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Now that my computer is set up with secure internet and current virus protection, I will post this late. I tried earlier this week, but it did not make it through. Lucky for me I always Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+C before I post. I also added a spell check and fixed it to my enforced style. I kind of had a rough day because of little things. The motherboard in my parents computer is dead. Refer to an earlier post regarding that. So I decided to test out all the components to make sure. Everything but the motherboard was working. I tested everything for the tech support. What I unfortunately choose to do after deciding to fix it was swap out my motherboard with their broken one and put my old MSI k7t pro2-a in mine until the replacement showed up. This is bad because windows 2000 on xp are able to survive all kinds of upgrades except motherboards. When I had everything swapped around I had 2 computers of deadly blue screens. I fired up knoppix on the xp machine and burned the files from after the last backup and was set. Then I was going to reinstall windows XP, but I found a repair option that worked. Not the first one but the second. Unfortunately since I had no Internet, I could not access command line help. But eventually I got the xp up but slow and without internet. Later today I am going to reinstall instead of repairing. It will not be so bad since I downloaded the service pack at my brothers place. Later I did a new install of win2000 on my box on a different hard drive in order to for sure save my "My Documents." This reminds me of why I hate "My Documents." From now on I will have my own folder like it, but of my placement choosing like I used to do. I guess the stability of almost 2 years had to go some time, but I think if I had prepared I would not have had a problem. Luckily I found my hacked USB modem drivers and was able to get internet going. Maybe tomorrow, I will be able to get things going good. Also my Asian Special Edition Star Trek Season 7 arrived. It is a ripoff. All of the last episodes on the disks cutoff. Kind of pissed about that. They say 100% refund, but I have to pay $10 to ship it back, and it was only worth that. And if I leave negative feedback, this guy leaves retaliatory feedback. Screwed either way. Plus my books are over a month overdue. Pissed about that too. Pissed at ebay right now. Fortunately only out $35. Heh, and last night I drove over a raccoon. It was running across the 4 lane road and was into the second lane when it turned back towards me and I braked but to late. It went under both right wheels. It was a really big one too. It was like going over a speed bump. I felt a little bad, but it passed quickly. And then there was the dentist. I lost my phone, and I feel like I have not met deep slept in a week. |
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I have been using Mozilla Firefox for about a week now. I definitely do not like it. Compared to Internet Explorer, however I still prefer it. My favorite browser is Mozilla. I guess they are calling it a suite now. It just has all the options I like and/or am used to. First I got to have autocomplete for text. I hate having to push the down arrow. That and I want it to only autocomplete addresses that I have manually typed. I prefer the way Mozilla downloads. There were also some other things I miss as well, but can not remember. And of course, I must have my LCARs star trek theme. Unfortunately, Mozilla is being a whore right now. On two computers, it will install sort of. The install seems to be at the end, then it will quit. In the add/remove panel, it says it is installed. However when clicking on it, nothing happens. It is like clicking on a shortcut that goes nowhere. So here I am stuck with Firefox. I need to download the latest beta or alpha. I have never had a problem with either type yet. Maybe that will fix the problem. On strong point of using Firefox is the one-click clear all for people who are concerned about history and such. This was pointed out to me by someone who needed the privacy. Fortunately, I don not; see earlier post. Also last week when I was going through the computer mess, I managed to get my 2000 machine going with 640x480 16 color resolution so I could log into astrowars. During that short time without a firewall, I picked up a virus. Some kind of spybot, W32.spybot.worm. Some ass was randomly sending it out to IP addresses and got a hit on mine. Very annoying but I easily cleaned it out. Both machines are working fine now. The documents folder was intact; the benefit from using a different user name each time. I need to download some Visual Basic library to make the astotoolpak work. Plus reinstall all my old programs. But on the plus side, because of this incident, I may get a new 64bit Athlon 64. Then of course I will move to Linux as my main computer. I could go with the 32bit sempron, but I do not really see the point. I would just as soon stay with what I got till the 64bit becomes cheaper. Also noteworthy, I started back with the dumbbells, after about a week off. Feels great. I take about an hour to do my stuff. Now I need to get in about an hour of aerobic exercises. I was thinking of getting a dancepad for my playstation and working out to DDR, but my playstation is old. |
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I got Mozilla installed now. Version 1.8a6. Though it said the skin LCARstrek would not work, I tried it anyway and it does. I happier now that that is working. I also downloaded Thunderbird and found that it is not too bad. The email client I liked best was The Bat!. Unfortunately the export option was pretty poor so that you could not export accounts and saved messages. This is at least a couple of years ago when I was using it. Plus now I mostly only use webmail. But with my problems with ebay, I have began to desire a pop mail. I have been using Winamp a little bit more recently due to not getting around to reinstalling Media Center. Now that I think about it, I may not have to reinstall it. I find there is a trade off in terms of features. Mp3 files in Media Center seem not to use the id3v2 tags. However Winamp does not seem to read all the id information off of the ape files such as track number. This is very important to me as it delegates play order in some instances. Also Winamp has a poor library. Considering that I have pretty much migrated away from Sonique, Winamp has been my choice of player, especially since the ability to play video files. It seems that all of the programs I try at least have something wrong with them. Currently for ripping, I use dBpowerAMP because it handles Monkeys Audio very well. To get id information I use a German program called Mp3tag which connects to the freedb server very well and handles ape files. I have tried MediaMonkey, but it stutters while playing the ape files. So if it was not for Media Center having trouble with id3v2 tags, it would almost be perfect. That and the playlisting and categorizing is insufficient. I still prefer Winamp to just playing files with the added functionality that Sonique lacked. Of course the LCARs skin for Winamp is not all the great. Too much bloat, but acceptable. Actually it sounds like none of the media library programs work well for me. I ought to write one myself, but my C++ skills are lacking. |
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I have started to use a audio file manager program called the TheGodFather: http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/. I am always on the lookout for a better organizer program. Actually I started using it about six months ago, but than I found J.River Media Center, which is pretty nice, but it is being a whore with burning. The nice thing about The GodFather is that it plays seamlessly into Winamp. It, of course handles the main formats ( mp3/ogg/mpc/ape/flac/aac/apl/wv/mp4/ofr/spx.) It is fairly easy to find files. It can do batch things or single. The colors are nice. One thing it does really well is identify missing tags from ID3v1 & ID3v2 with the ability to convert or add from one to the other. Some bad things: The interface is awkward at first. There is a slight learning curve. It clears the Winamp playlist unless enqueue is selected. I have not figured out how to do library filters or playlists, so documentation is lacking. But I guess it is ok. At least it is working out for me now. |
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There is a sticky feeling of the feet from wearing sandals or flip-flops. After a short time it causes the feet to smell as well. I have found a good solution though. All I have to do is pet the cat with my feet. The dried cat saliva flakes must absorb the sweatiness. Afterwards, the feet feel cool and dry and the cat is happy, at least my cat is. |