Technophobia

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Still no word on the promotion. The Chief has not made an appearance in the office yet. *sigh*

Beau’s mp3 player died yesterday. We tried to troubleshoot last night - the player won’t turn on, but seems to receive data. We reformated the thing and I was able to transfer a book to it, but it will not turn on. It is not a battery problem - it had a new battery in it and Beau did switch for a new one, too. It’s a stumper and a bummer. So he said that if I get the promotion that I can buy the one that I want for myself. I found it at Walmart for significantly cheaper than anywhere else, so I’m anxious to get an answer on the job for a couple of reasons now.

I’m not sure if we’ll be able to look at houses this weekend. We have a BBQ for small group leaders on Saturday afternoon and then church that evening. So if we go out to look, it’ll have to be Sunday, which neither of us wants to do. And it will depend on our realtor’s availability. If we don’t then we won’t see anything until after we get back from California. Man, we leave in a week for California already. I need to mail that package of Jesse stuff to Beau’s uncle no later than tomorrow so that it arrives on time.

We go to the Glenn Beck simulcast tonight and I’m very excited. He was talking yesterday about the special “The Twenty” pre-show thing that they’ve done for the theaters hosting the simulcast. Apparently, they were able to convince the theater chains to run his version for his show. So we have to get there at least 20 minutes early because I want to see that, too.

It’s a very nerve-wracking day. But in a totally good way.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Remember a few weeks ago when I said I wanted an iPod for Christmas? After doing some research with my library, I have decided that the better option is to get a Creative brand mp3 player (This is the model that I covet and have added to my Christmas wishlist). They are more compatible with the software used by libraries, and my library in particular. Wouldn’t it be awful to get an iPod and then discover that I can’t download audiobooks to it? I’m glad I did the research.

This morning I asked Beau if I could get a cheaper model now (and nevermind the other one for Christmas) so that I could use it on our trip. Because I had checked out three audiobooks from the eaudiobook part of the library website and after spending 30 minutes burning 2/3 of one book to CDs (11 CDs total took about 45 minutes to do the complete burn), I realized that it would be much more practical and cheaper to just buy the mp3 player.

At some point I remembered that Jaynee has an unused PDA now that she uses her Blackberry for everything the PDA used to do. I asked her about it and we agreed that it would work as long as I downloaded the books to my 2GB thumb drive since the memory on the PDA is small. She was going to mail that to me so that I had time to test it and work out kinks before our trip.

And then Beau reminded me that he has a small mp3 player. So he got it and we started a test download of the smallest book and less than 4 minutes later the whole book was transferred to his little Creative MuVo N200, which only had 512MB of memory. I then tried to transfer a second book and that one transferred completely in about 4 minutes. So there are 2 full novels on Beau’s little MuVo! The third is on the CDs and I’ll just use those since I have them.

And I just realized that the memory on the PDA may be enough for at least one regular novel after all. So Jaynee, if you want to bring that up with you at the end of the month, I’ll still give that a test, too.

I’m very excited. It’s days like today that I love technology.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

For years I have resisted the siren call of one beautiful modern technology item. I really have no need of it, except that I can think of one particular way I can use it that would make life slightly easier. It’s expensive and I just can’t justify the expense of it because in reality I don’t need it. But after all these years I am adding it to my Christmas wish list.

So what is it?

An iPod.

I’m leaning to the Nano, because I don’t think I want the full classic version, but I would like the viewing capability not available with the Shuffle.

My main desire is to be able to listen to audiobooks in places other than my car and not have to deal with the CDs if I am listening to a book in my car. Or I could listen to two books at once - one in the car and one on the iPod. Portability would be nice. Then there are sermons and other podcasts, Glenn Beck, and TV shows that I could watch, say, on my lunch hour instead of at home where it bothers Beau.

Anyway, it’s just a new thought I had the other day, but consider it officially on my wish list for Christmas.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I won’t bore you with the details, but I discovered something about the comment page yesterday when I was poking around the template code and I thought I’d test my theory about it. It looks like I was able to fix the commenting problem. So I’ve turned off moderation and turned on the captcha again. After a test, it seems to be working now.

Please email me if you get an error message when attempting to comment (or if you need hints for some of the captcha questions).

Given that I can’t use the captcha for security against comment spam here until we figure out what’s wrong with the template code, I am considering requiring registration for commenters. I really don’t want to leave my comments open to spammers like they are now. So, my faithful readers, are you willing to register in order to comment? Please let me know if the for-now wide open comments.

[UPDATE]: With further thought, I may wait to implement the registration requirement until I see how long it take to get spammed. I was getting enough comment spam before the upgrade that it caused me to do the upgrade. So we’ll see if they come back now that things are a little more open to them.

But I’d still like your feedback on whether or not you’d tolerate having to register to leave a comment here, please.

[UPDATE 10:45am]: Just got hit by a spammer. Registration is being turned on immediately. I’m sorry to have to do it. I blame Algore, inventor of the internets.

[UPDATE 12:20pm]: Because nothing hard is ever easy, it seems that the registration thingy wasn’t asking for you to register. So I’ve turned that function off. Comments are now set for moderation, which means there will be a delay to your comment appearing until I release it. Supposedly.

Not that anyone is really trying to comment anyway, besides spammers. My blog has become exceedingly boring. I despair.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

I turned comments back on but without the captcha requirement. We’ll see if that works or not.

In the meantime, go look at the pics of my kid I posted last week after our trip and talk to me over there, please.

This assumes you will be able to see this post in order to click the link. If I broke things again, then this is moot.

Got a quick response to a second note on my message to tech support this morning. Woo!

Now to see if the commenting problem is fixed.

Thanks to those who posted the alternate link for my new back-up blog - Lintefiniel Musing on Blogger Lintefiniel Musing on WordPress.

[UPDATE]: Meanwhile the comments link will not open the pages for commenting, so that’s still a problem. If you can access the comments page but cannot leave a comment, please let me know via email to jenspeaks AT gmail DOT com. Obviously if you’re able to actually leave a comment, I’ll see that.

[UPDATE]: The problem is definitely tied to the commenting - commenting is turned off until we figure out the problem. I miss you guys already!

[UPDATE (9:45pm)]: Updated to change the link to the new WordPress blog I created. I prefer WP over Blogger. Much easier to use.

Monday, June 09, 2008

I’ve received two emails lately from folks who wanted to comment on posts and couldn’t. It is most likely related to the upgrade from Friday, so let me investigate the problem.

Thanks for your patience.

[UPDATE]: Seems to be a problem with EE reading the server path for the captchas. Nothing has changed, so I have no clue how to fix it. *sigh*

[UPDATE 2]: I’ve downloaded and installed an alternate captcha/question plug-in that also is not working.  Yet. Still working at it.

[UPDATE 3]: Turns out it probably was not a captcha problem. I disabled that requirement and comments are still rejected. I’m stumped.

[UPDATE 4]: I’m getting no love from the support folks. Makes me slightly angry - they only help tech support issues in the forum. Makes me want to switch to WP except that I’ve invested $$ for the license to EE. Very frustrating.

In the meantime, I did discover a mistake in the installation that I may have made. I’m going to attempt a complete re-install in a bit.

Friday, June 06, 2008

I was previously running the blog on a really old version of EE and started getting consistent comment spam. I went into update the blacklist and was unable to, so it was clearly long past time to update the blogware. Let me know if things look wonky or if you get error messages.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

You have children. You have the internet. Chances are your children will or do surf the internet. Chances are high that your children will be or have been exposed to inappropriate content and/or predators when on the internet without their or your knowledge. So how do you add protections for your kids so that they can surf the web safely?

Shrek Browser looks to be a good tool. I know that we will install it when it comes time for Jesse to start playing on the computer.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

The printer, that is.

I was printing my jewelry hang tags when the printer stopped and the ink light came on. So I called Beau, who was out running errands, to ask him to buy ink, too. He did, I installed it, and the printer still won’t work. We replaced both of the ink cartridges.

I think I killed it because I use Avery business cards to make my hang tags. And I print them double-sided. But the extra perferation that Avery uses now, means that when they rolls through the printer the second time, they get hung up by the overhanging cover. So I was propping up the door a teeny bit to ease the paper through. It was working fine until the third page.

It’s an older HP hand-me-down from my parents, but it worked great. Actually, we had a bit of trouble with it a few weeks ago when I was working on my accounting/taxes stuff.

We really can’t afford a new printer. Of course, we can write it off our taxes next year as a business expense since I use it almost exclusively for the business at this point. So I’m on the hunt. Any recommendations for a good color printer that’s under $100?

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

I’m not actually on any cold meds at the moment - my Dayquil expired in 2005 and I need a new bottle. So I’ve only taken Tylenol this morning. My sinuses feel like their they’re going to explode at any moment.

I’m “working” at home today. I have actually done a little bit of work. I’ll do a little bit more later. I’m currently on sick leave. And so, I blog.

So Mike Huckabee did better than expected yesterday, huh? Talk radio hosts are in a tizzy. I’m a bit meh about it all now. I’ll vote for Romney in our primary next week and then I’ll wait for the RNC convention this summer to see how it all shakes out. And then in November I’ll vote for whomever is the GOP nominee because the thought of either Clinton or Obama as President gives me the shudders.

I’ll be staying home from small group tonight - no need to infect our lovely Merry babysitter this early in the game.

I got asked to coordinate a wedding this month at the church. The wedding is this month - in two weeks, actually. I said no. The only other wedding I coordinated at church was a disaster and not worth the fee I took home. I feel terrible for the bride though - two weeks out without a church coordinator? Scary thought for any bride.

The quantity of spam that comes to my business email account is alarming. I heart Gmail for sorting the spam so efficiently. I have Thunderbird set to move all spam to a junk folder, but it’s still annoying to get the “You’ve got mail!” alarm when I get the latest pr0n or v1agr@ mail.

Ok, my brain is empty now. As you were.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

I bought my subscription to Glenn Beck‘s Insider yesterday.

Day One of listening to the mp3 of Beck’s show on my computer started yesterday at home. It was great - commercial free and I could pause when I needed to leave the room.

Day Two so far is successful and enjoyable. I downloaded the three hours of his show to my thumb drive (since I don’t think I should download it to my laptop) about an hour ago. I’m now about halfway through the second hour. It’s fantastic.

Well worth the money, which is only about $5/month.

[UPDATE]: Each “hour” is really only about 35 minutes of actual content. Yowzah. So that’s probably 5-8 minutes of news and the rest is commercials. Sickening. Definitely worth the $5/month to save 90 minutes of wasted listening time.

Monday, January 07, 2008

I’m still pretty ticked off about the whole Glenn Beck radio situation here in the DC area. There’s a radio station in Frederick, MD, that carries his show from 3-6pm, but I can’t tune it in at work. There’s a station in Fredericksburg, VA, that carries his show live (9am-12pm) but again I can’t get it tuned in at work and that is the up against the Laura Ingraham show, which I love and also listen to.

So my solution? I’ve ponied up the dough for Beck’s Insider. This way I can listen whenever I want. My plan is to listen to his show On Demand when working at home. If I had an IPod, I could take it with me wherever. As it is, I’ll download it and may record it to CD to take to work on occasion. I’ll work on this as I figure out what works best.

By hook or by crook I’m going to listen to Beck’s radio show because it’s hilarious.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

My license for Expression Engine renews this month and I’m thinking about making the switch to WordPress instead of ponying up the dough for EE again. But then I think of the monumental hassle that making the switch will be and I’m reminded that if I can’t summon up the energy to upgrade EE to the latest version, how on earth do I expect to summon up the energy (and time) to do a complete overhaul to new blogware?

Anyone done it? How hard was it? How much did you lose in the process?

Gah, I’m tired just posting this.

Anyone want to do the technical stuff for me?

[UPDATE 3pm]: Nevermind. Looks like too much work to migrate. Don’t want to lose anything. I will need to upgrade to the latest version of EE, though. That is long overdue.