Computer virus issues, a 4 week long sinus cold, and a host of other problems have pulled me to the edge this month. I was having issues with installing Adobe CS3 (even after ridding my system of the over 800 infected files from the current round of internet virus') and discovered there was an error in the registry that was creating the software install problem. At this point my computer is working fine as I managed to clear it of the virus' using a free Malware removal program, but I just can't seem to get Adobe CS3 to install properly. The error was in the MsiExec.exe file in System32 and the fix for it (from Micosoft.com) was to re-register that file. So I go thru the step by step instructions from Microsoft, and it tells me I have to run the re-registry in safe mode. So I reboot and try to get the computer to start in safe mode using the F8 key, but it won't bring up the screen option, only the boot drives options (floppy, DVD, etc). So I go back to the instructions and it offers a second option to go and run MSCONFIG and set it to boot in safe mode from there. I go there, do that, then reboot the computer as the instructions suggest. Only problem now is that it just keeps rebooting all by itself, over and over again. No matter which option I chose from the safe mode options list or the start windows normally option, it just keeps doing the same thing - rebooting repeatedly.
So I go frantically searching my desk for the Windows CD and eventually find it between two pieces of paper on my paper tray. I throw the CD in and think that if I boot from the CD I'll get past the rebooting issue and be able to start windows normally....no go. (surprise, surprise, surprise). My only option at this point was to reinstall Windows, but it won't accept my C drive partition, stating that it is either full or misconfigured. I know it's not full because I emptied a whack of my important files a few days back to my portable drive. The only option it would give me at this point was to reformat C drive, which is what it is doing now. Anything that was left on my C drive is now toast - all my emails, my contact lists & several photoshop style software programs I bought online that I don't have discs for - worth roughly 500.00 I figure. And with all my emails gone, so are my copies of the purchases and the passcodes & the download links to use those programs (I couldn't back up those files to my external drive because it was full from the drive back up I did two days ago, and then forgot about the emails back up). Hopefully I can find a few of the paper reciepts I printed up for these programs.
To add insult to injury, the Windows CD has now gone thru the process of reformatting my C drive to reinstall Windows, but that too has now failed and as I look behind me from my husband's computer where I'm typing this message, all I can see is a solid blue screen, and a faint flicker - like a weak heartbeat from a dying bird. I don't know weather to laugh, cry or shit the chair my sorry ass is parked in.
I would like to have the entire month of May 2009 striken from my memory banks, because:
1) I only learned one thing during this entire process (starting with the virus issues) - Microsoft desktop computer systems are shit;
2) I am now 8 business days into this issue, which is still unresolved, & out an additional $100.00 worth in useless spyware, anti-virus, and registry repair products that did nothing but create more issues than solve, but found a free Malware removal that did the trick;
3) I have lost 2 weeks worth of productivity that I will never get back, have 6 videos still waiting to be edited and uploaded to Youtube and no functioning software to work with;
4) I believe somebody has put a curse on me - there is no other possible explanation for what I've had to go thru this month. Technically, I don't have a right to complain because my worst day is still 100% better than 90% of the world populations best days - but I'm bitching about it anyway because I can.
I only have one question at this point. Is it just me, or have all Microsoft users become raging alcholics? The correct reply here is, "I'll drink to that".
How many times have you had someone pull a fast one on you? Most people pick the standard April Fool's Day to pull stunts on others, but there are the odd characters who enjoy pulling pranks whenever they can.
I've had the luxury of pulling a few fast one's on people before, and the best one to-date is the stunt I pulled on my cousin Karen a few years back. She had been talking for a while about how much she'd like to have a hot tub in her back yard, and I go so tired of hearing about it I had to do something. Karen is one of those people who will do virtually anything to get something for free, and for her this would have been the deal of the century, so I decided to set her up by getting a good friend to call her and pretend they were from a local radio station that was giving a way a $15,000.00 hot tub as a promo for a local hot tub distributor/advertiser. She fell for it hook line and sinker. We told her that her name had been entered by her husband in a ballot draw at the local mall and all she had to do was answer a music history question and the hot tub was hers. You could hear the panic in her voice as we posed this question:
What year did Micheal Jackson purchase the rights to the Beatle's catalog?
Well, you could have heard a pin drop - the silence on the phone was deafening. She finally spoke with a cry in her voice claiming that she had no idea and there was nobody at home to even help her out with the answer. She struggled for the longest time to come up with the correct year, but knew so little of music history that all she could do was guess. Of course, no matter what answer she gave, it was going to be a wrong one because we didn't know the answer either!
To this day, I still feel bad for doing this to her, but frankly not many people have pulled pranks like this and gotten away with it, so in a sadistic sort of way I feel quite proud of myself. The trick is to cover all your tracks, practice it a few times, and be prepared for anything to go wrong. Lucky for me I was forgiven and a good laugh was shared. This puts me into the category of ME.AZ.OL.
But alas, I am not immune to being had by others from time to time.
I've had the luxury of pulling a few fast one's on people before, and the best one to-date is the stunt I pulled on my cousin Karen a few years back. She had been talking for a while about how much she'd like to have a hot tub in her back yard, and I go so tired of hearing about it I had to do something. Karen is one of those people who will do virtually anything to get something for free, and for her this would have been the deal of the century, so I decided to set her up by getting a good friend to call her and pretend they were from a local radio station that was giving a way a $15,000.00 hot tub as a promo for a local hot tub distributor/advertiser. She fell for it hook line and sinker. We told her that her name had been entered by her husband in a ballot draw at the local mall and all she had to do was answer a music history question and the hot tub was hers. You could hear the panic in her voice as we posed this question:
What year did Micheal Jackson purchase the rights to the Beatle's catalog?
Well, you could have heard a pin drop - the silence on the phone was deafening. She finally spoke with a cry in her voice claiming that she had no idea and there was nobody at home to even help her out with the answer. She struggled for the longest time to come up with the correct year, but knew so little of music history that all she could do was guess. Of course, no matter what answer she gave, it was going to be a wrong one because we didn't know the answer either!
To this day, I still feel bad for doing this to her, but frankly not many people have pulled pranks like this and gotten away with it, so in a sadistic sort of way I feel quite proud of myself. The trick is to cover all your tracks, practice it a few times, and be prepared for anything to go wrong. Lucky for me I was forgiven and a good laugh was shared. This puts me into the category of ME.AZ.OL.
But alas, I am not immune to being had by others from time to time.
Sometimes when we are out walking we overhear the odd conversation from people we pass by. The other day I was walking along Manitoba St. at Broadway where there are a number of bicycle & sporting goods stores. It's kind of a funky little neighbourhood; lots of interesting shops, heritage homes and community gardens which remind me a bit of San Francisco's suburbs.
As I passed two women talking about bicylces, one gal says in a very Valley Girl style accent, "I like totally love to ride around the Seawall at Stanley Park with a bottle of wine".
My mind instantly wandered in this direction: I don't know about anybody else but if I downed a bottle wine, I'm not so sure riding a bicycle would be such a good plan. And then I wondered if being soused on wine while riding a bike would be classified as drinking and driving. You may not kill anyone, but you'll definitely up the chances of killing yourself. Helmut therefore renedered useless.
I envisioned a reinactment of Peewee Herman laughing and waving at people while freestyle ridding in a random wavy pattern along a busy main street, ringing his bell, then haphazardly ramming into the backside of a parked car and tossing himself over the roof of it. Peewee never had a helmut on in any of his films.
Ok, so maybe that's an exaggeration, but Vancouver isn't Amsterdam and even in Stanley Park it's not easy to get around on a bicycle without having your full wits about you. For most, walking while soused on said bottle of wine is difficult enough (present company included).
So, did I get the crux of the conversation as I passed by, or did I take with me a snippet of a much larger one and then let my imagination fill in the blanks? It doesn't actually matter either way as I got what I needed from it and entertained myself while enjoying the spring air and that funky little neighbourhood. Like, totally! Ha Ha Ha!
P.S. Remember this scene..."Tequilla!"
As I passed two women talking about bicylces, one gal says in a very Valley Girl style accent, "I like totally love to ride around the Seawall at Stanley Park with a bottle of wine".
My mind instantly wandered in this direction: I don't know about anybody else but if I downed a bottle wine, I'm not so sure riding a bicycle would be such a good plan. And then I wondered if being soused on wine while riding a bike would be classified as drinking and driving. You may not kill anyone, but you'll definitely up the chances of killing yourself. Helmut therefore renedered useless.
I envisioned a reinactment of Peewee Herman laughing and waving at people while freestyle ridding in a random wavy pattern along a busy main street, ringing his bell, then haphazardly ramming into the backside of a parked car and tossing himself over the roof of it. Peewee never had a helmut on in any of his films.
Ok, so maybe that's an exaggeration, but Vancouver isn't Amsterdam and even in Stanley Park it's not easy to get around on a bicycle without having your full wits about you. For most, walking while soused on said bottle of wine is difficult enough (present company included).
So, did I get the crux of the conversation as I passed by, or did I take with me a snippet of a much larger one and then let my imagination fill in the blanks? It doesn't actually matter either way as I got what I needed from it and entertained myself while enjoying the spring air and that funky little neighbourhood. Like, totally! Ha Ha Ha!
P.S. Remember this scene..."Tequilla!"
...or why a six letter word could quite possibly be more offensive than that four letter one.
Addictions…we’ve all got them in one way, shape or form. One of my many obsessive compulsions include photo sharing sites. I wondered if I was among few or many with the same problem. I decided to poll my cyber community pals from various photo sites to see just how many of them considered themselves as “addicted” as I do. Not surprisingly, I confirmed I’m not alone. What did surprise me however was their willingness to purge their statistics on the number of sites they were members of, how many hours they spent per day online, and if they had ever used the evil word addiction to describe their online habits. One of my dear online friends often jokingly quips, “I’m not addicted, I’m not addicted, I’m not addicted”, yet freely confesses that once she’s online the hours pass her by like minutes. Yup, been there, done that, bought the membership.
So before I divulge the poll stats, lets examine the words addiction and compulsion, relative to my own confession.
Wikipedia describes addiction/compulsion in this way:
The term addiction is also sometimes applied to compulsions that are not substance-related, such as problem gambling and computer addiction. In these kinds of common usages, the term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user himself to his or her individual health, mental state or social life.
Oh, there’s the word I was looking for, “social life”. That’s the kicker right there folks. Unbenounced to all those whom walk in my shoes, most feel they have an amazing social life because they have hundreds of friends online. Sadly, it’s kind of like when we were kids and had make believe friends who entertained our little minds when we were bored or lonely. Which reminds me of yet another word often used to explain why so many become addicted to their cyber friends and mistake this connection for a real “social life”…the word is l-o-n-e-l-y. Lonely? Who me? Are you fracking kidding me? That’s such a sad little word. Six shrinking violet coloured letters short and not the least bit friendly. Suddenly I feel like bursting into tears and wailing a country song between self indulgent sobs. Where did I put that Kleenex box anyway?
Enough with all the nasty negativity. Let’s focus on the top 5 positive points of online addictions:
1) People don’t have to see you to like you, OR know you to enjoy your images
2) You can socialize in your pajamas, underwear, or in your birthday suit and nobody knows but you (and your Peeping Tom neighbour)
3) If you’re talented with Photoshop, you can make any picture of yourself look Brad Pitt handsome or Paris Hilton hhhhot
4) You can make up super cool names for yourself and have a different super cool name for every site you’re a member of (wasn’t grade 5 fun!)
5) Your friends are from all over this big beautiful photogenic world, so even if you’re up at 2:00 AM on a Wednesday in Canada, you know at least one of your photog peeps is awake at a legitimate hour in Australia! You are never alone.
That’s a pretty impressive list of reasons to build your very own cyber fan club! You know the kind…where you get loads of perfect strangers hooking up with your home page, sending you sweet props on your camera skills (don’t you just love the lingo in cyberspace? LOL). But I must digress, as this brings me back to my addiction to online photo-sharing sites and why I had to use that offensive little, purple shaded, adjective, lonely.
How many of us have shared this conversation?:
Husband: “We’ll, I’m off to bed dear”.
Wife: “Ok, I’m right behind you. I’m just going to check one thing on my RedBubble account and I’ll be up in a few minutes”.
Login Time: 11:40 PM
Logout Time: 2:25 AM
What I missed: Rougly two hours of loud snoring and a couple of pungent farts (our two dogs sleep in our bedroom).
What happens is this; even if you are in a relationship, and you’ve unceremoniously become addicted to online site memberships, you’ve now unintentinally made your significant other lonely. To coin another cyber phrase, an internet widow. So there you have it. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly parts of online addictions (giddy-up)…or to be wikipedically correct, online compulsions.
To sum it all up, here are the official stats I acquired from my faithful, wonderful, amazingly talented, charming & gorgeous photographer friends:
Average number of active photo sharing site memberships: 3.33 sites
Average number of hours spent online on photo sharing sites: 20 hours (holy crap)
Percentage of respondants whom considered themselves “addicted”: 100%
The confession blog comment box is now open. Feel free to purge your online compulsive sins, breath deep, do a yoga pose or two, then get back online because you and I both know your memory card is full!
Cheers, Sandra
P.S. Thank you to all those who participated! YOU ROCK!
Addictions…we’ve all got them in one way, shape or form. One of my many obsessive compulsions include photo sharing sites. I wondered if I was among few or many with the same problem. I decided to poll my cyber community pals from various photo sites to see just how many of them considered themselves as “addicted” as I do. Not surprisingly, I confirmed I’m not alone. What did surprise me however was their willingness to purge their statistics on the number of sites they were members of, how many hours they spent per day online, and if they had ever used the evil word addiction to describe their online habits. One of my dear online friends often jokingly quips, “I’m not addicted, I’m not addicted, I’m not addicted”, yet freely confesses that once she’s online the hours pass her by like minutes. Yup, been there, done that, bought the membership.
So before I divulge the poll stats, lets examine the words addiction and compulsion, relative to my own confession.
Wikipedia describes addiction/compulsion in this way:
The term addiction is also sometimes applied to compulsions that are not substance-related, such as problem gambling and computer addiction. In these kinds of common usages, the term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user himself to his or her individual health, mental state or social life.
Oh, there’s the word I was looking for, “social life”. That’s the kicker right there folks. Unbenounced to all those whom walk in my shoes, most feel they have an amazing social life because they have hundreds of friends online. Sadly, it’s kind of like when we were kids and had make believe friends who entertained our little minds when we were bored or lonely. Which reminds me of yet another word often used to explain why so many become addicted to their cyber friends and mistake this connection for a real “social life”…the word is l-o-n-e-l-y. Lonely? Who me? Are you fracking kidding me? That’s such a sad little word. Six shrinking violet coloured letters short and not the least bit friendly. Suddenly I feel like bursting into tears and wailing a country song between self indulgent sobs. Where did I put that Kleenex box anyway?
Enough with all the nasty negativity. Let’s focus on the top 5 positive points of online addictions:
1) People don’t have to see you to like you, OR know you to enjoy your images
2) You can socialize in your pajamas, underwear, or in your birthday suit and nobody knows but you (and your Peeping Tom neighbour)
3) If you’re talented with Photoshop, you can make any picture of yourself look Brad Pitt handsome or Paris Hilton hhhhot
4) You can make up super cool names for yourself and have a different super cool name for every site you’re a member of (wasn’t grade 5 fun!)
5) Your friends are from all over this big beautiful photogenic world, so even if you’re up at 2:00 AM on a Wednesday in Canada, you know at least one of your photog peeps is awake at a legitimate hour in Australia! You are never alone.
That’s a pretty impressive list of reasons to build your very own cyber fan club! You know the kind…where you get loads of perfect strangers hooking up with your home page, sending you sweet props on your camera skills (don’t you just love the lingo in cyberspace? LOL). But I must digress, as this brings me back to my addiction to online photo-sharing sites and why I had to use that offensive little, purple shaded, adjective, lonely.
How many of us have shared this conversation?:
Husband: “We’ll, I’m off to bed dear”.
Wife: “Ok, I’m right behind you. I’m just going to check one thing on my RedBubble account and I’ll be up in a few minutes”.
Login Time: 11:40 PM
Logout Time: 2:25 AM
What I missed: Rougly two hours of loud snoring and a couple of pungent farts (our two dogs sleep in our bedroom).
What happens is this; even if you are in a relationship, and you’ve unceremoniously become addicted to online site memberships, you’ve now unintentinally made your significant other lonely. To coin another cyber phrase, an internet widow. So there you have it. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly parts of online addictions (giddy-up)…or to be wikipedically correct, online compulsions.
To sum it all up, here are the official stats I acquired from my faithful, wonderful, amazingly talented, charming & gorgeous photographer friends:
Average number of active photo sharing site memberships: 3.33 sites
Average number of hours spent online on photo sharing sites: 20 hours (holy crap)
Percentage of respondants whom considered themselves “addicted”: 100%
The confession blog comment box is now open. Feel free to purge your online compulsive sins, breath deep, do a yoga pose or two, then get back online because you and I both know your memory card is full!
Cheers, Sandra
P.S. Thank you to all those who participated! YOU ROCK!
