Monthly Archives: April 2009

Email Trouble

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I am having email problems and I guess it should matter, but I guess it does. One of my email accounts is fritzing out, and I can’t get new email, or even have any of the old email I save. It’s Imap and I thought I had a version of offline, but it seems I don’t, in anycase, my Imap folders are all there, but they are all completely empty.

At first it was that I wasn’t getting new email since sometime on or after April 16th. I don’t do a lot with email always, I get very little, infrequently get, in other words, personal email. I sometimes send stuff, but often use my phone, or just not often send things. In the last week I recall that I did send something to my hubby and I bcc’d myself to have an Inbox record of it, not just my “sent” folder copy of it. Thunderbird, the client I use, couldn’t “copy to sent folder” and so I clicked through that and walked away. I puzzled at not seeing that email on my phone, but then thought of other things.

This morning I was up early (while still dark out) and got to thinking about it and took forever to figure out how to put it to Dreamhost in a support request. While I was doing that my Inbox went blank, hadn’t been before, and all the messages in the other folders looked to be there, but when I opened any of them they were blank inside, no headers either. I started to do some Print Screen things of errors when sending, and got sick of that, and when going back to Thunderbird that account had nothing in any folder, folder structure there, but empty otherwise.

So I abandoned my Print Screen project to aide in telling my story. I ended up blithering something into the support form and sent it away.

I realize that I never got that email I bcc’d to myself and never knew it had bounced or was “undeliverable” since I was the one sending that couldn’t receive, but didn’t know. Vicious circle, ain’t it?

If this ever gets fixed I’ll make super duper sure to back up separately some email stuff. Fingers crossed.

New kittens being born

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The feral mama cat that had adopted our crawl space previously for a batch of kittens had gone away and come back every so often for food, and then started in the last several weeks to come around more and more with increasing time as time wore on, and was looking fatter and fatter and fatter. The past week I really thought she looked full to capacity and would give birth soon. She’s very 1/2 wild, won’t really let us near her, but has accepted us looking at her at least, when before she’d scat as soon as we made eye contact.

I was working on putting the desktop computer together this morning in the basement and heard distinctive mewing. So I got my eldest son to get a screwdriver and take off the panel to the crawlspace from the basement. (the cats get into the crawlspace from the side vents that the covers fell off of and we just let them stay in there …) I couldn’t see really well into the space, with it being rather dark the further away from the little light bulb by the access space I looked, but I did spy a dark blob far to the other side of the crawlspace. The mama cat is a black cat, green eyes, and longish fur, some sort of mix. I got my glasses, which I need for astigmatism correction and distance, and it was an animal for sure, by shape, and I moved some loose extra pipes around there for a little noise and the thing lifted it’s head and looked, and for sure it’s the mama cat as the full furry face with light green eyes was staring at me.

I hope this mama will tame down and that we’ll get to handle the kittens before they get too old and become hard to tame as well. I’d like to see what they are like and keep one if it’s a black girl, I love black cats, truly miss having one in my inside crew since my Samantha died in 2005. We’ll have to do something with the kittens, and the mama too, as she and they will only populate more and more.

We’ve adopted and rescued several cats over the years, currently have 7 indoors. Adding another to the mix is too much, it seems. I don’t really think so, just some others in my household have that opinion.

The biggest problem about having so many cats is flea control, when one of the cats we have was adopted as a young kitten we were assured she was treated for fleas and had none, and within a couple of weeks we started having flea problems in the house on the other cats and the new kitten when we’d not had any and hadn’t had to treat anything for fleas ever. It’s been a problem up and down ever since. Maddening. We have to treat the cats and do it every month and it’s something I need help doing and since DH is hard to motivate in the area of helping with my loved animals, be it cats or hens … they haven’t been treated regularly in months and months and the fleas and their eggs and dirt are just awful. So we keep the cats in one room and I want to let them out to roam the house, but can’t. I actually like to have 3 or 4 out, rotate who’s out so they all get to enjoy each other differently with us, without everyone mixing constantly. That is the way I think adding a new kitten would work well. :)

InstantCake + DirecTivo R10

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We have two R10 units (DirecTivo) and have used them fairly hard. We got them right before DirecTV had stopped selling them in stores and put out their own dvr.

We have one in the bedroom and I had Baby Q in bed with us and turned on a Blue’s Clues that was recorded. It played and was nearly done (a noggin card game was actually at the end) and just when the game was to finish, *blonk* the box Self-re-started and never came back to work. It was stuck on “Welcome! Powering up …”

Hitting the reset button only caused the system to try to reboot, but stayed in the same “stuck” position.

The next day I swapped the living room box for the bedroom faulty box. Then I worked on the faulty box, opened it up, made sure cables were in right, etc. That wasn’t the cause. So I started searching the internet and found several threads which indicated I could have a power supply problem (less likely) the hard drive could be bad (likely) and I forget the other things. They weren’t important, in other words.

I looked at sites that have upgrading services and finally settled on Instant Cake. On Friday we were out shopping so we went to Best Buy and got a new hard drive, 320 GB, compared to the previous 80 GB one. I’ve looked into upgrading the capcity of the boxes before, but since we can do very little hacking just said “forget it” and lived with the alright 80 GB’s.

On Saturday I purchased Instant Cake and downloaded it, burned it to a DVD. Then I read through the instructions a few times to be sure I did everything right, and then opened up my desktop computer.

I had just started Baking my cake and my son came in from outside crying that he had a thorn in his foot, and I had to leave the room and take care of that, it was a quick fix, but upon getting back to the computer I found a blank monitor and my system shut off. I have no idea what happened.

I went through to make sure the eide cable was in my motherboard well enough, and found that it wasn’t, so I began the battle to get it to work, when it would have been easier in many ways to just take all peripherals off and unscrew the motherboard and put that MB on the desk by itself, then I could have had much more maneuverability in getting that cable into the ide 2 of the MB … but no, I wrestled with it inside the box. The things are very squished onto the side of the MB, very awkward to use.

I thought my cable was in finally, and ran InstantCake again, but it couldn’t find the HD. So off with the power again, and some more wrestlin, but I got it in better (I never figured how it was so very hard, when the cable plugged into other spots just fine, and I have had an easier time plugging the ribbons for DVD drives into that same spot in question, FWIW.)

I ran InstantCake and very quickly it Baked my HD and was done. Success! If I’d just take my system more fully apart from the start.

I put the HD back into the R10 unit, but didn’t screw things down. I plugged the box in, and the “Welcome! Powering up …” screen came on, and I waited and waited and waited, and just when I was getting more scared that it wouldn’t progress, “Almost there …” wordage came up. Yes!

I let it fully boot, let it get further along in downloading channels for a bit, then decided all was good, pulled the power and did the final screwdown/tightening of the whole box.

Wasn’t long until we were watching with that box again and now have approx. 301 hours of recording capacity. The system is much quicker than the old 80 GB one was for a long time, or maybe ever.

I’m thinking about eventually upgrading the other box, but that one I’ll have to do something about some of the recorded stuff that I don’t want to lose, and probably should do that soon, lest what happened to the other one happens to the one that is still running with 80 GB’s.

It was interesting in Best Buy to see how prices have changed in hard drives, and sizes have increased into such affordable avenues. That hd we bought was the same one we got for my desktop in the recent past, either last Mother’s Day (I picked this present) or the previous one. Anyway it was $79 off the shelf on Friday, and well over $100 when we got the one for my desktop.

In the end I’m very pleased with InstantCake, and would like to build a new computer. I’m tired of my desktop setup, would like to have a better processor and easier working on it like I needed to the other day.

I guess we could keep it as it is. I’ll just build a whole new one, with a T2 hard drive, and a dual-something processor, and way more modern memory, and a blu-ray player/burner, a large case, and an HD widescreen monitor. The children can knock around on the old desktop. :) My wish is not to be fulfilled too soon, it’s not right up there with all the other things that need done. It’s just a hobby that I love tackling and usually have to scrap and fight for getting a chance to upgrade anything, or to get anything new built. It’s been awhile …

Indispensable add-ons for Firefox

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These are the first add-ons I look for when I have a new computer, or re-set one up for whatever reason. I also set these up for other family members, as needed.

Bookmark

  • Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) Save your bookmarks on their site or your own site. This is totally a cool/hot add-on since it works to have the same bookmarks on any computer you use this add-on with, and sign in with the correct info to the account you want to use. Set it up and then just add bookmarks as usual, and they’ll show up anywhere you have this installed with that account. For instance I have an old WIN XP laptop with profiles for everyone in the family to use with Firefox. I have my own stuff there, same as I have on my primary newer Vista laptop, and also have on my user account on the WIN XP desktop comuter. This bookmark add-on make using each computer so easy, same bookmarks and not having to think about adding the same bookmark elsewhere.

    Even nicer, the next add-on (Fast Dial) works with Xmarks such as if you add this one to a profile in Firefox, Xmarks saves those bookmarks you create with Fast Dial, and if you then add (FD) to another profile, when it loads the same FD bookmarks appear.

  • Fast Dial Make your home &/or start page a page of Visual Links. Think blocks that show what the linked page looks like in the browser, customizable number of blocks vertical & horizontal.

Browsing

  • Reload Every Right-context menu, set pages to automatically reload based on seconds available on the menu, as well as setting a custom time. Useful for online auction pages, watching a flight status page for Delta for instance, and any other usage you would like to use a regular interval reload automatically to.

Weather

  • ForcastFox Accuweather.com’s information on your status bar. Customizable with different weather “profiles” for different cities, and placement on status bar, and icons that are used, and how clicking interacts with your browser.

Social Updates

  • TwitterFox Your Twitter.com profile in the status bar, update via TwitterFox, view Recent updates (as Home shows on twitter.com/home) Replies (now called “mentions” on twitter.com @yourusername usage in updates) and Messages (Direct Messages.) If you Twitter you might like this one. I didn’t always Twitter but have started and love using it.

View page in Internet Explorer

  • IE View Lite A useful add-on for when a site just doesn’t render properly. Plus it’s a smaller version that does that same thing as IE View. Very useful (wish it wasn’t needed!)

Theme

  • LittleFox This theme makes the browser have as much space to view pages as any I’ve used, mostly nice, sometimes squashes some menu windows, but never messes up viewing sites for me. Basic look of browser is flat and out of the way, text-ish and basic. I like it, it’s not for everyone though.

Laugh at yourself

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We are in Tampa for a couple of days. Thurs. we moved to a different hotel and the new one is right on the bay. We sat on the balcony and watched gulls and blackbirds flitting about for awhile. Then a new bird showed up and another just like it. I hadn’t thought of any of the shore birds as “gulls” just as sea, shore, birds, like that. So I got out my Sibley book I take around with me and didn’t find the gull section right off, puzzled over it and finally thought “GULL” and fastly found what I was looking for, eventually. At first it was evident that these new birds were different and after seeing a bird ID that is considered Rare in the book for this area I got out my Canon Digital Rebel camera and took several photos with my Canon long lens.

Satisfied that I had recorded enough digital data of the birds I sat down and looked hard at the identifying points in the Sibley book and realized that part of the ID I’d made was based on thinking and not thinking at the same time, with outside influence of my 10-year-old daughter pointing at the book. Right there on the previous page was a common bird, yeah, Laughing at me.

No matter. Laughing Gulls in juvenile feathers, then two come along in brilliant mature spring array. Worth a bumbling ID and some picture moments.

Rain, Rain and Spring

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Today begins rather gloomy, but a warmer than colder gloomy and we can still use it. Rain. We have needed the rain for awhile, and this past week has really overdone itself in that regard. We first moved to GA in Nov. of 1996, and a year later moved into the house we now live in. We’ve been through 2 other drought times, with the first the worst, dragged out, and the next one everyone was so reactive about it, it’s been tough but overall it came down to looking at the lakes, ponds and rivers it’s evident as to conditions.

We get milk in SC from a dairy in Starr. On our way there we pass the major waterways that border GA/SC and I’m very interested to know what that will mean for our next trip (Fri. 4/01 or Sat. 4/02) — what we’ll see, or not see. I’d love to see that the brown bottom parts of the rivers are not showing anymore, docks are actually in water, and such.

All this new rain will mean that our yards are going to be overgrown with weeds very soon. It’s Springtime and greening up tremedously already before all this rain, and even moreso the last week.

Spring Sidenotes:

    Twitterpated Wildlife

  • Right now as I type I can hear Mr. Eastern Bluebird twittering in the tree outside my window. Blinds are shut so I can’t see him, but his soft & musky trilling sound is very evidently him.
  • Earlier I saw the mother cat to the ferals that are living in our backyard. Those kittens are about 6 months old now. They first were noticed with another in the litter and the mother last fall, when they were mobile but very small, living in our crawl space (vent cover had come off giving them access.) The mother stayed with them through winter, and then one kitten wasn’t around most of the time, mother either, but two kittens stayed. The mother has been coming back again more and more the last couple of weeks, and it’s very apparent, she’s expecting again. She’s a very frightened feral, but at the least will stay around humans. In any case I saw her this morning running to the crawl space access and trying to dive through fast to hide, but she sort of got stuck and had to wiggle that middle part of her through before her backend and tail disappeared.