Category Archives: Computers

Mozilla vs. Chrome: GetGlue & Flickr

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I’ve been using Pale Moon x64 for awhile now. There are problems with how some sites display and work though. I have also run Firefox, latest versions of both browsers, with the same URL’s and find that they have the same problems. I have used Firefox for years and years now.

Two sites are affected by this: Flickr and Getglue

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Flickr

Flickr is affected only on Group pages. Add Photos to Group makes one wish they were bald so they CAN’T pull their hair out.

In IE and Chrome it looks and behaves how it should, nice boxes on the right and your photos on the left to click for insertion into the boxes to submit to the group. In Pale Moon and Firefox that set of empty boxes to fill is one long stream of boxes overlaying the page, going well beyond the borders of it area. Nothing works to get photos into the group this way.

The only way to do so is to go to the individual pictures and look in Actions to Send to Group … or go to Organize & Create and THERE you can batch send to groups.

But not on the group page, which is my preferred method, usually.

I didn’t always participate in groups much and never understood how people can be so active in groups on Flickr like some seem. It’s a double-full time job! So this browser problem isn’t too new, it’s been happening for a little while, I just started trying to get more active again recently (with my Knockout Roses blooming ever so sweet and abundantly!) so I’m frustrated by it and remembering other times in the past where I quit trying at all because of such things.

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Get Glue

Then there’s GetGlue. It’s a service I started noticing on Twitter last year, and didn’t give it single thought past what’s that? Who cares. Then one day it just snagged me … I clicked on a link on a Twitter search that had a getglue item in it … and that’s history.

I love Getglue, the only thing I haven’t done is branched out to follow anyone but my family. As my family goes, they aren’t even active really, only slightly, and that’s my immediate family. I have no idea if anyone I know is on getglue or twitter or … well a couple of people on twitter, but my extended family … no. OK so GetGlue has grown up since then, in my short use of the service. They revamped their site some time ago and since then, flunk … -F for Palemoon and Firefox. I lived with it, just for easements sake, using one browser for everything but Music (I have Google Music in Chrome, it’s the only place I run it on my PC. Firefox was flaky feeling, and Chrome is it’s brother or cousin or something, so, it work better, it does.)

Getglue, search for anything in the top right search box, in Pale Moon and in Firefox you get the same results, poor results, one thing, a black box usually that is a link to something related or maybe what you want but usually not.

Check in field usually works, but I don’t like that way of checking in all the time, sometimes I want to go to the actually page of what I want to check into first. I don’t want a bunch of bookmarks to work from … so searching, is useless in Mozilla on Getglue.

All the LITTLE things are also missing. The things that made me go, huh? When they rolled out the new site. I couldn’t tell if I liked something already or not, and it was the same going to other people’s pages and it was all just a hassle.

I didn’t check-in much anymore. I checked in via my Android phone app for GetGlue occasionally, a much better experience!

So all of this got to me yesterday. I copied a URL into IE and voila! Beautiful full color photo results. The ugly black bubbly square icky FF experience gone. I tried it in Chrome next. Same beautiful results.

There’s another annoying beyond annoying behavior in Mozilla browsers on GetGlue, hover over your profile links, and sometime you catch the edge of the Find Friends link. That pops out a label that won’t go away unless you navigate elsewhere and if it’s a link to go to your Profile or anything on the top of that list, you are SOL, the label won’t let you access the links (this stuff is just petty, who’s fault is it, webpage coding or browswer?)

No such behaviour in Chrome or IE or on my PS Vita in the browser on it.

So using Chrome I know that when I use a tab to go somewhere online besides Google Music, I end up X-ing the whole thing closed at some point, forgetting that “This is MY MUSIC PLAYER and IT WAS PLAYING but not anymore!” because I shut it down. Reflex.

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Good things about Chrome

I found out something about Chrome that I didn’t read about, don’t know if others know much about it but … open a site in a tab. Right Click the tab, choose Pin Tab. Nice!

Close browser. Open Chrome again, not a sub-link, the actual plain Chrome. Pinned Tabs open with the browser, plus a regular tab with you home page on it.

Pinned Tabs are tiny tabs on the left of regular tabs. So now I have Get Glue on the far left and Google Music on the Right of it. If I want to use other sites frequently I’ll add them, but only if it makes sense. I will have to add Flickr.

Things about computer use are nice when they work. So since FF won’t, I will move, some of it, the stuff that WILL work elsewhere, since there is an IE alternative.

Get Glue looks splendid in Chrome. It’s understandable, what they did with it when viewing it like that. The mystery solved, I can like and not like and favorite again. I can check-in however I want, I am not annoyed with pop out text nor searches that are wonky, wrong, ugly, slim, useless.

I don’t HAVE to use my phone to do this easier. It’s easy in Chrome as it should be on the PC. (It shouldn’t be hard and mysterious, should it? No. Fault on either side, coders or Mozilla coders, which side it doesn’t matter, the browser SHOULD be universal. Chrome and IE work on Flickr and GetGlue like mozilla doesn’t, update after update, nothing changes, just me.)

Scrobble, Scrobble, Scrobble: Sony, Playstation, PS Vita

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One thing I’ve wanted for a long time is an ability to listen to my music on anything and be able to Scrobble it. I had that ability with my PC when I first discovered what became Last.fm … audioscrobbler … and that support didn’t extend to the portable player I had at the time and it made me stop using it (really!) … I got a new device later and it wouldn’t do two things I wanted, log songs so that I could upload via a scrobbler of some kind … lots of devices have that capability, just none I ever picked. So eventually I heard of ROCK BOX and once I had to guts to perform the operation, I never looked back. I stayed with that until I got an Android phone and started using that for music (last.fm support + 3rd party scrobblers) and then Google Music came along and all my desires were met (with other tries in the middle, like Audio Galaxy and Mplay, both just didn’t work for me at all.) Google Music (now called Google Play) is my best friend.

Of late the Last.fm client on my PC won’t scrobble. That’s OK since I mostly use Chrome for Google Music on my PC, but there are things I want to scrobble sometimes that I do not have on Google Music, so then it’s a point of contention, and I know other people have the same problem on their computers with last.fm not scrobbling but I can’t figure out what to do. It says it scrobbles tracks, but it doesn’t. Anyhow …

Another place I have wanted scrobbling from is the PS3. I don’t want it hacked. We use it standard as it is and that’s fine with how we use it, I just would like to see Sony understand that simply SCROBBLING what music I have on their device is what I want to do. I just want Scrobble support.

On the PSP that would have been nice too.

Now, on my PS Vita it’s even more desired.

Sony Playstation PS Vita PS3 people, please support Scrobbling to Last.fm … even to other services … but Last.fm is the main scrobbler and lots of people would like a simple process that logs the song name, album, time played (each song, each time) … and can be submitted to last.fm as scrobbles.

I use a scrobbler on my Android devices, I don’t listen to music from Last.fm, I listen to my music library and scrobble from that. The scrobbler has my credentials and logs in behind the scenes and submits on the fly or caches for later submission. It shouldn’t be so hard to implement this for hardcore users, buried in settings … please, please, please!

Google Music app would be nice too, but that’s not really something I want, I only put some music on my PS3 and PS Vita, not all my music, fwiw. I’d use it if it came to the PS Vita or PS3 though. :)

Saving Personal Data

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Data on disks can make one totally insane. I haven’t had a good solution for many years, always “waiting” for the time when I can have a nice setup with a desktop, a laptop AND a great backup and backup of backup and … so on.

So now, with not having said desktop computer, only having a really very old Win XP computer from the mid-2000′s I’ve had my oldest, most precious, photos on a hard disk inside that machine, and though I truly believe in separate disks, time and action have forced me to use my 1TB for storing all that stuff to be partitioned to run Win XP AND store all my stuff.

Backtrack to last year. I had a 320gb drive that was partitioned for Win XP and All My Stuff, two partitions. Something went sideways and Windows wasn’t starting, and I couldn’t even see my files via connecting to anything else. I got an external Sata dock and Win 7 said the drive was empty, nothing, noninitialized, etc.

Win XP Wouldn’t recognize it, and eventually it worked out that I found this thing called TestDisk … which I thank God for since I needed it AGAIN … OK, what it does is allows you to get into a drive that Win thinks is broken … it is, and TestDisk will go deep and find your stuff. Yes, you can fix a drive. But man if that’s what I want, it’s always about … save the data. I don’t have extra stuff around … lets see, back then it was … sigh, the 1TB drive was new and I had to put all that stuff on it and through the means of trying to get things to run Win XP I ended up having no choice (recent drive and sata dock purchases) but to use the 1TB drive to host Win XP AND My Stuff.

So then we had internet problems the half of the year. Not really, only on that one machine. Ethernet, drivers properly installed, but I had to System Restore many times, then I ended up recently having to reinstall Win XP. Great, Fresh … got everything in line and no internet. It was #$@.k#$@dkald#$@ Anyhow I finally figured out SOMETHING to make it work, but I didn’t like it since “Automatic” wouldn’t work at all.

Plus that Win XP was ON MY Terra-byte drive and I didn’t want it there … and then the wonky started, I realized that one of those times of Sys Restore or reinstall… Win XP marked my My Stuff partition as Active and … I was toast.

It was too late. Missing NTLDR … akdjfklasdlkjfjkladsfjklaslk;dflk;adjflkjadlkfjlk;ajdf;lkjdslk;fjasdkljf (that’s how I felt) … so then, flip flopping things around I found my OLD 40GB drive actually WORK and such, as long as it’s level it doesn’t make horrid sounds, so I put WIN XP on that and right out of the box, with SP3 then drivers … bam! Fast internet without fiddling.

So … something was wrong before. Anyhow, I was taking the drive tray off of the 1TB drive and I dropped it. #$@%#%#%@ Yeah, the drive.
From there, it wasn’t a simple “repair” of WIN XP it was now, OH My …. DATA!

Test Disk to the rescue. Actually I tried “System Rescue CD” which was laying around. Crap for me. Test Disk was lying in my old downloads on my Win 7 laptop. I finally remembered that and listened as it tried to scan and do something. Basically it didn’t work with it inside the system. Once I had the Sata dock up and running with the right electrical cord it fired up the drive and Test Disk took forever but finally produced something, and Win XP went bonkers with Auto play windows for all these new drives it recognized. Wow!
I mean, I didn’t change anything in the Test Disk program, but something changed enough for Win XP to see that stuff. I moved the newer stuff only. I don’t have the space to move the old good stuff, plus I still have the 320GB drive that it came from which may or maybe can’t be fixed … but it can give up more data again, I do believe (it’s in a pretty good state via the Sata dock, I can use xcopy in cmd and it’s pretty good, very little of what it didn’t get. But now I am able to use Windows to look at stuff on it. It’s not as flaky as it was last year. Anyhow, it’s stable enough I can re-acquire that which I acquired before, again.

That means I can hopefully wipe the 1TB drive and start over, is it OK or not? We’ll find out. Also, that 320GB drive, have to do something with that too. I know, I need two more new drives so I can make it all work out safely. No three new drives. There’s a 3TB external thing I’d like to archive my video and photos and such on. Then a nice 500GB or so for the XP Computer, and … oh forget it. Just something has got to give so that I can build my powerful system, then I can rebuild the Win XP machine in a new case and MB setup … and then get an all in one computer for the Family room.

Why do I want an XP computer? Why not? It seems useful at times. It’s nice to keep old stuff in working condition. But I don’t work too well on that. I like my higher resolution, beautiful Win 7 … yes, I do like it, as bad as it is, it’s their best so far. I’ve also used Fedora & Ubuntu and looked at other distros. I am a PC, but I like my stuff to look good and run easily, but I want to fix it if I have to. I like coding and commanding and stuff, but it’s not something I have gotten to very much, only if I’m in the mood for it. So when I just want the internet and programs on my computer to WORK, I choose Win 7, for now.

So it’s a day of hoping to deactive that 1TB drive partition and see what happens.

Guitar Hero Again – Dongle fix

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(Dongle fix story, and Dongle Fix Directions at the bottom.)

Lately I’ve felt like revisting Guitar Hero. It’s been a long time. We first finally bought into the franchise on the Wii with Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock. I really liked that game.

We got GH World Tour next.

Then we got heavier into PlayStation than Wii, got the whole band kit for GH WT PS3 … and within a month the drums died and DH promised to bring it back to BB and exchange it, but never did, and I have no idea what happened to that, and the microphone eventually fell apart from little kids banging on it with no use for it but that (I couldn’t stand singing with GH WT, it wouldn’t give me points for doing it even one iota different from what was the original singer, so my own style was poo-poo’d and that sucks since sometimes even it was just MY OWN VOICE replicating the original singer but with my own voice, not a style, just copying “their way” and it would deduct points … ick. Forget it. I’m a great singer and since it wouldn’t recognize me … what’s new? Nothing.

Anyhow, forget WT I didn’t like the whole game anyhow, I really liked Legends of Rock. We picked up a used copy of PS3 GH III Legends of Rock a couple of years ago. I also have the Aerosmith GH but haven’t actually played it (as far as I can remember, like I may have … but not more than put the game in …)

So the other day we pulled out PS3 GH III and the WT Guitar and dongle for it. Plug the usb of the dongle in and … nothing. Par for the course. It always was trouble after not very long of having it.

So the first time anyone played in this session, it was my 13 year old daughter, she used a PS3 dualshock controller to play the songs. She didn’t like it, but got better at it soon. Later I had batteries finally useful for the guitar, and I gave it another go with the dongle. Miraculously it finally turned on. My daughter played with the WT guitar and it worked for her.

So yesterday I finally got my chance to play, felt like playing too, so I got out the dongle and … nothing. I #%#@!!@%!$%@$%&!!!!! with it for hours it seemed. All in all I think I did indeed wasted nearly an hour before I got it to light up. I had trouble with the guitar then, finally found the right battery stuff and had it linked. Started the game and found I only had named my band “BAND” ha ha ha. Must have been a frustrating day those long years ago. So I crank it up and start with Slow Ride. I didn’t do so swell. Lets put it this way. I wasn’t that bad, only had lost my “Medium” edge, just need to re-tune it. Long ago I started GH and used EASY, and got through the game. Then I started over perfecting each song (nearly each song) on Medium, and loved it that way. I intended to go to HARD but didn’t (for whatever reason) and then WT came about and that whole game was like a joke to me, I liked some of it, but man …

So that’s when we also switched to PS3 with GH WT and left the Wii behind. Left GH behind mostly too. Resurgence of GH III later, but not for too long, then we just let it all sit and gather dust.

So there I was playing GH III on my old GH “BAND” profile and with one song under my belt I moved to a second song in the first sections, a few notes in, my guitar was unresponsive, totally …. what??????? Both dongle and guitar were lit up like connected.

So I wasted a bunch more time, fiddling with it all. If I unplugged the dongle to reset the connecting, guess what? It wouldn’t turn back on. I go so sick of it. I had been blowing into the usb ports to warm it up, used my scrapbooking heat gun too. It didn’t work, or did, eventually I got it back on. And my guitar still was unresponsive.

I took it all downstairs to my “office” then. Get away from the Wi-Fi signal that was right there in that other room, and try it on a newer PS3 (like mine in the office is.) Trials galore, no dongle light. So I started more searching online than I had been doing already and found a video of a guy folding paper and cutting it to fit inside the Guitar neck. So I ripped out a piece of notebook paper and folded it up and got the neck of the guitar off, put in the paper and re-inserted the neck. Really tight, but it all went back together. OK, would that fix it? Who knows. The Dongle was still not working.

I put it in the freezer for 10 minutes. Nothing. Heated it. Nothing. Let it sit plugged in for 15 or more minutes. Nothing. Restart PS3. Many times. It was so testy, it was simply more than a pain in the.

Dongle Fix: the Story

Finally I did the only thing that I could figure out. OK, where are the screws. I’m taking this thing apart.

I did.

With the case off of it I looked at it, looked fine, smelled fine. Nothing lose, worn, or anything. Plugged it into my PS3 downstairs like that, the light was part of the button, loose in the case, just held in place, I couldn’t tell if it was connecting without it, so I carefully put the top onto it and voila! It instantly lit up! Yeah! So I had the top on, little poles slide into the circuitboard, so it’s held on secure enough. Anyhow, So now I played through GH III the first two sections and lost my battle against Tom M. Yes, I don’t care. I was able to play, the paper in the guitar neck seems to have worked. I guess I need to test it all without the paper now.

So I played a whole new game, never had played GH on that machine and I didn’t even think to put my save file in the cloud. All in all it’s OK since I really don’t mind beating it again. Not that I beat it already. No. I’m two sections in, just need to beat Tom M. and then I’ll have my more favorite songs to practice on.

So I played the two sections with no hitches. Then I quit, brought the dongle and guitar upstairs and asked my daughter if she wanted to play then. Yes. OK, let’s see … yes, instant dongle light up. Guitar worked. Awesome!

I had her unplug the dongle when she was done and put it in a drawer. This morning I pulled it out and quickly plugged it in, it lit up right away! I brought it down to my other PS3 and repeated my success.

I decided to put the bottom and screws and feet back on it. I didn’t over tighten, just enough. Sure enough, it still works. I tried it on both machines … instant light.

I didn’t do anything but take the feet off, take the screws out, take the bottom off, pry the circuit board off the poles in the top of the dongle case. It wasn’t anything about taking it apart that needed to be done. I’m guessing it’s the button, maybe it sits funny and that’s why, but simply replacing it makes it work solidly again. Works for me.

I have nothing against taking things apart (love doing that anyhow!)

Directions to fix GH Dongle to light up every time you plug it in!

So if you have a GH dongle and it won’t light up, try taking it apart. Pry off the sticky black dot feet, I used a T6 screwdriver to unscrew the 4 screws. Take the bottom and top (case) off. The circuit board is on poles connected to the top, just wiggle the board up to get it off. The button fits into a slot there, it’s easy enough to put it back together. If the dongle works when opened up, it just may work when put back together, as it did for me. Reverse the process to put it back together.

Android Romming

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I rooted my phone earlier this year. I didn’t flash a new ROM right away, left that for another time, but did do that sometime in February. My husband has the same phone as me, only he got his in 2011. HTC changed phones from then on to be able to be unlocked without having S-off, but you have to jump through their hoops to get that done. Ultimately I wanted to get his phone rooted and ROM’d so there wouldn’t be any more “out of space” notifications with nothing he could do about it except for get rid of apps that won’t move to SD Card.

Yesterday I started that, finished it, but there are more tweaks he could use, and I didn’t even verify that he can make any phone calls yet. It was a messy affair though. Unlocking and then I couldn’t get it rooted, then it was, but it wasn’t, but … ultimately I went the full downgrade to a lower hboot to achieve full s-off. And then still these ROM’s wouldn’t flash, so I took the one I had on my computer (I had been working on his laptop to keep his phone separate) that I had started with … voila, it worked perfectly!

Hmmm.

So I then got him into a Sense ROM, it’s nice and nearly the same, but one thing is, you can delete bloat apps and you have wi-fi you can share (with your PC or other device) To solve my hubby’s phone problem I could have just wiped all the data to factory. Kind of a start fresh. But there is more bloat there, that way, and it can’t be removed, and little tweaks are not do-able, and … let’s just do it, it’s the right thing for many devices, not all, just many.

Windstream issue again

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This seems to be an occasional post: Windstream being offline, and they won’t fix it, don’t see that the problem lies on their end exclusively.

Yesterday, March 5th, around 8:50am it went out. Hasn’t yet come back (over 24 hours now.)

I just talked to my husband on the phone, and Windstream wanted to talk to us with the modem connected while they accessed it (the modem) … but then they realized they couldn’t find our IP address or something and knew that wouldn’t work so they put in an escalted ticket for it to be fixed.

Once again, it is the same thing. So now we wait for my modem to come back on with a DSL signal.

Wikipedia is blacked out for 24 hours today

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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

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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

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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

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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.