5 posts tagged “computer”

...But, Jane just got her Stimulus Package check from the government this week. According to the list I posted here a few months again - she wasn't supposed to get hers until the end of August! I really hope we get ours soon, Paul & I have decided to buy a new mattress with our check - as the one we're sleeping on was his from when he still lived with his family.

That's only going to be half of our check though, and I don't know what we'll do with the other. I'm tempted to revamp my wardrobe as I feel frumpy and completely unattractive lately - what I wouldn't give for a tailor! I know Paul wants to buy a Wii - since we don't have enough money (not even with out entire check) to get him a new computer like he wanted.

If we were responsible, we'd put it towards our credit card debt. However, our debt is not out of control anymore and the check is meant to be spent - not saved. They keep talking on the news about how this whole scheme will only work if people spend it and not just save it or pay bills. Its so difficult though to think of spending money on potentially frivolous things when you have bills to pay and a family to take care of.

What are all of you guys doing with your checks?

I was missing a step when trying to get my wireless to work in Feisty, the step being that I had to have my Feisty CD in my CD-ROM drive in order for the wireless fix command to access information about the driver. So, I'm happy that I wasn't crazy and Feisty did work the first time and will work indefinitely. I'm upgrading to Gutsy right now and its taking awhile but since I started it so early I'm hoping I wont have to leave my laptop again. I'm at 593 of 1016 files downloaded.

On another note, I'm so sick of having to download all of my freeware over and over again, so I'm making a "rebuild" disk. I'm putting all of my favorite apps on it including my wireless fix requirements so I don't have to be connected to the internet in order to get my wireless working.

My progress at a tech is astounding to me sometimes. I would have never thought to make a CD of programs before.

Okay, call me computer stupid - but I didn't realize that by having 75 songs in .wav format would result in 10gb of used space. After converting all of my files to MP3s - including my .wav files - I've gone from 20gb of music to a mere 10gb without loosing any of my music.

Amazing.

I'm disappointed that the QotDs & Vox Hunts haven't been ringing my bell lately - I always found them a great jumping off point to the day when it came to blogging. On the upside, I'm sure everyone who has me marked as a neighbor is glad to see less of my five-in-a-row posting splurges. Sometimes I wonder how many people cut me from their neighborhoods simply because I post as often as I do. There is a very fine line for me - that is sometimes blurred - between blogging for myself and blogging for others. There's a part of me that delights in knowing that other people may be reading my thoughts and getting some form of entertainment from them. There's another part of me though that realizes I post as often as I do because this is my personal account. My record. My life.

On an off note, I miss wickeddoll - she's not feeling well enough to post and I've missed her terribly.

As I posted on Monday, I was reconfiguring my laptop in order to be able to boot into more than one operating system, and at last I think I've finished. It took ages for a few reasons.

1. We couldn't get the partitioning right in order to install Ubuntu after XP (we also tried XP after Ubuntu)
2. Once we got the partitioning right (or at least both operating systems on the same drive), we couldn't get my built-in wireless card to work with Ubuntu. Anyone who may know Ubuntu (any knowledge is more knowledge than mine) knows that its based off of the terminal (command line) and I know next to nothing about code. So I was having a very difficult time. Plus, there is a great downfall to community created guides/question forums because everyone has a different way of doing something - some more difficult others easy. When trying to follow instructions in three different threads I was led on wild goose chases for code and programs and firmware all guaranteed to work. Then I found this site and I realized that I'd been going at this all the wrong way. Considering I know next to nothing I really needed to stay out of the developers zone for now and stick to the user zone. So I left the community boards for more dependable, tested answers.
3. Trying to fix my wireless connection "broke" my wireless connection at one point and I had to wipe XP from the system in order to start over - so once I got the wireless working officially I then had to go back and retackle the partitioning issue again. THREE wipes of my drive & three failed installs of both operating systems later - and I had a working. With wireless :) It was a battle - but I won the war!

I'm truly in love. I love trying out and learning new things and this Linux system is really going to be great to learn. I always hated feeling out of the loop when it came to Linux so I just hope I'm able to gain some general understanding of it. Paul asked if I wanted to install OS 10 on my laptop too - but I said I'd pass for now. One foreign land at a time, too many roaster in the hen house always means something bad - right?

I came home from my training on the Windows XP operating system with grand plans. I had all of these ideas about properly sorting out my laptop - my domain - my castle. So as I mentioned in an earlier post we beefed up the speed and also the space and I decided that I wanted to create a multi-boot system and be able to choose to boot between Windows XP Home, Vista & Ubuntu (Linux).

We started by taking apart most of the laptop. Sure, my laptop had quick access ports for both the RAM and HDD - but I was never one for easy and insisted that Paul take most of it apart - with the excuse of taking a look at the touchpad. It took awhile. We strained, we mulled, we pried until finally we got to the touchpad. There, we found nothing wrong, there was not visible explanation as to the delay in response (or lack of response completely). Defeated - we put the laptop back together - and not very easily. I've already decided to take her apart again and rework some of the connections. But that was for another night. With the HDD & RAM in place - we then moved all of my information onto the drive and also downloaded my security suite. Then we decided to partition the drive - splinting it into three - and ran a partitioning software. The first swipe was fine, but we didn't make enough room for the operating systems was I going to install so we went into resize the partitions and that's when all hell broke loose.

During the resizing, it seemed like the laptop went into hibernation or something (technically impossible) and crapped out on us. No amount of recovery software was working and I went to bed with Paul hunched over the bright screen muttering what seemed like Latin but which could only have been run commands of some sort.

Oh well I say. You can't really "hurt" it when you've got all of your data backed up - which I did - so in essence I'm just trying to troubleshoot my way out. I was given a new partitioning software by a co-worker and I've repartitioned but ti's still not booting into Windows despite using my OS recovery CDs. So I'm "wiping" the partitions and repartitioning again and I'm going to try one more time. I think my problem was that it tried to install on the wrong partition. If worst comes to worst I'll wipe all of my individual partitions - group them into one - install the Windows XP OS and then partition after that.

Despite all of the issues, I'm having fun :)