When Technology Fails

Saturday night both Dan and I were on our computers, on the internet, when WHAM, we weren't.  We are at the end of the cable line, our source for our high-speed internet (our only source due to the location of our house), so it happens occasionally.  Usually we wait a while and it comes back.  So we waited.  And finally went to bed.  We checked again in the morning before we went to church, but alas, no internet.  And none when we returned.  We were also without land-line service for our phone.  Thank goodness for our new phones!

It's amazing how often a need arises to check on something.  What is so and so up to on their blog?  What are the words to that song?  And where can I find the wooden plaque that stitcher used to frame her cross stitch (just what I was looking up when the internet went down)?

We tried rebooting our modem numerous times and after a phone call with Eric, we finally were moved to call our carrier.  I will say that Spectrum, our provider, has always been very helpful, and once again they were.  I spent considerable time with a real person who was patient as he asked us to try several different things.  Finally realizing that it was indeed the modem and that it had died, he set us up with an appointment the very next morning (Monday). Couldn't ask for better than that!

The technician arrived shortly before ten, installed the new modem, and was done before ten-thirty.  We were back in business!!  

Meanwhile, I'm deep into taking down all the remaining Christmas decorations.  Yes, I know it's January 26th.  I read a recent comment by a Norwegian lady who said her mother always kept her things up for twenty days after Christmas, and that her mother-in-law kept hers up until Candlemas (had to look that up), so I guess it's the Norwegian in me that keeps things up to long.  I've been vindicated!!

A New Computer

I'm typing this little post on my new computer on the dining room table.  The light from the chandelier above is bright and I feel like I'm under a spotlight.  Both literally and figuratively.  Getting a new computer up and running is fraught with peril!  My old one was having trouble connecting to the internet and making me crazy. Would it work or wouldn't it?  Ah, that was the question! I conferred with Eric, my amazing son-in-law and computer tech, and he said it was probably a hardware problem and that I should be looking for a new computer.  Arghhh!!!

I vacillated and probably would have put the whole process off until too late, but Ann called yesterday noon and said they were heading to Costco and would I like to come along and look at computers.  The thought of being able to actually look at computers with Eric by my side was too good to resist so Dan and I agreed to go. And bought.  And here I am, typing away on my new Dell Inspiron.  So far (20 minutes in), I'm liking it. The keypads are spaced further apart like my old Toshiba and I'm so glad.  The ones on the HP I'm replacing were close together and drove me crazy.  (Notice how often that computer made me crazy?  It really was time for it to go.)

There is much work ahead of me to get email, printers, etc., up and running from this computer, and I'm sure Eric will have to come to my rescue, but at least I figured out how to get to my blog!! ♥

Coming to You Live From...

my new computer!  Yes friends, my trusty old faithful with the baked-in-the-oven motherboard started to fail me again last week.  As the week unfolded, I found I could only connect to the internet intermittently, it wouldn't shut down at night (but not every night!), and one day the keyboard wouldn't work until I rebooted it. It appeared that the time had come to buy a new computer and so on Friday, we did just that. I took the plunge and got one with a touch screen.  Time will tell if that was a good idea or not; right now it's kinda fun.  

So far I've managed to install Microsoft Office and download and install Chrome and iTunes.  We've pulled much of the content of my old computer onto an external drive but I've yet to deal with all that.  I was thrilled that adding our printers was a piece of cake though!  In the past it's usually been a long and hard-fought struggle and I was prepared for another one today so I'm very thankful.  

Here's my new baby in all its Windows 8.1 touchscreen glory:

Meanwhile, down in the sewing room, I finished the appliqued table runner.  The border is a mass of pieces, but it all came together pretty well in the end.  I just quilted around the applique and stitched in the ditch to quilt the border.  

I used my Bernina 830's buttonhole stitch (stitch #1329) to applique the center pieces.  I should have pressed it before I took the pictures, but . . .  Oh well!

Now that I'm back in my sewing room, I'm anxious to start another project!  ♥ 

Computers

Back in the day, I took typing in high school. Of course, this was in the last century, and our typewriters were huge, manual monsters, requiring strong fingers.  It proved difficult to press hard and at the same time to type quickly.  Speed was never my forte.  There was one electric typewriter in the classroom and we all had to take a turn at it.  Oh my!  You barely touched a key and bang! it typed.  Scary for certain.  

When I was a Senior in high school, I started working at our local doctor's office, at first just filing charts.  As time went on, I was able to learn the different jobs: receptionist, insurance billing, typing in patients charts using comments the doctor would dictate into a dictaphone.  All the typewriters were electric, so I quickly learned to use them.  No longer scary, they were amazing with their plastic ribbons that created crisp letters.  And no more hanging capital letters, the bane of typists who didn't press hard enough on the shift key.

Fast forward to the mid eighties when Dan began to regale me with tales of an awesome machine called a word processor which the secretaries at his work used.  He said I'd love them!  I couldn't even fathom such machines.  Then I went to work for the school district as an aide for the gifted and talented department and part of my job entailed using word processing and spreadsheet programs on a little Apple computer.  It was out of the frying pan and into the fire, but as I learned the in's and out's, I was amazed at what I could do. Soon I was convinced that we need a computer at home, and so we purchased an Apple clone and the whole family was off and running.  Several years later, we upgraded to a PC and we've never looked back.

A month or so before I retired, Dan presented me with my very own laptop.  He had a laptop for his consulting business and we had a desktop in the basement, but this would be my very own toy--I could put all my machine embroidery software on it, haul it to my sewing room, or use it upstairs.  I've loved my personal "baby" for almost five years, so last Saturday when it went into a coma and then died, it was a sad day for me.  Fortunately son-in-law Eric is always willing to be our computer tech, so I put my baby into my briefcase and took it to him on Sunday for a final diagnosis.  He checked it over and was pretty sure it had died.  

Monday, Dan and I set out to look for a new computer. In five years, computers have changed a lot. My baby ran on Windows Vista, and while many have cursed that version, I always got along fine with it.  Now, it's Windows 8.1 and touch screens.  Oh. My. Goodness.  To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. However, after several stores and finally finding a sales person at one store whom we knew, we felt we were getting a handle on the search.  One big issue for me is my embroidery software which is a few years old and only lists Vista and Windows 7 as compatible operating systems.  I was relieved to hear that most likely any program that could run on 7 would also run on 8.  The touchscreen was kind of alluring, so having to get a new computer wasn't looking quite as dismal as it had.

Then, Tuesday evening, after nine, our phone rang and it was Eric.  He said he and grandson Keaton (age 11) had taken my whole computer apart, had searched the internet for possible solutions, had found an unlikely one, tried it, and . . . my baby, when they'd reassembled it, had started up!  They'd previously removed my hard drive and given it to me so I could put my files on a new computer, so Dan and I decided we had to take it back over, plug it in, and see if indeed my baby was alive and well.  We hopped into the truck, drove to Ann and Eric's, handed over the drive and waited while they installed it. YES!!  We had success!!

And what, you ask, was the unlikely solution to the problem?  A suggestion on the internet was that there could be a soldering problem with the motherboard and the solution was to bake it at 390 degrees for ten minutes.  Yes, you read correctly:  bake the motherboard.  So they did, and it worked.  This blog post is being typed on my baby and I'm thrilled to have it back home where it belongs.  

The above picture was taken this afternoon.  ♥