Our router seems to be acting erratically again. Last time the problem was the power supply, and I have a spare one to try now if necessary, though it's hard to believe this one would fail after just three months. (Then again, I said that about our car battery recently.)
It's fine at the moment, but in the past 12 hours has twice done strange things like allowing just one half of a telephone "conversation," or allowing e-mail to be received and sent but not allowing web access. To be on the safe side, I've set up the system to ring my cell phone if it doesn't establish contact via the regular phone.
Computers. You can't live with them, and...it's hard to remember that we once lived without them.I wrote earlier about our failing telephone system. We limped along for a week with all calls forwarded to one or the other of our cell phones. Actually, it wasn't much of a limp. It was slightly annoying not to be able to have more than one person on this end of a call, and since my cell phone has no "free" minutes (it's a prepaid plan), I was conscious of the cost of every call. But it wasn't that much, really. A definite plus was that the forwarding message, "please wait while we try to contact your party" effectively foiled all those robotic telemarketers!
Still, now that it's fixed (details follow), I'm glad not to be so tied to my cell phone. I said to Heather, "I feel like a teenager, carrying my cell phone in my pocket all the time," to which she replied, "You're not a teenager, Mom. You still jump every time it rings."
So, I'm sure you're all wondering: What was wrong, and how did we fix it? (More)If you try to call us in the next few days, please be patient. All calls are being forwarded to our cell phones, so it may take a little longer than usual to connect.
Our CallVantage Linksys router stopped working. Well, to be more accurate, the router still works, or I wouldn't be posting this. But the Telephone Adaptor part no longer functions. (More)To Whom It May Concern:
If you need to reach us, try the good ol' telephone, or leave a comment here. For some bizarre reason our e-mail is down, even though our general Internet service is working fine. I've only been able to get a few e-mails all day, and none at all in recent hours,
It appears to work for sending, though I don't really know that, either. I'll have to remember to check when it comes back up and see if what I sent was actually received.
"When it comes back up." Soon, I hope. But at present the technicians have no projected duration of the outage....So, Porter delves into the dark recesses of an accumulation of objects, lifts up an old keyboard, and shouts, "I see a mouse!"
Perfectly logical. Janet had discovered that not one but both of her computer's mice are malfunctioning, and I knew we had a spare one somewhere. Unfortunately, this was the wrong kind of mouse.
It was PS/2 instead of USB.
But at least we didn't have to figure out a way to trap it.When I have a problem, I'm always amazed at how often a simple Internet search will reveal other with the same problem and very often a solution. But sometimes not. The negative results fall into two catgories: either I'm having a genuinely rare difficulty, or I haven't found the right combination of search terms to narrow the results down to something relevant.
I don't know which was the case with our recent Firefox problem, but I couldn't find any help, so I'm posting this in case it might help someone else.
Invisible Firefox, Firefox opens invisbly, invisble window, can't maximize window, perpetually minimized window, can't see open application window. Maybe that's enough search terms, at least for someone who thinks as I do. (More)
A few months ago we added a Maxtor OneTouch 200G external hard drive to our system, which excited me greatly because it made backing up my files much easier. Then one day last week we heard a sudden "pop!" and...nothing. No recognition of the drive by the computer, no light on the drive, no light on the power supply. The last was actually good news, as it gave us hope that it was the power supply that had given out, rather than the drive itself with all our data. (More)
In addition to setting us up on the Lime Daley server, Jon upgraded our blog software version, so there are some changes. Probably the first thing you noticed is how much faster the pages load. Note also the nifty search box to the right, and the fact that posts can now be assigned more than one category. One downside of the fact that the new version uses caching: sometimes you will need to reload the page (reload, refresh, depending on what your browser calls it) to be sure you are seeing the most up to date posts.
The transition went amazingly smoothly, thanks to Jon's prompt and diligent efforts, but we're still working out some minor details as I get accustomed to the new system, so please let me know if you notice any problems.
So...Lift Up Your Hearts! is back in business—please feel free to post and comment once again.We can still access the Internet, except for getting our phone messages; we can't access the CallVantage site, which also tells me this is a major problem, and that it is AT&T's, not ours.
I'll post here when service is restored. In the meantime, I have my cell phone on, and you can post messages here (via comments) if need be.Most of the vistors have been from the United States, but others have come from Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Vietnam! I might be able to account for Italy, Hong Kong, and New Zealand as well as a few from the U.S., but who are the rest of you? How did you find my blog? Are you a one-time visitor, or do you check in regularly? What do you like, or not like? Please leave a comment and let me know. You don't have to identify yourself; just let me know you are a real person! I certainly hope that most of my "readers" aren't just robots.
What I'm really waiting for, however, is for Mozilla to bundle the two products and release them as the Firebird Suite. :)
