Recovery from Computer Breakdown (and My New Computer)

November 29

Computer Recovery Lessons

On Thanksgiving Day, I had a breakthrough. I was at my parent's house after eating the Thanksgiving meal. I had brought my computer with me to attempt to transfer more files from my mother's computer by email. However, everything on her Apple computer works differently than on this Windows-based computer. Thus, even though I found an email program on her computer, somehow, the email process was not working. After getting frustrated, I decided to try the Filezilla file transfer program again. I was able to log on, as I had before, and noticed that all of the Box-Free Blog files were listed on the lower right side of the screen. The confusing part for me was that there was a blank area in the upper right side of the screen, at the top of which was a label that said "remote/." It obviously looked as though I needed to type some sort of address for the remote site, which even the example that I had seen indicated. However, the files I needed were already visible on the bottom part of the screen, and I remembered that a Lunarpages(my website host) technician (the one who seemed the most knowledgable) had written that once Filezilla was ready, all you had to do was click and drag files from one place to another. Thus, I clicked the first file in the alphabetical list of Box-Free Blog files from the internet, dragged it to the left side, representing this new computer, which only had a few files, and voila, the file downloaded rather quickly (for dial-up) to my new computer. Lunarpages is set up so that no further description of where the files are located in their inventory is necessary. By the end of the evening, I had downloaded all of the files from Box-Free Blog to this new computer. I also checked many of the files, and found that everything was whole and the webpages were complete with images. In fact, the process was so efficient that I think I will repeat it with the Dolly-Verse files, since it will replicate entire website with all of the links and changes that I have made to it since saving the files on zip disks.

Here are some lessons I have learned from this entire process:

1. Have an FTP program on hand and know how to use it. Also have a program that unwraps zip files. There are free programs of both kinds which can be rather easily downloaded.

2. Do not expect a laptop to last more than a few years no matter how sparingly and carefully one uses it.

3. Consider getting a desktop computer if durability and the preservation of files is an issue.

4. If one's computer begins to make whirring noises, shut it down immediately! If one can restart it, begin saving the most important files as rapidly as possible to some other source, since the whirring noise probably means that the computer's hard-drive is wearing out.

5. Most computer technicians are rather poor communicators and educators; even when they know how to do something, they use technical and general language which leaves their customers guessing. One needs to ask them for very specific information. If they know the answer, they will give it. If not, they will either admit it or give you some sort of nonsense answer.

6. There are programs for downloading other people's entire websites, believe it or not. I was so frustrated, that at one point, I tried to do this with the blog, but somehow, it did not work.

7. Dreamweaver, my website building program, actually works better when the website files are kept in an entirely separate place from the program files. That is what I have done now, putting them under "Robert's Documents" and it loads more quickly and functions more smoothly. I had always thought it made sense to put the folders for the website under the Dreamweaver program, but the program has issues with that.

8. Consider getting a fast-speed connection to the internet, even if the process might be somewhat inconvenient and the cost might be somewhat higher. However, I still have my cheapness standards to uphold, especially given the necessary state of frugality under which I live.

9. New computers are cheaper than one might expect. Computer technology is the one area that has been undergoing consistent deflation over the years to go along with improved technology. As a point of reference, I bought my first IBM pc, with basically only word processing capabilities, on sale at the U.C. Riverside bookstore for $2000 in 1985. (But at least it still works last time I checked.) Our first laptop computers, bought around 10 years ago, cost around $1500 with far less capacity or functional capabilities than the current ones being sold. This new computer cost only $579, plus a $200-something warranty that I have learned the hard way is probably a good idea to get.

And, athough I already knew this, be persistent. Sooner or later, one will have a breakthrough and learn how to do what needs to be done.

November 26

Computer Recovery Part 2

Last time, I forgot to mention that I had just bought a new Norton Antivirus program at Best Buy 2 days before my previous computer crashed, and had installed it on the computer that crashed. The program that I bought says it can only be used on one computer, and my new computer already came with a fuller version of Norton Antivirus pre-installed, so I went back to Best Buy a few days ago, and attempted to return it. The lady at the return counter said that software cannot be returned anymore after bein opened because of a copyright law that was passed a couple of years ago. I was left there wondering what opening up an antivirus program has to do with copyright violation; in my mind, it's just another example of the corporatization of America. Corporations which make equipment such as software saw an opportunity to make an excuse not to allow returns anymore, and took it. Norton is one of the worst companies to deal with, in my experience. As I told the lady at the counter, I had previously bought two or three of their products which promised rebates, only to go through the entire rebate procedure and never hear from them about the rebate. Later, I looked up their rebate practices on the internet, and found that they let another company handle their rebates, a company which finds any excuse it can to deny a rebate, leading to fewer than half of rebate respondents actually receiving them. In fact, Norton had the highest rate of rebate denial of any company. I got angry at them subsequently, and decided to buy another type of antivirus program. I asked an employee at Best Buy which antivirus program asided from Norton Antivirus would be good, and he recommended one the name of which I forget. I bought the recommended non-Norton antivirus program, installed it, and found that somehow -- I suspect due to the previous presence of Norton Antivirus on the computer -- the new program was unable to work. It seems that Norton makes its programs in such a way that even when uninstalled, they prevent other antivirus programs from working. At least, that appeared to be the most likely explanation for what happened. This problem is confounded by the fact that many computers, including all of the laptops that I have bought, come pre-equipped with Norton software. It seems clear to me that Norton is determined to have a monopoly on the internet protection business, and is not ethical in the way it conducts business. That is why in a previous post, I mentioned that I do not really trust the Norton company, and would not be surprised if many of the computer viruses, worms, etc, actually were being made by their employees, or employees of other internet security companies. And no, I am not simply being paranoid. As long as they can get away with it, that is unfortunately a winning strategy for them, since that will assure that they have more computer users motivated to buy their products. Alas, I continue to reluctantly use Norton's products.

Meanwhile, I have been making progress in the computer recovery process. I managed to download many archives from this blog directly to this computer, but only the shorter ones. The longer ones and the pictures still seem to be too much for my slow-speed connection to handle. I plan to use my mother's computer once again for that purpose, then email the files to this computer. Alternatively, I could attempt to use the Filezilla program which I downloaded, but I still haven't figured out how to access the "remote computer" (the internet) using this program. I have been trying to get DSL for years, and it is either unavailable here everytime, or way too expensive. This experience, though, has made me think that I should try harder to find a reasonably priced DSL carrier in this neighborhood. My website production program, Dreamweaver, somehow was not allowing its files to be accessed at first, either. I finally managed to post something by moving the blog to a different location on my computer, the document files instead of in Dreamweaver itself. When I did, the pictures were not there, only the words, as you may have noticed. Subsequently, I fixed the access problem by putting all of my internet files in the document files, which is fine with Dreamweaver, so it has no trouble accessing files stored there. I also found that my statcounter somehow was no longer working after having been downloaded. Apparently, it does not "like" being downloaded, but "likes" being uploaded just fine. I erased the old statcounter code, and re-installed a fresh set of statcounter code, so that it should now work.

Such are the vicissitudes of computer technology, making the learning of internet technology a constant challenge that seems to change day to day as this technology evolves.

November 23

Greetings Box-Free Bloggers!

Well, today is Eunice and my anniversary, which actually has nothing to do with the absence of recent posts. And no, I have not run out of ideas for post topics. Unfortunately, I have had to postpone posting activities due to a computer disaster. My former computer's hard drive apparently wore out while I was reading the first of three articles I am supposed to review for a psychology journal. Since then, I have been working feverishly to get the website going again with no success. The entire debacle is partly a result of my lack of experience with such activities, but also does not speak well of the current state of computer and internet technology. Uploading files is easy to do with the help of my internet host, Lunarpages. However, downloading material appears to be a complex process involving file transfer programs and zip file unwrappers. I have downloaded several such programs from the internet during the past week, but still have not been able to get them to download my internet materials. (The zip file unwrapper has been put to use by me, though.) The fact that my HP laptop computer, with which I was always very careful, broke down after about 6 years, is disturbing, especially considering that 6 years seems to be longer than most laptops last. I guess the computer manufacturers want their customers to buy a new computer every 3 years or so. On the plus side, computer prices have decreased over the years, and they have become more capable than computers of the past, at the same time, but they appear to be more vulnerable than past cohorts of computers to malfunction. I still have my first computer, an IBM PC which I bought in 1985, and it still works. But it cannot access the internet. Anyway, it makes a good antique.

Eunice told me this computer is my anniversary present. It cost $579 plus a 3 year warranty which cost an additional $200-plus dollars at Circuit City. I guess it is only appropriate that I would get the blog going again on my anniversary.

At this time, I am at my parent's house. My brother Bruce and his family arrived here yesterday and plan to stay for over 1 week. The way I got this blog going again is by downloading the webpage files to my mother's computer, then emailing them to my new computer. I tried downloading the files directly to my new computer, but since I am still stuck with dial-up, the connection is very slow, and consequently, only 12.6 kilobytes out of 89 were downloaded when I tried. Apparently, dial-up computers have difficulty handling the downloading of larger files by using the "right click" method. My mother's computer is an Apple computer with a DSL connection. I found it extremely easy to download the webpages with her computer. There is a "save as" command at the top of the screen, which simultaneously saves all files associated with the webpage, including all of the pictures and "buttons," in a folder on the desktop screen. After that, it was a matter of emailing it to my new computer, and transferring the files to my Dreamweaver problem, which is the program I use for website construction.

It feels good to be back. Don't expect very many posts over the next week or so, though. I still haven't reviewed the 3 articles, and still need to transfer lots of material to this computer, especially the archives for this blog. Fortunately, the large majority of the material on Dolly-Verse, I had already saved on zip disks, from which I was able to copy the materials to this computer.

So far, I like this new computer, a Toshiba Satellite. It does seem to work more efficiently than the old one, perhaps due to the presence of Windows Vista. Also, I installed the newest version of Earthlink Total Acess, which seems to be an improvement over the old one. However, I will probably buy another new computer when the warranty runs out after 3 years.