Re: I Finally Found Myself a Christmas Present (Better Late Than Never)

On Jan 5, 10:05 am, Rumpelstiltskin
<PleaseDoNotReplyByEm...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 5 Jan 2009 00:31:48 -0800 (PST), mg <mgkel...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
.. . .

There are some preliminary hearing tests on the web.
Here's one:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G60hM1W_mk
I can't listen to it because the sound on my computer
has died, unless my hearing has deteriorated much
more than I think. I guess it's time for a new computer
for me. Either that or wipe the disk clean and install an
operating system afresh, which is eventually the only
recourse, since Windows' pipes gradually get clogged
irretrievably with calcium deposits. I might as well get
a new computer as go through all that hassle though,
then I'll still have this one as a backup. It would be
nice to just buy a full operating system instead of
the cut-down versions that come with computers, but
Microsoft has its one-computer licensing system and
they keep changing the damned thing anyway, so
it's an exercise in futility to think you can just buy a
full version of one of the stupid operating systems and
end the annoyances. The least fascinating area of
computer software I can possibly imagine is the
operating system.

There are relatively easy ways to fix the problems you are having, but
for someone not really into computers, I'm sure they would find it to
be a big hassle. To turn your system into one with "a full operating
system", for example, see the instructions at:

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml

There are other things you can do also, but they would undoubtedly
fall into a big-hassle type of situation for most users.

I'll give trying to create a setup disk a shot, if I can find
the damned Windows license key which is by no means
a sure thing. Thanks for the link. It is definitely worth
trying, though it can't take care of the most accursèd
problem of all, of course, reinstalling all the damned
software, which is the thing that makes me think I might
as well get a new computer if I'm going to have to go
through all that. I do have all the installation files with
any keys and other bloody nuisances in an "Installation
Files" folder on my hard drive and on all my periodic
backup disks. I long for the days before there was such
a thing as a registry, when all you had to do was load
files into a "directory" (not the much more distant
"folder" name) and it would run.

I've never figured out why the registry is supposed to
be such a great idea. I guess it helps you transfer data
from your spread*** to your database, or something
else like that, if you're a pathetic wage-slave, but that's
something I would never have any interest in doing
automatically in a million years. I can't stand
spreadsheets, though I do use databases. I write the
occasional Visual Basic program to do things windows
can't do, such as adding or replacing or deleting strings
at the beginning or end of the names of a whole bunch
of files, or cutting names down to a maximum length,
or adding sequence numbers to the beginning of file
names starting from an input number and producing a
text list thereof, so that I can set up an MP3 disk in
which the batches of files will go on the disk, play,
and be catalogued in the order I want, and I'll have a
text index to show that order which I can put on the
end of the MP3 disk along with any associated JPG's.
That produces an MP3 disk that has all the music
and all the associated stuff conveniently right on the
disk, but it will only play on an MP3 player that plays
nothing but music, because any player that handles
other kinds of tomfoolery will see the text and JPG
files and assume, incorrectly and extremely annoyingly
and without possibility of override, that the disk is not
a music disk so it's not going to try to play anything at
all on the disk. Grumble grumble.

Visual basic is not easy to work with if you don't use
it all the time. The old QuickBasic was a breeze, but
I use Visual Basic infrequently enough that I constantly
have to look up the syntax of functions, which are
designed by microserfs who observe druidic ritual in
constructing syntax patterns, with the deliberate intent
of befuddling and terrifying the Romans. Visual Basic
also suffers from the same horrible drawback that
COBOL had, that you have to deal with masses of
overhead before you can add 1+1 to get 2. With
QuickBasic, you could just type ?1+1<return> if you
didn't want to write a program. I still remember that
after 30 years, it's so easy. In contrast, I have to look
up the syntax of the Visual Basic function to find a
string inside another string every time, because I can
never remember it, and it, or some similar function,
is backwards from what you'd expect based on your
intuition from other functions.

For some reason, also, Visual Basic is set up to put
all the parts of the programs in little tiny pieces all
over the place, so that you can never find anything,
and even if you do, by the time you find it you'll have
forgotten why you wanted it and where you were
before you had to go off looking for it. Fortunately,
there is a way to set up the program so that
everything is in the same place, but that's not the
out-of-the-box default. Also, god help you if you
forget to rename the obligatory though sometimes
unnecessary form to something unique before you
save the program, or the next time you run it, it's
likely to load up a completely unrelated form. If the
form was actually unnecessary and you never
referred to it, that's not a problem, but if you did
ever refer to anything on the form, you've got a
nasty and unpleasant piece of work ahead of you
before you can proceed with what you thought
you'd set yourself up to have already taken care
of, if you can even remember what you had
originally started out to do by then.

The only other thing I've heard of that the registry is
useful for is that it allows you to use the same deck
of cards in two different applications if the applications
happen to be compatible, which has never happened.
I'd rather each application have its own deck of cards
anyway, if it needs them.

If I have to look at the back of the computer to try
to find the stupid XP key, I suppose. That means I'll
probably pull the speaker plug out of the back in the
process, trying to remember to note where it was this
time before it falls out. Or I'll pull the DSL plug out
accidentally as I did yesterday when I was poking
around trying to find the right place to plug the
speakers back into. Fortunately, there's only one
place the DSL plug will fit. (I'm sure I tried every
possible place the speaker plug could fit before I
decided the speakers weren't working earlier, but for
some reason one of those spots worked now
whereas none had before.)

Damned Windows. Damned registry. Damned
excessive automation that's more a source of
problems than a help. But bless Bill Gates anyway.

I don't recommend that you try to create a setup disk. In fact, I
would probably recommend that you don't. If you do however, a good
rule is don't burn your bridges. Normally, I build my own computers
from scratch so I don't run into this problem. I have, however, done
this once following those exact instructions and it did work. What I
did do, though, was to remove the existing hard drive and put in
another one in case something went wrong. That was easy for me because
I have extra hard drives laying around.

The CD license key, incidentally, should be on a sticker affixed to
the side of your cabinet. If it isn't you can download a handy little
program called Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder. Your virus software will
show it as malware, but it isn't. I've used it for years now and it is
free from viruses.

Reloading your drivers can be a hassle. In fact, there has been a few
cases over the years where I haven't been able to find a driver.
Usually that only happens with Windows 98 systems, though. In order to
find the drivers, you will probably have to go to the website of the
motherboard manufacturer and download all of them unless you can pluck
them off of the setup disks that you have. There is some software out
there that claims to be able to transfer drivers from one computer to
the other, but I have never tried it.

With programming, I first started out with Fortran, then went to
assembly language and then to "C" and then Basic, but I gave up on
programming more than 20 years ago when I made my career in hardware.
I've found over the years that one can almost always do anything you
want to do with off-the-shelf software and if I can't, I find a work
around or just forget it. A good program for renaming MP3 files, for
example, is "FILE AND MP3 RENAMER". It looks like it costs $10.
Another program for handling MP3 files is MP3 Collector from
Collectorz.com. I actually don't like that one very much, although I
love their movie program. A useful program for printing file lists is
is PrintFolder Pro.
http://lcen.com/default.asp?id=fren
http://www.collectorz.com/mp3/
http://no-nonsense-software.com/printfolder/

Personally, when I start out with a new computer, or I fix one for
friends and relatives, I put a second hard drive in it and then back
the "C" drive up to the storage drive using the "image" option on
Ghost. Then when I have a problem I can fix it in 20 minutes with a
couple of keystrokes. I also put all my data, music, and pictures,
etc., on the "D" drive.

.

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