Category Archives: GeekWorld

GeekWorld

Not Too Plugged In

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Beltane                                                                Waxing Garlic Moon

A new printer, a laserjet.  Cheaper to operate than the color printers, necessary for producing manuscripts.  I bought one.  I spent a good while setting it up with no luck on the final leg, my print command to the printer.  Frustrated, I let it set for a month or so.  Today I decided to go at it again.

I tried to print something.  Nothing happened.  I expected that.  Went to the HP website and had a bad moment when I wondered if I’d bought a printer that simply couldn’t connect to a Windows 7 operating system.  After a bit of stumbling around, I found that no, I had not done that and that this printer could be made to work with Windows 7.  Which left me back at the original problem.

Instead of calling HP right away, I decided to give the troubleshooting guides one more try.  I put in my printers product number and sure enough, there was a fix for the very problem I’d encountered.  I followed the instructions to change the point and print setting (whatever that is) to disable and tried again.  No joy.

Tired of the process I called HP.  Surprisingly, I got through to tech support with little trouble.  When the nice man from India had walked me through the process for him taking control of my computer to check the problem, he asked me, “What does the printer say right now?”

“Let me look.”  I looked.

That’s odd.  Doesn’t say anything.  Could it be turned off?  No, the on button was pushed in but it had no light.  Hmmm.

Ooops.  I checked the plug.  Not plugged in.  I’d unplugged it before I went to Nebraska a week ago today.  So, I plugged it in, not saying anything to India yet.

It turned on and, sure enough, chugged to life and spit out the test matter I’d sent through it right after I ran the troubleshooter tips.

“Oh,” I said, “Gee.  I didn’t have it turned on and I tried a fix from your website.  Look’s like it worked.”  Chagrin.

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

An Intimate Relationship?

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Beltane                                                                      Waning Last Frost Moon

I spent the morning convincing my computer that the new laserjet printer I purchased exists, could be a good friend, one with whom we might enter a long term relationship.  Boy, was that a hard sell.  Something about the printer being made before Windows 7 and the run as command.  After beating about a bit, I finally got a software package (downloaded from HP) that my computer would admit into its intimate confines.

Then.  I stepped in and attempted to attach the USB cable to a printer not turned on.  Didn’t work. I’d stretched the power cord when getting to the USB port.  Took me three tries to realize what I had done.  Finished just before the thunder made it.  I turn all computers off during thunder storms.  I have too much invested in my electronics.  Not the computers so much as the external drives.

During our nap Kate and I had to get up to go down in the basement.  Another tornado headed north of Minneapolis, headed north and east.  Which is where we are.  After forty-five minutes sitting on a bench I use to do bench presses and triceps curls it became clear that this one, like so many in recent years, would track north of Minneapolis, get up into Coon Rapids, but move east on trajectory well south of us.  I’m not sure what’s going on but this seems like a track multiple serious storms have taken over the last few years.

Grocery store.  Then dinner, a bit of dithering around about Brazilian Visas, at $160 each.  Ouch.  That doesn’t include processing fees.  Geez.

Now, off to Tai Chi.

Art and Culture, Family, GeekWorld, Humanities

Using Tech Tools

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Spring                                                Waning Bee Hiving Moon

This morning Kate and I had our weekly business meeting.  Those Amazon books add up.  We’re well into the first growing season with Kate retired.  It makes the whole process seem less urgent, more manageable from my perspective.  I like that.  Having Mark here right now helps, too.

After that I checked my translation on Diana and Actaeon, the 10 verses I’m preparing for my reading/translation lesson on Friday.  The second time through I found several things I missed the first time.  I believe my translation is improving, improving quickly right now.  Some sort of developmental break through, I suppose.

After that I fiddled with Firefox 4.0.  It’s the latest version of the favorite non-windows browser though I understand Chrome (Google) has begun to catch up.  It seems to be a bit slower with g-mail and the MIA website, but it makes up for it with its cool new feature, Panorama.  Panorama allows you to group frequently used tabs together in transparent collections accessible through a small tab at the top of the browser.

This way, when I move into Latin, for example, I can click once and up comes Perseus with my section of the Metamorphoses already loaded, along with the word find tool.  Another example, a weather tab holds my Andover NOAA page, Paul Douglas’ blog, Chanhassen NOAA weather story and a moon phase calendar.  All one click away.  Pretty neat.

It’s also time to start working on my Spanish tour for next week.  I called up Microsoft Notes, a program I wonder how I worked without now.  I opened a new notebook, titled it Art History Research and put in a tab, Spanish Tour May 5, 2011.  Now I’ll have my tours all in one handy place with talking points beside each piece.  Pretty neat.

A guy like me, who switches between diverse interests with regularity throughout a day and a week, finds work accelerated in pleasant ways with these organizational tools.

Aging, Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Great Work, Memories, Politics, Travel

I Want To Like Nuclear Power

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Spring                                                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

Japan.  Nuclear power.  Climate change.  Not a pretty picture.  I don’t know about others, but I want to like nuclear power.  Its non-carbon emitting energy production has a potential role in staving off the worst effects of global warming.  However.  With no place to store the waste permanently, the waste gets stored temporarily near the reactor in which it was used.  This seems safe.  Look at Prairie Island.  After all these years, still no trouble.  Then again.  How many years do we have to have in a row with no trouble?  25,000 or so, I believe.  That’s a long run.

That’s not all.  Situations develop, human error, mechanical failure, maintenance scrimping, natural disasters with unforseen confluences, say an F5 tornado and a once in a century flood.  Could happen over the span of over 25,000 years.  Probably will.  Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had become objects in the rear view mirror, errors, mistakes, but over with.  Until Fukushima.

Now, suddenly, they begin to look links in a chain, a nuclear chain.  Remember Godzilla?  Them?  The 50 Foot Woman?  Radiation.  Now there’s radioactive iodine in the sea.  I want to like nuclear power, but I’m having a hard time.  The stakes of mistakes seem too high.  At least for now.

Wish somebody would get a good fusion reactor goin’.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Literature

Tech Savvy Milbank

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Imbolc                                          Waning Bridgit Moon        Blue Cloud Abbey

Since I plan to spend most of my time writing, I brought one of my split keyboards which make typing much easier for me.  Only thing.  It had an old fashioned pin style plug-in.  I have a USB exclusive laptop along.  Sigh.

Got on the web and discovered a Radio Shack in Milbank, only 13 miles back toward Minnesota.  They were redesigning the store tonight, so, though they would have been closed otherwise, tonight they were there.  After supper, I drove to Milbank, had a nice chat with the clerks and the owner, who offered me a beer, bought a new keyboard–they couldn’t find the adapters due to remodeling–and schlepped back to the Abbey.

When I pulled up in the Abbey parking lot, I opened the truck door and the bells started clanging.  7:30, time for Vigils.  Scared the B…well you know, out of me.

So here I am, typing on my new keyboard, ready to get up tomorrow and start writing more pages of Missing.  The Abbey is a peaceful place, set high atop a prominent hill in an otherwise flat topography.  As a result, you can see for miles.  At night Milbank twinkles off to the east and farm houses dotted across the prairie are outposts of electricity, television, the modern world.

What would Per think?

The meal was in silence tonight and Brother Bennet read while the rest of us ate.  Another Minnesotan is here, a woman, and me.  The monks were all in black robes and cowl tonight.  I don’t know what signifies, but I’ll ask  tomorrow.

The drive out here is a long one, over 4 hours, and I’m tired.  Early bedtime tonight.

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

More Fun With Computers

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Imbolc                                                       Full Bridgit Moon

After 52 on Monday and a good deal of melting, with a good deal left to go, too, the red button on my status bar has lit up again with a winter weather advisory, a winter storm warning.  If all goes as predicted, we may end up with 8-10 inches of new snow.

Today I spent a good bit of time installing a new printer, a multi-function HP, so-called plug and play.  Well, sort of.  I finally got it set up to print from all three computers on our home network.  Felt good to get it done.  Now I may tackle that old laserjet one more time before I buy a new one.

Groceries, then time on the treadmill and time with the grandkids on Skype.  Now to bed.

GeekWorld, Humanities

The John Henry Syndrome

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Imbolc                                                       Full Bridgit Moon

Watson.  Won at Jeopardy.  Big time.  Over the best player of the game ever.  Human player.  The coverage has interested me because it showcases what we might call the John Henry syndrome.  Each time a machine takes on a task thought uniquely human and masters it, then beats a human competitor, we go into human self-examination mode.  Are we still necessary?  Will machines replace us?  The human Jeopardy champion, Ken Jennings, wrote on his final Jeopardy answer, “I for one welcome our new computer overlords.”  Humor?  Or, irony?  Both?

Here’s one clear difference.  Watson is not sitting at home tonight, feet up on an ottoman, wondering if the next hunk of big iron will replace him.  Nope.  He’s just sitting.  Maybe warming his transistors or his circuit boards, drawing a little extra juice to keep things humming, but self doubt?  No.

We wonder.  We step back from a situation and observe, ask questions, then process them in a complex, data rich environment foreign to the world of bits and bytes.  Bring on the machines.  All of’em.  I’m not even worried about the Kurzweil singularity.  If it happens, we’ll never know, right?  Where is that ottoman?

Bees, Dogs, GeekWorld, Humanities, World History

Carpe this Diem

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Imbolc                                                 Waxing Bridgit Moon

OK.  Today is a new day.  I do not plan to torture my computers anymore today in regard to my legacy laserjet printer.  It has been a faithful companion throughout the last 19  years and I do not plan to give up on it yet.  Even so, I’ve experienced my tolerance level of geek futility since I tried to convert it from parallel processing to usb, so it will rest on the sidelines for a while as I install the new multi-function printer later in the day.  If I can find a new laserjet printer for under $300 I may just get one with a native usb connection.  Not sure I’d do with old faithful.  I might bring it in here (the study) and see if I can convince it to mate up with the Gateway in here.  I might give it to somebody with a parallel printer port.

I know, too, that losing colonies is still common for beekeepers and that my experience is not unusual.  In fact, as I said a bit earlier, I was not surprised by the deaths of two of the colonies. Only the package colony’s demise surprised me, since it seemed to have plenty of honey and a healthy group of bees.  Another year is another year.

With temperatures above freezing the dogs are frisky, staying outside longer, bumping, running, tails held high.  They both hunt between the honey house and the play house, noses to the ground, body alert.  Kona still finds the outdoors a bit too cool and no wonder, she no longer has any hair on her butt.  I know how it feels when there’s no hair on the head, probably a similar sensation.  And it is hard for Kona to put a hat or a scarf on that particular location.

I’m inclining toward a Renaissance theme for the Titian tours.  This exhibit showcases the High Renaissance in Venice from its beginnings in the early 1500’s through its end in the 1580’s.  Venice held on to the Renaissance longer than the rest of Italy, though even its extension ended well before the Renaissance limped toward its end in the 1700’s in northern Europe.  The Renaissance gave shape and content to our era, actually doing what those embroiled in it thought they were doing, ushering in the modern age, shifting from the ancien regime to the days of democracy, individualism, capitalism and science, days within which we still live.

Not often do we have the chance to experience such a clear visual record of this dramatic change in the lifeways of Western civilization, a record written not in words, but in the brushstrokes and vital imaginations of artists who distilled the time and painted it.  On canvas.  Using oils.

Bees, GeekWorld

A No Good Day

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Imbolc                                          Waxing Bridgit Moon

Some days.  You know.  This was one.  I got the printer cable.  Spent another 2+ hours fiddling with the printer.  Nothing positive.  Still.  I know it’s a breed fault, but I do prefer to be competent.  At everything I do.  Every time.  Not perfectionism.  It’s competencism.  Things don’t have to be perfect, but they have to display my general competence, or else.  Well.  You may have been down that hole, too.  It can get deep.

Then, I went out to check on the bees.  I suppose I might have missed something, I did last spring, but I don’t think so.  All three dead.  Geez.  I didn’t stop to diagnose the cause.  I just closed the hive boxes up and walked back inside.

I tried yet one more time on the printer.  Well, actually, several more times, flailing at different solutions suggested by this website and that.  Even went into DOS, foreign territory for me.  I got in and got out of DOS unscathed, but no closer to a solution.

If I had any hair left, I’d be pulling it out right about now.  Guess I’m gonna have to call Steve again.  See if he say some words over the machines, toss some holy byte water at them.  I don’t know.  An exorcism?

The good thing is.  Worked out.  Got my endorphins buzzing around the old synapses.  Sweat.

Now.  I can be philosophical.  Never to fail is never to do.  Never to do is to be dead.  I want to be alive.  I want to try things that challenge me.  Guess failure is part of that.  Gotta be.  Otherwise no forward progress.  So, I’ve got two challenges ahead:  get the packages installed in early April.  Do the due diligence before hand to find out what killed the bees.  Fix what I can fix.  Get the printer installed.  One damn way or another.

Grrr.

GeekWorld

No Joy

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Imbolc                                                       Waxing Bridgit Moon

Hmmm.  Spent an hour + last night with the network guy.  He took over my PC through a remote connection, a free app called showmypc.com, fished through my network settings, my printer settings and did a number of things I’d never imagined doing.  In the end though we still had no more luck than I’d already had.  None.  This cheered me up since I didn’t feel quite so inept afterward.

Heading over to Radio Shack for another try on the printer parallel to usb cable.  I avoided buying the Radio Shack cable because it was more expensive, but I’ll try it now anyhow.  As soon as I get this one set up, I’ll put the new printer online, too.  I’m not expecting trouble with it since it’s plug-n-play.  Each problem is a learning opportunity and I say that with no tongue in cheek.  If you pay attention to the problem solving, it’s true.

So, among other things on external Saturday, I’m headed for every geeks favorite store, Radio Shack.  Always good to have an excuse to go there.  At some point today or tomorrow it looks like the temps will rise above freezing, so I will have a chance to check on the bees.  Bee season has begun in active way, as has the growing season.  I have a few other things to accomplish over the weekend, get a system repair disc made for each of the new gateways, crank up the chainsaw and get my Titian tour together since I have my first tour on Thursday, the 17th.