Tales of the HP, Part One

O.K. so I have been off line for a while. Not totally a bad thing but not a great thing either.

The computer finally gave up on me. What a pain. First one side of my dual core processor locks up making everything run very slowly. This lasted about a week. It was at this point that I contacted the American Express warranty people. Since I bought the computer at Costco and used my Costco American Express card they extended the warranty by one year. I am kinda glad I did.

I have had issues with this HP Pavilion box on and off since day one and it finally got so bad that it became unusable. I was never sure what the cause was as the problems acted differently each time. Of course the first thought is that you have picked up a virus or some nasty software but that is the first thing I checked for and except for a few spy-ware cookies I was clean. (Practice good surfing habits people.)

In the past I have contacted Costco’s concierge service which comes with new electronic purchases. They act as an intermediary for user issues and are very friendly, patient and helpful. If they are unable to solve directly (I am guessing the 80/20 rule were 80% of all new customer problems can be handled with the same 20% of the questions/answers) they will contact the manufacturer on your behalf. The first contact was to help me create the initial back up disc for the operating system that no one seems to ship with new computers anymore. The machine would not cooperate in making the disc for me so HP agreed to send me the backup Disc directly. Problem solved, back to work.

The next time was when the Hardware and/or Memory started going flaky. I never could tell which if either was really bad but during the experience I got a lot more familiar with some of the system diagnostic tools. With the support of the concierge I ran many different diagnostics but without a clear, consistent indication of what was wrong we couldn’t proceed to fix anything. This is also the time when I began to suspect that all the different Microsoft updates might have had something to do with it. It seemed like every time I turned around there was a new critical update that needed to be loaded, and when I did load them sometimes things got better and sometimes things got worse, sometimes much worse. It was in this phase that I learned about Vistas ability to return itself to a previous version. That came in handy a couple of times but again I never really was able to identify what the real problem was or what really fixed it.

And here is the rub. The computer would go on these ‘rants’ if you will for several weeks marked by excessive CPU time, or constant hard drive activity even when the computer should be in sleep mode, or the most irritating action of all, the reboot out of nowhere. I have heard that you should leave your computer on all the time and I have heard that you should leave your computer off when not in use. I have gone both ways and at this stage I don’t think it really matters either way. Based on the way you use your computer and frequency it becomes more a matter of convenience versus energy savings from my point of view.

Either way, the computer over its life has acted up on several occasions, diagnostics would turn up one problem or another without consistency, and then after a few aggravating days and sometimes weeks the computer would right itself and all would be well again. It would run perfectly normal for weeks and months with no rhyme or reason.

Unexpected reboots are generally not a good sign and that was always a good signal to me that something was acting up again with mine. Sometimes it was in the middle of the night and the next day when you went to use it you would notice that it had done a reboot. Sometimes I think this was legitimate as a new Microsoft update had been pushed out and it require a restart. It would take a little digging to see if that was the cause but it didn’t explain all of the non-use reboots, not by half.

It is when it started rebooting in the middle of what you were doing that really gave cause for alarm, and much frustration. There is the case where you get something hung up and you have to do a hard reboot yourself, it is a pain but that is a fact of life with these computers running Microsoft. It is something else entirely when it happens on its own or is accompanied by the blue screen of death. This last episode got so bad that I could no longer use it for any amount of time without it crashing in the middle of whatever I was doing. Bad news for me…and bad news for my data.

I finally gave up trying to figure it out and contacted American Express Warranty service, described the problem with what my attempted corrections had been and they agreed to send it in for repairs. Now I face my second problem, the service repair shop they use is a local PC store that has a store about 10 miles from home; however, the store they use for warranty work is located about 70 miles from my home. No problem, I could just run it down there myself and have them fix it while I wait and I would be back in the chase. I neglected to think about the fact that I would have to drop it off and leave it with them for who knows how long before they could get to it, diagnose it, repair it, and return it. On second thought, send me the shipping instructions.

Ah yes, the shipping instructions. They were sent fairly quickly…to my e-mail account…that is accessed through the internet…by… (I think you got ahead of me on this one)…my broken computer. O.K. the internet is everywhere and so that wasn’t as big a problem as it might have been but still one I had to work through. The next problem was slightly bigger.

The instructions said to take the shipping slip to the local UPS store, they would box it and ship it for you, all you needed to bring was the box, power cord, back up operating system software, and the signed authorization letter for the local PC store to do the work. On this signed letter was a place to enter your description of the problem and a paragraph warning of the chance that through the repair of the computer it may be necessary to do a rebuild of the system, in other words wipe out everything on the computer and start all over with a fresh load of the operating system and this my friends means that any files and photos you had loaded on your computer that didn’t reside in another spot would be lost forever.

Now you would think that someone that has had this much problem with their computer would know enough to have backed everything up (and at this point probably several times a day) and you would be right…except for the several times a day. I couldn’t remember when the last time I had done a back up so I wasn’t sure where to begin and I knew I had a lot of photos…a lot of photos which means a lot of backup space was required. That shouldn’t be a problem as I had plenty of CDs and DVDs with which to do this but it would be a lot more convenient to get one of those new portable backup drives, plug it in and let it do it all in one big sweep. Now which one do I get, how big should it be and how much should it cost? Back to Costco.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West. Click here for Part Two of the HP adventures.

Increase your e-mail awareness

Since I am continuing to send myself an e-mail trying to sell myself Viagra, and growing increasingly tired of the many implications I decided to do a little checking to see where the link was going. I did this without opening the e-mail’s link. I just hovered the curser over the link and looked at the address listed below. I then entered the address into www.networksolutions.com/whois-search and it came back showing the current registrar as Beijing Innovative Linkage Technology LTD. It also shows the name server as ns1(2,3,4).collig.ru. In other words they are using a Russian domain.

There is some other information and some phone numbers but I am not pursing it any farther. I don’t know whether someone is spoofing them the same way they are spoofing my e-mail address to make it look like I am sending myself these e-mails or what but I don’t like it. If our government was really concerned about our welfare they would be actively reaching out and attacking these people. What they are doing is deliberate and with intended consequences. This is not an accident.

If there are any of you out there that love to hack and disturb but still want to do something for a good cause and stand for something right, here is your target. Take out a spammer. Actively eliminate those that are deliberately out to do harm. I don’t have the wherewithal (resources or knowledge to do it) though I really wish I did.

We have all seen the warning about not clicking on a link from an unknown source or untrusted party and that is good advice. It seems that is still only a portion of the advice you need as I can’t even trust my own e-mail now. Either way please be careful out there. The war that is waging out there is bigger than any of us realize and we are getting caught up in the crossfire, so when in doubt…duck.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.

Weeds, weeds, weeds. They are everywhere.

I was just out mowing the lawn today and upon completion picked up the bottle of a special weed killer to spray down some particularly difficult weeds.

Now I have known weeds in my life of taking care of yards. My last house was a corner lot that I am convinced managed to grow every type of weed known to mankind. It was a magnet and with each new wind storm a new crop would emerge for which I would ask myself "what is that?" I am not known for my gardening and yard professorship and am still in the learning mode when it comes to identifying which grass is actually the grass that is supposed to be called grass when referring to ones lawn and yard.

I kind of got this idea I took from some yards I've seen that if it is green and you mow it down every now and again that it stills makes for a pretty pleasant yard, but unfortunately friends, family, and spouse have a somewhat different opinion. Also, sadly the last city I lived in had something to say about agricultural creativity. For some reason yards are about something more than just the color green.

Anyway, with all the various weeds that came along (and it seemed as if there was crop rotation with different varieties visiting every third or fourth year) I found that Weed B Gone seemed to take care of everything I saw pretty well. I could mix it and apply it as needed and where needed and it worked out pretty good. It was also much cheaper than having those lawn guys come every few weeks, tell you they sprayed something or other, stick a sign in your yard and charge you a pretty penny each and every time. I figured for the price of one treatment I could do it myself for the whole season and for many years that is exactly what happened.

Well we changed houses. Didn't learn my lesson about corner lots and got another one. The yard was in bad shape when we got here thanks to neglect and a house that sat empty for awhile before we bought it and moved in. Also it was winter and the yard was snow covered so we didn't really know what shape the yard was in, but it was a fairly new house so how bad could it be?

Bad...at least from my wife's point of view. She has used the chem crap people before and ordered up a helping. I think they delivered in a rain storm which washed it all away and doesn't help a thing but they just want to get paid for their delivery and be on their way. After the second helping, which still didn't look as if it was doing any good I convinced my wife that I would take on the job myself. She was worried about this since she knows all too well my less than stellar enthusiasm for lawn care, but even she would have to admit that I have put forth a grand effort in holding up my part of the bargain.

Of course it isn't just mowing...it is trimming, and weed eating, and pruning, and planting, and edging, and weeding some more. This is one of those things in life that you will never reach the end of. Oh you might get to a point where you don't have something immediately pending but add a couple of days and a new task list will develop.

So this year our corner lot that came with secondary water has developed a new infestation of weed that is more obnoxious than any I have encountered in the past. I have fought off morning glory easier than this stuff. And what is worse, I don't even have a name for it.

My wife took a sample down to the local nursery and asked what was needed to get rid of it for which they gave it a name (I can't remember what the name is so don't bother asking) and told her it was really nasty stuff. The best medicine for it was this (insert small white bottle with scientific looking label) that would take care of things with three to four does applied diligently every three weeks.

The label said I could apply about an ounce and a half to every acre or so I think. I tried hard to calculate what that worked out to in equivalent terms for my hand pump sprayer. We where warned to not get to anxious and over apply as it would kill off the grass as well. It is a good thing that we did get to mix it with water though because at $30 an 8 ounce bottle it wasn't going to go very far. Thankfully we only had two patches in the lawn that really had any breakout and mindful of the warning I have tried not to overdo things.

I applied the fourth dose today and I can see evidence that it is working somewhat though I still see signs that it has not gone away completely. I mean this weed is nasty. The roots go deep and the tops run long and intermingle well with the grasses so that even when mowing they stay down and are seldom hit by the twirling blades. I learned quickly to rake the area and bring the weed up to the surface before applying the spray. That seems to have helped but what a pain.

If this doesn't work the next course of action will be to pull each weed individually by hand which will probably further destroy the remaining grass meaning a replanting will be in order and even then I feel there is no guarantee that it won't come back again. This is kind of frustrating but it is what we do when faced with such situations. We fight back as best we can not willing to give any ground to any weed that would destroy our designs for our yard.

At times the weeds seem to want it more. They live on little to no water, they don't require fertilizer, they are overwhelmingly good at propagation, and they resist most all efforts to eradicate them. Why can't grass, and flowers and food bearing plants and trees take a lesson and flourish with as much tenacity as weeds? Why can't we?

I am sure there are some life lessons in there somewhere and because I keep missing them I will continue to have weeds in my life. I did make the analogous connection between weeds in our lives and the crop of bad politicians. You can't just ignore them because they will bring friends and multiply and never be satisfied with the little patch of ground you give them, they will continue to expand until they have consumed all that you have if you let them. It is a never ending job of monitoring and eradicating if you are to keep them out of your life. It requires an eternal vigilance, and if you slip for a time and let them make a foothold then the effort to remove them is greater and sometimes the cost of the medicine is also greater. It may make you question if it is worth it and the only answer to that is, if you want your yard to be the way you want it then you must pay the price.

May the weeds in your life be manageable and may you find that having your yard the way you want it always to be worth the price.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.