yesterday

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I am very sorry to report that we lost my canine niece Theo yesterday. Probably cancer, and it was sudden. Less than a week between the Something Is Wrong and yesterday.

She was named for theobromine, the caffeine-like substance in chocolate. She was adopted from the shelter when she was a young adult. A Boston terrier mix, she was pretty energetic in her day.

She loved her belly rubs, and would wag and present her belly for rubs whenever a likely sucker, er, person, walked by.

I'm glad I got to see her in August, and give her a bunch of belly rubs.

Good girl, Theo. You will be missed.


Friday is the weekday I don't work. I had plans. I wanted to get a bunch of things done that I had been procrastinating on.......

I wanted to bake my eye. We have one of those microwave bags with rice in it, and that works a treat. I need a towel between me and it, as it is hot, but it stays warm plenty long enough. Thank you, CB, for the suggestion, and thank you, D, for the gift of the rice bag!!!!!!!

I finished Tony Hillerman's Hunting Badger (vintage late Hillerman; much recommended), and all the other books I brought home that day are on cd. I *could not* figure out how to get the player to play a cd. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

(Update 3:20 pm: No controls for cds on the top, well, other than the rocker switch which decides between tape, radio, cd; cd controls on *front*, of course. Sheesh.)

So I thought "Ok, I'll do what I've been doing when in bed with the rice, and just listen to the weather channel for 15 minutes+."

And the fly in that ointment was that I don't know how to work the new tv. SIGH! So I took the rice upstairs......... I still know how to work that tv!

(Update 3:20 pm: Tv remote basically worthless; use cable company remote. Very unhelpful off-topic error messages when you try to use tv remote, sigh and argh. Surely we're not the only area of the country where the stinking cable company requires that you put their box between their service and your tv????????? So why don't the tv manufacturers mention that using the tv's remote might be a waste of time? Rather than some generic "you can't do that now" sort of message??????)

Then I discovered my eye was getting red again. So I went BACK to health service, and this time I decided I was going to see Dr. C., no matter how long I had to wait. He was at lunch. I checked in, and used the ladies' room right by the waiting area. I thought I heard him call my name while I was in there, and, sure enough......... Had I known seeing him so quickly was a reasonable possibility, I surely would have waited to see him last week. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He was surprised I'd been put on systemic antibiotics, and reported that last week's doc had written down nothing about conjunctivitis, but had put me on the azithromycin because of the sty, which was not bothering me at all.......................

He called up to the eye care clinic and spoke to one of his colleagues there, who came down to consult. (I think I looooooooooooooooooove Dr. C.............) She said she would give systemic antibiotics IFF the sty were huge and soft, or if the patient were in lots of pain, but certainly not for the little hard painless ball my sty is.

Neither she nor Dr. C. would give systemic antibiotics for conjunctivitis........

Sigh. So I've had a needless course of a systemic antibiotic, SIGH. My stomach did not like it. Just a general touchy and uncomfortable feeling.............. SIGH.

The eye doc said she thinks the conjuntivitis is allergic, and put me on antihistamine drops. OTC zatidor-generic.

The bad news was that once a sty is a hard little ball, it is likely to never go away. This is annoying. But, compared to bad news one gets from doctors, this is hardly worth mentioning.

Ok. Whatever.

Rather than waiting hours for Dr. C. as I had been prepared to do, he saw me before his lunch was officially over, and before I ever even sat down to wait! One regrets the necessity for learning how to work the system, but one is glad to know what to do if one does need to work it......................

Ok.

Later in the afternoon I finally tackled upgrading our virus protection on the newer computer. The U has a contract with McAfee and we can download the protection from the U.

There are a ton of steps. It begins with a warning that if you have a certain sound card, you'll have problems. Well wtf. How do you find out what sound card you have????? I found the video card's info, poking around in the computer, but the sound card???????? I called one of my colleagues at work, who deals with pcs all day every day, and she wasn't sure, either, short of logging in to Dell and looking at the computer's specs there (they remember the computers they sell you, and know what is on them).

I finally found something on paper for the computer that made me think there is no separate sound card; that the sound is integrated on the mother board.

Ok, fine, that only took 15-20 min. Now let's proceed..............

To make a long story short, you proceed to download the program, and then you have to disconnect from the internet and de-install any previous virus protection (which is why you have to be disconnected from the internet..........). Then you have to run the installer as "administrator."

The directions were to right-click on the virus-protection installer's icon on the desktop, and choose "run as" and select a user with admin privileges.

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

Hah!

All our users are set up as administrator (computers behind router which refuses contact initiated from outside), but the program Will Not Run. The error you get is on the order of "failure to open zip file; bad file header."

Oh good.

NOW WHAT???????????????????

It seems imperative to have another computer, so one can look at faqs and use google, and .....................

Because this one surely should not be used on the net while it is totally unprotected.............

I disconnected it from the net by unplugging the cable from the modem.

So. Now I disconnect it from the net by unplugging it from the router, and plug the modem back into the net so I can use the other computer.

I go in the other room, and boot up the older computer, which has developed Issues.

For years it has thought it has hardware that it can't recognize, and every time you boot it up, it asks you if you want to go find drivers for this phantom hardware.

For years you have said "no," "no" and it has gone forward.

Lately it has gotten much more upset about this missing phantom hardware, and will bluescreen (requiring being turned off and turned back on again)..............

Yesterday it didn't bluescreen, but told me solemnly that it had recovered from a Very Serious Error.

Fine, ok, whatever.

At this point I don't know that the "failure to open zip file" error message means that it thinks I don't have administrator privileges.

(Digression on error messages. "Something is wrong" error messages suck. But lying error messages are worse. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.............. End of digression.)

So I'm thinking from the error message that I need to do the download again, so I download the file to the older computer (did I mention that it's a big file and takes 10 minutes to download?). I come back to the study, unplug the modem from the net, plug the newer computer back into the router (so our two computers can talk to each other but neither can talk to the net), and the newer computer refuses to see the older one.

Argh!

Ok, I can take a blank cd in the other room and burn the virus protection onto the cd.

Fine.

So then in the process of trying to open the cd drive on the older computer (which is on the floor and all black), I push the "off" button instead of the "open the drive" button, and it turns off.

ARGH.

You'll recall this is the one that is likely to bluescreen when turned on...........

Feh.

Well, it takes its usual own sweet time to come up, but doesn't bluescreen.

Then I try seeing the study computer from that one, and I can. So instead of sucking the file onto the study computer, I push it there from the old computer.

OK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But the virus-protection installer still won't #($)&^ well work. Same error.

I pull the new computer's cable from the router, plug the modem back into the net, and go hunt through the faq at the U. I discover that "failure to open zip file" actually means "this user doesn't have administrator privileges." It doesn't mean there's something wrong with the file at all. (booo, hiss, badddd error message!!!)

Oy.

Even I am growing weary of this story, so I'll cut short the tale of trying to find the administrator password. There probably IS NO ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD as you are not required to set one when you set up your computer..................

And my better half is off playing bridge so I can't ask him................

I write a frustrated message to the guys at the U who are in charge of this, and give up.

Later, after the bridge player returned home, triumphant, we tried double-clicking on the virus-protection icon, which is the standard way to get something on the desktop to run.

It worked.

It installed, it ran, it only found one issue (in a game, how rude! a game purchased on cd, no less!).

I *knew* I didn't want to deal with that whole virus-protection thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The guy at the U actually answered my email last night, amazingly enough, but what he said wasn't very helpful. He said it was Bad for our regular users to be Administrator, and he reiterated that any user who was Administrator could use the program. I informed him that while he might be right about it being bad for us all to be admin, he was not right that any user with admin priv could run the program.........

Feh.

At least the computer seems to be working correctly, after all this...........

(Update 3:20 pm: More email from guy at U confirms that double-clicking on the icon will work just fine IFF you have admin privileges. Good. And -- I #($*(*^ well WISH I HAD KNOWN THAT YESTERDAY EVENING. Sigh!)


For the good news from yesterday, my better half and his team had a Very Good Day.

They were playing in a team event. Each team is two partnerships. The event was stratified, which means the organizers pay attention to how many bridge masterpoints the team members have, and try to set things up so that people play others of like skill level.

Yesterday they broke at 3000 points. About half the teams had under 3000 points between the teammates, and half had more.

Only.

Our heroes had the fewest masterpoints of teams in the top bracket, at 7000, and the team with the next lowest number of points had over 20,000! They were the only team between 20,000 and 3000!

Luckily it is handicapped, sort of, so that if you play a team with a lot more points than you, you get some help, but the handicapping system doesn't take into account this large a gap.

It was, however, enough to help our heroes into the top four! Their first match was against the team with a guy who is probably the best player in Michigan, and they beat that team! Then they played in the evening, against two more very good teams, and triumphed.

So they'll play again today.

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I haven't mentioned Wibber -- he worried me by shivering yesterday. It has been cold, here, but the house wasn't that cold...................... I did walk him around the block (mid-40s out) before I went to Health Service. He seemed ok. If you didn't know him, you'd think he was fine, but he wasn't as lively as last Sunday.......

He has seemed ok since. Let's hope that trend continues. I'm keeping a close eye on him.....................

I need to buy that boy a coat.



And -- just to reward you for getting this far, an actual picture!!!!!!!!!!!!

This little red leaf caught my eye just before I walked into my office building.

I put it on the keyboard, where I would notice it, off and on, all day (not in the middle of the keyboard; on the number pad, which I do not use).

Lots of people have been doing self-portraits, of various kinds, and I thought this could be one of mine, after a fashion. So I moved the leaf to the part of the keyboard I do use, for the time it took to take the pic.

Hey. This is the first time I noticed that there is a ... euro-sign on my keyboard. Cool.

Ok.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Self portrait.


I'm not fresh and green as once I was. Beaten up a bit. But still bright and too colorful for some.

And I spend a huge amount of time with a keyboard, doing one thing and another......



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