Not How I Planned My Saturday...

8 am Saturday morning. Snuggled in bed with a book and a cat. (A different cat than had been glued to bits of me all night...) The husband comes back in from outside. (Who voluntarily goes outside at 8am in winter??) With the announcement that Hydro has arrived out of the blue, and will be cutting off our power for about six hours to move a pole!

Eek... so much for visions of a comfy Saturday. (Quickly quickly to wash hair, make more coffee, fill the sink for dishes, boil some water into thermoses, coffee into thermal carafe, some eggs on to hard boil, pot of porridge on to get a start, firewood in and fire started - our heat is electric otherwise, wet hair to be brushed while there's still a light and a mirror... computers and UPS's turned off)

This all came about because this fall Hydro was by, many many times, trimming trees on the crossroads, and muttering vile "chop 'em down" noises. Even though our trees in question are mostly spindly little weed trees that are still years and years from being a threat, but provide some small insulation between us and a gravel road of ever increasingly fast and heavy traffic.
However, Larry next door does/did have some bigger nicer trees that had their chainsaws revving up.
In fact, Larry actually had someone come and relocate a blue spruce in his yard to try and save it from the chop.

In the midst of all this though, it eventually came to light that all our poles and wiring weren't placed to current standards. Well, actually, neither are our houses. Larry lives in the old church. We live in the old church shed. Both were built on land donated to the church, early in the 20th century, before poles and wires were the in-thing.
And for some reason, when they actually did run electrical support through the hamlet, they don't appear to have been looking at today's guidelines for clearance. (Odd, that.)

Anyway, someone realized that if our power poles were actually on the other side of the road, this would fix things. So, in the fall, all golden and lovely, some marker stakes were placed, and everyone agreed to let everyone know what was going on next...

Which brings us up to 8am on December 13th, when Wareham is buried under the most snow it's had by that date in a really long time, and it's danged cold. And without warning here they are....


This is the Before picture. Our power pole as viewed from my studio window. It's situated snugly between the two properties, well back from the road, and down in a hollow. (Many years ago, they raised the level of the road, and there's now a fairly steep drop from road level, down to where the building sits. In spring, summer or fall, you can see this drop in elevation, and that we've ended up building a terraced garden from the road height, down to what's *our* ground level, with a small bit of patio, and a tiny ornamental pool for Darrell's latest fountains or decorative iron work. Right now it just looks a bit like a large snow drift, and there's no real way to tell when you've got to the bottom.


Peeking over towards Larry's place, where they've attached to *his* power pole, and are starting to work on it, jiggling it loose?


And over across the road to the east, where they have to turn us all off, and cut our wires free. (Because of course, we're now going to be talking of different lengths of cabling needed, since all the attachment points are moving...)


Out the studio window again, the Hydro fellows in their snowsuits are starting to disconnect our transformer and dismantle our pole, while beyond them, across the road, the existing pole, which only carried a wire across to the Southern neighbours, now needs to be replaced with a pole to hold the transformer...


And there they start raising the new pole into place...


And re-attaching the transformer.


And then they're back over to my pole, to start chopping it down. They're having to work from above, because of the snow, so this limits the ease in doing it. The shot is a bit blurred, and my focal point a bit confused. I snatched the shot without much preparation when I realized what they were about to do. While hovering, the guy now holding the chunk o' pole, had used a chainsaw to cut through the pole, then before it could topple, the cherry picker (do they call them that at Hydro?) had to quickly move up a bit, so he could grab the section, and they could swing back and lower it to the ground.
(On the second chunk, he missed it 'by that much' and the section of pole crashed to the ground below, fortunately missing the building, or anything particularly noisy down below. We probably won't be able to tell for sure until we can make our way through all that snow to over there.)


Ah yes, a parting shot... The whole endeavour was to prevent them cutting more trees. But of course the new replacement pole was by a tree they've never been able to 'have at' before... Why not a quick bit of seasonal tree trimming before going away?

In the long run, the power went off at about 10:03am, and came back about 2:55pm. Could have been worse. They also could have done it at a smarter time of year. But the fellow explained they had a huge number of poles to replace, all before the end of the year (and budget.) And it didn't matter what it cost Hydro in overtime... So these fellows all just bundled up intheir snowsuits and came trudging out to do it, even thought they agreed that someone up the food chain was an eejit.

Fuddled by Facebook

Or frazzled? Flummoxed? Frelled? Flustered?

Yes, it *is* pre-coffee, so bear with me. I'll try to toss back a swallow or two as I go. Though I don't know that it will make me any more coherent...

So, Facebook was born. A long time ago, (well, okay some indeterminate long time ago in my memory) I even checked it out. A friend had mentioned they were on it. It had got some airtime on CBC. (So it must be real!) So I went to look it out.
I think it was a bit different early on, because I couldn't really figure it out. I couldn't seem to make it do much. And whatever ID I set up, I didn't write down. duh...

Anyway, at the beginning of this year, a dear friend asked me to check out her Facebook profile, so back I went. Yes, you have to be involved enough to set up an ID to even look at things you're invited to look at... So I set up an ID. (This time I wrote it down!) And looked at her profile. Noticed with amusement, how many mutual old friends had popped out of the woodwork. Poked her. (I love the "poke" function. It suits my sense of the absurd.) Sent a message or two.
But....and here's the first big but in all of this. It worked like sludge. Every action took forever. (And we've already switched to satellite, remember? Admittedly, it's pretty sad satellite, but we're paying through the nose for it, simply because our dial up barely supports phone conversations these days!) It took so long to sign in, or change screens that I was forever asking myself, did I hit enter?

And pretty much anything I went to do, required me to sign in and join up for whatever widget, and quite apart from the amount of time it was taking to even get to those screens, I'm sorry, I just wasn't interested in going that far. Sure, I'd love to know my friend's secret stripper name, or send her back a 'flower for her virtual garden', or see how she did in the movie trivia quiz, but I've no interest in adding these widgets to my Facebook page. I don't use my Facebook page as it is.

After four months I finally got as far as adding a picture, and mentioning the theatre, just so it didn't look totally question-mark-y. I don't have much else to say.
I can send email to my friends far more simply. I don't have to log in to do it. My email gets turned on at the beginning of the day. I click on their address, I type as long or as short a message as I want. And queue it. Whenever I want I can hit send, and my outmail goes, and my new inmail arrives. Ta da!

When I have random thoughts, I can come over and jot them down. Long or short, with pictures or without. And I can also make notes to myself here (like which cookbook that marvellous sesame and green bean dish was in, and when I should be heading off to check on wild leeks.) Actually, the picture posting aspect of blogs is far more useful and interesting. My useful herby friends can tell me it really is woad (when I'm too stupid to be sure.) I can lust after Grondzilla's irises. And admire Karen's new header image.

So, on wieldiness points alone, the 'blob' wins.

But the latest bizzarity with the Facebook phenomenon is that all of a sudden I have people asking me to be their friend. Sure, some of them are already friends in the greater scheme of things. We already chat to some degree. But then, there are other people. People I know only marginally. People I've barely shared a half dozen mini-conversations with in my life! People I might not even pick out of a crowd.
Now that's weird.

I understand the mechanic. Now that I've allowed myself to be 'friends' with a couple of other people, because it seemed harmless, if ineffective, there's a coagulation of 'people I know' and 'people they know'. So friends of friends can see my existence.

Sure, that works for me, too! I can look at someone's list of friends and say to myself, well lookee there! So and so has Facebook. Do I see any point of doing anything about it? Not really. I suppose it suggests to me who I might ask about email addresses, if and when I'm suddenly filled with the urge to get in contact...
But beyond that? Hence, it seems highly weird that these people now want to be my friends here, in the online world, when they might not know me from a hole in the ground in the real world. (Though another friend did suggest it's way to get to know me better in the 'safety' of Facebook... Actually, I'd say come read the 'blob', there's far more of the real me here!)

Sadly, maybe this is nature's way of pointing out to me that I'm finally achieving fuddy-duddiness. That I'm too old a dog to change spots. (Is that even the metaphor?)

Maybe it's telling me I'm too old to remember trite whatyamahusits that I can't even remember the word for... sigh.

Maybe life is telling me I need more coffee!

v

Apologies to my readers

(Both of you!)

It appears that I may be having technical difficulties getting some of my posts to be polite and readable and non-html-y to all browsers. Unfortunately, to me, using Firefox, they look fine.
On the other hand, there have also been occasions where in posting mode and preview mode and compose mode here at Blogger, everything looks great till I publish, then it all goes to hell in a handcart....

Sigh. Somedays I'm just not made for technology!

anti-v

Signs of Spring

Okay, it's still cold out. and wet. and mucky. And it still keeps snowing.
Even when the temp is above zero and it should be rain!

And my crocus buds are by this point, no more than crocus popsicles. I do
not expect them to finish flowering now. Sigh.

But a true sign of spring is that now our internet/phone service has gone
from poor to 'sucking big time'.

When it gets wet outside...well, all we can think is that there's some
imperfection in the seals at the junction box up the road. When it's wet, we
have phone troubles, and almost non-existant connection speeds. And by the
time the phone guy comes, it's dry and bright, and everything is back to its
usual rural non-high-speed but functioning self.

So, now that I actually have a moment to blog about what I've been doing
the last three weeks, I don't know if I'll stay connected long enough to
even get to the blogger site, let alone do anything there.
The connection has been secretly dropping every time I try dialling up
today. Or is running so slow that there isn't even any point in trying to go
anywhere with it.

Darn. This piece of string and two tin cans method can be terrifically
frustrating!

v

From The Twilight Zone

Actually, from the laptop, but there's a similar feeling to it.... *AND* it
is being all gray and snowy and depressing out there. Does that count?

Yup, techno-woes again.

The power supply fan on my computer has been sending out occasionally grumpy
noises over the last while, and it suddenly got a bit more 'in your face'
than I could ignore.

I thought, oh, I'll just pop the HD in the 'back up' machine. Which is
actually a step up from my old back up machine, and which I'd been using for
a few months last summer and fall. Unfortunately, my current HD has never
lived anywhere but in my main PC, so it didn't have specific drivers it
needed, and started getting all paranoid and upset.

I thought okay, I'll use my second HD, which I've been slowly trying to
clean up so I could try loading Win2000. Of course, it's not empty, so it
had too much memory of Windows to load a new version and not enough to do
anything else.

I finally opted with a shaky set up involving a 2GB HD as the master and
slaved in my regular HD, only to find the modem wasn't working properly,
there aren't a real selection fo serial ports and my cables and adaptors
seem to be misplaced...

ACK!

Hence the laptop. Which while sluggish, and far too tiny for my great
mammoth fingers, does at least work and dial out!

And wouldn't you know it, I had only just run out of my stay of execution
and been forced to switch to the "new and improved" blogger, and was really
hoping to make some headway in figuring it out.

Nah...another day.
Hopefully I'll get a new power supply installed and can try to sweettalk all
my hard drives back into their original positions without too much angst.
(Angsty - V?)

And obviously I need to find out about drivers for the other machine. No
point in having it as a back up, if I can't make it behave!

Anti-V

Another Techno-Rant

Sigh. I feel there are far too many of these hogging room on this blog.

At long last, I have my old, but renewed, computer back. There's a new
motherboard, and a slightly faster processor, and we'd moved in a clean hard
drive and done a brand new installation of the operating system. A blank
canvas.

So I slaved in my old HD with programs and data, and swapped back the best
of the RAM, and started consolidating life. Of course I've got bits and bobs
of it all over the place now. Because the whole thing started with an email
problem, there's a trail of different email programs and oddments of mail.
There's six months of life on a 2 GB drive that I'd like to fetch back. And
varying programs and data to move around.

Some of it worked slick as a whistle. It's here on the slave drive, now
it's there on the main. Whee! Easy peasy.

Other things not so simple.

I thought, gee, here's my chance to try networking, and I'll be able to
move the six months data in a nice straightforward fashion. I moved the 2GB
to another machine with an Ethernet card. I set up the drivers. I got a
crossover cable. Then I had to Google and Google and Google to find
instructions, because oddly, while it's something that *everyone* is
supposed to do these days, families all networking together for maximum
value, it appears that there's no real How-To's that are easily accessible.
Windows Help tends to skip over the details of how to get there, and just
tell you how to enjoy it once it's working. Their trouble-shooter walks you
through a few steps and then assumes you'll get the IT guy to fix it.

It's a teeny bit like being a woman with a car. Sure, we'll accept the fact
that you might be able to fill the windshield washer, and maybe even change
a tire, but after that, step aside and let the MEN take care of it. (Really,
I don't WANT to know how the spark plugs work or how to change them, but I'd
like to have a better sense of when it's THEM not working, and what's
involved. Is that a betrayal of my gender?)

I mean, I don't really WANT to take computers apart. I'd prefer it if they
worked. But since they often don't, I'd also like to be able to understand
the small stuff. I don't have a computer repair fellow on call, and couldn't
afford it if I did!

Anyway, after some head-banging, I achieved a network! I transferred one of
the files as proof, and then decided I'd run out of playing around time, and
would have to get back to it in a day or two.

Of course, the network went away, and I've not been able to find it again.
And wiser heads than mine have looked at the info I've given them and said
"that should work". Sigh.

So, by now, in between failed attempts, I've mostly copied the obvious
files onto floppy disk and transferred them that way. There's still some
more obscure stuff scattered around, and one really big thing that won't fit
on a disk, so I guess I'll have to try something else. At some point.

Because it would be nice to be done with the 2GB HD machine and make a nice
new home for the xpoodle* machine a friend just gave me. (With the proviso
that I was NOT supposed to take it apart and tinker; just use it!)

*I call it the xpoodle, because it's so cute and tiny and compact, smaller
than my breadmaker, like a toy poodle, and is running XP. (Heck, I won't
need to take it apart to make myself crazy; just try to understand how to
use it!)

vandy

Missing in Action

Yes, I should have at least posted some words in all this time. I set things
up so I could email blogs, because I thought that would make it easier. And
yes, it does. I still just don't say anything!
Perhaps it's because when I do sit down in front of the computer I'm so
frustrated by its sluggishness, 400 Mhz and almost zero RAM and a
2.something MB HD.... (Though I've functioned on this as a back up machine
before.) Or maybe it's because our dial up speed has dwindled to tin cans
and string speed.... (No, really. Messages tied to the leg of a snail would
be faster. Except I don't think snails have legs...)

We've harrassed good ol' Ma Bell so much they know us personally now. It
seems very likely there's some fault in the seals of the local junction box,
because ever since spring, it if rains, the service drops off. Sometimes
even quits. Our neighbours have given up on the idea of internet totally.
We're the only poor eejits still perservering! And of course, when the local
on-contract guy pops by to check it out, it's a day or two later, and the
rains are gone, and everything seems fine.
We've tried four different computers; two different styles, Mac and PC;
four different phone outlets; two different phone lines; even two different
ISP's, just for overkill's sake! Nothing helps. The last thing we can try,
which will be time-consuming and awkward so gets put off, is to replace all
the phone cabling in the house and all the jacks.

We don't even have the option of paying the big bucks for high speed - it
simply isn't available. We're in one of those little black holes where
no-one is supplying it. Sigh.

So, that hasn't helped my literary mood.

And when I finally did get a version of my computer back so I could access
my nice little camera again (really mine now, I've worked off the trade!),
it turns out the email problem is still there, and I probably have to load
the OS from scratch, so I'm still running life from the Village Idiot
computer.

And then, my old old computer was having a second chance at life, with a
new motherboard! (Thanks Russ!) Well, I haven't been able to manage to
collect it yet. Won't see if for a month. sigh.....
And with my luck, when I finally do get it home, I'll be up to my eyebrows
in the Christmas play at the Theatre, and not get a chance to really sort it
all out.

Thing is, there are solutions to all of this, and not just the simple but
more expensive one of just buying a new system that works. But a number of
them require me to figure them out, and that probably means doing some
research on the web (cause we got no libraries up here at the end of the
world) and then I'm back to being annoyed at my dial up speed.

Vicious circles.

But here, let's end the techno-whine before it makes Karen grumpy!

v

Not Dead Yet....

Still semi-computerless.
(This back up is slow and has only 64 Mb of RAM, and can multi-task about as
well as I can these days! And no USB for camera or printer or.....)

Turns out my *real* computer has fried part of its motherboard. Maybe when
the CPU fan died? But essentially, it's frelled enough to not be worth
poking at anymore.

(Though I feel really guilty, because it seems that the message from the
fellow working on it, which explained how much he'd already tried, and that
he had another system he'd GIVE me if I said the word, ended up in the ISP's
Spam folder.... So instead of saying 'thank you, thank you, please do
that!", I made him try a few other, probably unnecessary, things first.)

So, maybe there's an ending in sight, but not sure when....

Instead, let's offer up a lovely quote:

"There'll come a moment when you'll have the chance to do the right thing."
Elizabeth Swann
"I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by." Jack Sparrow

My Battle with Technology

Seemingly endless!
I’ve been poking at a cast-off computer from a friend. It needs a BIOS upgrade, and seems like the power supply fan has seized. But it was a different thing to be poking at for a change. Nice to be mucking about with something I wasn’t deeply involved with!
My own computer, after I’d taken out the faulty RAM, was being weird still, but only every two days. And then it wasn’t weird….
Mind you, I walked in today, and all of a sudden those little white words on black: DISK FAILURE! GGGGGGRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!
So I took it apart and jiggled its guts and it worked again. I’m starting to think that one of its problems is a loose “ribbon cable”. (No idea what the real technos call those.) I’ve noticed again and again that it’s a real effort to get that cable to connect to the hard drive and stay connected. And since my processor is on the flight path of one small cat who like to be in high places, it gets a bit of a jostle from time to time…

Anyway, since I had the whole thing apart again, I also tried flipping the sound connector for the CD Rom, (still not the solution), actually remembering to screw the CD Rom into place, and stealing some RAM from the other computer I’ve been working on…. Interesting. The first slot for RAM was empty. I thought, from what I’ve read, that you had to start with slot 1 and work outwards. Admittedly it was a pain to access that slot, not enough space for hands, like working on a Honda! But with a lot of jaw-clenching and teeth-gritting I managed. Now have to see what happens. I’ve added 192 kb. Will it solve my problems? Who knows….

Speaking of Hondas, a friend emailed me this link to a sweet little Honda Element ad. I had to figure out where I’d stashed Quicktime, moved from previous computer and never installed, but it was worth it. Charming, silly, little ad. Don't know if I can make this a clickable link or not...have to try.

http://www.funnybutwrong.com/Funny-Videos/5.Advertisements/31.Honda-Element- Crab-commercial.html

Adventures on the Web

Finally, after oh so long, I’ve actually posted some content to our shared website. His side is full of things. Every web space he comes across he can fill to capacity and then some!

Mine’s just been an empty place holder for years.
Every now and again I’ve though about, and even sat down to try and do something. But I’ve never had a plan. And when faced with some of these complex web programs and no plan….well, it all comes undone!

So, a good friend recently suggested Nvu by Mozilla, as a simple program. And wow! Was it ever! Definitely a jumping off place if nothing else. (Mind you, trying to FTP the stuff up to the website was a bit hellish….)

So, at long last, there’s some content.
http://www.home.golden.net/~wareham/

It’s terrifically ugly. The pictures didn’t go over at the same time, even though the program asked me if I wanted to do that, and it took several more tries with a handful of programs to get them there….and they’re too big, and I can remember what software I usually use for that, and there’s a typo in one of the links, and it’s ugly….did I mention that?
But by gum, it’s there.

Now to change it!

Anti-v

BAD RAM U!

Isn’t that the secret phrase they used in Babe to control the sheep? Or maybe it was Bah Ram Ewe. In my life it seems to be Bad RAM though.

It kind of perplexes me, that in all the years of working from home, from the beginning of the home computer/internet era (yes, really!) I had poor clunkers of computers with no real support except what I could devise myself… I managed. (Sure, the IT guys would say, bring it on in and we’ll fix it, but that was a two-hour drive, a half-hour subway ride, and then a hike from subway station, and we’re not talking a laptop here!) So, I learned to deal with it myself, as best as possible. Only the major ‘toast events’ got me to take it in.

But I managed. And hardly ever had things that couldn’t be dealt with. And yet, in the last year… My old computer went distinctly freaky and it got worse. It was a toss up whether it was the hard drive or the motherboard, and when I had the chance to get a deal on a used, but slightly more current PC, I took it. Woo woo! USB and PS/2! And they saved my data. And life was grand.

But only a few months later, things started getting weird again. And I went through the fall assuming every time I turned it off at night might be my final farewell. But at Christmas it suddenly smoothed out and got quiet and happy again. Not that I assumed it was cured…. I still kept my eyes open for a replacement hard drive, and finally got one in early February, though I didn’t have time to do anything with it till the show opened in mid-Feb.

And then, just about the time I was thinking I’d sit down and take things apart, Disk Failed! Ooops. So, after a week of what was supposed to be a quick swap, and using up all my favours with a geekish friend, as well as discombobulating HIS machine in the process, we got this puppy back on the road. But with attitude.

And now we’re thinking it was bad memory. (Not a bad memory, but actually faulty RAM.) Because having removed the extra John had added, the intense problems have gone away. But maybe there’s a flaw in the RAM I already had, and that would explain some of the other oddities…

But heavens above! Has my life ever ended up being ruled by this ostensible labour-saving device.

Argh!


Anti-v

Is it dead? Poke it with a stick....

No, I didn’t quite fall off the edge of the earth. It just seems like I must have.

I did write a blog entry on the laptop; I was quite proud of myself, my fingers are so big and the laptop is so small….. But for some reason, while I could connect to the internet enough to see email, I couldn’t connect to the blog site…

So, where the heck have I been since my last blog?

[What WAS my last blog?]

Let’s see: It was the Katimavik house in October. “Katimavictims” as we call them at the theatre, because we’re one of the “partners”, and get one as a placement, and Sarah manages to sweet talk the whole lot in for strikes and the like!
Then it was Mary’s Wedding at Theatre Orangeville. Ostensibly I was really just hired to do some alterations, but of course I ended up being the costume co-coordinator as well. (Sadly, it didn’t really come along with the money….) But heck, I like the theatre, and it kept me off the streets. (so to speak.. Not off the highways, though!)

As we went down for opening night, the Honda started behaving more oddly than usual. At first I assumed it was just Darrell. When Darrell drives, my cars all seem to freak out. Or maybe, it’s just that if they’re going to freak out, they wait till Darrell is driving. Kind of the canary in the mineshaft thing. Like I used to be for IT at work….
But no, the ailment lingered….

(Sure, I know I was living on borrowed time, but still… I was willing to keep on borrowing.)

Then, in November, I drove down for a meeting about the Christmas show. Car was perfectly behaved on way down. On the way back? Well, “toes up” about describes it. It was a painful return journey, taking WAY longer than it should have. SIGH!

So, then I fumbled through the Christmas show (Kringle’s Window / FOUR Santas!) by using Darrell’s truck, and a week of the theatre van when he was away, and then the truck again. (Wow! That theatre van! A 2004 Montana! Not only this century, but also this millennium!!! Was that ever a treat! Mind you, it was a bit more electronic than I’m happy with. When you put it in gear, it locks the doors!!! Made stopping to pick up the mail a real chore, because it doesn’t unlock when you put it in park…)

Kringle was a bit of a madhouse. The usual short production period – two weeks – plus I had some builds. And several more finicky than usual actors to dress. But in the end, I think it looked nice. Certainly I was very satisfied with my vision of Kris Kringle, the TRUE Santa. (Yes, it might have helped that the actor was a lovely Welsh gentleman with a wonderful plummy voice…. But I was in love.)

Sadly, I missed the opening because winter hit us with a vengeance late that afternoon. And then I spent several days trying to recover from the nineteen-hour days of the second/last week. Hence, Christmas was quiet.

Though when we had to go meet up with the Markewitz clan, I also arranged to buy a used car from someone I know. So we’re now on the verge of having it ready to register, and maybe I’ll have wheels again! Because I’m already chin deep in the January show: The Emperor’s New Clothes. [I know, why do they need a costume designer?]

Anyway, back to work… Maybe I’ll be talking to you again soon. You never know!