Just a quick heads up – I am moved over to the new host (HostGator), and am checking things over one last time before I start posting on a regular basis again. Sorry to have been out of the loop for a couple days!
Technical
It’s raining 64-bit Vista, Leopards, and Gators
photo credit: craigCloutier What’s a gal to do? After a long conversation with the husband yesterday, we decided to ditch the idea of a netbook and shell out the extra money for a new desktop. I had been researching desktops for awhile, and we took the plunge (We got a solid deal, which I’m sure I’ll talk about in another post). Why so soon? A big part of it has to do with my husband’s scanning project that he has been working on. His grandfather was a photographer, and he is creating a digital archive of all of his...
Ding Dong, the Dell is dead
It’s almost official. We decided not to extend our warranty on our Dell Inspiron 9100 (from 4 years to 5 years) because of the cost. It would have been about $350, and we had just gotten a new hard drive, DVD drive, and motherboard while it was still under the 4-year warranty. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe the CPU could die? That’s a possibility. At least, that’s what the error code said yesterday. I reseated the CPU in a lame attempt that it might have been knocked loose. This process took a little over an hour and countless...
No automatic WordPress upgrade for me
Yuck. I tried upgrading WordPress earlier this week using the Automatic WordPress Upgrade plugin (which has worked fine in the past) to no avail. It kept getting stuck on making a backup copy of my database. I had not done the upgrade before the most recent one, so perhaps that had something to do with it. I’ve been putting off doing it manually due to lack of time, but finally got around to it this evening. It really wasn’t all that bad due to the fact that I had time and no distractions. The extended instructions on the WordPress...
Helpful hint for Entrecard dropping
Sometimes, I’m the last one to figure things out. But just in case I’m not… Frequently, when dropping Entrecards, I will open 10+ blogs at a single time. In some instances, the blog will load, but not the Entrecard “Drop” zone. I just noticed that you can right click on the frame for the Entrecard widget, and just reload the frame (as opposed to the entire blog). The Drop zone will appear, giving more time to read the blog entry instead of waiting for the entire page to reload. Good stuff!
Getting the Digg button in WordPress to work
There are a number of posts out there on getting the Digg button into WordPress – I ended up using snippets from a couple of them, and thought that it might be helpful for someone else. I added the following code to my archives, index, and single post files: <div style=”float:left; margin-right:10px;”> <script type=”text/javascript”>digg_url = “<?php the_permalink(); ?>”</script> <script src=”http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> </div> I inserted the code immediately above the <?php the_content (‘<p>Read the rest of this entry »</p>’); ?> line in each of the files. The div style lines puts the button floating (instead of above the post) and...
Technical Difficulties
I just wanted to write a quick post – my ISP has been having some issues, but things should be fixed by this afternoon. I’ll post back as soon as things are fixed. I also wanted to apologize to Entrecard droppers – things were just too slow over the past two days to keep up; I promise to make it up to you as soon as I have reliable and fast internet access again! Take it easy
Using Dell Technical Chat to Get Things Fixed
I mentioned that I was trying to rescue the old Dell from the blue screen of death. I was pretty convinced that a virus was causing problems, but after running some diagnostics realized that the hard drive might actually be fried. This really sucks because we don’t want to get another computer right now. What I didn’t know (until yesterday) is that the old girl is still under warranty! Four years ago, I was able to get a really nice Dell Inspiron 9100 through work, and I did not know that it came with a 4 year warranty (that...
Take free classes with HP
There are a lot of short classes on a variety of topics available for free at Hewlett- Packard’s Learning Center. Topics include Windows Vista, Microsoft Office programs, networking, and general business skills. The classes usually run for 6 weeks, and there are forums to keep things interactive. I have taken one course so far; I didn’t participate in the forums, but I found the information to be useful. I just signed up for a course on Flash animation (it starts on 8 May if you are interested). Just thought I would share in case you are looking to update...
Using a rubber mallet to fix your MacBook?
It seems to have worked for me! I was having some trouble tonight after my hard drive started whirring on my (less than one-year old) MacBook. I’ve had the hard drive replaced once (this is why my published thesis is about 20 pages shorter), and was pretty ticked to hear it causing a commotion once again (no pun intended). The thought of traveling over 1.5 hours to the Apple Store tomorrow after my son’s class was not appealing, so I decided to take matters into my own hands – after backing everything up, of course. Turns out that a...
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