Technophobia

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.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

I was about 2 minutes from home this morning when I realized that I needed to nag Beau about making sure to put not just a coat on Jesse when they take Annie to the groomer, but also a hat. So I called the house and we had a short conversation about that because we realized that we’re not sure where his winter hats are after the move, so a baseball cap will do. Yadda yadda yadda and we hung up.

And then my phone started “Call to the Post,” which told me that I had voice mail. Thinking that my boss must have called during my chat with Beau, I dialed into voice mail but the message I got was a recording of Beau’s side of the whole conversation that we just completed.

It cracked me up at the time (I never realized how many times he said OK - I’ll try to transcribe it later), but with further thought I’m a little freaked out about how it happened.

Anyone nerdy enough to know?

Friday, November 30, 2007

Brad Thor has the best website of any author I’ve visited so far. The link requires Flash.

Normally that kind of intro would annoy me, but I was so impressed with the quality that I watched the whole thing.

Anyone read his novels? I’m thinking of giving him a looksee.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

And it probably came from me. Please accept my apologies, it was not my intent.

Early this morning I was online, checking for possible sales in my shop, and decided to check out Stumble Upon as a possible marketing tool for the business. So I was going to email a few strategic people (like my mother) to let them know of this resource and instead I inadvertently sent the email to my entire Gmail contacts list.

Here’s what happened - I was at the page where you can send an info email to folks and I signed into my Gmail account. On the page that came up there were two sections of people. The top section only had about a dozen people, all checked. I clicked the “Check All” box to uncheck all of them and then rechecked the three people that I wanted to send it to.

And then Beau came to remind me that it was time to get in the shower and in my hurry I clicked on the Send or Submit button before I noticed that the bottom section was all still checked. Turns out that the button doesn’t just send for that section but for the whole list. I figured that out when my email binged that I had a new message and I saw a message from myself. And my Gmail notifier started working as I got auto-replies from my utility companies and other such responses. That’s when the realization dawned of what just happened.

I had a good chuckle about in the shower later when I starting thinking of the hundreds of contacts in that list. I haven’t open my Gmail yet to see what’s in there.

[UPDATE 2:30pm]: Just logged into SU to find that people actually signed up in response to my spam. Hilarious!

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Anyone else having problems with Firefox locking up when you’re in the new version of Gmail? For the past week I’ve had lock up after lock up when just going through my email. Fortunately, I’m able to restore my session after shutting down the browser, but it’s a major PITA.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

There’s something wrong with your page, fellas. For the past several days anytime I try to open your page while at work, it locks up IE and shuts it all down.

I don’t know what you’ve got going on over there, but please fix it. I miss you!

Thursday, November 01, 2007

After a second attempt to get the Blackberry working I have again returned service to my trusty regular, old school cell phone. My boss attempted to give me a different Blackberry and I said, “No, thanks.”

Total amount of wasted time? I’m guessing about 4 hours.

Nice.

Friday, October 26, 2007

So.

I called to activate the Blackberry that I was given. I should start by saying that while we have 6 shiny new Blackberry units sitting in our vault, my boss gave me a used unit. Nice, huh? Admins don’t rank new things, apparently.

Anyway, I let it charge up before calling to switch from my phone to the Blackberry. Got that taken care of in no time and then I spent a few frustrating minutes trying to make a simple phone call. No go. I was getting these weird messages about Emergency Calls Only! when attempting to call home. So I clicked around the menu to check things out and see if there was something I needed to do to get the phone part working and got to a menu that showed the battery status (it was at 90%). But I still couldn’t figure out how to get things working right and decided to “reboot.” I powered the phone off and pushed the button to turn it back on and got no response. Nothing happened. She’s dead, Jim.

Now I had two useless phones and it was late and I had to get home. So I brought both home with me to try again this morning. The Blackberry still won’t power on. And since I need to have a cell phone, I called to reactivate my old phone that works just fine, thank you.

I emailed my boss to see about getting a different unit. We’ll see if he breaks out one of those new ones in the vault for me.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The afternoon has been more of the same from this morning, but slightly different and slightly better.

I’m getting ready to get a Crackberry. I have no plans to set up the email function. I know. You say, “Why bother then?” I want the other functions.

I am wondering how long I’ll withstand the siren call of email on my phone, though.

Anyone want to put in a guess?

So the frustration this afternoon has been my attempts to create an online account with Nextel/Sprint (a phone call to customer support was required and the techie even had troubles) in order to upload my address book from my current cell phone so that I can download it to my new phone when the time comes. So far all I get is this funky welcome screen. I cannot get into any sort of account page at all. I either get this other sign up page or logged out. After wasting 30 minutes I gave up. I’m going to try again at home because I think our network is part of the problem.

If I can’t get anything uploaded, then I’m going to have to write all of my contacts down. How old school.

Harrumph.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Making progress on business things:

1. I’ve finally gotten the BoaW blog going. With much technical support from Jaynee, I must add. I decided to go with BlueHost for my hosting and WordPress for the content management. So far I’m pleased with both, although the WP installation was a challenge - hence the tech support from my sister.

2. I have over 100 inventory items made. I plan to list a few more today in my Etsy shop, which will get me over the 100 mark there. But don’t let that stop you from shopping! [UPDATE 3:00pm] - I’m back down to 97 items in the shop - a faithful shopper bought some stuff! Thanks, friend.

3. We’re just three weeks away from the craft show in South Carolina! There’s still so much to do to prep, but I plan to work on that today with intensity. I haven’t started to tag my stuff yet and that’s the most time consuming thing to do. My time with Mom to plot out our booth was fruitful. We have a plan in our heads anyway.