Ah, the joys of a new computer — plus some Olympics talkl
Bookworm on Aug 11 2008 at 2:56 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I got my filing finished today, which ate up the morning, but I have a little — a very little — time now to doodle around before I have 15 kids swarm my backyard for a party. The problem is that, as always, one seems to lose as much as one gains when switching to a new computer. Right now, I’ve lost Adobe (not the reader, but actual Adobe); I’ve lost access to my Outlook, because I can’t get the Vista Outlook to read my old WP personal folders data; and (which is the killer for blogging) I’ve lost all my beloved bookmarks. Even though I copied my Firefox profile off my old computer and replaced it on this new one — no bookmarks. It’s going to take me a little while to reassemble all of my regular reads, so please bear with me on this.
As it is, I don’t know if I actually have anything to say anyway. When I last looked at a newspaper before bedtime, nothing struck me particularly.
I do have an interesting observation from home, though. Ours is not a house in which patriotism is stressed on a day to day basis, although my kids do get talks about the difference between Communist/Socialist societies and free societies. And I do mention the rights we have in this country. And basically, without any “stand in front of the classroom” lectures, I do try to get across to them that we are uniquely blessed here. But I don’t think that has anything to do with what I’m seeing what we watch the Olympics. They instantly morphed into rabidly pro-American fans. The other teams don’t rate. It’s “America this” and “America that” and, most often, “I want the Americans to win.” Tribalism lives.
On the subject of Communism, though, I did use the women’s gymnastics as the opportunity to give my daughter a little lesson on the difference between living in a state-focused society, such as China, versus an individual-focused society, such as the US. NBC has been doing a good job of showing the way in which the Chinese scour the country for talented 3 year olds, remove them from their families, and then proceed to abuse those little bodies for 13 years so that they can do incredible feats at the Olympics. My daughter now understands that, if the State is the central focus, there is nothing to stop a government from systematically abusing thousands of children in the hope of creating one gold medalist. In American, people do gymnastics because they want to. The State has no coercive power here, and wouldn’t dream of dragging children from their homes simply to keep face at the Olympics.
Email This Post To A Friend
6 Responses to “Ah, the joys of a new computer — plus some Olympics talkl”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Make sure that the firefox profile that you copied is actually in the profile that the new Firefox is using. Also, if Firefox happens to be open when you copy the bookmarks, it will overwrite the new with the old. You need to make sure that all instances of Firefox are closed before copying the bookmarks. This drove me crazy for awhile one of the times I redid Firefox.
On your bookmarks…
There’s probably a computer savy tech way, but I’m not in that category…still, I have a fairly long list of bookmarks as well, and I’d hate to lose them. Using Foxfire, go to the “Manage Bookmarks” option in Bookmarks, do an export and put them into a file. Then use your email, attach the file and send them to yourself… you do have more than one email address, don’t you? Or send them to someone you trust, if you don’t. Then have that person forward the attachment back to you, and import the file into your current Foxfire program.
It doesn’t hurt to export your bookmarks to a file periodically just to have a backup.
I also imagine that they’re pumping those poor kids with every possible enhancement drug imaginable, destroying their ability to lead normal adult lives, and most likely stripping them of any chance of producing babies. But that’s OK, it’s China…
Any particular reason you didn’t pay a bit extra and get XP instead of Vista? You may end up suffering for the oversight.
Our IS department, which is constantly making us upgrade (I HATE the 2007 editions of Word, etc. because they’re so much less intuitive than 2003) is actually refusing to adopt Vista until more of the debugging is done! I was amazed.
Good luck!
Once you’ve got all the kinks worked out with bookmarks and email…
Do a web search on ‘Speeding Up Vista’. By default Vista runs loads and loads of programs, in the background, that you don’t care about. A huge number of them! The intent is to help you by having all of these services ready and available instantly, but the chances are you won’t care for YEARS to ever use even one of them; and the extra burden on VISTA can make it a HUGE memory hog. Even if you’ve got gigabytes of RAM.
If things seem just too slow, check out how much RAM you have. (I am typing this on my Mac, so I can’t remember how to do that in Windows, but basically click on ‘Computer’ and try its tabs…). If you have only one Gigabyte (ONLY!), then you’ll want to shut down many Vista service programs you don’t care about. The web search will help you identify which ones are OK to shut down.
Even 2 GB of RAM can sometimes not be enough, depending.
I’ve heard lots of good and bad about VISTA from various people. I’m sticking with XP… once I replace my dead power supply. For now, I’m all Mac.
Vista runs best on 4 gigs. Vista uses at least twice as much RAM as Xp does, when in the background. That means you need more RAM to load up programs.
More RAM, faster program loads. Faster RAM, faster program loads. But the amount of RAM is the primary indicator, and that depends on your motherboard capacity. Some can’t take more than 2 gigs.
In American, people do gymnastics because they want to. The State has no coercive power here, and wouldn’t dream of dragging children from their homes simply to keep face at the Olympics.
I mentioned that before when I posted a vid Neo did about ballet.
People should never forget the costs of their little entertainments. That’s one of those details that can be diastrous if you are fighting a war.