Month: September 2017

CIRCLING WINDOWS 10

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 35 Comments
CIRCLES WITHIN CIRCLES

I cannot blame Windows. It was me, or rather … me and a dysfunctional Malwarebytes plus two “disconnected” (but not really) hard drives … and being told I must become the administrator when I am the administrator.

What?

I got a message from Malwarebytes of a new update. Free. Just install it.

So I installed it and it deleted itself. Completely disappeared off my hard drive leaving a blank. It even removed its short-cut symbol on the desktop. I sighed. I have had trouble with this application before. Malwarebytes fixed it, but it took a week of back-and-forthing with the technical squad and I didn’t feel like it. Just not in the mood.

I tried backing up to see if I could recover the previous version, and I did, but it didn’t restore the broken application. It restored pieces of it, and it didn’t work. It just sat there. I tried one more restore, but that errored out. One of the more annoying problems with Windows operating systems is they never tell you why they are malfunctioning. They throw an error and leave you sitting there, staring at the screen saying WHAT? What was THAT?

So today, I tried to check the weather and all I got were ads that wouldn’t even let the program upload. I deleted what I could and realized … I needed Malwarebytes. That’s why I bought the program in the first place, to prevent this type of crap from happening. It isn’t viruses. It’s just garbage from advertisers.

I decided to restore Malwarebytes from scratch since I have the original receipt and key. This should have worked, but it told me it couldn’t complete, some kind of error. I could “continue and ignore” the error, but I got one of the Windows warnings that if I did that, terrible things might happen to my operating system. And I got another message telling me that the computer couldn’t find its hard drives.

What? WHAT?

So I diddled around and eventually, everything found everything else. Voila. No idea when they decided to disconnect, but I had a sneaking feeling that underneath all these other errors was that I needed to run the “network” function and connect everything to itself. Mind you, the computer was running fine, except for Malwarebytes, which wasn’t running at all.

I decided to delete Malwarebytes because it was listed as a program, but it wasn’t really and it didn’t work. It wouldn’t let me. It said I need to be an administrator. I am the administrator. I am the ONLY administrator. It is my computer. No one else has ever used it and when I look at my account, it clearly shows me as The Administrator.

The newer Alien
Am I now emotion free?

I rebooted. I still couldn’t delete Malwarebytes because I needed to be an administrator. Eventually, it wouldn’t let me administrate and it wouldn’t let me out of the loop because I had to be an administrator before I could escape.

I rebooted.

At this point, I realized I could not become the administrator because I am, so it was asking me to do something I could not do because I am that thing and I was …

(Drum roll and trumpets, please …)

In a loop. The ultimate circle of hell for computer users. You can’t do it, whatever it is because you aren’t an administrator, but since you really are the administrator, you can’t become one because all those boxes are checked. Sometime around this point I discovered a previously broken piece of the application has been fixed. When I got this computer, the restore system would only let you restore the “C” drive. The “D” drive — which is huge and contains all my documents and pictures which is pretty much what lives on this computer — had to be backed up separately. Which I do anyway, so I didn’t care. But now, you can. So I added the “D” drive to the restore function and things began to roll along. Suddenly, I could create a restore point for both drives, something I haven’t been able to do since I got the computer.

I created one. Astonished that this event had occurred and being suspicious by nature, I did it a couple of times more, calling each restore point “testing 1” “testing 2” “testing 3” until I was finally convinced … it worked. Damn! Was it because I had done the networking thing and the computer finally knew it really has two hard drives?

I then tried to delete Malwarebytes again and it didn’t work. Again. It still wanted me to be an administrator, but by now, I realized this really wasn’t a Windows problem. It was a broken application.

Back to installing a new copy of Malwarebytes. When I got to the place where it told me if I clicked “Continue,” terrible, awful, dreadful and dire things would occur. Possibly making my computer stop working entirely. 

OH NO, NOT THAT!

“Screw it” I said … and clicked the (potentially) fatal link. The application rolled merrily along and installed itself flawlessly. It then scanned the drive, fixed everything, and set up a new — FUNCTIONAL — short-cut. I could have done all that stuff in the first place. But to be fair, I would not have known I needed to network the computer to explain to it that it really does have two hard drives. Nor would I have realized — miracle of miracles — I could set a restore point for both drives.

I suppose I ended up on the winning side of today’s “loop warfare.” You want to know about circles? Computers. Looping their digital lives through the circularity of binary heaven. If anyone wants to know why I haven’t been online today, I was in a circle. Me and my computer, doing the little loopy dance. But I won … I think.

MY WORLD TRAVELING DAYS – BY ELLIN CURLEY

/ Ellin Curley / 18 Comments

I traveled a lot during the 25 years with my first husband, Larry. After we had kids, we frequently took them with us. Larry, who was bipolar, was often manic when it came to traveling. One year, we took twelve trips in twelve months, often with two kids. Many of the trips were just weekend trips, but they all involved planning, packing, and logistics, which I handled. I was exhausted and drained by the end of that year.

Over the years we traveled a lot in the United States, mostly out west. In Europe, we traveled extensively in France and the UK, as well as a bit in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Israel.

The California coast in the early years of marriage

It took me years and years to figure out how to plan a good trip. It was hard because Larry liked to move around a lot and cover a lot of territory. I liked to stay in a smaller area and cover it more slowly and in more in-depth. So we had to compromise. I learned that you have to be knowledgeable about your travel destinations to be able to tailor a trip. It takes a lot of research, all of which I did, for all of our numerous trips.

Outside of Paris before I had my kids

When we first started traveling in the UK and Europe, we over-scheduled ourselves. In America, you can cover a large geographical area and not find too many places you really want to explore. That’s not the case in Europe and the UK. Towns and sightseeing spots there are more numerous and are crammed more tightly together. The history there covers almost every square inch.

Yosemite, pregnant with my first child

I found that it was hard to cover too much actual territory and feel that you’d seen and done what you wanted to in the area, Plus, whenever we went overseas, we tried to spend a few days in London with our old and dear English friends, the Millers. After 1984, we also had a second set of close friends in London, American ex patriots named the Schiffers. We also saw them regularly on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1984, for example, we took a long trip with our four-year old son, David. We visited London, of course, as well as several counties in the southwest of England. Then we went north to Yorkshire and Wales and over to Holland to visit the Schiffers, who were living there at the time.

The Devon countryside, 1984
Stonehenge, England, 1984
London, 1984

When I travel, I always like to stay in charming B&B’s in the picturesque countryside. Some we stayed in were simple and some were manor homes on beautiful grounds that had been turned into B&B’s so that the families could afford to keep their homes. On this particular trip, we also thought that our son would find it fun to stay on a working farm for a few days. We did that — and got to watch a calf being born. Such an amazing experience!

Mother cow and newborn calf, 1984

On this trip I felt that we were running around too much and were missing many of the local attractions wherever we went. So I planned another trip in 1986 that I hoped would be smaller in scale. This time we were traveling with our six-year-old son and our one and a half-year old daughter. This trip covered only Devon in England, plus London and a few towns in Wales.

Unfortunately I didn’t realize how big Devon was, so we still ended up feeling rushed. But we got to do plenty of my favorite things in England — visiting magnificent National Trust estates with manicured gardens and grand manor houses. My idea of heaven.

David in Devon, England, 1986
The Miller and Kaiser families in 1986
Larry and Sarah in a formal garden in Wales, 1986

We had the same learning curve in France. Though it was harder to rein Larry in here because he wanted to hit as many one, two and three Michelin star restaurants as possible. Need I say that our meals in France were always beyond words.

On one trip, in 1994 for our twentieth anniversary, we covered Paris, Burgundy, the Loire Valley and Provence. I fell in love with Provence. In particular, I fell in love with a B&B we stayed in which was run by an English woman. It was called Jas des Eydins. It was beautiful, peaceful and idyllic, but also warm and friendly. I took so many photos there that I ended up making a very large photo montage of photos just from this B&B.

Me in Burgundy, France, 1994
One of the B&B’s we stayed at in 1994
Larry and me with three of the Millers in 1994

When Larry and I went to France again two years later, in 1996, we had a considerably pared down itinerary. We traveled through Provence again and to the Dordogne region. I insisted that this time we spend an entire week at Jas des Eydins! We got to explore the incredible Luberon Valley in-depth this time. I was happy. That was one of the favorite places I’ve ever stayed in all my extensive travels.

Larry in field of Provencal sunflowers, 1996
View from the breakfast table at Jas des Eydins, 1996
Pool and house at Jas des Eydins, 1996

One of the most memorable tourist spots there is a corkscrew museum at a vineyard in the wine country. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen an exhibit of pornographic corkscrews!

Pornographic corkscrews

We also traveled often in the American West. This is a totally different experience. Bear in mind that the entire UK is approximately the size of Wyoming OR Michigan OR Minnesota. So we could comfortably do a 4000 mile drive throughout the western United States and Canada in the same time we took to travel through a few small counties in England. In the summer of 1989, we took our four-year old and our nine-year old on a large loop that started in Salt Lake City Utah. We drove up through Idaho and Washington into Vancouver and across southwestern Canada to Banff. We reentered the U.S. in Montana, getting to the border crossing just minutes before it closed for the night. We then drove south through Wyoming and back to Salt Lake City.

We mostly saw natural sites, like Glacier National Park in Montana. We spent several days at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. We rode horses through the countryside, walked on a glacier, swam in a natural hot spring, and spent several days with friends at a National Bankruptcy Judge’s Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Larry and the kids on a glacier, 1989
David with a moose in a national park, 1989
Larry and the kids at a waterfall in one of the national parks, 1989

In the U.S, there can be long distances between points of interest. So though the distances were huge and we did a lot of driving, we saw most of what we had set out to see.

After 25 years, I burned out on traveling with Larry. Our last summer together, in 1998, I insisted we stay home and train the new puppy we had adopted. My mother was diagnosed with cancer that summer, so it turned out to have been a good decision to stay home.

I travel the world much less these days with Tom. In part, that’s because we spent six months of the year traveling locally on our boat. I’m happy these days puttering around Long Island Sound or up and down the Atlantic coast in New York and New England. It’s a different type of traveling. It takes less planning and it’s more relaxing. So I’m happy to leave by globe-trotting days behind.

VIEWS FROM THE KITCHEN

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 19 Comments

A KITCHEN WINDOW

I like shooting through windows and I have a lot of pictures to prove it. It’s the only place from which I can see birds in the yard in the winter, or the frozen trees in the woods during a storm.

It’s also the place from which I can take pictures without having to put my boots on. Not a small thing when the temps are well below zero (Fahrenheit) and the snow is up to my hips.

I like the light from the east side of the house. Kitchen, dining room, our bedroom and the deck all face east.

Another focus

Utensils by the window

The picture window in the living room faces west.

Only two small windows face north and south, but the way we are situated, all the action is east and west.

When I finished taking these pictures, the sun had made its way around to the other side of the house.

I participate in WordPress’ Weekly Photo Challenge 2017

LAUGHING ALONG WITH THE MUSIC – FROM NPR

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 20 Comments

WITTY – IF YOU FIND MUSIC FUNNY

This is one of those posts that requires you to have a passing familiarity with a variety of classical (by which I mean, not modern pop) music. If you played in the orchestra in high school, studied piano or bass or flute or violin, or have a secret passion for Chopin, Beethoven, Vivaldi … well, the list is a bit too long, but hopefully you get the idea. These are for you.

My favorite is BERLI-OS! With a Harold In Italy action figure in every box! And the Walking Dead Composers.

I hope I’m not the only one who could read the notes in Brahms …

FAMILY MEETINGS

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 33 Comments

Colbert did a piece on family meetings a few nights ago.

I looked at Garry. “We didn’t have family meetings. The closest thing we had were family fights. I bet you didn’t have family meetings, either.”

He looked at me. “You knew my parents. Can you imagine my mother having a ‘family’ meeting? It boggles the mind,” he commented.

I nodded. “I don’t think our generation had family meetings. The closest thing we had were probably large family get-togethers, during which we tried to keep hostilities from turning into violent shouting matches.”

Our parents told us what to do. We either did it, fought about it until we gave up — and then did it anyway — or said we would do it knowing we would really do the other thing. I don’t know about anyone else, but being sneaky was not considered “lying.” It was more like survival. Making it to adulthood with independence intact required a good deal of prevarication. If you only did what you were “allowed” to do, you would become a pathetic shadow of one or both of your parents.

Growing up meant developing individual opinions and direction. Our parents weren’t necessarily interested in our opinions. About anything. Being sneaky meant you could save the inevitable face-to-face confrontation for something really important.

So, no family meetings. No rational group discussions of what the family should do … or even what we personally could do. Instead of meetings, we had arguments, fights, low and high-level hostilities … and plenty of sneaking around.

Family meetings? Like me, mom, dad, Matt and Ann sitting together and logically — and politely with good humor — discussing our collective and individual futures? Not. Really.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP – KAFKA AND DIRECT TV – BY TOM CURLEY

/ tomcurley1 / 12 Comments

The following story is true. The names have not been changed because I didn’t really get any of them anyway.

I’ve had Optimum cable as my TV, telephone and internet service for years. My cell phone provider was Verizon. I had no complaints. They all worked great.  Life was fine.

Then Ellin and I decided we should try to cut down some of our expenses. A friend who works for AT&T as a store sales representative told us to switch to AT&T and get Direct TV.

It would be great and we’d save money. I didn’t think we’d save that much but I’d had a Direct TV account for years. I only used it on my boat for six months each year. Spending the extra money for that account and Optimum was costing too much money, so I closed it.  I figured that now, if we had DirectTV for the whole house, I could also go back to getting it on the boat. That would be a plus

So, we did it. They said they would cover any cost for switching phones. Except they didn’t. They paid some. But not all. But okay, fine.

They set up our house for Direct TV.  I asked if they could switch the box on my boat that I had actually bought and owned for years  to our new account.  They said no, they can’t do that. Those boxes don’t work anymore.

“But”, I said, “it works just fine”. They said  it doesn’t matter.

“OK, can you send me a new box? It has to be Standard definition not an HD box because my antenna on the boat only gets SD channels.”

“No”, they said.  They don’t carry DirectTV standard boxes. THEIR OWN BOXES. I would have to buy one from a third-party. I said, “OK, where do I get one?” They said they had no idea. So I bought one from Amazon. Except that apparently, the company Amazon gets them from is either out of business or just doesn’t have any. So, now, my only option is to install a Dish Network box that does work that I do own. and pay extra money for six months every year. Just like I was doing before. Totally negating the reason I did all this to begin with.  These are “”first world problems” to be sure. But come on!

There goes the “saving a few bucks.”

At this point, I have spent about two hundred dollars more than I would have by switching  the phone carriers and I’m gaining nothing by switching to DirectTV.  I could just go back to the way things were. But I can’t. If I do I have to pay three or four hundred dollars in “Early Termination Fees”.

OK, fine. Live and learn. But I haven’t gotten to the good part . To quote Al Jolson. “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

eli.com

I recently got a 4K TV. It’s amazing. After having it a few weeks I noticed that DirectTV had some 4K channels.

Cool. So I went to one and the TV said, “You don’t have a 4K TV”.

I said ” I most certainly do!” The TV ignored me. Even though it has some kind of voice activation feature, it’s not a very good listener. After doing a little research I found out that I need a “special 4K DirectTV box.”

The service is free. Or at least that’s what they say on their website. So, what the hell. I call them up, I order one and last Monday a technician came out and set it up. Fine. But then we started to notice that the audio kept cutting out. Just for a second. It did it every four minutes. It did it on every channel,  HD channels, 4K channel, recorded programs. Everywhere. And only on that box.

I did a quick Google search and found literally hundreds of thousands of complaints that the DirectTV 4K box is defective. The audio cuts out.

Notice where it says about 108,000 results

Many people also complained that it sometimes turns their TV off on its own and frequently just locks up and doesn’t work at all.

I didn’t have that problem. Until two days later when my TV would turn off and lock up about every five minutes. And every person complaining pointed out that no matter how many times they had their box switched out for a new one, none of them worked.

Did I mention the fact that for the privilege of getting the “FREE” 4K service, I was charged 160 dollars in fees? 99 dollars of that was to apparently buy the box that I would then have to pay a monthly fee to lease!

So, I called DirectTV back. Spending the half hour necessary to finally talk to a human. I was very calm. I explained that this box is defective. I wanted it removed and my old box replaced. I wanted my money refunded. I wanted any extensions on my contract removed. They said sure. They apologized profusely. It took about an hour but they told my money was refunded and my contract was not being extended.  They set up an appointment to have a technician come out Monday. Exactly one week later and switch out the boxes.

I haven’t gotten to the good part yet.

I get an automated call from DirectTV telling me the service tech is on his way! And the visit will take one hour and 15 minutes.  I chuckled. All he had to do was to plug to the box into the wall and into the TV.  Easy! Five minutes tops.

A nice man comes to the door. I hand him the 4K box and tell him where to put the new one.

But he can’t do it. The order was put in wrong. This is supposed to be a service call. I need an upgrade!

“It’s not an upgrade” I say. “I’m trading a 4K box for an HD box. If anything it’s a downgrade.”

So he calls it in to get it changed. Did you know that DirectTV technicians have to go through the same voicemail automated hell that we all do to talk to one of their own supervisors?  You’d think they’d have a back door number or something to help those poor guys out.

When he finally  got a hold of someone and explained what was going on, he was informed that they could only make the exchange if I paid a 120 dollar fee for the “Upgrade”to replace the equipment. That until a week ago I ALREADY HAD!

The tech then told his boss. “I don’t think that’s going to happen”.  I spent the next ten minutes explaining the situation. I told the boss that on Friday, when I cancelled the service, I was ASSURED that everything was taken care of and that I would have no problems at all.  So of course, I got transferred to her supervisor.

someecards.com

I went  through the entire story AGAIN.

She transferred me to her supervisor.

And we did the dance again. This one said she could take care of me but for some reason it took her about 25 minutes to find this out. The “upgrade fee” would be waived. But to do that I had to pay 22 dollars from a credit card that would then be refunded to my DirectTV account.

At this point I was beaten. Sure, fine. Do it. Make the “upgrade.”

memegen

Another ten minutes go by. She keeps telling  me she’s almost there.

Almost there.

Almost there.

I just have to put in these two things and…..

I’m on hold. I’m hearing that horrible “on hold” Musak.  “Hello? Hello? You still there? Hello?” And this is what I hear. “Your call is important to us. Please stand by for the next available representative.”

The tech goes,” You gotta be kidding me.”

“Well all righty then” spectrumculture.com

So we wait.

For almost 30 minutes.

And we finally get a person. AND WE GO THROUGH THE WHOLE DANCE ALL OVER AGAIN.  After another 15 minutes of silence she says that they have to DROP SHIP A NEW BOX TO MY HOUSE!  It will take at least five days. And then a tech will have to come out and install it!!!!

But, I say, “He’s already here!!!! He is holding the box in his hand!!!!!”

“Sorry. That’s the only way we can do it.”

At this point I told them to forget the whole thing. I’ll keep the box. The tech and I shook hands and he left.

To sum up, in order to “save a few bucks” I now have no DirectTV on my boat and a 4K UHD receiver plugged into an old analog TV in my guest room that doesn’t even get HD. And I think I’m paying extra each month for the privilege of owning what is basically a paper weight.

My audio theater group performs a very funny piece called “Till Death Do Us Not Part.”  You can click here to hear it. It’s about a guy calling the cable company to cancel his dead father’s cable account.  We tried to make it as absurd as possible. This real-life experience exposed levels of absurdity that even my twisted brain could not in a million years, ever conceive.  The shear incompetence and insanity of the DirectTV bureaucracy rivals that of the current President and his administration.

Franz Kafka is going. “Wow, they are seriously fucked up.”

jobsanger.blogspot.com

What have I learned from all of this?

When things are working just fine, leave them the hell alone. You are never ever ever going to save money by switching your cable or your phone company.

And when you want to “save a few bucks”? Just cut out a few coffees at Starbucks.

will-blog-for-food.com