One of my friends just shared this little game on Facebook. It looks pretty simple at first glance. Just click the light green dots to turn them dark green and keep the cat from getting out. But, like the game says, he's a pretty smart cat. I had to keep trying it until I finally got him contained. I'm not sure exactly why it worked that time, so I'm sure I'll be wasting more time on this.
And if I'm wasting time, you might as well be too. See how long it takes you to Circle the Cat.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
ebay!
The battery on my laptop has been quite dead for a while now. It's so dead that the computer shuts down immediately when it's unplugged. I figured I'd have to live with that because a new battery from Dell costs at least $150, and I just couldn't justify that. Then yesterday one of my friends on Facebook mentioned that she had just ordered a new battery for her laptop. We got to talking about it, and she said she had found one on ebay for $35 with free shipping. Ebay! Why hadn't I thought of that?
I've bought things from ebay before, but it's still not my first thought when I need something. I don't know why. You're probably way ahead of me on this and always check ebay first when you need something, but just in case you don't I thought I'd mention it. Check ebay first!
Because when I checked, I found batteries for my laptop starting at $30 with the free shipping. That's a huge savings over the cost at Dell. I wish I had thought of looking on ebay back when the battery started dying. I would have ordered one sooner. I ended up spending a little more than the $30 to get a better quality battery, but still saved significantly. I could never justify the $150 price tag, when I could just plug the computer in to use it, but $40? That I can justify.
Just had to share!
Now it's your turn - what kinds of things do you look for/buy on ebay? Is it the first place you look? What kinds of great deals have you gotten?
I've bought things from ebay before, but it's still not my first thought when I need something. I don't know why. You're probably way ahead of me on this and always check ebay first when you need something, but just in case you don't I thought I'd mention it. Check ebay first!
Because when I checked, I found batteries for my laptop starting at $30 with the free shipping. That's a huge savings over the cost at Dell. I wish I had thought of looking on ebay back when the battery started dying. I would have ordered one sooner. I ended up spending a little more than the $30 to get a better quality battery, but still saved significantly. I could never justify the $150 price tag, when I could just plug the computer in to use it, but $40? That I can justify.
Just had to share!
Now it's your turn - what kinds of things do you look for/buy on ebay? Is it the first place you look? What kinds of great deals have you gotten?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Looking for Online Storage
My favorite online storage and backup service, MyBloop, has disappeared recently. I did a little bit of searching to see if I could figure out what happened to it, but no one seems to know. If you do know something, please let me know.
Luckily, I saved this link to the Ultimate Review of Free Online Storage and Backup - so if I need to choose another site, this will be a great place to start. I think the best course of action is to choose at least two different sites and upload everything to both. It seems sort of redundant, but that way if one or the other server goes down, for any reason, there's always a backup. A backup of a backup, if you will.
Luckily, I saved this link to the Ultimate Review of Free Online Storage and Backup - so if I need to choose another site, this will be a great place to start. I think the best course of action is to choose at least two different sites and upload everything to both. It seems sort of redundant, but that way if one or the other server goes down, for any reason, there's always a backup. A backup of a backup, if you will.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Free eBooks
Image by brungrrl via Flickr
There are 23,963 eBooks available, and they're all free. You can browse by title or author, or look at most popular titles and reccommendations from readers.
Like I said - so many books, so little time!
Friday, June 12, 2009
beethov9.wma Is All Kinds of Problem
Earlier this week I was helping a friend of mine upgrade Windows XP to SP3. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but for some reason these Service Pack upgrades always seem to have their issues. I put off installing it on my own computer for a long time, and then when I finally did it - BSOD! - which led to having to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows completely.
This time things seemed to be going well. We backed up all the documents on the computer and began the install, which of course takes forever because Windows has to back everything up, just in case you need to go back to SP2. So, all the files are backed up, the install of SP3 begins, and partway through there's an error copying beethov9.wma - do we want to continue the install without copying it? Click yes and the install continues, until we get another error message telling us the same exact file cannot be copied. After multiple retries we hit cancel, which does not just cancel copying that file - it cancels the entire upgrade. That means everything that had been installed is uninstalled and all the backups are restored. And we went through this multiple times - first deleting the file because we thought it was a random file that was already on the computer. That didn't work so I tried downloading SP3 from Microsoft again, thinking maybe there was a problem with the file I had previously downloaded - except that one had worked just fine when I installed it on my computer - the 2nd time, after I had reformatted and re-installed.
Midway through the 3rd attempt, this storm rolled through, and I held my breath hoping the power wouldn't go out. It did flicker a few times, but thankfully we had the computer plugged into a battery backup. I still got the beethov9.wma error, but at least the install wasn't interrupted, and I didn't lose everything. That's when Mary Googled "beethov9.wma" to see if there was any info. Sure enough, we weren't the only ones having this problem. Basically, Windows was trying to copy this file into the Shared Documents folder - except that on this particular computer that folder had never been shared. It was just called Documents, and every time we tried to open it, we got an error message saying we didn't have permission to access that folder.
To fix this I right-clicked on the folder and chose 'Sharing and Security' (you can also choose Properties and go to the Sharing tab) - then I checked the boxes to share the folder on a network and allow users to change my files.
Reading the box, it looks like the Shared Documents folder was already supposed to be there and be shared with all users on the computer, but for some reason it wasn't. I ended up having to run the Network Setup Wizard first so that I could check those boxes, but the end result was that, after sharing the folder, the file did indeed copy, and the installation of SP3 was successful. Finally!
My question for Microsoft is - why does an update to my operating system that contains 'security updates, hotfixes, and select out-of-band releases' also need a music file? I'm pretty sure the computer would have operated just fine without it - and saved me a lot of frustration. A job that should have taken a couple hours ended up taking ALL DAY.
This time things seemed to be going well. We backed up all the documents on the computer and began the install, which of course takes forever because Windows has to back everything up, just in case you need to go back to SP2. So, all the files are backed up, the install of SP3 begins, and partway through there's an error copying beethov9.wma - do we want to continue the install without copying it? Click yes and the install continues, until we get another error message telling us the same exact file cannot be copied. After multiple retries we hit cancel, which does not just cancel copying that file - it cancels the entire upgrade. That means everything that had been installed is uninstalled and all the backups are restored. And we went through this multiple times - first deleting the file because we thought it was a random file that was already on the computer. That didn't work so I tried downloading SP3 from Microsoft again, thinking maybe there was a problem with the file I had previously downloaded - except that one had worked just fine when I installed it on my computer - the 2nd time, after I had reformatted and re-installed.
Midway through the 3rd attempt, this storm rolled through, and I held my breath hoping the power wouldn't go out. It did flicker a few times, but thankfully we had the computer plugged into a battery backup. I still got the beethov9.wma error, but at least the install wasn't interrupted, and I didn't lose everything. That's when Mary Googled "beethov9.wma" to see if there was any info. Sure enough, we weren't the only ones having this problem. Basically, Windows was trying to copy this file into the Shared Documents folder - except that on this particular computer that folder had never been shared. It was just called Documents, and every time we tried to open it, we got an error message saying we didn't have permission to access that folder.
To fix this I right-clicked on the folder and chose 'Sharing and Security' (you can also choose Properties and go to the Sharing tab) - then I checked the boxes to share the folder on a network and allow users to change my files.
Reading the box, it looks like the Shared Documents folder was already supposed to be there and be shared with all users on the computer, but for some reason it wasn't. I ended up having to run the Network Setup Wizard first so that I could check those boxes, but the end result was that, after sharing the folder, the file did indeed copy, and the installation of SP3 was successful. Finally!My question for Microsoft is - why does an update to my operating system that contains 'security updates, hotfixes, and select out-of-band releases' also need a music file? I'm pretty sure the computer would have operated just fine without it - and saved me a lot of frustration. A job that should have taken a couple hours ended up taking ALL DAY.
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