computer Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Continuation of Thankful

fixing the computer, sort of

This is a continuation of thankful, which I started last week. I’m not including the Thursday night choir rehearsals, Sunday morning church services, or events presented in some standalone posts, all of which would qualify.

DATE: Tuesday, the 11th. I was to meet Jim at an Albany restaurant, Ale and Oyster, a guy from far out of town visiting his adult daughter, who now lives in the Capital District. He opened the restaurant door and saw a black guy. He said, “Is your name Roger?” And it was! Just not the correct Roger.

We, including his daughter, ate. He and I swapped stories, some about the Beatles; he remembers the ABC-TV cartoon series better than I. His hometown didn’t have an ABC affiliate until 1970, whereas Binghamton got one in 1962, still later than the bigger cities. Hmm—I know most of the lyrics to Mister Ed, a show his daughter does not recall and I haven’t seen in decades. I was challenged to list the Presidents backwards; yes, I can do it.

Charter schools

Then onto the library. Ryane McAuliffe Straus discussed and read from her book, Divided by Choice: How Charter Schools Diminish Democracy. She based her work on a few dozen interviews involving parents and others in the Albany area. She pushed back on many of the racially tinged tropes about the Albany City School District; as well as being an academic, she’s also a mother of children who are or were students in the ACSD. Read the description on the NYU Press website.

Since she was formerly a professor of political science at Saint Rose College before it closed recently, it was not a surprise, but still that Smallbany thing, when one of the attendees knew people I knew; our church choir director had also worked at CSR.

DATE: Wednesday, the 12th: I went to see my allergist for my annual evaluation at Corporate (frickin’) Woods. While I like the new person – my previous provider warned me last year warned me two years running that she was going to retire – I don’t miss going to C(f)W.

Computer games

Then I went to Best Buy. My keyboard has been driving me crazy for several days. The J, Q, and Delete keys failed to operate. When I got to the Geek Squad counter, a man was berating the customer service rep because he had tried to make an appointment online but was unable to. I noted that I couldn’t either, but said it wasn’t the rep’s fault.

The irate customer said that he had driven two hours. He was told that he could make an appointment for three hours out, which he did.

The rep, addressing me, noticed that there was a cancellation for a slot in ten minutes and that they could try to help me. Though I said that I had owned my laptop for three or four years, he determined that it was built in 2018 – I had bought it secondhand – so they couldn’t help me. If they had sent it off, it would have cost me $85; it wouldn’t have been fixed, and I would have been out the 85 bucks.

Instead, he recommended that I buy a keyboard, which I discovered cost a whopping $12. Incidentally, the sales clerk was a friend of my daughter’s.

Since I had previously found a block to plug into my USB ports, I could utilize not only the keyboard but also my backup stick and a mouse, which I still love to use.

When I want to use voice recognition (Windows + h), all I have to do is unplug the whatchamcallit. It’s a clunky but workable solution.

Old friends

DATE: Thursday, the 13th. I had a 100-minute conversation with my oldest college friend. He may be coming up one of these days.

DATE: Friday, the 14th. I talked for 110 minutes to another old friend, a former comic book store customer with whom I’ve worked occasionally over the years. He subsequently texted me that my penny post led him to a “unique historical moment,” which pleased me greatly.

My wife and I went out to dinner at Suwan Thai on Western Avenue in honor of our lunaversary. We try to go out somewhere once a month. It keeps things fresh. But I should not order the spicy versions, I have determined.

I like going to that location. For years, I patronized the Ginger Man for decades until it closed in 2017. I used to live a block away.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Technological improvement

a router AND a modem?

Ah, I have a technological improvement! But, as usual, it took a bit of doing. I’ve been having real problems with my laptop of late. I assumed it was because there was not enough storage space, although the section was still in the Green Zone, and I’ve offloaded some things to a separate memory off the computer.

It was more of an irritation than anything. I’d leave the laptop for a few hours, and then I couldn’t easily get back onto the Internet. I had to click on something called Network Reset, which involved my computer shutting down and then looking for my Internet provider. This was not onerous, but it was inefficient and irritating, as it was a real pain to have to keep re-entering the password, which was a lengthy alphanumeric gobbledygook, and which I almost began to memorize, which was terrible use of my brain cells.

Here comes the good part

I was looking through old emails, and Spectrum, my provider of Internet services, had sent an email suggesting that one should get an audit of one’s technological stuff.

So I made an appointment to exchange my current modem, which I’ve had since, I believe, 1693. I took my modem to the Spectrum store in Colonie Center on Saturday afternoon, and I received two pieces: a modem and a router, which I had to connect.

They told me I could go on to the app and read the instructions, but I know myself well enough to recognize that wouldn’t work because technology. Instead, I called the support desk, and the rep patiently walked me through the process. Ultimately, the Internet was working, but I didn’t notice that the phone was not. Ha, I plugged in the wrong phone line.

But a few hours later, the Internet wasn’t working, so I called again, and they said they didn’t know the problem. They could have somebody come over on Monday at 8:00 a.m., which I agreed to. I was frustrated because I didn’t want to wait that long, but what was I going to do?

In mild desperation, I did what one of the techs told me not to do: reset the modem. Lo and behold, this actually worked! I canceled the work order. Now I can return to my laptop and be on the Internet without rigmarole. (I love the word rigamarole; both spellings are acceptable.) Happy, happy, joy, joy, technological improvement.

Being plugged in or not

Summer solstice

Being plugged in or not has popped up several times earlier this year.

Memorial Day week

My wife suggested the family stay at a timeshare in Hancock, MA, just across the border from New York. I don’t know how relaxing it was for my wife because she had to travel to Albany and back, 45 minutes each way, almost every day for work. One of my daughter’s friends came as well. The entity allowed four devices to be connected to the Internet.

My daughter, her friend, and my wife opted to connect to their phones. But I chose my laptop. I could write blog posts, check email, and post to Facebook. More importantly, I played Wordle on my laptop, and I had a 515-game streak.

Still, I was surprised that I had such poor cell reception outside the resort. Indeed, I couldn’t use my phone until I got about five miles into New York.

June 5/6

About a quarter before midnight, my wife asked to use my laptop. She generally leaves hers at work.

I unplugged mine and gave it to her. When she was done, I put mine back in place, played Wordle, and went to bed.

During the morning, I checked my email and wrote a blog post, et al., until I noticed that my battery was running low. I had failed to plug it in. OK, easy, right? Not easy. I must have stepped on the end of the charger that plugs into the device.

I could get a new one from Amazon in two days, but that wouldn’t do, because Blog, Wordle, et al. So, I hopped on a bus to Best Buy and purchased a Microsoft 65W Wall Surface charger. (I’m writing this so I’ll know what I need in the future.)

June 20

It was the third of three days of 90F+ temperatures. Around 5:30 pm, as the Times Union noted: “A brutal storm blew through Albany early Thursday evening, taking down trees, damaging buildings… National Weather Service meteorologist Brett Rathbun said it’s not likely a tornado tore through the city. Instead, hot and humid air was likely suddenly pushed downward as a cold front rolled in and ended this week’s heat wave, causing short-lived and intense wind gusts in what was likely a pulse, or single-cell, thunderstorm.” Also, power was cut for thousands, including us.

It was fine for a time. The restaurants at the end of Madison Avenue, less than two blocks away, still had power and were doing brisk business. (Actually, the real danger is that drivers, impatient with the nearby intersection, which I have described, nearly caused a dozen accidents.

As nightfall came, my wife took my daughter’s two soaked friends home. My wife and my daughter then went to get more flashlights and to charge our phones in the car.

I tried to read by flashlight, but that got old in six pages. Instead, I sat on the front porch in a lawn chair. Here’s the thing that’s interesting to me: I enjoyed it. A lot. I couldn’t be on my laptop, and I didn’t have my cellphone, so I embraced the moment.

Because of light pollution, city skies aren’t pitch black, so I could peruse the outlines of the massive trees nearby. Watching people negotiate the dark with flashlights and cellphones gave me the feeling that we were all in it together.

Of course, trying to go to sleep sans air conditioner or fan was a drag, but the power thankfully returned at about 11:30 pm.

Technical difficulties

RESULT_CODE_HUNG

For about two weeks, I was having severe technical difficulties with my laptop computer. I’d open my browser, usually Google Chrome, but it would inexplicably and unexpectly close. The same thing would happen on Microsoft Edge.

I either deleted or moved downloads from my hard drive. It did little good. I reinstalled Chrome; ditto. Alternatively, I could open one tab but it would spin until it indicated it couldn’t open the page.

Finally, I noticed the error message RESULT_CODE_HUNG. I searched and found this article.

Fix 1: Reload the Webpage – well, duh, tried that straight away.

Fix 2: Update your Browser. As it turns out, it is up to date, to my minor surprise. It’s probably one of those automatic things I once set up.

Fix 3: Clear Cache and Browsing Data. This I did. I probably don’t do so often enough. It didn’t help.

Fix 4: Disable Extensions. Say what? “The error code: RESULT_CODE_HUNG probably shows up because of a corrupted extension installed in your browser. On this occasion, you’d better disable all the extensions in your browser and then enable them one by one to find out the problematic extension. It may take a long time.” It didn’t, actually, because I did not have that many.

“First of all, you need to disable all the extension in your browser. After disabling all your browser extensions, restart your browser to see if the error has been removed. If you can open webpages normally, it indicates that the extensions caused the error. Now, you should enable one extension at a time and check if the RESULT_CODE_HUNG error appears again.”

I did this and it appeared to be rectified… for about three days. But the problem soon reemerged.

Correction 5 of 5

“However, if the error still exists after you disable all the extensions, you should go to the next solution.

Fix 5: Reset the Browser

“When there is something wrong with your browser, the error code: RESULT_CODE_HUNG may get into the way and prevent you from browsing web pages. To fix it, you can try to reset your browser settings to default.

“To reset your Google Chrome settings to default, you can follow this tutorial: How to Reset Google Chrome Browser Settings to Default.”

This made me anxious. But not using my laptop was making me more so. It worked!

However, it mucked up some, but not all of my passwords. And my Quordle, for which I played over 400 games, no longer knows who I am, and I have to start over.

For a time, I thought it had ALSO been the case with my Wordle after I had gotten 475 of 477 correct. However, once my computer knew I had a subscription to the New York Times, it “knew” me again. Oddly, I had started Wordle on the laptop before I got the NYT subscription.

Anyway, all of this technical changes backed me up. So if I’m behind in responding to your email, Facebook post, et al, that’s why.

And speaking of Facebook. I can access Messenger on my phone, which was synced to my laptop. While I can still use the phone, I can’t acess the same person on the laptop. Wait, if I go DIRECTLY to Messenger then go to a person’s bio, I can use the laptop too. Did I mention I both need and hate technology?