The Thang and I

The Cynister Mystress of Cynchronicity
Adventures with gak! the printer
The Return of The Thang
Grimflits?
More Small Mysteries
Birthday Party!
13 Ways in which I am like my Computer
I HATE JAVA
16 Ways in which Windows is like a cat
The Dozens (Your computer is so old...)
A Word From Our Sponger

MY DIPLOMA

On the wall to my left is a post-it note that says "Happiness is a warm reboot".

On the last day of March, 2001, The Thang moved into my "lil house". Having long had a deep craving for a computer all my own, I joyously welcomed this wondrous piece of frankenware. Mine, all mine, ha ha HAAAAA...

We soon developed a very close relationship. I began to view my hypnogogic visions in windows. I would wake up groping for my mental mouse, trying to click on that last dream (I hadn't saved it).

The second month of the honeymoon had a rough start. I was all set for a year with he ISP of my choice...and couldn't go on line. Mr. Thingy sat there and whined that he couldn't feel his modem. It took eleven days of head-pounding intuitive finagling to punch a hole in the virtual wall between me and the web-wide world. But I effen well did it. Don't ask how.

Hell is a folder on drive C

Our third month saw the beginning of web page season. Learning HTML from a free tutorial and pecking away at the keys, just me and my Notepad, spinning a wild word web. I figured, at the rate I was going, I'd have it up not long past the middle of June. Sure.

It looked like a good idea...why not try out an editing program, maybe catch some little errors...install another browser to view it with...besides, Arachnophilia can only use Internet Explorer as its "internal browser"...how convenient, I thunk.

Make that infernal browser...

Mind you, I really don't have anything against Arachnophilia; I like Paul Lutus' outlook on life...but his program seems to have ewed scrup my poor little opus in some mysterious way that I could not discover or correct. I think you either use the spider or the notepad, not both. At any rate, it has too many bells'n'whistles for my taste.

Meanwhile, the Battle of the Browsers was raging. Two big browsers duking it out in a fight for dominance in a small computer - not a pretty sight. The Thang was getting awfully cranky. I said to H with it and did some serious uninstalling.

The following morning, a Monday, The Thang got up on the wrong side of the desk. The honeymoon was over. I thought I had seen some Bad Computer Days, but this was extreme. Land of the Blue Screen. Illegal ops all over, and I couldn't open even a local file with a browser. E-mail was also taboo. Oh,I could dial up a nice solid connection - but I couldn't do anything with it. Next day I couldn't even open a browser. I tried all sorts of persuasion...got him calmed down enough that I could work with my graphics toys without too much hassle. So what. Do what with it? The fun was done. Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

The next Monday, on my way home from the library (checking my mail, surfing for info, and helping out with bookish chores), I dropped in at the sew'n'vac shop to say hiya to my friend Gwen. We shared our woes. She was in the middle of moving. Suddenly a light bulb appeared over her head. She had too many computers...would I like to have - ta-DAH - this one? - pointing at the demure little Packard Belle sitting between the sewing machines. Bet she seldom gets hugged that fast.

Back at home I began the painful process of salvaging precious programs and files from my senile silicon sidekick. I added another pound of floppies to my collection that day and, Tuesday evening, with Mozart's Requiem on the radio, I pulled the plug. The sooner the better, for both of us.

I was paralyzed, unable to do anything but huddle in a corner reading computer books for the next few days.

Friday came, and my new idol with it. I had her up'n'running in minutes. Hooooo, all the nice surprises I'd inherited. And plenty of useless flarf. Not to mention I should have cleaned the mouse first. Eew. The weekend was devoted to exploration, experimentation, and reorganization.

The Cynster may be nothing to brag about, but she has a much better attitude toward color than the late lamented. This is very good. I think we will have lots of good times together. If she survives the next round of "quality tweak time". And if I get her some decent RAM. Poor baby can't load a browser and chew gum at the same time. I am stealing a few body parts form The Thang... talk about frankenware... The last butcher that had his neanderthal paws in her left a lot of loose ends. I can't believe he didn't know how to disable her password. FYI - the p-word was "cyn". Hence the name.

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

Adventures with gak! the Printer

June 6th, a day to remember. A package on my doorstep, and in it, a printer. Slightly used. Smelling of smoker's house, it smiled saucily up at me with a CD sticking out of its mouth like a shiny tongue. Cool! It even had cat hairs in it already.

I carved a shaver cord to fit, pedaled my SUV out to Walcrud for a cable, and installed the pup. It spat hairballs and bitched. I named it gak!. When it egested an aluminum can pull-tab, I knew we were making progress

After it condescended to print - if I hand-fed it one sheet at a time - I changed cartidges so I could do up a mess of plain old text. Ha. Around and around and around with it about the wrongness of the cartridge until I was screaming and ready to cry (being a little short on sleep to start with). To H. I took a nap. Next day I re-installed the software and the little twerp acted like there was never a problem.

Maybe that's why they call it "hard copy"?

Actually, gak! does feed himself if I put the right ammount of paper in and do it perfectly... takes practice (and luck?).

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

So there I was, furiously rewriting my webstuff again. This time, I said, I am NOT changing computers before the next upload. Two computers in less than six months is enough for anybody. Yeah, right.

Hang on, it's coming - but first, the preliminary anecdotes.

The Cynster was doing all right, for a RAM-shy wreck. In fact, I was getting so good at fixing her broken Windows, that I decided to have a second look at The Thang. Around the nth of September (scuze my vagueness, I seem to have lost a few files...) I dragged his weary butt in from the front porch, where he had been keeping the elderly freezer company. First boot... kinda cranky. Second boot... barely made it to Safe Mode. Whew, cranky.

I did a lot of research on line in case I really would have to resort to the F-word (Format). Eight or nine days and one national disaster later, I pulled the old Thang up by his frayed bootstraps. With Fractint installed, the old boy happily crunched numbers behind me while I worked with the Cynster-spynster. He also handled the transfer of fresh photos from my sleazy camera, as the Cyn couldn't be talked into it.

Then I got hold of IEradicator! And one fine October day I thunk - Why not, just for a lark, lay the healing hands on The Thang yet again, and get him back on line? With Invasive Exploiter out of the system there should be a tad more stability. The Cynner liked it. I bragged in an e-mail that I would do it, and my words were not to be eaten. Of course I half-killed the poor old 'puter first. NOT a good idea to let a newly aquired registry reamer go ahead and do its thing. Not when it has a tendency to shoot first and ask later. Oh well. The old System.1st again. By the end of the day, I had Mr. Thingy wagging his modem, eager to go. Just as I was about to switch phone cords, the phone rang. It was my friend Norb, The Thang's so-to-speak daddy. He had my birthday present, a motherboard with all the trimmin's. Would I be home tomorrow? WOULD I? Droooooool.

Then I switched cords and by the all the little tiny deities I swear it is true, SURFED. Now we get to the fun part.

Day one - Norb spends more time than he had trying to pry parts out of the hideous Packard Hell case (you wonder how they ever get them together - elves?) and patch it all together. When I shove him out the door the Cynful One is still in a coma. I rassle a while, then get down with the screwdriver and a little 248MB hard drive with Windows98 crammed into it.

Day two - I steal a jumper from the old board (Norb walked off with the only one my old drive had) and fiddle around. The teensy odd-size jumper from the little drive takes flight. I actually find it. Many screws later, Norb calls. I whoop excitedly as a Windows 98 desktop appears before me. Yes, I tell him, it's there, it has drives, it lives.

My elation was slightly dampened when I realized that nearly everything that was not in either Windows or Program Files (PROGRA~1 for you DOS speakers) of the old drive had vanished. Gone, poof, bampf. Including My Documents, where I had trustingly stashed all of my documents.... eeehhhhhhhh.... well, it's only data, I kept telling myself. It's only (choke, sob) data. Oh, did I mention that every byte of my website files was vaporized? Ta-ta to many days work.

Day three and a few - The Battle of the Floppy. I finally get both ends plugged in right - there's nobody to hold the flashlight for me - and bedad if it don't work. Nubs didn't wreck it in the struggle with the old carcase. Not that Her Grace is terribly impressed. She won't do nowt but Safe Mode now. Meanwhile The Thang has been doing my mail. I want to update some of his system files so I can use some particular programs. Something goes horribly wrong. Not even Safe Mode for Himself now. Joy.

Week 2 - Now I begin to get more fresh air and exercise. Bump off spam at the library and surf for info. Drop in here and there, ask the neighbors if I can borrow a cup of files... thinking F-word again for poor old Thang. Windows won't re-install because of the botched-up job I did with drive compression and partitioning way back in... May? There's a way around the "not enough room on host drive H" thing, but not if you can't even get to Safe Mode.

Use the little grey cells, Arual - it's Windows, right? There's always some useless fat. I took a peek into H. What's in thishere Wincabs dir anyhow? Big fat old Precopy1.cab. Dafork that needs to be on the hard drive. OUT with it. In goes Windows. Thang revives.

Herself gripes and grumbles through another hundred slooow reboots. Then, after one good bit of registry juggling, UP she goes with her proper windows. I sit there agape, muttering "What did I do right? What did I do right?".

Week three, and still parts are flying. Three modems and two sound cards (one's a combo), and if one thing works another is putzed. My best modem, the one Herself had been using, is now Mystery Meat. Sic transit drivers. My fingers are getting sore from wrestling hardware. "The sound card should slide easily into the slot..." - right, Mr. Gralla.

T'was the day before B-day, and I said "Eat hardware, you swapped-out son-of-a-batchfile!" and rammed the last possible combination down her throat. She spoke. I had music for my birthday. But I forgot to thaw the cherries for my cherry cobbler "bithday cake".

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

11-7-01 -Grimflits?

The Cynstress wasn't having enough fun with her new brain. All this terrorist stuff, dear me, we MUST have some excitement of our own. I had just re-re-re-installed some balky fractal music progs and got to work on the printer problem when POWIE all H broke loose. All I wanted to do was straighten out the berserk printer. But after a couple of rounds of BSOD games with the inSTALLer, the anti-virus prog started flipping ugly screens at me. All my shortcuts went blankies, and Windows told me I didn't have permission to just about anything. Finally managed to reboot. The virus rescue disk that I had made about ten minutes before the sky fell went to work.

Well, either the critter got killed in the first stages of the battle, or it was just the grimflits having me on, cuz nothing turned up in the scan. My dishes got washed, though. I wonder how long a complete virus scan takes on a 20-gigger-or-bigger drive? I don't think I really want to know.

Euchh, I still have to deal with gak. Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

3/4/02 9:41:20 AM
The Cynister Mystress of Cynchronicity likes to surprise me . This morning she came up with a cute one. A mystery window. About two inches of titlebar with no title, and very much On Top. Something like that could be a real pain.

I whipped out the old Window Hacker, and found out that it called itself #42. I then forced it to display the number, - and something vulgar - and un-on-topped it. So far, so fun. But other things need to be done. I told it to go away.

3/5/02 8:04:38 PM
Haven't seen the little fellow since, but I installed Another Task Manager (cute name) today, and that told me that his papa is my good buddy Mr. TraySaver, who keeps all the tray clutter out of sight and under control. So I won't worry about it. Enough to worry me with Herself kvetching about Low Resources when hardly anything is (apparently) happening. Yo - A. T. Manager! Wassup?

3/6/02 7:35:58 AM
42 made another appearance. I was messing around with Windwoes, hiding .INF files so I wouldn't see IE and OE in the Add-Rem window. I uninstalled the address book that I never use anyway, and suddenly there he was. I made him invisible again.

3/9/02 4:17:10 PM
In an interesting reverse of the preceding shenanigans, the taskbar turned up missing after the last reboot.Huh. Cute. I called up the WHacker from Explorer, figured out which doodad was it, and commanded it to be visible. Thank you Linkexe.

3/16/02 7:54:13 PM
Among other trivial recent window antics - including more tray and taskbar foolery - little 42 has made a couple of appearances. Tonight he brought a friend called DDEServer or domething like that. They sat quietly in the taskbar laughing at me for nearly an hour before I noticed them.

3-22-02 - The window games are getting downright vicious. I thought maybe things would calm down after I re-installed Windwoes on wednesday... that was one of those Windwoes Moments, by the way - not my time to choose. Ever have 90% of your C:\ root files disappear suddenly for no reason? She crashed like a terrorist while I was trying to restore the essentials. Hello DOS. C:\(dir)\(dir)\setup. End of digression.

What's new in the window war is the blank start menu. Just the first part - if I hover the mouse over the right spots, the good stuff pops out. But already I guessed wrong and wound up with Help instead of something useful... Also getting tired of having to make things visible or not every time I boot.

My "good" eye is so blurry today I really don't eant to write any more.

9:44 AM 4/1/02
Meanwhile, back at the rewrite... lately the desktop has taken to hiding from me. Windwoes forgets all my settings. One of us obviously needs counseling...

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

THE THANG'S BIRTHDAY

Yep, it's been almost a year since The Thang came into my life. Today (3-12-02) I dragged home - literally, in my home-made shopping cart - a kindred spirit. A please-free-up-my-closet-space hulk that had begun life as a 386 and had experienced some changes for the better before being exiled, it proved to be very difficult to probe due to my lack of a serial mouse. Oh well, it at least showed that it was still alive.

The next step was to start digging for goodies. The Thang joined it on the couch, where I sat with first one and then the other on my lap, screwdrivers busy, snarling lips clenched on screws. Three sticks of RAM changed places, and the new hard drive gained a precarious hold. The worst part was adapting a ribbon cable for two drives. I didn't have very many extra parts to spare if I massacred it...

When I first booted the New Thang, he was only a little perturbed. I diddled around in setup and then Windowed up. Yeehah, 44MB RAM! Hmm, the new drive aint there. OK, he won't acknowledge the modem or sound card either. Work it out later. I wanna know what's on that drive. I changed the jumper, disconnected the old drive, booted again. WO! thar she blows. A slightly confused W95, unsure of itself in a totally unfamiliar hardware environment, revealed itself to me. I explored around - with frequent explorer-crashes - deleting odd bits of leftover junk, pausing to play Duke Nukem II, checking out interesting fonts and other good salvageable soft.

Some days later, I am still wrestling with poor old Thang off and on. Problem number one; that aint plain old Win95 on that nice newer drive, it's the dire and dreadful OSR2. We're talkin' bad 'tude, dude. One of Microsnot's finest idiocies. I can tweak my 98 or the old 95 to the bone, but this thing I just want to stomp on and kill. Now if I could just get the floppy and the cd working again... Did I mention that I had succeeded in wiping out The Thang's old drive, and that I can't do didddly with it?

OK, I give up on the old drive, for now. On a second try, theCynster accepted the haunted drive. We ripped and reamed. I copied the goodies from the W95 CD onto it and put it back in The Thang. Floppy is finally functioning, at least. Nice clean install, and whoopee, it's Windows.

The Cynster, meanwhile, is managing to digest some pirated MStuff, but Duke Nukem crashes her real fine. Oh well, it's the thought...

Then I had the bright idea of trying the sound card - be warned, Yamaha OPL SAx3 spells garbage. It got Thingy all flupped up, and then mucked over the Cyn.

But when The Thang's B-day arrived, he was making lots of happy noises. I let him go on line for a short while, and sent a few emails. Back in the saddle again!

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

sue me

13 Ways in which I am like my computer
1. I boot slow
2. I often lose data from my clipboard before I can save it
3. I'm likely to crash in the middle of the afternoon
4. Viruses are out to get me
5. Most of the time I'm not doing anything very useful
6. My OS is obsolete
7. I have a lot of useless information stored in me
8. The harder you push me, the slower you get it
9. I hate this *§@$¢# summer heat!
10. I get confused when I am given conflicting commands
11. Sometimes I don't make very much sense
12. I complain a lot
13. Stupid people are always telling me what to do

Please note that I have said nothing about loose screws.

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

I can't wait for Java to become obsolete. The only thing I can think of that's worse than waiting for a cludge of useless applets to load is having my browser phasered down by a Macromedia Flash - attack. Why do people greet innocent visitors with all the krashing kiddie-krud they can cram on one page? I only enable fewking java for the sake of the rare instances of real informative content. But most of what I run into is nothing but flamboyant show-offery.

When you fling up a wall of unnecessary heavy-loading face-paint, you are throwing ice water and insults in the face of a large percentage of your site's visitors. You are saying "I don't give an aerial sex act about you, peasant. My site is only for my (snoot-in-the-air) kind of people."

Wouldn't it make some sense to put the "go - to - the - movies" pages in the parlor, instead of hanging it all out on the front door?

16 Ways in which Windows is like a cat
1. It crashes whenever and wherever it wants to
2. It is fussy about what you feed it
3. It needs a lot of grooming
4. When it has a problem it messes everything else up
5. It makes a big fuss about being touched the wrong way
6. It complains a lot
7. Sometimes it's awfully hard to figure out what it wants
8. It has 9x lives
9. Some people hate it, others love it
10. Our assumptions and expectations don't mean diddly-ding to it
11. It thinks it owns everything
12. It gets teed off when you change things.
13. It gets in the way a lot
14. It doesn't always use the litterbox
15. It eats things it shouldn't
16. Some people pay a lot for it, but some of us adopt orphans ;))

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

Your computer is SO OLD...

Maaan, Your computer is so old - whaddaya use for a monitor, anyway - a crystal ball?

Ahh, your computer is so old, the hard drive is nuthin but a fossilized floppy!

Huh, your computer is so old, it's got no bytes cuz it's got no teeth left.

Yeah? YOUR computer useta belong to Bill Gates' baby-sitter.

Haw! Your computer is so primitive it doesn't even have a CPU - it's hooked up to a crate full of abaci!

Huh?

----Best viewed in Indecent Exposer

Back to the TOP - or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

A Word From Our Sponger

Even before the advent of the mighty HexPee, I had begun to see that Microsnot was not primarily interested in building the better operating system. No news to you? Of course not. But did you observe the obvious?

Every time the micromammoth comes up with a new OS these days, it needs a ten-times-"better" machine to run in. So what is MickyBig really trying to sell? New computers. This is not just a monopolistic software problem. They want to rake your dough in both ways, and the connection is like those "hidden" files in Windwoes.

Now I'm not against progress. But I am against waste. Microbloat is a great producer of waste. Just look at all the unnecessary, unwanted, built-in crud and trivial face-painting you are forced to take to get the functional parts. The Windwoes98 shell32.dll is less than 1.5MB, while that of ME is a wee tad over 2. The shell32.dll of XP tops them all at nearly 8 megs mainly because of the fancy icons!? Is this sane? This is part of the kind of shallow-thinking, piggistic attitude that causes terrorism.

Buy a Mac.

Back to the ?

Stay tuned for further episodes of "Days Of Our Computers" as I continue to knock 'em down and set 'em up!