| Thursday,
May 1, 2008 11:30 AM
It's a complex situation. Last night I crashed after dinner, having spent
most of the day in bed. It wasn't a terrible night, but it wasn't that bad.
I am expecting a delivery this morning -- between 9 and 1 they said and they
wouldn't narrow it down more -- so I went downstairs with the ThinkPad t42,
which connects to the wireless network from there, having moved all the PST
files from this machine -- Alexis the communications machine -- over to
Orlando the T42.
All was well until I clicked on a link. At that point Firefox went insane
and insisted on updating itself before it would open. It gave me no choices
about just shutting it down. The screen went blank for a long time.
Eventually I did a power cycle. The system came up, sort of, and suddenly
Adobe insisted on updating Acrobat. More blank screens. Eventually I
brought the machine upstairs so it could connect to the Ethernet in case the
big problem is that it's too slow downloading updates on Wi-Fi, but so far
after a reset, the system comes up, I log in, and there's a blank screen.
The problem is that I can't get email. I am hesitant to give out my MAC
email address because it will get flooded with mail and I don't have much of
a way to handle mail there. What I need is a way to start up the ThinkPad
t-42p in SAFE MODE so that I can remove both Firefox and Adobe Acrobat
Reader entirely from the system. Then once I get the machine back up I can
reinstall the Adobe reader -- I think I will -- and contemplate whether
Firefox, which always insists on installing updates when it is the default
browser, will ever be installed on any Wi-Fi machine again. I really hate
both programs.
The t42p doesn't seem to respond to f8 on startup and I don't seem to be
able to get it into safe mode, I don't really want to open Outlook on this
machine because there will be a considerable pile of mail over on Orlando
that will be lost forever if I do unless I can get to Orlando and open
outlook over there first and copy the pst files --
This is a potential minor disaster, and I don't quite know what to do
about it. I sure wish I knew how to get in to safe mode on the IBM. I'll go
see if there's anything on the Internet.
AARGH. What I am learning is what I thought: hit f8 at just the right
time. If you miss, you have to power cycle again. AARGH. But in fact I got
it into Safe Mode, and that hasn't helped. It's still trundling with a blank
screen.
Meanwhile the delivery came so I don't have to wait for that. Now all I
have to do is get teh t42 running again. At least enough to let me get the
outlook.pst file off it... If I could just get to task manager I could shut
down the errant processes, but I don't seem to be able to do that. I need to
boot into safe mode with step function I guess. This is egregious.
Well, I find I can network to Orlando. Apparently he's working but doing
something goofy. So I can copy the Outlook.pst file over, and get Outlook
running over here. Amazing.
And that all worked. So I am back on line with Outlook while Orlando
continues to trundle. This is amazing, but it makes me wonder if Adobe
Acrobat and Mozilla Firefox are safe to have on a machine. Any program that
forces updates in the middle of something else is not a very good program to
have.
I have a full schedule today. I have to change set-top boxes, get to the
Kaiser labs to give a blood sample so they can be sure my kidneys are
working well enough to handle the dye markers for my MRI tomorrow, and get a
bunch of other stuff going.
It is now 1245 and I need to get to work.
==============
1700:
I had a day but all is well. I had to wait for the delivery of a Samsung
42" HDTV, which came at 1130. Once again, a consulting firm was interested
in what I would do with an Apple TV box and HDTV; I didn't have to pay for
this. My wife is happy about it -- she was telling me it was time to get a
larger TV than the 32" normal definition TV which was the best we have. Of
course he major purpose is the NBA playoffs. She's a big Lakers fan.
To the extent that I watch much professional sports that's my favorite
too, although I sometimes like football; I played guard in 8th grade, which
was odd because being 2 years younger than my classmates I should have been
smaller. I wasn't all that bad, but when I got to High School the 2 year age
difference was decisive: I got to go out for boxing. I wasn't all that bad
at it either.
Anyway we now have HDTV downstairs and I am about to connect up the Apple
TV Box and look into doing HD podcasts which I can edit with the iMac or Mac
Book Pro and apparently there is a way to "publish" them using the Apple TV
box. There are also rentals, and downloads, and lots of stuff. We are
getting a 1 GB Ethernet line into the room where the TV is, but until then
it will work with WiFi.
Never had any experience with HDTV before so this should be interesting,
and the project is to see how well it all integrates with the rest of Apple
and the MAC OS. I must say it's an interesting experiment.
I also had to get a blood sample drawn since tomorrow I get my MRI (in
late afternoon) and they are going to give me some kind of dye marker, so
they need to be sure my kidneys can handle the dyes. I had to do this before
and it was no problem so I don't suppose there will be one now.
So tomorrow they get a picture and I have an appointment with the
oncologist next week to see how it all looks. Wish me luck.
So it was an interesting day, and considering that I spent yesterday in
bed, an active day wasn't something I expected, but I feel great, and all's
well. Tomorrow I have a lunch appointment, then the MRI. That will be a busy
day.
I see am rambling. Thanks again to all those who subscribed or renewed.
Took the sting right out of not getting much done last week. I'm not used to
long periods of not producing much...
=============
Jerry,
I was reading your Current View, and wanted to let you
know that you can turn off the automatic updates in Firefox:
Tools - Options - Advanced
Click the upgrade tab, and you can either turn off the
automatic checking for updates, or have Firefox ask you what you want to do.
Bill Anderson
Thanks to many of you who told me this. Now if I can just make Orlando
boot to where I can get task manager working...
If necessary I may have to scrub to bare metal and restart? But I hope
not.
What happens is that he boots up, I log in, and get a blank screen that
stays that way forever. I can network to him, but I can't ever get him to
respond to anything. He's apparently trying to update something. I'll fool
around with booting into safe mode and see if that helps, but what I really
need is to get him to respond well enough to let me kill some apps...
There's mail on the economy, the Marching Morons, and hydroponics and
energy over in Mail
today.
============
Well the news on Orlando is both good and bad. It seems I can sort of see
that things are happening on screen. The problem is they are so dim I can't
see them. Orlando is a ThinkPad t42p running XP. There must be a way
to brighten the screen because the IBM splash screen and the first Microsoft
splash screen are at full brightness; then it goes dim. XP is up and running
but at a level so dim I can barely see that it's on at all.
I still have hopes but I can't figure out what to do. Help? Please:
for a few hours, if you don't know what is going on, please don't send me
speculations. If I don't get some help from those familiar with this model
of ThinkPad, then I'll invite speculation, but for them moment, let's hear
from those who actually know what's happening. But hold off--
The system boots, and it shows a screen, but it's so dim I can't see
what's on it. I can't see where the cursor is, and I can't read the
displays: they are very dim. It turns 0ut that taking it into a dark room
makes them invisible.
Playing with fn F3 will get me a screen, but it won't last. I am still
fooling with this, but at least the system is almost working. I'll keep
trying. This is weird.
It keeps showing me a screen, then it vanishes. I hit fn f3 a couple of
times and it comes back. I kept fooling with settings and resolutions and
advanced settings and God knows what else, and one of my foolings around
seems to have fixed things. I do not know how that worked or what I did. But
the t42p is now working. I have no idea how I managed that.
If there's a t42p expert out there I would like to know what I did wrong,
and what I did right, and what to do if all this happens again...
=================
HDTV is spectacular. I am sure those who have it already know that. I
haven't yet installed the Apple TV box that allows all kind of interesting
interactions with HDTV. That comes next week. Not tomorrow: tomorrow is a
pretty full day with a lunch appointment and then the MRI in the afternoon.
It should be an interesting day. Meanwhile, I haven't had the urge to throw
myself in bed and pass out, so it has been a good day and much got done.
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