A new Blog Editor…..Windows Live Writer.

This may be a waste of time, but while downloading updates and software to get my machine back to normal I ran across this ‘writer’ software while downloading MSN Messenger. It’s an add on to the download and it’s description was specifically geared toward blogging so I decided to take a look-see and agreed to download it.

It seems very much like writing in a streamlined version of MS Office Word, but without the cluttered feeling and a user friendly layout instead of what feels like trying to converse in a completely different language all the time. All my links for adding pictures, which I’m about to try in a minute, and hyperlinks, video..they are all here, font and color and alignment control…it’s all here.

As long as it all works I’d say this is nicer than logging into blogger to write a post. Let me try a picture and see how that works!!

COOL, there’s all sorts of picture effects can be applied to a picture…like the reflection on the bottom of the picture above. Incidentally thats my brother with the big fish he caught on the Peace River just south west of Fort St. John in Hudson’s Hope B.C.

Looks like I got a new toy to play with. Lets see how it publishes to the web.

Later on!!

The longest and most boring post about a computer problem.....EVER!!!!

My puter crashed and I was sad. Very sad. I had no rescue disks and the fly by night computer shop which sold me the unit had flown by night, leaving me to my own devices. I had an older version of XP which had been over installed in a few of the local machines and I had the Product Identification code or PID from my laptop and I'm currently in the process of install XP right now while I blog on another laptop.
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It accepted the newer PID on the older software, so I am temporarily happy with this. We'll see when we attempt to activate the installation and register the software with Mr.Gates followers exactly how happy I am going to be.
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This machine has been a mess since I downloaded service pack 3 for XP. From the minute it rebooted - which took 20 minutes btw - it ran slower and constantly froze solid for 10 and 15 minutes at a time. Trying to watch a movie was impossible and listening to music was unbearable, every song started out with the first 2 minutes choppy and jerking around to the point where I was at my wits end with the machine.
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Got past all the crappy installation screens, rebooted and now we are at a windows setup screen.......rolling right along!
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I tried to do a roll back but there was no restore point, I tried to remove the software and the machine could not find the installation files to reinstall the service pack 2. This was because they were removed by 'clean up' software I had downloaded to hopefully speed things up in my registry! My fault, my fault!! OK! Yes, but the updated service pack grossed my machine first.

I got a hold of an online technician from Microsoft who went into my machine and worked out some registry fixes and we rebooted and everything was good except my wireless connection had disappeared, (I had plugged in my cat5 cable during the support session). Hmmmmmmm. I could probably fix this myself so I was good to go but the tech was a perfectionist and there is a very small part of me with the same relative attention to detail, so I relented and let him have at er again. He got my wireless ability back but could not fix the machine again! ugh!
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I'm currently staring at green fields and blue skies and I'm back. I am among the proud owners of broken software built on outdated programming and ready to start the endless series of updates for software, drivers and security purposes that make being a PC user such a pain in the arse!!
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He gave me a ticket number and wanted me to call the next day as we had been at er for a few hours by this point. I agreed but when we was closing the call he mentioned maybe I would want to try another music program besides windows media player. I said 'pardon........'. What the hell?? Yeah, so 2 days later I'm in a work camp in Fort MacMurray and I don't have a readily available internet connection, it's quite a piece away from my room so i frequent the place very infrequently, twice a week, tops, for an hour or two. Not enough time and not a strong enough signal for online tech support.

So I tried email support and they had me jump through all the same hoops that didn't work previously with the online agent. Didn't work, as we all knew before hand. During this process I received an email from my technician stating that two and three days between sessions was not good and if I had something that was more important I could just get back to them at a later date when I had free time on my hands! Hateful, hateful, people I tell you I was hateful after that. I had explained my situation at the beginning of the session work we were doing, but because I was messing with his 'successfully closed in a relatively small time frame quota' I was being pushed aside for some easier tecno gimps. I lost it, sent a scathing letter to Customer Service...like they would even care.....I ranted about foreign workers doing tech support and using flawed translation software to figure out what our problems actually were. It got me no where.

I was going to say 'Long story short' but it's way too late for that!

I suffered with the crappy music and listened very rarely. I drank more often. At least I had made a few friends to drink with. The Simpson's are right. Alcohol is the cause of AND solution to all of life's problems. Now I had some people to drink with though so the music wasn't really that big a loss. Besides, I still had my guitar and I tried to get in close to an hour of banging on that thing every night. That helped alot too!

I made it thought that horrible experience to come home and buy 2 gigs of Ram to put in my machine at Christmas time hoping it would do something to help speed it up, almost like banging the side of an old television would make the color a little sharper or the reception a little clearer. It goes against all logic but somehow it works.
Well not in this case it dosen't. The machine runs faster when it's running but all the afore mentioned problems are still rampant. Not soon after I start getting disk checking errors and then last week...the dreaded blue screen of death! So I start the tedious task of transferring and discarding files and folders and memories to another computer and start trying to get the corrupted installation of windows off my machine and get something on there that works.
Format hangs for a few hours at 47% and for almost a full day at 52% so I think it's corrupted and I try a different file system, NTFS instead of FAT32 but the same problem happens so I try FAT32 one more time and wake up today and it's gone to 100%!! yay
I start to install windows and it won't install. Says it needs to format the drive!!! After three friggen days of fuckin around I'm back to square one with the formatting or reformatting. And I try again and again. Anyway, this older copy of XP won't allow me to install on a FAT32 machine. Apparently this disk wants to only see an NTFS file system so I do a quick format in NTFS and away we go...installation complete!!
I am so tired bitches! Off to bed.

The death of a dream....a few pictures ....and the curious case of the howling bowel.

Well, I'm back. A late night rant to let the world know...The dream is over.....I've been laid off. haha We are told we will be back to work in a month, but hey...I was told we weren't getting laid off in the first place, go figure.
I was supposed to fly back out to Ft.Mac today but I got the heads up last week - wednesday I think - not to bother making the 4 hour drive to Halifax.
Yes I know for a fact it was wednesday because that was the day my Dad started working at Albion Sands. He flew out to work on the day I was laid off. Yes. Go figure indeed.
I guess this is better than making the 4 hour drive to Halifax to find out you have to turn around and go home.....jobless at that!!

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Been in a bit of a funk since then. Sure I'm home a bit longer -well indefinitely at this point - but I'm losing a lot of money to be here sleeping late and trying to do stuff around the house.

Getting some hobby stuff that I wanted to do taken care of too tho. A buddy of mine gave me a 5 string bass in the summer. It was missing a string due to falling off a truck...really...they found it on the side of the road and that it is almost brand new shape is a testament to the durability of the 'soft' instrument cases on the market.
N E Way....got a string put on and started to practice last night during the Grammies - which weren't all that bad but just too friggen polished a show for me to really enjoy it. (how much Justin Timberlake can one show telecast anyway.) After 25 years of playing guitar, bass will be fun to learn and it's quiet enough to play all night without an amp.
Hopefully these practises will strenghten my guitar playing, bring it to the next level, if you will. I will keep posts on my progress.

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I haven't actually made it out for a run yet this year, this makes me sad...I can't call myself a runner if I do not run, all I am is a former runner or a wanna-be runner but a runner no longer in action. Being a runner at heart is ok as a sappy metaphor but it doesn't give me any sense of pride to say 'I used to run', or 'Ya, I ran a half marathon a while back..' That while goes further and further into the past every time I think about it.
It actually was warm enough here yesterday that I changed my 'Facebook' status to "Jody is thinking about going for a run." All I did was think though. It got dark to soon and the sidewalks are not plowed and the shoulder of the road is blah blah blah.....one excuse after another when the bottom line is I didn't get out for a run. It's my fault and my fault alone.

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The warmth didn't last and the next thing I know the driveway is a sheet of glass the walkway is a pretty close second in the 'slippery as hell' catagory. It's bad when you put your car in park and have it start to slide backward without the wheels turning.
So it was a quest for bags of salt and sand after some foraging for sustenance at the local Supervalue this afternoon. A suprise visit from my nephew and his extreme neediness in the 'watch-me' department when playing the Wii kept me from applying the sand and salt in as swiftly a fashion as I would have liked so I was out, fully face masked and winter booted at 10pm spreading and spreading and spreading. Well, it was really just spreading. I wasn't really out there that long!
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Next it was the howling bowel. I have no idea why but the noises coming outta my mid section tonight resembled a cross between an depressed, bi-polar elephant trumpet and an emphasymatic timber wolf howl, clearly audible across the room, even over the disturbing sounds of nanny911 on the idiot box. Scared to fart? Not me. I have Christmas underwear I haven't even opened yet. Not scared but...curious. Yes. Thats the word. Curious.

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Time for pictures bitches!! Gather round and I'll get out ye ole photo album, better known these days as A 4 Gb HCSD card (High Capacity Secure Digital). As always, click on the pics for a larger view.

So glad to be in the air, had a feeling I should not have been as happy to leave as I was.



Sunsets are so much better from a few miles high.





Scrambled and left over rib steak for breakfast. Yay!



Fresh Haddock, MmmMmmMmmmm!



Ohhhh, I'd tap that!!!



The main course.



The a fore mentioned nephew. Breton Thomas.



Happy Birthday Dad, work safe at Albion.



Sunset...from the ground this time...in my backyard.



It's really late...I will return to blog again! Hope all three of you return to read!!lol