Sunday, June 17, 2007
Winning the internet
It's not as easy as it sounds.
I got a giant almost none of what I'd planned to do today done, because of keeping a promise to Mike instead.
Last year something went wonky beyond my ability to fix with the clone's computer. It would no longer connect to the internet for ANYTHING. Nothing, nada, zip.
My solution (after two days of non-stop failure to be a tech goddess) was to do the obvious thing and buy a new one. Hers was okay except for that pesky interNOT thing, and Mike's really old computer did not do much of anything right anymore. So why not move them both up a notch on the computer chain?
Speaking of Mike, we had been working for a LONG time on trying to get him to stop chewing pieces of his fingers off as a hobby. The best carrot in the bunch we held out was...The Internet! Well, today was the day he finally met all the terms and conditions.
"All" I needed to do was pop in the Restore CD and boot his computer back to factory settings, I figured. Yeah. "All" in this case meaning, find the CD, remember how it works in theory, get online to eMachines tech support when it turned out the one thing I didn't have was the authentic Windows XP code number, THEN spend a couple hours trying to get the screen settings to go to a higher resolution than FOUR colors. FOUR. No, I am not exaggerating, four. You have NO idea how crappy and unreadable a really nice extra wide LCD monitor looks in a 4 color mode.
But after a mere six hours, Mike now has the intarweb, Zone Alarm (yes, with Parental Filtering going on), Firefox and 32-bit color. Tomorrow I am going to transfer his bookmarks and other things, plus set him up on Gmail so his mail doesn't get lost in the chaos of MY inbox. (Although I do have that pared down to 77!)
And maybe I will plant those last four sickly tomatoes.
I got a giant almost none of what I'd planned to do today done, because of keeping a promise to Mike instead.
Last year something went wonky beyond my ability to fix with the clone's computer. It would no longer connect to the internet for ANYTHING. Nothing, nada, zip.
My solution (after two days of non-stop failure to be a tech goddess) was to do the obvious thing and buy a new one. Hers was okay except for that pesky interNOT thing, and Mike's really old computer did not do much of anything right anymore. So why not move them both up a notch on the computer chain?
Speaking of Mike, we had been working for a LONG time on trying to get him to stop chewing pieces of his fingers off as a hobby. The best carrot in the bunch we held out was...The Internet! Well, today was the day he finally met all the terms and conditions.
"All" I needed to do was pop in the Restore CD and boot his computer back to factory settings, I figured. Yeah. "All" in this case meaning, find the CD, remember how it works in theory, get online to eMachines tech support when it turned out the one thing I didn't have was the authentic Windows XP code number, THEN spend a couple hours trying to get the screen settings to go to a higher resolution than FOUR colors. FOUR. No, I am not exaggerating, four. You have NO idea how crappy and unreadable a really nice extra wide LCD monitor looks in a 4 color mode.
But after a mere six hours, Mike now has the intarweb, Zone Alarm (yes, with Parental Filtering going on), Firefox and 32-bit color. Tomorrow I am going to transfer his bookmarks and other things, plus set him up on Gmail so his mail doesn't get lost in the chaos of MY inbox. (Although I do have that pared down to 77!)
And maybe I will plant those last four sickly tomatoes.
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