Wikipedia is blacked out for 24 hours today

I support their move. It’s hard on us though. Just bit me. I knew about it ahead too. But it’s a truth universally acknowledged, show people how bad something could be, and they will finally believe it.

I do applaud their blackout on January 18, 2012.

Every Category in this blog system is applied to this post, therefore, and every TAG … it’s just not reasonable to list every tag, so I’ve used ‘Everything’ and ‘Nothing’ as my TAGS.

Time Stretch

This week has gone slower than the week before and the week before and the week before and the week before. It’s just perspective, but even so, it’s as real and anything can get.

A new year dawned 6 days ago. Christmas even longer ago. Getting to each event was fast. Now with this one new week, they seem so distant, removed and far away. At some point in the last two weeks in our house we were talking about the PS Vita “that it’s only … away!” when we’d get ours. Now it feels stretched out of reach, just over the horizon, something that was right in view all the time, anxious for the day to arrive, now it seems further away than ever.

It’s only perspective. It’s been one of those weeks, this and that, news of internet stuff, be it threats of one group or another, to make things unpleasant for many, many folks. These times are insane, it doth seem.

Windows Live Writer Test

I just upgraded my old desktop using a Media Center XP disc I have. It’s not on the machine it used to be on, and it activated and validates just fine. I call it an upgrade, though it was a clean install, not really much of an upgrade, same OS, just a better flavour.

I am testing WLW to show myself and my children why this is or isn’t good to use.

I have used it before. It’s OK. It’s different, and I hope they will see it’s beneficial-ness … not be such a “blank slate” like the browser web blogging interface is.

I’ve used this and other blog clients, but usually just use the WP interface connected to each blog I have. Anyhow, this is not my main computer. I only have a laptop, have for a long time, my desktop being relegated to being the old old old machine that HAS to be the family machine and as the children get older it’s getting older faster than them. Other old laptops we have had are dying off as well, and that makes this old desktop even more precious and delicate.

It doesn’t have it’s own monitor anymore either. It’s either connected to the big flat screen tv in the living room, or the small one in my bedroom. Neither place is really good for it. FWIW it’s just so important to keep it working, it has all my stuff archived on it and I’m down to one working disc again, and so this windows install is on the same disc, different partitions, but it’s still trouble. I’ve had trouble with every hard drive in this machine the past couple of years, no matter how old the drive is it just …. augh! Not again! My stuff … my hubby promised through Christmas present 2010 to let me build my dream desktop. Oh well, it’s not to be. I have the shell (case) and data that is in jeopardy.

Pale Moon – browsing heaven

I downloaded Pale Moon x64 today and I love it! I migrated all my Firefox info over with their tool and it was fast and seems right. First and formost, FAST DIAL worked flawlessly and that is the clincher for me and a browser ever since I found that extension some time ago.

I like how Pale Moon x64 works, it really seems faster, and the thing I love, it downloads faster, absolutely. I tested a file from the Playstation blog. It was a worthy test, 63mb mp3 file. So, I’m mostly using Pale Moon today, and for the foreseeable future, as long as it continues to perform.

I tried a x64 version of Firefox before, and it’s just plain no good to me. Everything I’ve wanted has worked phenomenally in it today, You Tube, Accuweather, Flickr, Word Press sites, Google things … I’m using it right now. I love how quick my own blog sites, like this one here, load up so much easier, more fluidly, pleasant.

Firefox isn’t for “Modern OS’s and Processors” really. I knew that, only stuck with it out of comfort now knowing what else there was, until I felt compelled to find something else for another reason. I was actually researching trying to find another email client, Thunderbird has been making me upset here and there (so many lags right when I want to write something) and compacting isn’t impacting this, I do that daily or more often, sometime missing a day, but if I don’t open my mail for a day it’s totally unuseable to read or write anything for a few to several minutes. Granted I have many accounts in it, but I don’t get THAT much email. Au contraire, I just don’t.

Anyhow, I found a reference for Pale Moon, looked it up and downloaded and installed it immediately. Lovely, fast install, and even faster usability on every front from opening it, to browsing, to downloading files. I haven’t uploaded anything with it yet. We shall see when I have opportunity for that.

As for email, I didn’t pursue it once I found something that made me happy on another front. Email client search will continue some other time. (my feeling may change tomorrow when Thunderbird locks up with downloading and moving stuff…(all imap with old-messages) and I need to clean up something or just do something, I don’t know. I’m lazy with my email, if you can call compacting and deleting, emptying trash, and compacting stuff again lazy.

I do let my server move stuff from inbox to old-messages … but that’s ridiculous if it’s causing my annoyance since like I said, I don’t get that much email, and I do delete email, move email to other folders, compact, empty trash, compact, compact, compact.

It’s not THAT bad, just my “it should work easier than this by now in time, it’s 2011 for goodness sake!”  attitude.

PSN Activations – starting from Scratch

My hubby called PSN support today. They answered very quickly, but … I felt they didn’t get to the point of understanding what we wanted exactly, but eventually were going to do the ONE TIME ONLY EVER IN THE LIFE OF THE ACCOUNT wiping of all activations.

This is silly as the only reason I HAD to have them do it is that THEIR system messed up giving me devices I had labeled that were real PSP’s to be only virtual PSP’s activated with Video/Comics & Music and the real world PSP’s when I activated each one, my personal one connected to my virtual one as it should, but the other two showed up as NEW PSP’s and that’s purely nothing that I did. I couldn’t deactivate the PSP Video/Comic activations because I had no deviced tied to those virtual activations, they went into limbo even though the ones were no different from before in my house, with mine acting right, and the other two totally not connecting to those profiles online in Sony’s database, FOR WHATEVER REASON! But all I wanted was for them to fix it.

The biggest thing about it is, if they stick to their guns and say later, “We can’t do that because on November 26, 2011 we did that for you and it’s a once in a lifetime thing for any one PSN ID.”  … this post is about it, and I will demand justification for it again, since they messed up my systems with their deactivation scheme in the first place.

So anyhow, I got the account wiped. Within a couple ours everything was off my account and I started from scratch and added each device in and labeled it appropriately. I only activated GAMES on everything. Nothing else. Sony automatically puts MUSIC on each device (I don’t use it though, signed into it once this year just to see what it was, but didn’t do anything with it and that’s that.)

I’m not putting VIDEO on any machine/device unless I need it in the future. On each PS3 we can’t do it (only 1 is allowed per account.) I don’t know if that is ONLY the PSN Store Video (I guess it is) and that the other kinds of video I can do on either/or whenever without “VIDEO” activation. (Netflix, Cinema Now,  Hulu, Vudu, but Video Unlimited I don’t know.)

In the past I’ve gotten video on my computer from Amazon Unboxed. I’m not a big fan of digital renting of movie or shows as you don’t have much time with them if something keeps you from it, I prefer discs to that, plus a disc can be watched anywhere, anytime as many times as desired and sold or given away later if desired. Digital content, if you buy it, it is yours forever and limited to the program it is part of, either in their cloud service or on your harddrive. No thank you except for Digital Copy from some movie discs, that’s a back up version to watch without the disc at times, nice sometime, hardly used but a nice feature, and it’s not my only option. I like options.

That’s why Sony has me not so happy with this license change. It’s less options.

Now then, on the phone the person my hubby talked to told him about how Me as Master account with Sub Accounts works. I know how it works and how I WANT it to work, but she/he was supposedly telling him that on the PSP it DOES work the way I want, but she’s not right. I know, nothing has changed, their are no controls in Master Accounts to let them use my content. They have to be logged on as me on the portable devices. Why they don’t change that, I don’t know.

For some games they can put their sign-in PSN ID in, but for some games they HAVE to have MY PSN ID input. It’s not an easy thing, it’s a jump through hoops to do it kind of thing. I wrote about it early this year (in August) when we bought Syphon Filter Combat Ops on PSN… and then referred to it again when we got the UMD of Syphon Filter Logan’s Shadow
.

Still waiting … (theme of my life)

Still waiting for hubby to call Sony about the PSP activation thing I wrote about last. He said he would that day, didn’t, nor the next, and so on.

I can’t believe it from this perspective, that their stuff is so messed up as to not recognize that those two PSP’s are the same ones as before hitting the Deactivate button. The Music/Video/Comics activation is totally annoying, as you can’t get rid of old ones that are activated with that stuff since that stuff isn’t EDITABLE ONLINE ANYMORE as it once was (I know, I took that stuff off of one of the old ones we don’t have anymore but was still connected to the account, then the DEACTIVATE from post 11-18 did take that one away totally. There is no way to take such an approach now though, cause the DEVICE section was changed, and there is no way to change the PSP Music/Video/Comics thing anymore. I’m glad I did it when I could, before, but now I’m locked with two PSP’s listed with that stuff, and when trying to activate the ACTUAL PSP’s in question, they can’t be activated for that stuff, and if I activate for GAMES they show up as NEW PSP’s, don’t connect to the ones there already, thus I refer to those on my account as Virtual PSP’s, they used to be representative of IRL PSP’s but no longer are connected. Urgh!!!!!

HTC Sense 2.1 Calendar All-Day Event problem

I have an HTC Evo 4G phone, and an HTC EVO VIEW 4G tablet. [HTC]

I like them both. The tablet has an updated HTC Sense. The Calendar is nicer on the tablet, from the phone, with this one caveat:( It’s very annoying) All-Day Events in the calendar show up at the top of the day, also show in the agenda, but if you TOUCH one of them, that opens a “No Appointment” blah screen.’ Where are the details? In the event, but they aren’t accessible unless you EDIT the event, and for that you need to long-press on the event in another view, you can’t do anything with it in the “No Appointment” screen.

I don’t WANT to edit the event though, only VIEW the information.

On my phone the list of events for a day, the same All-Day Event shows in the list of things for the day, and if you touch such an event it opens a View Event screen of all the details for the event.

That is what I am missing. I hate how the tablet treats the very same events as the phone has, so differently. Same calendars, it’s not the old “HTC Calendar Bug from 2010″ It’s Sense 2.1 induced, no doubt, and I can find not ONE SINGLE entry online about it yet.

I’m assuming that the HTC Flyer (1st cousin of the HTC EVO VIEW, or little brother, whatever) has the same problem.

It’s not just my calendar, it’s also calendars I share that belong to someone else, they all work one way on my phone, great, and a different way on my tablet, not great, bad in fact.

I hate having to search and search endlessly and never come up with something. I use a billion different ways to describe what I’m looking for but can’t find anything but the old calendar bug about All-Day events from early 2010.

Treat this post as an entry into the arena for this HTC Sense 2.1 calendar bug (or design) –get rid of it HTC! Fix it so the details for the All-Day Event show when a basic touch is performed.

Breathing Life into 12″ Touchscreen Laptop

I used to use an HP tx2500 laptop. I gave that up to my husband to use after about a year, he used it for awhile, it promptly gave him trouble (while I had no trouble with it per se, mostly the trouble I had was VISTA, in my humble opinion.)

When I handed it off to my husband I fresh installed Windows 7 onto it. It seemed much better, in fact, the things I hated were gone. All new things cropped up over some time. BSOD’s and running hot … so it went on, I cautioned him about over-using it when he didn’t HAVE to, and such things to do to keep it cooler, blah, blah, blah.

At some point he got something else and the little laptop was now an extra one, and so I used it some, and put accounts on it for two of my children. It started getting worse at times, but not always. Eventually though, it had a graphics problem which was quick fix-able by pressing down on the keys all together above where the graphics on the motherboard is. It took the right touch, then would work after a re-start for days to hours, depending on ?.

I retired it, waiting to get more Artic Silver 5 and to think through what I could do and to basically FEEL like opening the laptop up.

I did do so last week. I took it all apart, looked at the motherboard, took the all in one assembled processor & heatsink and the graphic cover off, cleaned up the area with rubbing alcohol  then applied the AS5 and put the processor back on, and the soft sticky pad that goes over the graphic area. Screwed the whole thing down really tight. Put the laptop back together and the power was charging the battery, but the computer wouldn’t boot on at all. Realized that I hadn’t connected that one little thing … and had to unscrew and open up and connect … tried the boot up right then and there, and yes, it does work after all!

I have had to press on the graphic area a few times since, but hardly ever compared to before, and it’s not as “bad” of a messed up problem most of the time either.

It seems that others with similar laptops have “baked” the motherboard to re-glue the graphics to the motherboard. I couldn’t see any problem with that per-say, I mean, it needing that, if it’s evident from looking at it or not. All I know is that the laptop was so hot all the time before. It was so hot. The stuff that was on the processor before was really dry and flaky, so I’m sure it’s in a better state right now, good AS5 in there, not too much, not too little. It wasn’t dirty in there either. It was just old thermal grease and that’s it.

The graphics covered with the pad and then the heatsink, I just figured that having it as well press around it as possible plus the heatsink screwed in just tight enough was going to help.

The heat from the processor is so right next door to the graphics. I hate laptop design, in so many ways. Anyhow, just getting 5 years out of one is a feat, and I have done so with more than I want to count.

Sometime I may get a copper sheet to put over the processor, as in the penny fix, but with a sheet of copper instead. As it is, temps for the cores are in the high 30′s up to 42°c idle, going up higher with browsing, video skyrockets it, but that is steady into the 60′s at most. It hasn’t gone higher.

The processor is rated to go to 115°c … the laptop is performing alright for basic use in schooling for my children and usually the graphics problem crops up when turning the laptop on from on off state. So it’s not a problem that forces a shutdown really.

Time will tell.