Editors are humans too …

Oh dear. Is Mercury retrograde? It must be.

Yet again my (new, 2 month old) computer is cactus.

There is a large hole in the clutter that usually fills my office – it is approximately computer shaped.

This isn’t good. I believe I am losing my mind.

I have had the hard drive reformatted and the RAM replaced but was still being haunted by the dreaded blue screens of death.

Argh!

It has now been abducted by techie-like people who muttered something about motherboards. I too was using the word ‘mother’, but in a slightly different context…

In the meantime, I was given a far too brief opportunity to visit my website and discovered two MASSIVE, GLARING, HIGHLY-EMBARRASSING errors. Hopefully they are fixed now.

One of my headings was misspelled and another didn’t actually match the content it headed.

So much for attention to detail.

Hopefully, the hardware in question will return to me this afternoon and I can try to return to something like normality.

I’m planning on putting up a page dedicated to the use of capital letters as that is the query that seems to be leading most people to my page in the first place.

Never let it be said that I don’t recognise popular demand!

Stay tuned also for a more informative “About us” page. I’ve now got the mandatory photo in my hot little thumb drive and should figure out how to publish it to the web fairly soon. This will mean that the content needs to be updated … natch.

I’m also planning on changing the look of this site to match that of my website: www.capital-letters.com.au

I’m thinking of taking up snail watching, it requires no equipment of any technological description and is outside in the fresh air.

Yours in early nervous breakdown,

S.

Techno-babble

Well, I guess I should write something today, but I’m not really keen to do so.

You see … that means I have to look at my computer … some more.

I’ve done far too much of that in the last week and none of it was really productive.

My ‘puter has been plagued with blue screen of death (BSOD) errors and sudden shutdowns. I’m talking about ten to 15 a day.

It’s all been a tad frustrating – especially so given that the machine is less than 2 months old.

However, I have got to know some really nice tech support people in India. I’ve also eaten far too much chocolate and ice-cream – but that’s another blog entry I think.

I’ve not done much that was productive at all; merely sat and stared and pressed buttons in response to telephone commands.

It’s got me thinking about how language can simply cause things to be much worse than they have to be. If you don’t understand what a term means, then it can lead to all kinds of grim fears.

What is an IRQL and does it really matter that it is not less or equal?

Where is my PFN list that it has become corrupt? Zimbabwe? Joh’s Queensland? Can it be rehabilitated?

Memory management is understandable, but the errors are scrambling my brain and causing dementia like side-effects on the resident human.

ARGH!

Why can’t BSOD errors be in English instead of gibberish?

Why don’t they simply read, “Your RAM is stuffed, mate.”

Or, “The webcam is giving me indigestion.”

Perhaps, “Abandon all hope of ever printing again.”

Instead, we are shown reams of code for periods of mere seconds during which we are supposed to read it, write it down and prepare to reel it off for the poor tech support person at the other end of the line.

I’m tired. I’ve reformatted my hard drive and restored a few programs and the blue screens have returned. There is some sense of stability though – they’re still all in techno-babble.

ttfn from your square-eyed friend,

S.