• Not So Bad After All

    When it comes to computers, most people want only three things. I’ll have a bit of fun here and refer to them as the Three Laws of Computer Usage. It’s not a new idea but rather a shameful rip-off of Issac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. If you think about it, these laws determine whether you get your work done without a splitting headache, or stand the computer on a tree stump and blow it to bits with a shotgun. Here they are. The First Law: The computer must startup reliably. No extra b…

  • Stink, Stank, Stunk!

    As is traditional, my nephew, Patrick, was coming to spend a few days for the annual Uncle/Nephew Christmas Shopping Expedition....... The decorations were up, including the tree, with the lights strung, ornaments hung, and timers set free. After a long day of cleaning before he would come, I found myself tuckered, worn out, nearly done! So, along ‘round midnight as I readied for bed, I looked at my phone and my heart filled with dread. For there on my phone, shone a text in bright red. From…

  • Winter Wonderland!

    Well, not so much. Our first storm of the season was a whopper. It started out as rain and then shifted to wet, heavy snow. Weather reports said that accumulations would vary based on the elevation and could amount to as much as a foot. We were as ready as we could be, so when bedtime came, that was that. At around 4 AM, I was awakened by a whump sound like when a tree comes down. Since it wasn’t followed by a crash, whatever it was hadn’t hit the house. That meant it could wait until morn…

  • Just checking in...

    I had hoped to get something posted before this - don't like to let it go more than a month at the most. Anyway, its' been pretty quiet around here. So, I thought I'd do a sort of "progress report". The computer and network issues have been (I'm afraid to say so too loudly) mostly dealt with. The only odd thing is that I just discovered that some of the USB ports on my PC seem only to work when they feel like it. Not the end of the world but annoying nonetheless. My nephew’s file server w…

  • You Gotta Have Connections! - Part 2

    Well, it seems like I have the network thing licked. I picked up the unit pictured off Amazon for about the same price as as standard replacement unmanaged switch, which is to say less than $100. This one worked great right out of the box with no changes. But wait! There's More! As I said in my last post, the new switch would let me play with something called VLANS (Virtual Local Area Networks). For example, a VLAN lets me seperate workstation computer traffic and from a household DVR or o…


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