Sure, Computer! How About You Work Properly For The Next Week?

Posted on November 30, 2015 by geelw

Whee. I finally figured out what was wrong with the laptop, and it was nothing I did but a driver going rogue and mucking up my work life. Boo. Ah, technology… you stink for us less brainy types. Anyway, it’s now a matter of getting somewhere with a speedier connection to fix the issue (albeit temporarily). Blue Screen o’ Death, you can’t stop me! But I’m still buying a new laptop in a few days just because I need to upgrade and this old thing is on its last legs and flaunting that fact HARD. Okay, let me post this before the stupid thing locks up or crashes again. I just did a registry cleaning after uninstalling a bunch of not-needed stuff in order to free up a bit of extra space on the HDD and that seems to be helping a tiny bit. Oh, the backing up of data and reinstalling stuff on the soon to be new computer will be “fun” for sure. Does anyone remember ALL their passwords these days? I thought not.

Black Friday, Indeed: Time For A New PC

Posted on November 27, 2015 by geelw

(thanks, castleafb’s channel!)

Bleh. I was trying to hold off for a few weeks, but the laptop is officially dying and was in fact quite dead for most of the day today. A bunch of reboots, a complete system diagnostic that took about an hour and revealed nothing “wrong” with the old beast (except the double screen image and a couple of blank startup screens) and a few other issues later and yup, it’s time for a replacement. This post is here thanks to a load of extra restarts and “only” three crashes, but I’m hoping the dang screen doesn’t freeze before I’m done (yaaaah!)

Amusingly enough, I’ve been looking for a new laptop for a while, but not something with a big-name overprice tag loaded to the gills with bloatware and other junk. With my current budget, pricing needs to be about $600 or so with moderately decent specs. No chuggy i3 processor, integrated video or anything else that won’t work for me, a BR or DVD-RW is a must and at least a 1TB HDD and perhaps additional room for something else is what I’m looking for. I did get a nice set of lists from three friends, so those along with what research I’ve done over the last few months will help me pick something out within the next week or so. In the meantime, updates will be slow as the two desktops I have seem to not want to work at all and both need major updates if they do fire up.

Okay, let me cross my fingers and hit “Publish”. So far, the few minutes it took to type this have been the longest I’ve been online in the last two days. Ah well, life happens, right? If I were a rich man (hey, you know the rest), this wouldn’t even be an issue. But I’m not, so it is. Back in a bit (well, depending on what happens with this stupid laptop tomorrow)…

Let’s Play “I’d Rather Fight A Hydra Than…”

Posted on November 14, 2015 by geelw

Let’s see now: if I small world this little game and not think of current events beyond my control, “…deal with more dopey computer issues!” is the first thing that comes to my mind. Yep, still having some issues with a few things. But not for long. While that hydra above (courtesy of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen which is finally making its way to PC in January 2016, thank you much Capcom!) is confident it will win because it’s been reading old issues of Strange Tales for those Nick Fury stories (“Hail Hydra! Cut off one head and two more will take its place!”), it’s going down for the count so one of those heads can get transported to Gran Soren as a gift for the somewhat unbalanced Duke who resides in the castle there.

I’m sure that’s a metaphor for something, but I need to pop up this post before my laptop craps out and blue screens me again. It’s down to twice a day, though… so that’s “good”. I guess. Back in a bit or sooner as my backlog is lightening somewhat, but I do need to tackle posting a bunch of stuff with my fingers crossed that it gets up without any rebooting needed.

Well, So Much For Plan “B”

Posted on November 10, 2015 by geelw

Yeah, it’s been that kind of a day here. The laptop is having some stupid issues (ah, blue screen o’ death, I hate you so much!), the desktop (or my backup plan) keeled over when I turned it on and it’s been hours of fiddling with rebooting and mucking about and trying to stay online lone enough to get a post up before SOMETHING else happened. I think the three minutes or so I spent on this post was the longest I’ve actually been online today. Bleh. Well, I think things are working sort of normally, so I’ll see you all then. Got some catching up to do, as usual… but more than usual.