07 May 07 Between 3 and 5
It’s after 3:00. Do you know where your computer glitches are?
Tags: Asides, computers, mini-rants, Rants, Technology
09 Apr 07 Flash Drive Troubles
My flash drive and I are at odds this morning. It was working when I left the house for work today, but when I plugged it into my computer at work, suddenly it was no longer formatted – and would I like to format it? Of course not, I say, since that would mean I would definitely lose all the data on the drive. So, my flash drive has been set in a corner, where it will likely spend the rest of the day moping. I’ve had to download the Portable Applications Suite again and live with a version of Firefox that is a bit more lightweight than I’m accustomed to. I’ll try plugging it into my computer at home again tonight and see if I can force it to be cooperative, but I’m fearful that it may actually require a reformat – for whatever reason – to get it working again, and I’ll have to restore my flash drive from a backup. And of course it figures – I forgot to back it up last night, so the latest backup I have is a couple of weeks old. I can live with that, even if I’m not necessarily happy about it. Worst case scenario is that the flash drive is completely dead, which wouldn’t be terribly surprising, considering how hard I make it work. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed, though, and see what happens.
Tags: computers, flash-drive
16 Jan 07 Computers - Bane or Boon?
I grow increasingly weary of the high computer security paranoia in my workplace. I’ve gone to some trouble to find ways to run a handful of my favorite programs from my flash drive. Most of them work great from there, thanks to the hard work of a number of open source programmers. But one in particular is again being blockaded simply because a couple of key .dll files are missing from the system directory. Should be a simple fix, one would think – download the missing files and put them into that directory. Not so easy, of course, because it seems there is a major network lockdown on the system directory on all computers in my office. Nothing gets in or out of that directory that isn’t directly approved by the powers that be. Which figures – Heaven forbid that I actually be allowed to work with rich text files.
Much as I love my computers, in this case, network security is the bane of my existence.
Tags: computers, Technology, whinging
25 Jul 06 Technical Difficulties
Somewhere, somehow, the database for this blog experienced a hiccup overnight – a very prolonged, drawn-out, and most probably painful hiccup. I’ve no clue what caused it, other than something exceeding the maximum of mysql queries at some point. Apparently web servers don’t like it when this happens because suddenly you notice that the database has crashed and no amount of coaxing and cajoling will lift it from its dejected state. Believe me, I tried. Fortunately, customer service for my provider is really rather good – a 10-minute wait on hold this morning followed by a 2-minute conversation, and the database was given some sort of powerful stimulant to allow it to go bouncing along its merry way again.
And all the world’s children rejoiced. Presumably.
So, if, by some far-off chance, you tried to leave a comment last night and were unable to, well, you can live breath again. Everything is up and running and happy.
Tags: computers, databases, Technology, WordPress
07 Jul 06 Enhancing That Toolkit
A couple of days ago, Flood asked a question – if you had to limit yourself to three tools or items in order to write for the rest of your life, which three would you pick? Conversely, I keep thinking of things that I want to add to my toolbox, things that would make it easier for me to spend time writing.
One thing I’d love to nab is a laptop computer. Right now I’m tied down to two PCs – one at work and one at home. So, in order for me to be able to write, I have to be in one of those two locations. Having a laptop, with wi-fi, would give me a greater degree of mobility and flexibility on the ‘when’ part of writing.
Item #2 I’d like to add is a flash drive, particularly in the 1GB range (since, in addition to file storage, I would be using it run my portable apps). Having the ability to instantly plug in my files to any computer would also make the writing process a thousand times easier. As things stand currently, I have to burn my files to CD-R (would that it was a CD-RW) in order to transfer my projects-in-progress between locations. Not particularly efficient, let me tell you.
Those are the two major tools pressing on my mind that I’d like to add to my writing toolkit right now. Now just to do something about that money flow problem I’m having…
What about you? What tools would you like to add to your own writing toolkit?
Tags: computers, flash-drive, flood, Writing
11 Feb 04 Bupkus
Ok, I promised I would come back and revisit this book I’m reading. I’m working my way through it (slowly!). It’s an intense read, to say the least, and I am finding that I just don’t have much time for ‘casual’ reading with my current class schedule. But I just finished the introductory chapter, so let me summarize it.
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The author is a physicist who originally started as an atheist. Throughout his work, he eventually came to the conclusion that God exists and that a future resurrection of the dead to eternal life will occur (and that this is all provable). He states that the universe has already been existence for at least 10 billion years and will continue for at LEAST another 10 billion, but more likely for another 100 billion+ years in the future. God, in his theory, is in actuality something called the Omega Point, basically the end of time/space/etc. He claims that as a necessity to his theory (and by implication proven through his calculations), God is not yet fully Being, that His Being will actually only occur in the future, at this Omega Point event. He does claim that his God is personal and that his God loves us, and thus will resurrect us. Heaven and Purgatory exist (or will exist, to be more precise), and Hell might exist, depending on a future condition (a.k.a. variable) of the Omega Point event (i.e. the end of all time and space). According to the author, the resurrection of the dead will occur for all those who have died in the past (but not for another few billion years, at the end of time), but that it will occur as an emulation performed through the computers of the future. The dead will be resurrected to this state of being (which he claims can be proven to be identical to our current state of being), and that it will be a state of “continued individual becoming.” Additionally, he states that neither Western Christianity, nor any other major world religions, fits well into the Omega Point Theory. He states that the Omega Point Theory merely proves the two things that every religion shares—that God exists and that He will grant immortality to us. The rest of the book will be used to flesh out these thoughts/theories more fully.
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Already, I’m barely out of the introduction, and I’ve discovered that what this scientist postulates does not match up with the God that the Bible proclaims. I would not say that this scientist is a Christian (and based on his own words, I do not think he himself would claim to be a Christian, necessarily, either; in fact, I think it would be far safer to say that physics is his religion), though he believes in God, because his view of God (and his view of an inevitable and undiscriminating resurrection of all to essentially the same place) does not match the Scriptural proclamation of the Gospel. I plan to continue working my way through his book because I believe in giving everyone a fair chance to voice their opinions (and frankly, I curious to see where he goes with this).
Tags: atheism, christianity, computers, emulation, god, gospel, heaven, hell, immortality, omega-point, physics, purgatory, resurrection, Science, scripture, time-and-space
