Tag: computer crash

bitmo Tech update

Updates to my Technical Madness and the Writing Muse

Published on by 62 Comments

Well, it’s been an interesting week. After 2 weeks ago’s fiasco with my  burning through two laptops in one week and working on an old desktop clunker, I was elated to receive my new laptop a week earlier than promised! Woohoo! I’m on it now and what a wonderful feeling to be able to open a new page in lightning speed, rather than having to steam while waiting and wasting precious minutes for each new tab to open.

 

I’m so grateful for my new laptop, but it’s far from easy sailing yet. As we all know, setting up a new computer is like setting up the interior of our homes once we’ve newly moved in, and of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t create my own problems.

I made the HUGE mistake of loading my Dropbox onto the new machine before downloading my old computer’s files on with my backup disk. After downloading everything, there were 1000s of photos and files RE-downloaded into Dropbox where my storage space is very sacred. Let me tell you how NOT Fun it’s been spending my entire weekend doing delete, delete, delete as I went through every single file – worse than cleaning, even vacuuming!

Because the duplicate files weren’t enough in Dropbox, I found them in my documents, photos, even download files, taking up valuable storage space. OYE! What a mess! From the crash to setup, it’s been a royal nightmare. But it’s done now and I feel great having that same feeling I get when I get a new car, because, of course for us writers, having a functioning computer is like having wheels!

One caveat that didn’t thrill me about my new laptop, Microsoft has a great habit of taking over our computers. They also have a steep price tag for all their Surface laptops. I was royally pissed to discover that this NOT cheap machine has zero places of extra storage – no Micro SD card slot! It also is chinzty with minimal USB ports.

Now that I spent the weekend deleting, my mission is to find a way to get my stored files off my old SD card that was in my broken laptop. Sadly, the old laptop has caught the black screen of death pandemic so I can’t transfer to anywhere! My only option at the moment is to take out the SD card in my tablet and slide the one from my old laptop into there and see what I can do from there. Any other ideas would be much appreciated in comments.

On the upside of things, while searching for my Word doc folders, I came across the file for another book I’d planned to write 2 years ago, but because it’s humorous, and I wasn’t into writing a humorous book with it not being the best of times, I abandoned it and wrote another book, the one I’m now back to revisions in. I didn’t realize I’d written half a book already, lol. I started reading some of the stories, and I was cracking up at myself (is that a bad thing?), lol, which inspired me to start writing for that book again while in revisions for my upcoming one. I did that before – wrote 2 books simultaneously – Words We Carry and MenoWhat? -A Memoir. I don’t know about some of you writers, but I find it difficult to write in humor if I’m not feeling the love.

Thanks for following me on my Schleprock ride through technology.

 

©DGKaye2020

bitmo live laugh love

 

bitmo good grief

Technical Update – #WordPress – #Microsoft Hijacked my Laptop

Published on by 51 Comments

Hello blogging friends, I just wanted to share my grievance with you. As many of you who visit here know, I try to read as many blogs as I can fit in every evening. I’m having a temporary problem with blogs these days – with ‘liking’, some sharing, and some to even write a comment. It seems the full moon once again has caused me SEVERAL  technical issues. Here’s the lowdown:

Early last week, my beloved Windows Surface finally stopped playing nice with me. Thanks to the hijacker Microsoft hijacking my laptop into forced updates that wouldn’t fit in my disk space left, and TOTALLY IGNORING the 50 gigs I have available on micro SD card, the gears wouldn’t stop spinning and wouldn’t even turn off. It’s been giving me trouble for a few months now and I’d been trying to hold out for end of August school sale prices to purchase another. So in the meantime, I pulled out another old Asus laptop I had and planned to use that until end of August. But after 2 days of using that one, I got the black screen of death and toasted that one too.

On Friday, after Thursday night’s blowout, I started my search for a new laptop (again the new Surface), only to find they were sold out everywhere in various stores in my vicinity, so I had no choice but to order online (grateful to find it on sale too) and have it delivered (usually a 2-day deal), and was told it would be delivered August 5th. This came as no surprise to me seeing as every store is sold out, which I attribute to Covid and moms and teachers buying up better quality computers, as well as students, seeing as this is the only way to stay connected to loved ones and the world and reliability with a better machine.

So, plan C while waiting is to work on my very old Dell desktop, which has given me nothing but grief. It doesn’t recognize any passwords, takes 5 minutes to load a page, and the grief goes on. This desktop also does not play nice with WordPress. I’ve lost the ability to ‘like’ your posts, and in some cases, I can’t use the share buttons, and for some self-hosted and WP premium plan blogs, I can’t even comment and I can’t retrieve notifications unless I go to someone else’s blog and click on the WP reader. I also have a tablet which I try to use in the evenings so I’m not secluded from the TV at night and it seems my tablet is possessed and turns on and off at random will and won’t load some blogs. OYE!

This desktop clunker is a back-breaker for me to sit at all day too. And don’t even get me started as I’m in the middle of revisions for my newest book and this clunker has an old version of Word on it that chooses to screw up my documents. I’m trying my best to use the old version to write posts on, but I don’t dare ruin my manuscript, so once again, I cannot work on my book until the new laptop arrives.

Out of curiosity, I emailed support to find out the exact day of delivery, as I discovered in fine print that my laptop will be delivered between August 5th an 14th!!!! I emailed them to beg for early release and was told it won’t be sent til August 14th!!!!! So I am screwed! Personally, I don’t even think this clunker will live that long. So I wanted to give you all a heads up in case you think I’ve abandoned your blogs, or I’m not reading them because you may see no likes or comment. Some of you have mentioned to me that you too were having problems commenting on my posts. For this I am sorry. I have done my best to fix what I can, but because my machine is acting prehistoric, I’m out of ammo. So please bear with me and know, if you don’t see me, I’m still around.

I think as an empath, and as my Fey sister Colleen Chesebro refers to me as an ‘energy witch’, I’m accumulating wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to much technical energy. What I really need is a technical break, and if this desktop dies out on me, that’s what I’ll be doing. Ironically, my trusted mobile phone still allows me to be on FB (hope I don’t curse it).

So, just know, I’m still here and fighting the tech gods daily. Thanks for putting up with craziness you may encounter on my blog.

©DGKaye

Duh!

 

stress

GETTING BACK IN THE GROOVE

Published on by 36 Comments

wtf

It has been three weeks since I’ve returned from my great winter escape and it already feels like that was so long ago. This winter is just the gift that keeps on giving.

Coming home from a long vacay always involves catching up on so many fronts. Besides the discipline of getting back into routine and trying to assert myself back into writing and revisions for my next book there is also the daily grind of cooking, cleaning and laundry and whatever little surprises get thrown in the mix. Once again the clock begins ticking at a rapid pace.

As many of you may remember, I have had my share of computer mishaps in the last several months. After my older laptop suffered two fatal hard drive crashes within a four month span, I had purchased a new desktop computer in the fall, realizing that I needed a reliable backup available for use when my laptop didn’t want to cooperate with me.

It took me awhile to get used to using Windows 8 as I sadly had to surrender to it if I wanted a new computer as I mourned the loss of my beloved Windows 7. After my laptop crashed for the second time in four months in December I also purchased a new laptop in fear that I could no longer rely on it.

This week I was working on my fairly new laptop and when I took a break and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I suddenly heard a strange screeching, beeping noise. I followed the noise directly to my laptop and when I looked at it there was a blank screen…for a long time. I finally powered it off and restarted only to find the same screen but with added words, “windows is trying to repair disk errors.” I waited and waited as I assumed it was doing its thing repairing whatever it was that suddenly stopped working.

As I continued on with my writing, I did random checks on the progress of the repair when finally a message came up telling me the laptop required service. I already knew that my plans for the next day of staying home and writing were going to be thwarted because I had to take the laptop in for repair. I took it to my local Staples store where I had purchased it and I just didn’t have a good feeling of what was to ensue.

I was told within seconds by the tech man that…MY HARD DRIVE HAD CRASHED! “Are you friggin’ kidding me?” I blurted out in disbelief. “This thing isn’t even three months old and not even finished being paid for.” I added angrily.

stressed

The tech man who was also the man who had sold it to me was very nice and already knew all of my prior computer woes, was also in disbelief that this could actually happen. According to him, I was the only customer whose hard drive had crashed in this brand ever sold in that store in such a short time. He added that is was a very rare occurrence for a hard drive crash and even more rare that I had now endured three crashes in the past seven months.

My friends and family have often referred to me as the one per cent girl because of some of the things I have encountered in life containing slim odds of ever happening, but this hard drive business was like my Achilles heel and became to the point of ridiculous and not to mention, a huge time-suck.

The tech offered to order me a new one, which although was a lovely gesture, still involved me waiting for it to come in another day, and two more visits to the store while they worked on setting up the operating system and downloads and needed me to loggin with passwords during the process. It also involved downloading back all my files from my backup device. This was definitely one thing I learned long ago…BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP! A familiar procedure instilled in my brain.

I hate when I have that feeling of zero accomplishment in a week where the hours are so precious and I am left feeling that every step I take forward, I fall three steps behind in my work. But once again, I will start fresh again next week and try to put this behind me and move forward.

I am thinking that maybe I should be buying a lottery ticket and trying my luck out by using my one per cent odds in a positive way.

So, after all my venting I am going to say it again…DON’T FORGET TO BACKUP! Crashes don’t give us subtle warnings. They don’t slowly happen where you may be able to notice little things slowing down or not working properly. Within a moment’s notice your screen could just go dark and WHAMMO, you computer is dead.

Enough said, I have to get back to work.

 

DGKaye©2014

 

Bittersweet – Murphy’s Law

Published on by 14 Comments

law

A few months back, I wrote a post on “Murphy”, my pet name for his origin is Murphy’s law. Murphy has a tendency to show up in my life at most inopportune times, hence the name, so of course it would be inopportune!

Murphy has been circling my orbit for the past two weeks. I have tried to ignore him and refused to acknowledge that it was once again my turn in the universe to be graced with his presence. I know when he’s around, he’s like Santa; he sees you when you’re sleeping.

In these past two weeks, things around my house have been mysteriously breaking down or malfunctioning. Communications have had SNAFU’s and anything I was trying to accomplish was being time-sucked by distractions and mishaps which I had to attend to. One day my Lazy Susan cupboard or ‘the magic cupboard’ as my cabinet maker who designed it named it when I bought and renovated my house completely last year, wouldn’t open more than 8 inches for me to get into it to access my various cooking ingredients. I suppose Susan lived up to her name. That was the week of the Polar Vortex and I need not go into what that weather situation entailed after the great ice storm. Coincidentally at that time my gas fireplace conveniently died. And of course that happened on a Friday night so it couldn’t get serviced until Monday which again turned into Tuesday because people whose furnaces broke down took precedence over fireplaces. The repair man finally came, made it work but found no known reason to man why it didn’t work.

Two weeks ago I went to my mailbox in anticipation of finding my Conflicted Hearts books there, only to wipe out on the icy sidewalk and sprain my ribs and upper arm…and no books! Yesterday in the middle of checking back and forth at my sales rank on amazon during my first KDP promotion, my laptop CRASHED…AGAIN! That would be two hard drive crashes in 5 months. Can this even happen? I spent two hours on the phone (instead of writing) with Dell tech support, chewing them out for a crappy product while trying to analyze the problem. Another thing that got me steamed about the already aggravating situation was they informed me that they would come an repair and put in a new hard drive for me but they were taking the old one with them. WHOA!  I said, “What?” Apparently if I don’t let them have the old one, I would be charged $80.00! “Are you kidding me?”, I questioned in a not so friendly tone. “I’m not giving you guys my whole personal world in that hard drive, that’s invasion of privacy,” I added. I thought the crash was enough punishment. They patiently replied that they don’t look at my information. So what the heck do they need it for! I thought when I bought the darn thing with all its components that it belonged to me. Why is their property? What is this world coming to? So my choice became give up the hard drive or pay. I was steamed So I ventured out to my local business depot today and took the dead machine over so they could swipe off all my info and paid them twenty bucks. I sure wasn’t going to give them my life on it.

In the midst of my mayhem, I was eagerly watching my author rank and downloads during my promo and I was so elated that my book Conflicted Hearts, made #1 in the top free NonFiction/Memoir category. It was a thrilling end to a crappy day. So as the saying goes — There is a silver lining!                   Screenshot 2014-01-10 18.41.18

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you who participated in getting my book and I hope you all enjoy it and if you did, please write a review on amazon because that is how our books get pushed up into visibility. I also want to thank many of my friends here for helping to spread the word for me and a special thanks to Diane Tibert for doing a lovely post about my book on her website for me. Please click on the link below to have a look.

Free eBook: Conflicted Hearts by D. G. Kaye | Diane Tibert.

I wish you all a great week and remember –Beware of Murphy!

 

DGKaye©2014

Disaster Abounds – #Backup your Work!

Published on by 4 Comments

 

 

creative mess

It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote a blog on the importance of backing up your work.  I went on vacation for a week and in that week it seems there were quite a few disasters globally.

 

While I was away, there was an airplane crash in San Francisco, a train crash in Quebec, hurricane in the Caribbean, fires in Las Vegas (where I was), and then I came home to the remnants of the flood in Toronto.

 

 

I came home and turned on my laptop yesterday to work on revisions from my editor only to find out after long hours of trying to get my laptop to work; that my hard drive crashed.  I spent numerous hours on the phone with Dell support and am now awaiting my new hard drive so I can be guided through the process of putting in a new one to spare me from having it sent away for two weeks.  I am not a techie, I keep saying, but it turns out I have turned into one.  I can hardly wait for the experience of downloading everything back into a new hard drive from scratch…………………not!

 

I had to resort to my old desktop which takes about five minutes to turn a page.  It turns out that my anti-virus wasn’t doing its job.  I spent all afternoon on the phone with Mcafee for that.  I also noticed when I used this clunker, that my wordpress site was full of porn ads.  Yes, lovely.  Mcafee kindly offered to get rid of them for only another $179.00.  Are you kidding me?

 

I spent the rest of the evening on forums trying to find a way to get rid of the ads and clean off what Mcafee didn’t.  Thanks to some folks on this wordpress forum I was offered some great links for removal.  So hence, here I am back, hopefully fading anymore disasters.  Again, I am grateful that my book is safely sleeping in cyber space with dropbox until this mess gets all cleared up and I can get back to my programs to work on it.  Eventually I will be posting an excerpt here so stay tuned!

 

DGKaye©2013