Archive for the Computer & Gadget Talk category
August 9th, 2005
Businessweek has a funny article (though I’m not sure if they meant it to be) about how the changes to Daylight Savings Time might adversely affect technology.
I admit, it’s something I didn’t think about when I was getting excited about it not being pitch dark at 4pm here in Maine, but now I’m trying to think of everything with built-in clocks that have settings to change automatically for Daylight Savings. I’m fairly sure that my VCRs, DVDs, and alarm clocks will get confused about when to change and might even require fiddling up to four times a year.
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Tags: daylight savings time
August 7th, 2005
When I first moved to Maine, in the absence of having the daily news update from informed co-workers, I got in the habit of watching CNN for an hour every morning. The way the apartment is set up, there’s no way to leave the t.v. on in either the bedroom or office and hear it in the bathroom — damn good insulation, I guess. Well, I suppose I could have turned up the volume to share with my neighbors but that’s not neighborly, is it?
Anyway, I explored trying to figure out how I could somehow transmit the sound
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Tags: none
July 26th, 2005
Forbes; Review of WordPress
In February, open source blogging application WordPress came out with its release 1.5, and we’ve found that this release puts WordPress squarely ahead of its competition (namely MovableType, which has begun to shift its focus away from consumers and onto enterprises). Although wrangling together a domain name and Web hosting space and then uploading the WordPress software can be intimidating to newcomers, once it’s set up this hosted option is one of your easiest for ongoing use. You can download and tweak visual themes that make your blog look radically different from the plain default Kubrick
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Tags: none
July 8th, 2005
So Sven Jaschan wrote a virus that has been blamed for “shutting down British Airways flight check-ins, hospitals and government offices in Hong Kong, part of Australia’s rail network, Finnish banks, British Coast Guard stations, and millions of other computers worldwide.”
He admits he’s guilty and he got a suspended sentence, community work, and a new job working for an anti-virus software company as a result.
Hackers need to be punished, not rewarded.
Oh, I know that this has been pretty standard since the age of computers began. I know it’s pretty much normal operating procedure for the FBI, NSA, and CIA
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Tags: hackers, Sven Jaschan
June 8th, 2005
Well, I downloaded a 30-day trial copy of Paint Shop Pro. It’s $99 to buy it and since I only want it to open .psptube files and convert them to .jpg and .png files, I am very reluctant to spend the money. I really think they should make a cheaper software program that is just a viewer/converter. I still think it’s ridiculous to have a image type that doesn’t work on the web or is only viewable in $99 software.
Anyway, I’ve started toying with a fairy design for this blog using work from rendermepink.com which I
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Tags: none
June 7th, 2005
So I found this website that explains what a Tube is.
Paint Shop Pro by Jasc Software has a fun feature called picture tubes. The tube consists of a variety of images which allows you to “paint” with images rather than color.
Unfortunately, I cannot find a way to view them without paying $75 for Paint Shop Pro and I don’t know how you can convert them to something web-friendly. It’s very frustrating. Why would you create an image that only a limited number of people can look at?
Tags: none
June 6th, 2005
I have long been stubbornly clinging to IE. I really can’t give you a reason other than compared to Netscape, I just thought it worked better. I never put much thought into other browsers, particularly the free ones. In fact, my opinion of free software has been somewhat snobby in the past — a “you get what you pay for” kind of attitude despite my cheapskate mentality. In many cases, my use of particular software is simply because that was what I’d been using and change was bad. I started using Eudora after a friend
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Tags: none
February 24th, 2005
Why is it that merged cells in Excel will not work correctly with word wrap? I have the merged cel (which spans four columns) set to word wrap, and the wrapping part seems to be working but it doesn’t and refuses to adjust the column height so you can actually see the next line of what you typed. :angry:
Also, is it too much to ask to be able to set up a formula so it referances another worksheet by relative location? For example, if I have a form which I copy every day into
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Tags: none
July 18th, 2004
I don’t understand. I was printing stuff 2 weeks ago without a problem. Now my printer gives me one of two errors. Either it thinks it can’t communicate with the laptop or it says there’s a cartridge error. I’ve tried removing and reinstalling the cartridges. I’ve unplugged and rebooted everything. Still won’t print. Of course, I have stuff I need to print and has to be printed from my laptop as it’s in software.
Grrrrrrr….stupid Lexmark x5150…
I know the usb port works fine because I downloaded pictures from my digital
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Tags: none
July 10th, 2004
Well, last night I sat down with the compiler and book for C#. I quickly came to two realizations:
- I have been out of mainstream programming way too long and it’s going to be a struggle to get caught up with technology.
- C# and the .NET Platform is way more technical than I want to deal with right now. I really need some sort of beginner’s book to help me get my feet wet and get started on a software program I want to write and then deal with the serious technical details later.
Of course, the first is going to
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Tags: C#
July 6th, 2004
So, this afternoon I mentioned to my boss and co-workers that I needed more work to do. Honestly it’s been bothering me that my projects all seem to have been “hurry up and wait” and I’m on perpetual hold on all of them. I’m either waiting on a vendor to resolve something, waiting on a vendor to redesign the whole system, or waiting on the user to test something or check with her vendor because something didn’t work on her side. I so want to be useful and therefore not have my boss realize they don’t need
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Tags: none
June 28th, 2004
MJ in all of her hyperactive wisdom convinced me to take a glass art class. Now I know that those of you who’ve been following my life for a while might feel a bit panicked at the idea of someone with a penchant for slicing open her left hand with everything from scissors to a manual can-opener taking a class where they allow her to cut glass into shards and use a grinder, but I made it through the first class with just a small glass splinter.
The class itself is all the way in Lisbon Falls so now I’ve
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Tags: Anne Rice, discombobulated
May 4th, 2004
I’ve been staring at this weird eLink/eWebIt/WebLink/whatever-Eclipsys-is-calling-it-this-week code for a couple of weeks now, trying to remind myself about how it all works. It doesn’t help that “they” kept my training manual. One thing that has been helpful is the Statement Guide I found online at the Eclipsys customer website — the documentation I was told by my oh-so-talented previous co-workers did not exist, documentation I might have found had my Director thought it was safe to give me a sign-on to the website (and Eclipsys kept insisting I should have a sign-on when I called to open
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Tags: none
April 28th, 2004
I forgot to mention that a recruiter I spoke with several months ago recently called me on my cell phone. She had originally contacted me about the job in Alabama but I was already interviewing for that position. Anyway, apparently the position is still open and she had thought I was the best qualified fit for that position and wondered why I wasn’t there already…I told her that they had indeed made an offer and then recinded it and wouldn’t say why. She was surprised. Maybe that’ll make her think twice before sending in a
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Tags: outsourcing
