Wine on the Keyboard » Techie Stuff

Lost in Computer Hades

Kacey — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:28:50 +0000

I really, REALLY want to use swear words. But I won’t. At least not on here. If you stop by my house this week, you might hear some good ones though. I’m in computer h. e. double hockey sticks. Seriously. The PC died. The one that had all of SuperGuy’s work stuff on it.

Sitting there, looking at me innocently. Ha! The mean, evil PC. (yes, I know I need to vacuum my office floor.) As a total aside, how much longer do I have to live with this teal/green carpeting. I’m SO over it…

I’m a Mac person, but we need a PC to run SuperGuy’s business software. The software that they only guarantee compatibility with Windows XP…

Windows XP is about impossible to find anymore, and costs more to get it than the Vista machines. So…I decide we’ll go with a Vista machine and I’ll strong arm the software into compliance.

I go to Best Buy. I ask for the cheapest desktop with Vista 32 bit on it. They have two to choose from. I pick one. They are out of it. I pick the other…they are out of it.

So they call around and locate it at another Best Buy and off I go to pick up the machine. I get the stupid computer and I have been in agony ever since. I do not know Vista. At. All. I did have backed up DATA files. But there is that whole problem of finding the actual software programs… It took me until today to find SuperGuy’s software. Of course it then took me forever to find the software key. I did manage to install it and it runs…barely…on the Vista after spending all afternoon tweaking it. Okay, I’ll live with it. Oh, and did I mention I lost two months of data that I’ll have to re-enter in the process??

Moving onto our personal financial stuff…which I had on Microsoft Money…no idea what version I had, no idea where the software disks were. I DID find 4 different version of it. I’ve been using it forever for my finances…I was fairly certain I could rule out the 1998 !!! version of it… (and I do NOT know why WordPress insists on putting a space after the 1 key. Can’t figure it out…) Tried all my versions but none would open the file. So I finally Googled around and found a site that had trial versions to download. One by one I downloaded them. On my 3rd try…2004, by the way, I got my file to read. But the program shut down saying it would only work during the year 2004!

So, I figured out Vista enough to go in and reset the date on my computer to September 2004. (I thought that was pretty clever!) I’m getting rather annoyed at this point. I’m going to try and figure out how to convert the files to Quicken, then convert that to Quickbooks for Mac. I’m SO over PCs. Really over them.

My office now looks like a bomb went off …

I’m no where near finished with digging myself back out, converting data, and getting up and running again. Sigh. (oh, that towel up there? That’s right where the sun shines through in the morning and glares on my computer screen. I got tired of the glare and tacked up the towel to block it. The new trendy look in window treatments…)

The only good thing out of all this? When we were at Best Buy I noticed that for $10 more we could get an 18″ flatscreen monitor. (grrr with the extra space again! Does it show an extra space between the 1 and the 8 for you??) So we bought it. Even though I don’t need it…and just bought a monitor for over at The Love Nest. Couldn’t pass up a $10 monitor.

So If you don’t see me out blog hopping this week, or if I seem in an unusually sullen mood on Facebook, ignore me. I’ll eventually get it all sorted out. Move as much as I can over to my beloved Mac, and hopefully get caught up on my real job later this week.

The saga of computer hades ends.

If you missed my blog post this weekend, I posted that September’s Photo of the Month theme is Purple! I’ll call for submissions, um, tomorrow! I’m running out of month!

Similar Posts:

Overhead View

Kacey — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:07:28 +0000

So have you ever gone to Google Maps and done a satellite view of your house? Type in your address on Google Maps and then click on the satellite view?

See, there I am by the red arrow? See all the luscious woods that I back up too?

Okay, confess, have you ever done this with someone you know? A blogging friend? Old boyfriend? Wondering what it looks like where they live? An old house you used to live in? Your grandma’s house? You can confess here to us…

Okay, you’re going to tell me that I’m the only one…

I find the internet fascinating…it has totally changed our world, hasn’t it?

Similar Posts:

What is Twitter

Kacey — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:01:40 +0000

Are you one of those “what the heck is Twitter, anyway?” people? I was too. I signed up. Logged in. Got overwhelmed and didn’t go back for months. I didn’t get the whole mircoblogging thing.

So, for you, those who like me who just kind of scratch your head and ask “what IS Twitter?”, I’ll try to explain a bit. I might even get you to check it out. To realize the potential. To get in on the fun.

(this is a long post, so I split it into two sections. Click on the more key if you need to to see the second half of the post.)

Easy Guide to Twitter:

Twitter is a microblogging platform. You have 140 characters to say what you want to say. No more, but you can use less. Twitter isn’t only about letting people know what you’re doing, what you’re eating, what the weather is…though people do filter in those brief comments about their lives. Twitter is about finding other like minded individuals and following them. It’s about instant access to information. It’s another building block in your online community.

Go to Twitter.com and sign up for an account. It’s quick, it’s easy. Use your real name, your pseudonym, your business name, or a name you’re know as online, depending on what/who you’re trying to connect to. A lot of people use their blog name.

Okay, all signed up? Go to your settings page and upload a photo for your avatar. No, you don’t have to, but it sure makes it easier to keep track of people on twitter when they have a unique avatar.

Go to some of your favorite blogs and see if they have a follow me on twitter link. Click on it and follow them. You’ll now see their updates. Easy, right?

Go to Twitter and type your first update into the box. Just type away. 140 characters. Go for it. Everyone following you will see what you said.

This is what you’ll see. A list of updates from people you follow. (sorry for the blurry screen capture)

What’s this whole @ thing about?

You’ll see updates like this:

mentalmama @kaceyskeyboard How was your walk today?

This means Mental Mama has commented to me, but anyone following me will see the update.

What’s with Direct Messages?

Our same beloved Mental Mama could have sent the message to me directly:

d kaceyskeyboard You slacker I know you haven’t walked today. Wuss.

With a direct message, only the person it was sent to will see it. So I don’t have to hurt Mental Mama for yelling at me publicly. :wink:

I also have the Twitterific app installed on my iPhone and I can keep up with Twitter when I’m on the road. You don’t know how entertaining that can be on long road trips!

Now Some Really Cool Ways to Use Twitter.

Politics and Twitter.

Want to keep up what’s going on in the political arena? Go to the Twitter Election Coverage page. It’s a live feed of election topics people are tweeting about. This was an amazing way to follow the presidential candidates debates! I’m so going to be there for the vice presidential candidates debates too.

What’s happening Right Now.
What to know something that’s happening right now? Use the Twitter Search Page.

I’ve used it for topics such as:

Hurricane Ike (I put in the name of the town we used to live in in Louisiana to see how it handled the storm)
Mizzou (for football game scores)
BlogHer08 (info on the conference I went to in San Francisco)
Palin
iPhone

How do I use Twitter?

I use Twitter to keep up with my blogging friends. I’ve also discovered a lot of other interesting, like minded people that I follow now. I follow the hometown paper in the town where my boys go to college. I follow software companies of applications I’ve gotten for my iPhone like Evernote. When I find a blog post I really like, I link to it on Twitter if I think my followers might be interested in it too. I sometimes link to my own blog posts. I ask questions that I need an answer to. People have a lot of answers for you!

I’ll mention TwitterMoms here too. It’s an active community on Ning where moms who tweet hang out. Their site says it’s the “online version of the three martini playdate.” It was the brainchild of Megan Calhoun (her twitter profile) and it was a brilliant idea. Over 1000 people have joined in just a few weeks. The marketing major in me really admires a creative idea like TwitterMoms! There are groups, discussions, and a great resource if you’re looking for more information. It hopefully won’t get too spammy with people trying to promote their sites or products. Right now they are doing a great job of keeping the spammy stuff out. So if you sign up for Twitter, go give TwitterMoms a try too. I’ve signed up to have a Boomer Blogger Group over there, so those of us with a bit more age on us :wink: can have a place to hang out. Friend me on TwitterMoms. Go check it out!

There is so much more I could tell you about Twitter, but let’s keep it to the basics right now. I’ll do a follow up post on more ways to use Twitter, more options, and some other programs you can use to access Twitter instead of just using the website.

Okay, hope that helps anyone in the “what the heck IS Twitter” camp. Check it out. Ask any questions you may have. Anyone with a twitter account leave a link in your comment below so I can follow you. Oh, and follow me on Twitter.

Similar Posts:

He’s So Proud Of Me!

Kacey — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:04:37 +0000

So my iPhone rings. (I told you I’m in love with all things techie!)

The Geeky One: “Mom?”

Me: “Hi, Favorite Son.”

The Geeky One: “I’m so impressed.”

Me: “Hm.” (you know, like I know what the heck he’s talking about.) “Really?”

The Geeky One: “You’re on TWITTER.”

Me: “Oh, that.” (like it’s nothing that I figured out the maze that is twitter!).

The Geeky One: “I’m proud of you. And I’m following you now….”

(is it a good thing for your kids to follow you on twitter? Hm…maybe I should follow HIM…)

Then he proceeded to explain to me how to take a picture with my iPhone and use twitterrific (free ap for the iPhone or $14.95 on the Mac) to post the pic to Twitpic. Does that kind of make your head spin? Me too!

Anyway, I have arrived! Just ask my son.

Yes, go ahead and follow me on twitter. If you need help setting up a twitter account, or using twitter, just drop a comment here and I’ll see if I can help you. ‘Cause, you know, I must be doing something right…my son is impressed with his mom!.

Similar Posts:

Stumbleupon for Photo Blog Hopping

Kacey — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:24:23 +0000

Okay, you’ll thank me for this. Or maybe you won’t. I’ve been known to waste tons of time photo hopping with Stumbleupon.

(this photo inserted for no reason at all. Doesn’t pertain to this blog post. It’s totally superfluous. But it’s pretty, isn’t it??)

Where was I? So do you know about Stumbleupon? It’s many things. A social networking site. A toolbar that allows you to browse the web according to your interests. You thumbs up or thumbs down a page as it feeds them to you, depending on whether you like it and it interests you or not. The cool thing is? As you use it more, it gets to know more of what you like and don’t like and serves you up web pages more to your liking! Kind of like magic :wink:

You install the toolbar, hit the Stumble button, and it serves you up a web page according the interests you marked when you signed up. I did up an easy guide to getting started with Stumbleupon over on our how to blog DandelionBlog.

Okay, now here’s the cool thing. If you want to Stumble only photos…which I love to do sometimes when I’m ~~procrastinating~~ when I have some spare time.

Here is the StumbleUpon toolbar. See where it says Channel? Then it has a World. Then what looks like a picture frame? Click on that picture frame icon, and it will Stumble only photos. I’ve found some really cool photo sites that way.

I also submit other people’s blog posts to StumbleUpon when I find a post with great photos, or a post that moves me, or has really good information about something. My mother always taught me to share.

So if you’re looking for a way to ~~kill time~~ discover some really cool website and photos, give StumbleUpon a try. You’ll thank me later…or not :wink:

So go over to the article on DandelionBlog, read about StumbleUpon, how to use it, and how to download the Stumbleupon toolbar and have fun! If any of you try out StumbleUpon make sure to add me as a friend. And if you find other Stumblers with similar interests as yours, add them as your friend. You can then see what they are stumbling too.

Do any of you already use StumbleUpon? And if you do, have you found the Stumble Photos only button? Any other cool tricks that you know of? (you can see on my DandelionBlog post how I use it to research subjects for my books).

Similar Posts:

Google Trends Part Two

Kacey — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:48:44 +0000

Well, my post was timely yesterday. A Google representative announced on The Today Show this week what the fastest rising search terms were/are on Google this year:

I had to Google two of those to figure out what they were… I feel so out of the loop. Do you know what all of these are?

Similar Posts:

Google Trends

Kacey — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:28:01 +0000

Interesting things I find on the web. I know, I’m a hopeless techie. Anyway did you know about Google Hottrends? It lists off the most searched terms for the day. I was glad to see that “Missouri Oklahoma” was on the list on December 1, if a bit disappointed that “Mizzou Tigers” wasn’t.

Google’s most searched terms in 2006:
1. Bebo [social network]
2. MySpace [social network]
3. World Cup [football]
4. Metacafe [online video]
5. Radioblog [web music player]
6. Wikipedia [collaborative encyclopedia]
7. Video
8. Rebelde [Mexican TV series]
9. Mininova [torrent site]
10. Wiki [tool for collaborative authoring, see #6]

Aol’s most searched terms in 2006
1. weather
2. dictionary
3. dogs
4. American Idol
5. maps
6. cars
7. gamers
8. tattoo
9. horoscopes
10. lyrics

hm, a bit boring there… wonder when they’ll release the most searched on terms for 2007?

Similar Posts:

My Scrivener Setup for Novel Writing

Kacey — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:05:23 +0000

Scrivener- for Macs only.

First off I’m using version 1.08 (1.1 beta). So a few things may be different than the last non-beta release. But the Beta is really stable. If you have an older version of Scrivener though, make sure you back up your data files before you upgrade to the beta version. Once you convert your files to the beta version, don’t try and go back to the old version.

Scrivener Main Website

MAIN WRITING VIEW (for me)

To see a larger version on the screen capture, click on the image.

In the binder, (the stuff to the left hand side) you can see that I set my files up like this:

STUFF (folder)
with the following files:
ideas
characters (notes, descriptions, names, secondary char etc.)
scene ideas (just one liners about scenes I want to write)
char arcs (char arcs for my main characters)
char sketch (the complete char sketch if I do one for a char)
char pics (I copy/paste pictures of my characters here)

you could add whatever you wanted here. Setting notes. GMC stuff. I find if I have these files set up, I can add things like hair color, eye color, last names, names of secondary characters, and see them at a glance by just clicking on a file.

DRAFT (folder)
Act one (folder)
sc 1 (file)
sc 2 (file)
sc 3…
sc 20

or alternatively you can break it into chapters
Act Two (folder)
Chapter 20 (folder)
scene 1 (file)
scene 2 (file)
scene 3 (file)
Chapter 21 (folder)
scene 1

Act Three (folder)

Writing by scenes, instead of chapters was a hard leap for me. But I like it now. You could always start out writing by scenes, then later as you revise, drag the scenes into chapter folders. I use the 3 Act folders because otherwise I had too hard of a time keeping up with all the scenes.

Research
Then under research I have a file for things I want to look up. You can also capture website info here, etc.

Okay, that was simple. You can drag scenes around and change their order as you go. You can put in one liner placeholders for scenes. I usually name my Acts, and name my scenes as I go along. Helps to remember what’s in the scene at a glance. The title of the scene will show up on the first line of the index card in corkboard view. (more about that view in a minute)

The above image is my basic view when I’m writing.

In the inspector panel: (right hand side)

SYNOPSIS
Change “Untitled” to the title of the scene on the first line of the card. This will show up on the first line of the index card in corkboard view. I type in a brief synopsis for the scene. This also shows up in the corkboard view. I sometimes list all the characters in the scene here too. Or the setting.

LABELS:
You can see how I have my labels set up. I put in a label for each character’s POV. (Click on file, label and status setup) Use the + and – at the bottom of the setup to add or delete labels.

I color code them. To color code them in the set up, just double click on the small box to the left of the label you set up and a box of crayons pops up. Pick your color. Using lighter colors than I did will make your cards easier to read.

Then when you add a new scene change the Label in the inspector to the correct POV for that scene.

I usually set up another status what is white in color, and use that for folders so the corkboard and outline don’t get too colorful.

Status:
I sometimes use the standard status. To do, first draft, revised draft, etc. But you could use this for anything you want. Things like suspense thread, romance thread, secondary thread. Or if you could use it for a timeline signifier. To set up your own, click on File, Labels and Status Setup.

Document notes:
I jot down anything I think of that I still need to do, or look up for this scene. You can also cut/paste a picture of your POV character here, or a picture of the setting.

Notice below document notes there is a key icon. If you click on this, you get the keywords space instead of the document notes. I often use my characters as keywords and list all the characters that are in this scene. (as opposed to putting them in the synopsis area. Not sure which I prefer)

CORKBOARD VIEW

Click image to enlarge.

I have set the cards up to be tinted by the Label color. (Click on View, index cards, tint cards with label color). If that’s too much for you, you can still do the show pins, and they will be the color of your label.

OUTLINE VIEW

Here I’ve highlighted the draft and expanded all the folders. You can see the synopsis for the scenes, the label (POV), and the status.

Another cool Scrivener trick to cut down on distractions. Click on Full Screen on the top menu bar, and your background will darken out, and you’ll just have the blank page to type into. Hit escape to go back to the regular view.

One more cool trick. Targets. Don’t know how I wrote without them. Set your target for the document. And set your session target. (to get to targets: Menu bar. Cick on view, statistics, show project targets. Or use the shortcut SHIFT COMMAND T) Here you can keep track of your total progress towards the completed novel and your progress on that writing sesssion. Love this feature.

For more help on Scrivener, there is a very active forum.

I’ve just barely scratched the surface of all the things Scrivener can do. But this is my basic setup for when I start a novel. Hope this helps.

Similar Posts:

I heart my Mac

Kacey — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:25:15 +0000

My PC kept locking up. Still is. And I’m a geek. I’ve swapped out everything. Bought new memory. Took stuff off. Put stuff on. I mean I can BUILD a PC. But this one just defeated me.

Don’t laugh. I bought a mac. Yes, me, a life long PC user. A Mac Mini…and I’m in Love Honest. I also got the program Scrivener and it is the MOST amazing software for writing. I’ll do up a review of it later, but for now, trust me. I heart it too.

I’m also doing the trial of Curio for collages for my writing. Not so sure on that one yet. I think a scrapbooking program on a PC would work well for that too. (but my PC and I aren’t on speaking terms. It does still hold our work software and my accounting stuff…)

Anyway, my techie sons have just rolled their eyes at me But, after thinking about it, they think maybe it IS the way to go for a mom with a creative bent. They’ve used Macs at school, so they are conversant in them…even if they are die hard PC boys.

And there has been some learning curve.

I say: “Son of mine, what the heck is the ‘Apple menu’”
Son says …after a brief pause and eye roll “click on the apple on the top left” oops!!

Similar Posts:

smilie slut

Kacey — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 11:05:06 +0000

Writing rewards. I can’t seem to help myself. I reward myself with new smilies. I did tons of writing ™ yesterday. So rewarded myself by hunting for new smilies.

some of my favorites:

crazy :crazy2:
blah blah blah :blah: (which is what I feel I’m writing sometimes)
and of course. WTF

I’m so mature

Similar Posts: