Pray for me.
Copyright Nerd Writer Mom 2008-2010 - All Rights Reserved
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Computer Still Dead: Hold, Please
I'm in the process of "upgrading" to an older workhorse computer that's never seen anyone's lap and was put together by a person who took a "LEGO" approach to computer assembly. It is, however, quite stable. And it is an upgrade in a very real sense, since it works, and my old laptop doesn't. This old desktop will mean I can once again write blog posts, not to mention earn a living. I'm blissfully expectant that given a couple of days, I'll be up and running.
Pray for me.
Pray for me.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Ghost in the Laptop Shell: The Spill of Death
In ancient times, I used to skip along, typing away on my easy-tempered, stable desktop computer. But for the past five years now, computer time has set me in an edgy struggle with my Toshiba Satellite A-65 laptop--that clunky, slow, heavy, battery-draining, barely portable desktop replacement laptop that in no way embodies the shih tzu-like glamour that I associated with laptops as a species the day I bought it.
I used every drop of the 3-year warranty to keep my laptop alive. Between two hard drive replacements, one battery replacement, and innumerable calls to customer support, the machine has shown itself to be no placid pet--nay, but something on the order of a demon plastic poodle that lets me walk him one day and pees on my bed the next.
And then it expired--the warranty, that is--leaving me fighting a daily struggle to 'shoot the thing--troubleshoot it, I mean. Three months ago, it croaked, then was brought back on life support and has sluggishly limped along since.
Then Junior climbed up on my lap.
There's an old saying in my family--and yours, yes?--about never crying over spilled milk. I wonder if my mother, spouting off such wisdom in times afore laptop keyboard vulnerability even existed, had any idea what Vitamin D homogenized can do to a laptop computer that really wasn't designed to ingest cow's milk.
I sit here on my husband's computer, looking over at the laptop-that-will-not-be-booted, and I wonder if I can blame my toddler son. Though it was mine arm that knocked the box of Wheat Thins into the bottle of milk and splashed the milk onto the arrow buttons of the laptop, he did--he must have--altered my center of balance somehow. I certainly don't recall Junior's raising a protest as I flung everything away, turned the laptop up and down, and shook it like a mostly-empty ketchup bottle. No, he just stood by, watching with interest as I pulled that final trigger on the ailing-but-might-have-been-recoverable laptop nightmare-thing.
That was yesterday. You know, we regret a lot of things in life--mistakes we made, paths we unknowingly took that led us in unalterable directions--but my biggest regret right now is that I didn't let that laptop know, in actions if not in words, how I appreciated what it did do for me (albeit reluctantly and with a machine-like malice) when I had the chance. I've been living half off my external hard drive, working on the laptop only when I absolutely had to, and generally assuming it was all but toast.
And now that the laptop really is toast, I wish I'd been better to it. I wish I'd given it a new fan when it was getting overheated, maybe not let my husband loose with an air compressor on it the second time, and thought it worthy of updating Malwarebytes on its behalf. And I really, really, really wish I'd copied the last week's files onto my external hard drive.
I used every drop of the 3-year warranty to keep my laptop alive. Between two hard drive replacements, one battery replacement, and innumerable calls to customer support, the machine has shown itself to be no placid pet--nay, but something on the order of a demon plastic poodle that lets me walk him one day and pees on my bed the next.
And then it expired--the warranty, that is--leaving me fighting a daily struggle to 'shoot the thing--troubleshoot it, I mean. Three months ago, it croaked, then was brought back on life support and has sluggishly limped along since.
Then Junior climbed up on my lap.
There's an old saying in my family--and yours, yes?--about never crying over spilled milk. I wonder if my mother, spouting off such wisdom in times afore laptop keyboard vulnerability even existed, had any idea what Vitamin D homogenized can do to a laptop computer that really wasn't designed to ingest cow's milk.
I sit here on my husband's computer, looking over at the laptop-that-will-not-be-booted, and I wonder if I can blame my toddler son. Though it was mine arm that knocked the box of Wheat Thins into the bottle of milk and splashed the milk onto the arrow buttons of the laptop, he did--he must have--altered my center of balance somehow. I certainly don't recall Junior's raising a protest as I flung everything away, turned the laptop up and down, and shook it like a mostly-empty ketchup bottle. No, he just stood by, watching with interest as I pulled that final trigger on the ailing-but-might-have-been-recoverable laptop nightmare-thing.
That was yesterday. You know, we regret a lot of things in life--mistakes we made, paths we unknowingly took that led us in unalterable directions--but my biggest regret right now is that I didn't let that laptop know, in actions if not in words, how I appreciated what it did do for me (albeit reluctantly and with a machine-like malice) when I had the chance. I've been living half off my external hard drive, working on the laptop only when I absolutely had to, and generally assuming it was all but toast.
And now that the laptop really is toast, I wish I'd been better to it. I wish I'd given it a new fan when it was getting overheated, maybe not let my husband loose with an air compressor on it the second time, and thought it worthy of updating Malwarebytes on its behalf. And I really, really, really wish I'd copied the last week's files onto my external hard drive.
Copyright Nerd Writer Mom 2008-2010 - All Rights Reserved
Friday, February 20, 2009
Me, Plagiarize? There Are Only So Many Ways to Say It and Other Myths
Having recently joined the honored multitude of plagiarized writers on the Web, I was intrigued when the subject of plagiarism cropped up again in my life, and so soon. It turns out eHow writers are up-in-arms because eHow has kicked up their plagiarism software a notch. A number of writers' articles are being removed for being copycats of each other.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Plagiarized! The Triumphant Story of One Writer's Recovery from Intellectual Property Theft, Kinda-Sorta
I'd been looking forward to this day ever since I wrote and published tons of eHow articles on the Web. But I didn't expect it to come so soon.
Mind you, I'm no raw chicken. I've been plagiarized before...as part of an en masse plagiarism extravaganza. Not till now, though, was I singled out. They could have linked to my article. They could have asked permission. But instead they snuck into my eHow page, saw my article, fell in love with it, snatched it and fled.
Mind you, I'm no raw chicken. I've been plagiarized before...as part of an en masse plagiarism extravaganza. Not till now, though, was I singled out. They could have linked to my article. They could have asked permission. But instead they snuck into my eHow page, saw my article, fell in love with it, snatched it and fled.
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