so I can't review how well the class is working for me, but I did see the overview of what Access can do, and it could potentially be a great tool for writing. I'd love to create a form for my characters--not only the hero and heroine, but all the secondary characters too. Then I could punch in what book they're from, what their general appearance is, other details I need to remember, and best of all, it would be quickly searchable when I needed the information.

Or how about creating a form to record my book collection? I have more than a 1000 books all listed in a spreadsheet, but once upon a time, I had a form in Microsoft Works that was so slick. I'd love to have that back again. Music collection, movie collection, the possibilities are endless.

But first I actually have to take the class, something I'm notoriously slow about doing even when I'm enthusiastic about one of them. :-/

More Screen Real Estate

At my day job, we work with two monitors. I actually need another screen or two, but even two have spoiled me forever. When I'm at home, I want the screen real estate that I have at work. If I sat at a desk while I wrote, I could have it at some point, but I don't. I like to write in my family room on my laptop.

Overall, that's not too bad when I'm actually writing. The pain (and the desire for more screen space) comes in when I'm editing what I already wrote. I want to see the entire page at a size that's legible and I can't have that.

I've thought about hooking the laptop up via HDMI to the television and using that as my giant monitor, but the cable I use to go between my laptop and TV is heavy and it starts annoying me. I've thought about writing on the laptop and editing on the desktop, but I feel too antsy there. Mostly because the room has boxes and papers to be filed everywhere. I never finished putting everything away there after my move. Of course, if I put stuff away in there...but let's not go crazy. :-)

My current laptop is 16 inches, so it's not as if I'm working on a small screen to begin with, but as my six-year-old laptop is getting close to retirement age, I'm eyeing the 17 inch ones. Which will be heavier and won't solve my screen problems anyway because I'm used to the dual monitors at work. Which is where the story started. Ah, well. Back to editing.

Morning Phishing

One morning last week, I got up for work, poured my coffee and sat down to read email while I drank it. There was an email in spam that appeared to be from my website host. Gmail is usually really good about categorizing email, but they're not perfect.

I studied what I could see of the preview and it looked legit. I opened it. There was my full name and it was actually sent to the account I used to signup with my host. Most of the spammy stuff goes to my author account which I don't use on websites to avoid phishing attempts. I read through the email--the spelling and grammar was correct. The phone numbers and logo were correct. The from email address had my host's name.com.

The message concerned me. I'd added far too many directories, and if I didn't go to my account and combine them, I would be shut down. They suggested I go to my control panel or click on a handily included link. One reason I was so concerned? My former blog was hacked multiple times and I was concerned that someone had actually hacked into my website itself. That's the only way all those directories could be there because I hadn't added anything.

I paged through my files, but it didn't look as if anything had been added and I didn't see hundreds of directories. Puzzled, I was trying to figure out how to contact my web host and ask for help when I said, let me check out that email again. This time I clicked the link as a test. The page looked like my web host, but the address in the bar above was some site in Russia. It had a .ru extension.

Phished!

Normally I don't fall for this and I was lucky that my innate caution and natural suspicion had me paying attention. At that time of the morning, without coffee and short on sleep, it would have been too easy to just click through without thinking about it.

I forwarded the email to the abuse department of my web host. The lesson, though, is to be careful out there. The phishers are getting better.

Shut Down Argh!

I mentioned recently that I tried to clean my laptop, but was unable to do so because I stripped a screw and couldn't get the case off. I paid for that.

Usually, I write on my MacBook rather than my Windows laptop, but I was feeling lazy and started working on an overview for a series idea I have. I was making some good progress when my laptop shut itself down. It's a measure to protect the computer and keep it from overheating bad enough to cause damage, but I hadn't saved in a while. I ended up losing about 1/3 of a page, which isn't much, but it's hard to grab those words back.

This isn't what my laptop normally does in an overheat situation either. Normally, it goes into hibernation. I give it some time to cool off, wake it up, do a save, and then shut down. Not this time. this time it just said, I'm done and shut off. Gah!

I used to be really good about hitting control-S all the time because I used to have a dog that would walk under my computer desk  and brush the plug just enough to make make the computer flicker. It wasn't enough to cause the system to reboot or turn off, but it did jettison anything that was unsaved. Control-S became a constant friend. Clearly, I've gotten lax about that in the time since she died.

Because it was overview stuff, it's not the end of the world that it got lost. If this were story, I'd be much more upset, but still I'll never find the exact way I said it the first time.

Adventures in Computer Repair

My 5-year-old laptop has had the fan blowing hard all the time and has had the heat cause it to spontaneously shut down. I knew it was because the dust build up was bad, but unfortunately Sony doesn't make it easy to get to the fan. I did some online searching and discovered that the Vaio has an issue with dust/dirt because of the position of the fan and vents.

Despite it being difficult to access, I decided I was good enough with computers to attempt to clean the dust out myself. Last Saturday was my scheduled day.

After clearing off some space and disconnecting everything as well as pulling out the battery, I opened my tool kit and found a YouTube video telling me what to do. I had little cups ready to separate the screws and a flashlight.

The first problem I ran into was that my screwdriver tips were not magnetized. I found instructions on how to do that--you simply run the screwdriver over a magnet. Hey, I even had a magnet...I just couldn't find it. Not immediately. Um, yeah, my office still isn't unpacked and it just gets worse since I dump everything in there. It took longer than it should have, but I did find my magnet.

Magnetizing was as easy as it sounded and the screwdriver was pulling the itty bitty laptop screws out as I lifted it. Perfect.

I had a few misgivings as I went along, but I don't want to buy a new laptop until Windows 10 comes out next fall/winter and I couldn't keep allowing the Vaio to overheat.

I forged on.

I was down to the final screw in the casing, then I'd be inside the laptop and the scarier part of the day's mission. There was one small problem, though. I accidentally stripped the screw head. Oops. I'd seen a work around on Pinterest--something about using a rubber band--and went in search of one that would fit in the small hole, but still be wide enough to work. It fit! But that particular life hack was a fail. It didn't work. 

Finally, I had no choice except concede that I wasn't getting that screw out. I put all the others back into place and plugged everything back in. Put this in my Fail column.

The Tech Savvy Catch-22

I'm pretty tech savvy. Not at the "hire myself out to fix computers" level, but good enough that I can normally handle just about anything the crops up at home. I think it helps that computers don't intimidate me and I enjoy the problem-solving that sometimes goes along with owning one. Not all the time, mind you. Sometimes I get really frustrated when I can't get an issue figured out, but a lot of the time...yeah, I enjoy it.

The fact that I am tech savvy, though, leads to quandaries. For example, I'd love to set up an author page on FB, but I want more than the standard, minimal page that I could put together now. You see, I know there are ways to put together a very professional, polished, functional page. This is what I want.

My quandary? I hate to pay someone else to put this together for me because I know I can do it myself. If I had the time to read up on how to do it and even more time to play around with it. And because I don't have any extra time, I don't read or tinker and no page goes up. For time efficiencies, I should find someone who can do it and just hire it out. But. But I know I can do it. I know I can. And I hate to pay for something that I can do.

Same thing with the formatting my backlist stories for ebook readers. I can do it myself. In fact, I did do it myself on my short stories. But finding the time is hard.

Then there's the control freak in me. I like things perfect. I know if I do my own FB page that I'll get everything exactly the way I want it. When I pay someone else to do it, there comes a point where I have to settle for good enough because of the costs associated. I hate settling. I want perfection. I can't help it.

Twice the Fun?

Lat week at work I got dual monitors for the computer. Because of the programs I work in and what my job entails, this is something I really needed and it will make everything so much easier. Once I get used to it.

I'm a tech/gadget person and my computer equipment at home is impressive. I tell people that if we can run a major airline on the computers we have at work that I can launch the space shuttle from my house. But the one thing I don't have at home is dual monitors. In all honesty, I don't need them. I have an iMac for my desktop computer and the screen is enormous and the laptop screen is fine as is.

So far, I'm having a hell of a time remembering where to click. I've typed in the wrong document many times and I never did get the cool Maldives dual screen wallpaper to load correctly. I gave up on that and just have my Tahiti wallpaper up on each screen.

It is very nice, though, to be able to see my spreadsheet without having to click between windows. I can reference the data I need and enter it in one step instead of many. If I could just remember that just because I'm looking at one screen doesn't mean that's the active window. Yeah, I look from the left screen to the right one and start typing, only to discover my left program is still the active one. Sigh.

I'm sure I'll get used to this, too. Eventually.

Adventures In Streaming

I've had bad luck trying to stream Netflix. My Wii does it really well, but it's in the basement and I have one lawn chair down there to sit on. Not exactly the most comfortable thing in the world. Since I want the Wii to stay in the basement, I bought a Roku player next. This was supposed to stream Netflix and a bunch of other stuff, but it stopped working in the middle of a movie and Roku support was a huge joke. But that's another story.

I've tried streaming on my laptop, but I didn't like that. I also researched Blu-Ray players, but my head started spinning and I gave up on that idea. My last ditch effort was to buy an HDMI cable.

I chose the 25 foot cable. Don't ask me why I did that because my TV is certainly not that far away from the laptop, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Last night, as I looked at the curling cable and the weight of it against the connection to the laptop, I thought, oy! Not the best idea ever.

But I'm jumping ahead slightly. So last night I decided it was a good time to use the HDMI cable and stream a movie. I found instructions online and it seemed easy enough. I plugged the cable into the TV and into the laptop and tried to switch the TV's input. Only the menu didn't have any options for this. I flipped through all the items, clicked and arrowed my way around, but nada. That means I need the instruction book for the television. I found it in the third place I looked. Not too bad.

Armed with the instructions, I found the input button on the remote. I clicked down to HDMI 1 and hit enter.

No signal.

Hmm. Maybe I need to do something with the laptop. The online site I found said something about toggling the laptop between its own display and the television.

This is where the fun began.

Sony didn't include an instruction manual with the Vaio, so I tried different key combinations. One of them put the laptop into sleep mode, although I didn't realize that was what had happened at first. Not knowing what happened meant I didn't know how to fix it. Hitting the same keys didn't help. Neither did the escape button. Finally, though, I figured out what had happened and brought the laptop back to life.

I tried setting up so that the sole display was the external monitor (TV). That was a scary place to be because the TV had no signal and now the laptop display is gone! Rebooting didn't bring it back up and I was sweating (and slightly panicked) until--somehow--I got the laptop screen working again.

I visited the Sony website, opened the PDF instruction book. It says to put the laptop into TV Configuration mode, but they didn't say how to do this. Searching the manual for this phrase netted me nothing.

For more than an hour, I tried to stream a movie. I was about to concede defeat and resign myself to never streaming Netflix, when I had a sudden thought. What if the plug-in on the TV wasn't HDMI 1?

This seemed like a long shot. After all, it was the top HDMI port, how could it not be 1? But maybe I accidentally slotted it in 2 and thought it was in 1. I clicked to 2.

Nothing.

I clicked to HDMI 3.

Nothing.

HDMI 4.

Nothing.

HDMI 5.

There was my laptop display! The Netflix site, the streaming instructions, Twitter! Woot! They'd numbered the ports backward (to my way of thinking) labeling the lowest HDMI port as 1 and the upper most port as 5. I could watch Netflix!

I didn't start my viewing with 2012. I picked some other movie in my queue whose name I've forgotten already. It involved dragons causing an apocalypse on Earth and had Christian Bale who is hot. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes into the movie, I knew I couldn't sit through it, not even for hot men. That's when I tried the 2012 movie, which was watchable, but was a science disaster from beginning to end.

There was only one problem with the streaming--my good laptop was tied up for the length of the movie. It's the only laptop I have that has an HDMI port.

Electronic Hell

This past five weeks have been hell on my electronics/computers. It seems like if something can go wrong, it has. I'm not used to this!

It started with my iMac crashing in mid-August. The night before it was fine, but I went in the next morning--coffee cup in my hand--and it was sitting there, doing nothing. Googling turned up a variety of solutions, none of which worked. My last-ditch attempt was erasing the hard drive and reinstalling the Operating System (OS). If this didn't work, it was going to have to go to a shop.

The reinstall did get the Mac running again, but now I have weird problems. Like Safari 5 won't bookmark any web pages for me no matter what I do. The answers I found online didn't solve the issue. I also can't access my Audible audio books because iTunes insists my computer isn't authorized even though it clearly says it is. My solution of deauthorizing and reauthorizing the Mac didn't work because no matter how many times I deauthorize, it stays authorized. I see another erase/reinstall in my future.

My Roku player which is supposed to live stream things like Netflix quit working in the middle of a movie. It was annoying anyway, all the buffering it was doing despite the fact I can live stream on my Wii seamlessly. I haven't been able to get it started since then. Roku's brilliant idea for fixing it? Recycling the cable modem and the router. Really? You think the problem is there when I can still access everything on my laptops? I don't think so. Situation still unresolved.

Then my Wii balance board started to cut out on me. It would just stop working. At this point, I'm like WTH now? After days of this and wondering why this thing was breaking, too, I finally received a message to put in new batteries. Oops. ::blush:: I forgot the thing had batteries. This I managed to fix. Once I turned the battery around that I'd put in the wrong way. I do this all the time with batteries even when it's clearly marked. I don't know why.

The weirdness doesn't stop here. Tuesday night, I'm online in Firefox and everything was fine one minute. The next, none of my websites were rendering correctly. A reboot didn't fix anything. I checked Firefox and Flash and both were up-to-date. A reinstall didn't help. Vaio had done some updates earlier that evening so I system restored to before then. Still the sites didn't show up correctly (if they pulled up at all). Everything rendered correctly in Chrome.

I logged in again Wednesday night without doing anything more to my laptop and now all but three sites are pulling up the way they should. WTH? I don't get it.

Y'all don't even want to know how much time these issues have taken up. ::sigh:: I was blaming this all on Mercury retrograde, but that's over with, so the Firefox issue can't be laid at its door. All I can do now is look around and wonder what next?

Fighting the Dragon

I picked up Dragon Naturally Speaking because I got a great deal on it. I'd guessed it wouldn't be something I'd write my stories in because there's something about the act of typing that spurs my creativity, but I figured it would come in useful on other things. Maybe. Did I mention it was a great deal?

It came with a headset and microphone, lucky for me, so I could immediately use it. The first thing to do was train it. I'd heard from other people who had the program that getting it to understand what you're saying can be a little time consuming at first, but once it's setup, it's very accurate. There's a choice of entries to read for Dragon to learn what you're saying. I thought I'd be doing more than one, but it didn't want more.

To give the program its due, it was remarkably accurate after reading that one passage to train it. There were a few other word glitches, but I could just do that one word and Dragon would learn it.

Until I hit the F word.

While I didn't think I'd use it for writing, I still wanted that option. To that end, I was reading one of my Works In Progress (WIP) into the program. Just in case. It balked at the F bomb.

I tried to train it on that word. Nope.

I tried again. And again. And again. No matter how many times I tried to get Dragon to type the F word when I spoke it, it wouldn't. Everything and anything except that word. It became frustrating and ridiculous and Dragon won--I gave up.

Some day, when I feel more ready for battle, I'll fight with Dragon to type the F word again, but for now, I'll just have to type it in.

PS: I did figure out what to use Dragon for--transcribing my notes from my notebook into the computer. It will save me a lot of typing and I don't use the F word in any of my notes. ;-)