I've finally made the change from dial-up to high-speed. What a difference!

I'm sure everyone's familiar with the 'Windows has recovered from a serious error' box.

This is not the response you want to ever see:

Hardware failure: replace failed component

Thank you for submitting an error report.

Problem description

The error was caused by an unrecoverable hardware error which forced the operating system to stop functioning.

As it's a laptop that's getting this, I guess its time to go shopping for a new computer soon.

I've had this error twice in 24 hours now.

I know the site hasn't been updated in a while, but I've got reasons (excuses).

Two thunderstorms this week, with a combinnation of fork and sheet lightning, one of which did some weird stuff. I had the radio on (AM) and I guess it was a power surge, but it re-set itself to 'standby'. That's never happened before. It was pretty spectacular!

The cat. We now know who owns said cat (the next door neigbor), and it's name, which has shown up every day for the last two weeks. Loki lives up to his name. We can't leave him alone in the kitchen, or he'll be on the stove or the counter.

I've been trying to database my book collection, so my computer is set up for that, and not the internet right now (meaning that it's in the room with the books instead of the phone jack).

Probably the biggest reason there's been no update is that I got Highlander season Three. So far, the best episode is the Brian Cullen one called Courage. And, of course, generally the commentary and interviews are more interesting than some of the episodes. I'm up to the Anthony De Longis interview for Blackmail. What's really neat are the Watcher Chronicles for each episode. Some of them seem to have the personality of the writers such as Joe Dawson.

However, I've got part of the chapter five summary written up on the other computer, for those of you who are following the discussion of The Hobbit on the messageboard, and I'm re-working the javascript for the bullets on the site map to make it easier to add new items. At the moment it's set to 'image*' (the * meaning the number of the bullet) and that number hit 150, so adding things was nearly impossible.

This is weird. A while ago, I wrote that the radio on my stereo wasn't working properly and when I took it in to be repaired, the guy at the shop said it would be too expensive to repair. Well, my Dad just decided to try it, and the radio works perfectly again on AM and FM.

Chaos.

I thought I had the latest version of my website on my computer after the crash. Not so lucky. I think I had intended to copy it from the server, but forgot. Instead, I accidentally copied the older one over the new one. Thank goodness for back ups. It might be a couple of days though.

On the other hand, this proves that the connection to the server is working properly (more or less).

Tomorrow's April Fools Day.

On another note, I think I've finally gotten rid of the spyware problem. ::knocks on wood::

gryphonhri posted something rather frightening to her Livejournal. I'd suggest you read it. It's about something called frienditto.

That blasted piece of software that was removed yesterday is back!!!

Second item:
My stereo has basically given up the ghost. The cd player skips on the second run through of almost any cd and the radio tuner on AM (which is digital) jumps by nines not tens, making it impossible for me to pick up most stations. I've jsut been told it's not worth the cost to repair it. This was an RCA stereo about 3 years old.

I'm in the market for a new one, can anyone give me recommedations for a small stereo with CD, AM/FM and tape deck with good sound and good quality in its making?

Well, the spyware problems seems to be fixed, but fixing it brought back another problem. Now when I shut the computer down something goes "not responding" partway through. It will shut down after that though, but the something always has a name made up of a string of nonsense letters that are never the same for any shut-down. ::banging head on desk::

On another topic entirely, I posted the barrow-wight challenge piece I did to my FF.N account (same user name as here) and re-posted the Wizards piece with some formatting changes and a disclaimer (I forgot to add that the first time LOL).

Honestly, the stuff should almost be classed as viruses. It's about as hard to get rid of!

For the last month, the desktop computer has been plagued by something opening pop-up windows in IE. Not so unusual after all, most sites use that method of advertising. Thing is, I use Mozilla Firefox exclusively. The only reason I keep IE around is for testing my website in and for a couple of sites that don't agree with Firefox. The anti-spyware programs couldn't find or fix the problem until today. ::knock on wood::

I finally found out what was causing (I think) the problem, but the first of the programs couldn't get it, then the second thought it had. Finally it's gone. The file (and I could find it manually but not delete it) is gone.

Here's hoping the problem is too.

If it is, I will be trying to fix the network that's been down for the last three weeks. I didn't want to do it before, due to the problems, but I think it is. With luck that means that there will be an update to the site in the next couple of weeks.

Why can't they make spyware and most variants illegal?

The results of a grammar quiz:

Advanced
You scored 87% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 50% Expert!

The quiz is at: Commonly Confused Words Quiz

In other news, I still don't have the network between the two computers running, so I haven't done anything with the website. I'm also getting sucked into Forever Knight fanfic now.

Well, I got the crash problem fixed, that's the good news. The bad news is that all the files I use such as the website are on the other computer and I can't get the network running properly. Until that gets fixed there will be no updates to the site. However, I am making a list of things to work on.

Well, looks like it's going to be the wipe/reinstall.

I'm now copying files off of the other computer via a linux flopy disk in preparation. Now the challenge is to find all the software cds again.

Well, ten years or so ago, I collected stamps. I lost interest for a while, but some people kept giving me stamps. Over the weekend, I got an ice-cream bucket's worth (the 4 litre size). That gave me the kickstart to go back to the collection. Right now, I'm fairly enthusiastic with the project and two rooms of the house have been taken over by it. We'll see how long that lasts.

The old collection was rather out of order. The labels were done at various times in various styles and sizes. So, the first thing I've been doing is making all new labels. All well and good, until I've printed them only to discover that I'm missing about a quarter of the categories and Word (I can think of a few words for it) mucked up some of the others. This is where the computer problems come in (more about that farther down).

So, it turns out that I have a fairly nice collection, and I discovered a whole bunch of stamps from the 40's and 50's. All well and good. So I started sorting them. Fine. Now I need more pages to put them in.

Guess what! Photo album pages in the size of a standard 3 ring binder are nearly impossible to find. I'd had an empty album but the pages didn't stick properly, so I went to get some new pages. I ended up getting a whole new album of a different size. So, now I'm trying to sort the stamps and shift some of the categories to the new album, which means moving each stamp to the new pages. I have to do this because I don't want to break up some of the larger countries into two separate places.

All this is going fine until last night. I went to print the missing lables and the other computer crashed. Nothing big, you think normally. This time I got told that a system file was corrupted and it couldn't restart. I spent a couple of hours last night on the phone to fix it. That got fixed, and now there is a password error of some sort. Hopefully I can get that fixed today. And no, I don't consider wiping the hard drive and re-installing everything to be a fix.

- Sorry about the long delay in updates. I had computer problems, which have now been fixed.
- Weekly Trivia will begin again on Monday.
- I'm working on optimizing the website a bit. So far I've managed to knock off about 2k in size for each of the html files.
- Updated the Site Map.
- Updated the Entries to be Added List.
- Added the entry for Nob to the Characters in Middle-Earth N section.
- Added the entry for Amon Sul to the Places in Middle-Earth A section.
- Edited the entry for The Shire in the Places in Middle-Earth S section.
- Added the entry for Thranduil to the Characters in Middle-Earth T section.
- Updated the description for the Lord of the Rings Fanatic site under the Information Links section.
- Corrected a typo on the main page.

With a little luck, I should be getting my computer back in the next week or so.

I read a book on how to optimize a website for speed in downloading, and I'm planning to implement some of the things it suggests. (Things like removing unneeded whitespace)

I found out what the problem with my computer was (is). It's the motherboard, which has to be replaced. $$$ Also, the part is back-ordered so it will be another couple of weeks before it's fixed.

The library sale last week was productive (in a way). I'm now hooked on Andre Norton's Witch World series. Only problem with that is that the series started being published in the early '60's. Try finding the early books in the library. Oh well. Guess the second hand bookstores are going to be getting what little spending money I have for a while.

On the computer front:
The printer problem has been fixed.
A new power cord has been ordered, so maybe next week I will be able to move forward on the repairs question. I think this is cord # 5 by the way.

Well, my computer is NOT likely to be repaired any time soon. Managed to talk to a Compaq specialist (after far too long on hold) and found out that the problem would most likely require the replacement of the screen, at a $700+ bill.

That power cord replacement doesn't work, athough apparently, the numbers and models all match up.

To top things off, the printer finally bit the dust, so I've got to replace that too.

The desktop computer is incapable of running the web design software, so I have no idea at this point of when the site will get a proper update.

On the up side, I've spent the last two days buying books at a library sale, so lots of new reading material.

I now have half of the power cable for my computer. Yep, only half of the missing cable was sent. Go figure. Why is it so difficult to get a replacement for the cable from the repair place that didn't return it in the first place?

The good news is that we seem to have found a good place to get the computer repaired. The bad news however, is that the last place gave me the wrong cable so I have to wait until they send the correct one.