Here’s the deal. I am extremely scrupulous when it comes to any photos on my blog. They were either taken by me, or … well, there is no “or.” I made a mistake about eight years ago when I used someone’s flickr photo, thinking it was available through Creative Commons, the photographer contacted me, I…
Read MoreAll articles filed in computer repair
Click Click Click Click Click Click….
That sound you just heard was my external hard drive – a six-terabyte storage unit that carries nearly my entire photo archive – making strange noises. This is not good. This is very not good. Over the years, I’ve dealt with hard drive and disc drive failures before. I’ve had friends and companies reconstitute the…
Read MoreThe monitor “sparked” at 2:00 A.M.
I can’t sleep. I just can’t sleep. Okay, maybe I can get up, write my blog post, putter around on social media, all that. I check my desktop computer. Monitor’s dark. No problem, I’ll wiggle my mouse, the screen saver should activate in three … two … two … two … Well, that’s not good.…
Read MoreA final trip to Altamont for 2019 …
So I did my Sunday trip to the Altamont Fair – ostensibly to see if my picture had claimed the People’s Choice award (it didn’t, a photo of a snowy squirrel did)… And I also made a pilgrimage to the Arts and Crafts building, which I did not do on Tuesday, to see if there…
Read MoreComputer Answers saved my bacon … one more time!
So last week, I was working on a project … and I dropped my power drill. I dropped it – and it landed on the floor. Well, it didn’t land completely on the floor … it landed on something that was already ON the floor. It landed on the back of my laptop. Oh crap.…
Read MoreAdobe Photoshop – you don’t own what you own
Way back in the day, years and years and years ago, I knew people who had acquired illegal, pirated versions of Adobe Photoshop. They offered to make me a copy for my own personal use. I said no. I don’t use illegally pirated software. Eventually, though, I did purchase my own personal copy of Photoshop…
Read MoreRemoving an electronic brain
Last Monday, in all my running-around errands, I took a personal moment for one final duty. I had its memories removed and preserved. And as soon as I receive a special part from Amazon … I’ll restore the memories once again. No, Chuck is not channeling his inner mad scientist. I was not cruising the…
Read MoreComputer Answers really does have the answers!
Ten years ago, I cobbled together a desktop computer tower. Rather than go to the local CompUSA and buy a tower off the shelf, I ordered all the component parts and jiggered them together. The tower survived a couple of hard drive crashes – one in 2010, another in 2015 – as well as an…
Read MoreWhat I did with my World Tavern Trivia winnings
Last week at this time, I was celebrating with my friends from the Stir Crazy trivia team. We had just won the 2017 World Tavern Trivia championships, and each of us received a share of the $5,000 grand prize. Now I don’t know of any bank that still takes these gigantic checks … you know,…
Read More“Lazarus, it is time to boot up.”
A few months ago, I had a computer crash that crippled my custom-built computer tower- and in the resulting crash, one of my hard drives froze up. Thousands of photographs and music were trapped on that hard drive as well. I tried a few different techniques to resurrect the data, including swapping out the motherboards,…
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