Billy Young's Blog - Posts Tagged "computers"

Still not sorted my problems out with Lulu, I’ve been force to move my query to the Escalation forum. I don’t hold out much hope of them getting back in touch but have to give them a couple of days to see. It hasn’t stopped me finishing Bublos though, so that one good thing. My wife is reading through it checking for those little errors that I have missed. While she does that I’m trying to design the cover. With a couple of idea’s to play around with, I don’t think it will take me to long. I’ve got my graphics pad to help make the whole process easier, there’s nothing worse than trying to draw on a computer with a mouse. I know from experience because that was how Teddy the Bear was done and I did have to fight with the mouse to get it to do anything. Don’t get me wrong the pad makes it easier but you still have to learn to use it. It’s not like when you drew at school with pencil and paper. Then you looked at the paper and your hand was there, unlike with the pad where you aren’t watching your hand; as what you are sketching is appearing on the monitor screen, with your hand out of view. You quickly adjust which is good; leaving everything down to how good you are as well as how good your ideas are.

I’m writing this on my wife laptop. Why? Well mine blew the PSU the other day. I got a new one yesterday, only for that to malfunction today. When things go bad they really seem to go down the swanny. I only hope that all the trouble with power packs hasn’t caused any other damage to other components. Because of all this I’m unable to do any more work on my story or had much of a connection to the web, which is depressing to say the least. It’s amazing how much we become dependant on the tech around us. Yes, we hear the horror tales of losing our link to the web but it is only when it happens to us that we see what others are going on about. After all there was a time when we weren’t linked through the WWW. Yet we all managed very well without it. What did we do that used up our time so well that we had no need to interact with the wider world? Before the web we watched endless TV, listened to the radio, went to the pub and breathed fresh air whilst going for a walk. We still do these things yet, somehow found we have time to talk to new friends from the other side of this small blue globe. The past few nights I have been a bored to say the least. Last night I was so glad to finally find I could once again get lost in the great digital universe and at the same time work on Bublos. Today saw me back to using my wife’s computer to do those things I think of as essential, checking on my emails, etc, etc. I only hope that my luck changes soon as I don’t think I could stand any more of the kind I’ve been getting of late. With Lulu, work and now the computer, well they do say troubles come in threes; let’s hope.

Another week of struggling to get my computer back up and running. Most of that was waiting on the postman delivering the parts. As it turned out my PSU was part of the problem, delivering only power on one of the power looms. My motherboard had also blown, which I was able to prove once I had a new PSU. The processor was fine though now I have a more modern one. I finally got my system up and running yesterday and was never so glad, even if it did mean the dreaded reinstall of Windows. Now I can get back to writing again.
The government seem to have gotten away with their wage rise and this week announced that other government workers would have their wages frozen. One rule for us and another for them. Not a wise thing considering that it is an election year. Maybe Labour doesn’t want to stay in power. Though does it really make a difference who is in power? After all they all seem to be only interested in themselves after they have attained our votes. Still what can be done to change things? Can we change anything? I have my doubts. After all I have seen it all before. Last time was when Labour came to power in 1997. Things did seem to improve for a time but not by what was promised, or maybe I just expected more. I don’t believe the Conservatives promises though. Being Scottish I remember the last time they held power and it wasn’t pretty for us north of the border. Yes we have our own Parliament now and that may make a difference, I doubt it though. If anything I thing it make it a lot worse as at heart the Tories were against the idea of Devolved power for the other nation within the UK. In the end though we have to wait and see how the election will turn out.

It’s been a long hot week at work. At times I thought I would melt. It isn’t even been that hot, comfortable I would have called it but the place I work has those big boilers for cooking the tins in. And you can imagine how with their added heat it can get really warm and humid. You’re just glad when the end of the day comes to escape to the sun out side and the cool breeze.
My computer problems continue. It was so bad yesterday I almost the big format. I even moved some things over to my other drive ready to begin. Maybe a defrag might help a little so I’ll run that this weekend and hope. Why do we all hate the idea of wiping our computers and starting from scratch? I think it must be to do with the downtime from the web. Sometimes it amazes me to think that we never had an online world. It is even hard to remember what we did with our time. I used to watch TV more which now seems strange as programmes are no less boring as they were then. Of course not all TV is sleep inducing though much of what I used to view seems so now. Everything else that fills our time is still in our lives kids, family, friends, music, reading, writing, etc, etc. I suppose it shows us how important TV really is in the greater scheme of our life that it was the one thing that became easily replaced with being part of the bigger community.
The good weather has been helping my garden along. My tomatoes are forming some nice fruits and my apples are looking good. At the same time my gooseberry wine needs to be racked this weekend. Seems like I’ll have a busy weekend between the computer, garden and the wine; I might even watch a little bit of telly.

I had a bit of a panic this week with my computer. It was overheating so I decided to give the insides a good clean with the air hose. When I went to turn it back on my hard drive was missing from the bios. At first I thought it was a cable issue, well you would. Unfortunately after making sure all the cables were in place it still wasn’t recognized by my system. I really was starting to think I had lost a lot of my more recent poetry as I haven’t backed up in a few weeks. I know you should do it once a week but how many of us do? Not me for sure though I do every month or so as I have come close to losing everything before. Luckily I reseated the Sata cable into another plug and that seemed to restore my system back to full functioning order. I sigh in relief then copied all my latest work over to my memory stick.
I’m just hoping that this isn’t the first sign of trouble ahead. I am planning on upgrading my system or should I say doing a new build this year at some point. That is when I have saved enough for the parts. That won’t be for a few months yet and my son is already eyeing my system for himself when I do. Of course that means his sister get his. Remember when it was clothes that got handed down, hehehe. Calum though wasn’t too happy at the though of giving Tammy his computer though. That was until I threatened him with her getting mine. That worked.
To tell the truth though Tammy uses her mother laptop more than the old rusty thing she has at the moment. She is always complaining that it’s too slow for her. I wonder if she’ll use the same excuse when she gets Calum’s? Probably.

My first week at the recycling centre as part of the Work Placement Scheme is over. It isn't to bad though the dust inside the computers we are taking apart causes a few sneezes. I look on it as positively as I can. It gets me up in the morning and I will be able to put it down on my CV as reference to help gain a proper job. Mind the work we are doing is real work as well as varied as there are many different brand of PC's to be dismantled. All have there own quirks which can make disassembly awkward. Still it gives me something rather than sitting around twiddling my thumbs.
I still have to carry on with the job search when I get home at night. Though today I had a break from it as I was down town with the family. I know I'm bad. Though in my defence I usually carry out a six day search and have only normally taken Sundays off from trying to get a job. I must admit though when getting home after working all day that I have to force myself to do a search. You know how it is when you get home and just want to put your feet up. Well it is the same for me. I just have to wait till after I have search through the mind numbing number of sites. Then check my email for all the alerts that have been sent to me. Yeah I know I should check the alerts first it could speed up the whole process. I just prefer going through the site as the alerts I am sent usual aren't that great. And going through the pain of configuring all those different sites alerts to be more relevant. Well enough said.
I got back my documents from the SIA this week but I'm still waiting for them to complete all their checks. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long for my second badge.

My son dug out one of his old graphics cards for me. It worked as soon as I had it all wired in which means the old one is fried. Even so I don't just want to bin it just yet. After all it was an expensive piece of kit even if I paid for it with Bitcoins. Of course there was the tax and then the original blew which meant sending it to the manufacturer to have it replaced. In the end I would have been better just saving the Bitcoins and using cash. Well we live and learn or keep banging our heads.
With my computer back up I can play my games again though I haven't. I have been gaming though just online the descendant of one of my all time favourites, The Settlers Serf City. Yes the very first one was the best and still is. It was just so simple an idea which made it so easy to play. I lost years playing it I believe. At least Magz would tell you so though I can' t really deny it. I like the online version but it doesn't have the same cuteness to it or easy to learn. Not that it is hard to learn just a little more thinking is needed in the resource management of the game. Some of what is in the modern game would have improved the original but then it wouldn't be the same game. I could download the first one and use DosBox or something similar but then I'm too lazy to go typing in the commands to get the game up and running, much preferring to click to play.

The nightmare of computers, it drives us mad. It isn't like they can tell you what is wrong. Often you think it is one thing and then find it is something else. And then there is the times it seems to fix itself. Those are the worst as you know they will be back. That sounds like a bad line from a good movie, hehehe. Sorry couldn't help that.
I had that computer meltdown scenario yesterday. In the end unplugging my back up hard-drive and back in seemed to solve the troubles I was having. That was after reinstalling Windows 7. My son said it was the hard-drive that was failing which was causing problems for Windows as the computer booted up. Yet the drive seems to be fine and hasn't caused me any problems. Though to be sure I will need to look out my some analyzing software to check the SMART data. I can't quite remember if its Seagate or WD that does a free package for doing that. It has after all been a good few years since I did anything like that before and that was just because I read about in a magazine. It was a computer one though so they must know what their talking about even if I don't, right. Hehehe. My main drive is an SSD so my hope is that it isn't that which is failing. I know they are a lot cheaper to replace now but even so I couldn't afford to do that. Maybe it was a loose cable which could also cause the problems. It would also explain why everything is now running as it should. And the reinstall of Windows was over-due. After all the longer you run a Windows installation the more error begin to creep into the registry and such like. Let me hope that I have another two or three years of fairly good computing before I need to do another install.