Blew up. Froze. If I’d not been so tired, if I’d had the sense God gave a newt, I’d have hand-copied, but the autosave hadn’t gotten it, and I’d pushed past tired to input the edits I wanted, freehand, no written record, OF course, and then the friggin’ TSR that almost all computer companies install to help us manage our lives (when I i-dee this ‘un I’m going to call Dell and light up somebody’s ear in technical support—froze my program. And blocked the autosave.
I can fix it. Tonight I am going to work a mighty slaughter among the renegade priests and undead, because I am in that kind of mood. Much too tired and much too ticked off to attempt that scene tonight. I’ll fix it in the morning. Fortunately the bones of the scene are NOT lost, just the fixes for problems I’d delicately put in.
Arrrgh.
Go get ’em, and please leave trying anything with that computer until you’re better rested in the morning. The same goes for Jane, even though she’s the resident technical wizard, because messing with computers while (over)tired is almost guaranteed to make things worse.
When you feel like talking to us again, could you tell me what (a) TSR is? I tried Googling it but found many different things, none of which seemed to fit exactly.
The “spirit of the stairs” is strong in me (l’esprit de l’escalier – as usual) – I keep thinking of something to add right after I’ve posted. Maybe you were meant to have the extra time to think about that bothersome scene, and the chance to take your time tomorrow when you’re changing it. Sometimes that sort of serendipity works out to your advantage – at least I can hope so; though it’s very frustrating when you’re working so hard for so long to have things like this happen.
Please enjoy yourself bashing those renegades and sleep well.
Terminate and Stay Resident file? Seems to me it was an older term used to describe files that the manufacturer or the software developer put in to help keep the computer running smoothly….
We calls ’em “daemons” on *nixies. 😉
As many here know, I make garments. I love construction. I like fiddly fitting. I adore embellishment. The quest for perfection in each project excites me. I despise mending. I am very sorry!
Between your computer throwing a hissy fit and Jane wanting to use hers for a boat anchor, it’s a minor miracle there is an intact one in the house. I’d be sorely tempted to wing the offending electronics out a convenient window! Didn’t both of you replace the respective workbeasts in the reasonably near past?
Oh, yes, but they both have that nasty program. I’m actually working on the old one because of familiarity and not wanting to jockey file transfer through the ‘cloud’ on a project on which I have to concentrate in a totally different mental mode.
I just have to try to hold those elements in my head tonight, and pick them up in the morning.
TSF is a lurker—‘terminate and stay resident.’ Dell’s is pernicious, in my book, partly because I run an old, old software, and the TSR, a watchdog on performance, may give just more help than the old program wants —but the same thing happens on the other computer, same program, with a program that is state of the modern art—so I tend to blame the nature of the beast, which is to lurk and stick a foot out now and again to trip something up. DUnno why I want this thing and my first question to Dell is going to be dare I kill it, can I kill it, and how do I kill it. I see no helpful use for it.
Maybe useful to put some short hints on paper to help you pick it up in the morning, just so you can let it go enough so you can sleep?
A thought for the future but I have found Dropbox and OneDrive to be quite effective for allowing me to work from a document across multiple locations and computers, with local copies kept on each machine as well as synched across the whole set of machines and locations. I still take offline backups (two backups are never enough) but so far both services have performed well.
Back when I had PC’s, I really hated all the junk-ware that got put on them. Spend an inordinate amount of time trying to rid the machine of what I didn’t want or need, with variable success.
Would a clean install of windows help out ? It’s a bother to re-install all your needed software, but at least you’d start with a really clean build.
Amen. That’s perhaps the major reason I have built this Linux system “from scratch”, compiling every program here myself as I have done for over a decade, rather than using some “distro” that tries to be all things to all people. Beyond the basic and very Spartan GNU/Linux, I chose everything that is installed and rejected many, many things. I no longer (have to) run Flash, nor Adobe Reader, nor Oracle’s Java binary.
Back in the day of Windows 95 many of us nerdy studs were recommending a yearly wipe clean and reinstall. I don’t think the reasons for doing so have changed all that much.
Good suggestion, but I don’t own my own Win 7 copy, and it’s a lot of hoops to jump through. I don’t think it’s entirely my old WP software. The program involved is ‘Dell Smart Settings,’ which is in the start menu, and all it does is config a laptop for use on an airliner. Right? So I’m going to have a go at MSConfig and see if I can unwire this little gift from antiquity.
ANNOUNCMENT:
I got the scene rewritten. I am now going to have lunch. Wheeze.
Well done.
Glad to hear that the scene and words re-emerged from your head. Enjoy yr lunch.
I’m back at work on my sequel, which I stuck on hold while prepping and teaching an on-line course (as well as my in-person courses) and traveling to Scotland this summer for a conference, academic and novel research and just plain fun. I came across a super quilting store in Perth and succumbed to several nifty quilt center panels (unique panels for the Perth shop but turns out they are American-designed: but still count as Scottish for me!). Instead of being a good, budding novelist and getting back to the novel when I returned at the end of July, I’ve picked up my old quilting passion and spent a delightfully inordinate amount of time buying (way too many bits of) fabric, quilting stencils and just generally rediscovering quilting.
It took a good friend (and fan, how weird!) asking how the novel was coming and when could she read it to push me back to late medieval Edinburgh… and I’m delighted to have gone back.
Hmm… I wonder if that TSR program is why my desktop blue-screened itself yesterday for the first time in years.
… And half an hour before I had to leave for an event, at which I was going to read the new story, which I had not yet printed out. Of course.
*headdesk*
I have this mad urge to tell the MS folks to please! Make a stripped-down version of the OS that doesn’t have ‘helpful’ things like pre-loaded apps for things I never use, or forced updates, or worse yet, forced updates which don’t, but take hours to happen anyway!
(I ended up reading a different story, which was well-received, but …!)
To be fair, M$ isn’t entirely at fault. How many times have Windows users gone to download a package, only to find a checked box for downloading something else besides.
I typed MSCONFIG into the search blank (Win 7), got up the tabbed menu box which has, among selections, START, and read through it. I found the offending file in there twice, once as part of the original install, and again as part of my USER setup, in a different directory. I disabled the redundant one, in USER, and we will see if that is the origin of the problem. I don’t like the idea of what it is, but if it just stays in its box and doesn’t do anything wrong, I’m ok with it being there…if you try to yank things out, sometimes the wiring and guts come with them, so simply disabling its redundant self from boot on startup is step one.
Our cataloguing software at work occasionally announces that it “has run into a problem and needs to shut down” and has an irritating talent for almost always deciding to do this when one has nearly finished a complex original book record rather than minor edits on an existing record. My sanity saver is to drag the error popup from its centre-of-the-monitor position to wherever I can put it so that it least obscures my work and then hit the “print screen” button before acknowledging the error message and letting the software close; I then just paste the screenshot into Irfanview (because it’s handy but any document program that can have images inserted will work), then I re-open the software, adjust the size of both it and Irfan so a new blank and the screenshot are side-by-side on my monitor and retype my text from the image rather than try to remember/redo my work. No good if the entire computer has frozen but it’s usually just that program that has seized up and everything else is still functional.
I’ve had that happen with the various cataloging software I’ve used. I’ve gotten into the habit of creating the record, doing the basic stuff, saving, then doing the fancy stuff.
Saves having to hunt and kill dead entries at a later date, at least …
Yes, I now do save regularly during the creation of original records or any kind of complex edits on catalogue copy, just in case. But sometimes the sneaky little thing will pull this stunt just as one is about to hit save for that purpose (the kind of coincidence that makes one start to believe computers are sentient and plotting to destroy humans). So that screenshot and copy trick is alwasy useful.
er … “always useful” (I do spell my marc records correctly. Really) 😉
I spel gud, two … but have you ever noticed how typos will find their way in anyway?!
It’s a conspiracy. Obviously!
Yep. I blame my ability to type “Canadain” 99% of the time on the fact that, being one, I’ve previously typed it so many times that I’ve suffered early burnout of the specific part of my brain that is responsible for that word’s spelling. At least the bit that automatically notices that I’ve mistyped it yet again and activates me backspacing and correcting it still works. So far. ;p
If only I’d just hauled out a pen and hand-copied the screen—which was whited but still legible. Frozen dead. But legible. I was too tired at that moment, hit the x in frustration and only then thought of hand-copy. Bummer. But I got it back in good shape, so all’s well that ends with me getting the scene done.
using Alt-Print Screen will copy the current screenshot. Then you can paste it into a Word or other processor’s blank document…..
You know that we’re all going to try and figure out which scene it was, don’t you? You might hold a contest…
Glad you managed to get the scene back.
I don’t know what camera or phone you have but a lot of them are pretty good for capturing a screenshot in an emergency and in readable quality and quicker than pen/ paper copying.
I agree.
Print screen probably won’t work on a locked computer. The safest thing? Ask Jane to photograph the screen. You might even be able to OCR the image, but you’re such a fast typist, it’s probably not worth it. The screen will provide enough illumination to take the picture; external lights and flash are useless. Jane’s DSLR should be able to photograph even if your laptop is at its dimmest, and have plenty of resolution.
THat’s a good thought. I do have a phone slightly smarter than my previous. It might manage a readable picture. I’ll have to try that. And we do have a good camera.
Even an old iPhone 4s with a little coaxing has been able to capture evidence of the text on a PC on more than one occasion. Best forensic tool ever 🙂
A phone camera might not have the light gathering needed, or might auto-flash, which would not help. Even if you can turn off flash, you might have to hold it *very* steady. But, like Rikki Tikki Tavi, go and see! 😉
That seems to happen when there’s a particularly brilliant thing you’re doing on a project, you’ve put in a good amount of work, you’re running on adrenaline and inspiration and…poof! And then you spend the next little while (or long while) trying to figure out what all went into that brilliant thing.
I highly recommend not having a liquid and a cat near your computer at the same time. My klutzy, well-meaning, non-assertive cat fried a laptop come years ago by knocking over a glass of iced tea. Sigh.
Computers crashing…yeah, not good.
* Isn’t it funny how in science fiction, they almost never have things like this? Human error, software crashes, hardware failures; none of these seem to happen much, either at non-critical moments or during those tense action sequences when it’s vital that the heroes (or anti-heroes) win.
When it happened on Trek, it could become a trope. Firefly might’ve been one of the few shows that did this in a realistic way.
Though I do remember a few cases where a certain jumpship or two needed repairs and couldn’t get away from a station conveniently. (Both the Pride and Lucy / Le Cygne at least.)
Though I suppose it is comforting that the bad guys can’t take over the planet or the galaxy because their software just glitched. Heheh.
— Note: I’ve been enjoying the new Muppet Show on ABC (actually, via iTunes). I am still catching up with Doctor Who seasons 8 and 9.
I haven’t been as taken with the new Muppet Show. The best thing I’ve seen so far is the Swedish Chef rapping.
I’ve only watched a few eps of the new Muppets. My impression is they’re spending too long in segues. And I don’t recall a running gag. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing”–JH. But it often takes a new show a while to get it’s feet under itself, so I’ll keep watching.
One thing virtually all Windows users misunderstand is M$ doesn’t write Windows for the end user! It is written for the developers of the applications it supports: the POS in your market, the laptop system my doctor carries into the examining room, the patient records system my dentist uses, the SAP systems corporations run or that run corporations. The so-called “end user” is so very far down the list of customers.
The iMac user cringes. If you just lost a game, big deal, but this is your living.
Got Facebook? Facebook is has a new warning: “Notifications for targeted attacks
October 16, 2015 at 4:36pm
The security of people’s accounts is paramount at Facebook, which is why we constantly monitor for potentially malicious activity and offer many options to proactively secure your account. Starting today, we will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state. …
It’s important to understand that this warning is not related to any compromise of Facebook’s platform or systems, and that having an account compromised in this manner may indicate that your computer or mobile device has been infected with malware. Ideally, people who see this message should take care to rebuild or replace these systems if possible.”
Yup, translation: “We don’t think anything you can do will decontaminate your computer. You need to start over, fresh and clean. (And given the speed of obsolescence, maybe buy a new box/laptop.)”
You can read the whole thing here at facebook.com.
It is a bit of an odd statement given how much money Facebook has already been paid by the NSA over the Prism programme. It appears that not all Nation State are equal in their eyes. (and hello Cheltenham!)
Got Flash? You need an update. “Adobe released a patch for a critical vulnerability in Flash Player faster than it originally anticipated in response to high-profile cyberespionage attacks against governmental targets.
The latest Flash Player updates released Friday address a flaw that’s already exploited by a Russian espionage group known as Pawn Storm, as well as two other critical vulnerabilities reported privately to Adobe.
The CVE-2015-7645 vulnerability is actively exploited by the Pawn Storm group in attacks targeting several foreign affairs ministries from around the globe, security researchers from Trend Micro reported Tuesday.”
IMO, the point isn’t that you don’t have to worry because you’re not a “foreign affairs ministry”, Flash is another one of those things that has been designed to put doing flashy things above security. It is inherently insecure–always has been, always will be. I won’t run it if I can avoid it, and now I can.
More to the point, we must escalate cybersecurity majorly in our concerns, personally and nationally. The political campaigning on one side always emphasizes military defenses, “fighting the last war”, while this morning the NYTimes reports: “Cybersecurity Firm Says Chinese Hackers Keep Attacking U.S. Companies … In a blog post on Monday, the security services provider CrowdStrike, based in Irvine, Calif., said that it had tracked a number of attacks on American tech and pharmaceutical companies leading up to and after Mr. Xi’s visit to the United States last month.” What needs bolstering in DOD is Cybercommand, though we need an equally strong arm in the Dept of Commerce. I’m talking about preventative measures, hardening our defenses against cyberattack, not the sort of thing Snowden leaked.
[/soapbox] (Though, be warned!)
I have to agree with Paul, above.
A major problem is that Flash is used by advertisers, looking for “kewl” and cheap. They want to do what they want to do, and have no respect for what they’re doing to your computer or its security. These ads can bring your computer to a near standstill, run down your battery, abuse your system, and are only as safe as the weakest advertiser code-monkey.
Going from simplest to most complex:
Flashblock will block all Flash unless you enable it. Some sites you may have to turn off Flashblock completely to get them to work properly.
Adblock I haven’t used myself, but it’s well spoken of. It will (attempt) to block all advertising.
Ghostery is pretty easy to use. You can just pick a level of protection, and for popular sites, it will warn you if you’ve blocked something essential. It blocks, ads, trackers, statistics programs–you’ll be amazed at how many trackers are running in the background. CNN.com, for example, has over a dozen trackers and ad systems. You can also whitelist something for one URL.
NoScript is the best protection I’ve seen. It’s used by the Electronic Freedom Foundations’s (EFF) stealth browser Tor. It not only blocks references outside the URL you went to, it spoofs the most common trackers so the site thinks that they’re working. But, it’s complex to use, and you can’t (easily?) whitelist a site for just one URL. (I use URL loosely here to mean domain, like “cherryh.org”.)
These are all available for Firefox, and I use all but Adblock, which is a bit of overkill, probably. If you use Chrome or Edge (Internet Explorer II), you’re essentially giving all your data to Google or Microsoft, respectively.
Last, all the stuff about Win10 copying all your data? That is permitted under Microsoft’s (lack of) “privacy” policy. And, they’ve send out “updates” for Win7 and Win8 that, reportedly, do the same damn thing:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/09/06/windows-10-worst-feature-now-installing-on-windows-7-and-windows-8/
Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary… [reasons that pretty much include, “We want to”]–Microsoft “Privacy” Policy
More info:
http://bgr.com/2015/08/05/window-10-privacy-settings-how-to-stop-spying/
I have to agree with Paul, above.
A major problem is that Flash is used by advertisers, looking for “kewl” and cheap. They want to do what they want to do, and have no respect for what they’re doing to your computer or its security. These ads can bring your computer to a near standstill, run down your battery, abuse your system, and are only as safe as the weakest advertiser code-monkey.
Going from simplest to most complex:
Flashblock will block all Flash unless you enable it. Some sites you may have to turn off Flashblock completely to get them to work properly.
Adblock I haven’t used myself, but it’s well spoken of. It will (attempt) to block all advertising.
Ghostery is pretty easy to use. You can just pick a level of protection, and for popular sites, it will warn you if you’ve blocked something essential. It blocks, ads, trackers, statistics programs–you’ll be amazed at how many trackers are running in the background. CNN.com, for example, has over a dozen trackers and ad systems. You can also whitelist something for one URL.
NoScript is the best protection I’ve seen. It’s used by the Electronic Freedom Foundations’s (EFF) stealth browser Tor. It not only blocks references outside the URL you went to, it spoofs the most common trackers so the site thinks that they’re working. But, it’s complex to use, and you can’t (easily?) whitelist a site for just one URL. (I use URL loosely here to mean domain, like “cherryh.org”.)
These are all available for Firefox, and I use all but Adblock, which is a bit of overkill, probably. If you use Chrome or Edge (Internet Explorer II), you’re essentially giving all your data to Google or Microsoft, respectively.
Last, all the stuff about Win10 copying all your data? That is permitted under Microsoft’s (lack of) “privacy” policy. And, they’ve send out “updates” for Win7 and Win8 that, reportedly, do the same damn thing:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/09/06/windows-10-worst-feature-now-installing-on-windows-7-and-windows-8/
Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary… [reasons that pretty much include, “We want to”]–Microsoft “Privacy” Policy
Flash the software that just will not die and comes back more times that Christopher Lee in old horror movies.
CJ, I have a question. If you were to miraculously find your deleted draft and compare it to your rewritten draft, how different would they be?
Probably would show quite a bit of red and blue in Comparison, but would have the information.