Build 10031

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:18:47 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/15/2015 02:05 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:56:43 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 06:15 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
No, it just led to a subtle put-down.

Hi Gene,

Uh, when did I do that? If I did, it was by accident.
It is important to me that we are good with each other.
I respect your technical opinion and value our
efriendship.

-T

I see from your later post that I misinterpreted your question "What
kind of I.T. work do you do?", so it's mea culpa...

I'm sorry about that.


Hi Gene,

No problem.

This brings to an interesting topic. In written correspondence,
it is sometimes easy to be misinterpreted, especially
since you can't see facial inflections. To help with this,
I encourage folks to use emotocons, even though they
feel like 12 years olds doing it.

:-) :-) :-)

-T

Here's the problem: sometimes I leave them out because what I wrote is
so off-the-wall that it's obvious I must be kidding.

Shows what I know :-)

I'm joining friends at a new place for someone's birthday later today. I
mentioned in an e-mail to the hostess that there's little parking and
she pointed put that there's underground parking in one of the buildings
near the restaurant.

I told her (without a smiley) that I had forgotten to turn on the x-ray
mode in Google maps, so I didn't see it. Her response: I didn't know
they had that.

I replied that I didn't either.

I had thought she was cleverer than that...

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 03/15/2015 01:55 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
How does the magnet do with brass screws?

Hi Gene,

Not so well. But I have never seen brass fasteners used
in computer.

Stainless steel on the other hand is non-magnetic until
you machine it, so stainless steel screws get picked up
pretty easy.

Oh, and when you drop a screw in front of the customer,
no swearing or accusing the screws parents of not being
married. A simple "golly!" will suffice.

:-)

-T

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:42:50 -0600, GreyCloud wrote:

Everything gets rolled back to a previous date when you know that the system
was working properly. After the roll back, then do a Windows update.
Your system is now in the state that it should be in. It won't mess with
3rd party software, unless that is what got hosed. Usually, a
reinstallation of the 3rd party app is in order... but I'm talking about the
system itself.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. I'm glad it works for you, though.

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:55:53 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:35:26 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 06:25 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:46:16 -0700, T wrote:

Those panels are not easy for older hands to remove. And those
screws are really small and can get lost in the carpet really
easy.

I always disassemble notebooks in a very large, shallow baking pan. If you drop
a part such as a screw or break a plastic tab, it always ends up in the pan.
Makes the process much simpler.


Hi Stormin',

Impressive. I love it!

I go searching through the carpet with a magnetic screwdriver.
I wonder if the customers will think I am crazy if I ask them for a
cookie sheet. NO SELF RESPECTING GRAND MOTHER IS WITHOUT A
COOKIE SHEET!

-T

Stormin's idea is great. (Should I have written Stormin''s?)

I sometimes use a towel on top of my work surface, one without too much
nap. Screws tend not to bounce and are easy to find - but not as easy as
in a cookie sheet :-)

How does the magnet do with brass screws?

I once lost a crystal from a pocket watch I was working on. The floor
had wide gaps between the boards and some sand in the gaps. But somehow
I found the jewel. Pure luck (I almost said blind luck...).

After searching for a while, did you 'stumble' upon it?

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:09:42 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 10:56:58 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:04:54 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 19:53:20 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 12:19:13 -0600, GreyCloud wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 13:03:48 -0600, GreyCloud wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:

I don't use Restore Points, and in fact that's one of the very first
features I disable on each of my personal systems, but I didn't know
that rolling back to a previous RP would also clean up the filesystem.
I'm very surprised to hear that, and if it's true, it makes me extremely
happy to know that this feature is disabled.

At the time I was busy cleaning up the remnants off my hard drive that was
eating up a lot of space. Unfortuanely, one particular remnant directory
was also tied to VS. VS wouldn't load any projects. So I resorted to the
restore point. Problem solved. All you have to do is make a restore
point once a week and you won't have any problems.

Regarding that last sentence, I'm sorry but I don't believe that for a
second.

Then you apparently just don't do much system cleaning then.

No, that's not the problem with that statement. The problem is that you're
saying that if everyone made a restore point once a week then no one would
have any problems. Restore points don't prevent problems, as you surely must
know. In the best case, they might fix an issue, but you never know what
else they might 'fix' at the same time. Restore points aren't able to read
your mind. Instead, they just change everything they think they should
change, all at once. In anything less than the best case, they make one or
more changes to your system without fixing the issue you're currently
interested in, so you're left wondering what got changed while knowing that
the thing that was surely broken is still broken. It's sort of a lose-lose.

I'd say "In anything less than the best case, they make one or more
changes to your system without fixing the issue you're currently
interested in" is quite an exaggeration...

How about "in some of the worst cases" as a more moderate - and IMO
*much* more accurate - qualifier?

I've never experienced the extreme of which you write.

I re-read my text and compared it to yours, and I think I have to stay with
mine. Aren't there really only two possible outcomes when you roll back to a
previous restore point? Either your issue is resolved, or it isn't. Either
way, the user has no idea what else was changed in the process. I don't see
a gray area in between "my issue was resolved" and "my issue wasn't
resolved", and in both of those cases there can be other things that got
changed that you may not even see until later because you're focused on the
thing you were trying to resolve.

Am I looking at it wrong?

You have ignored a range of grey shades (way more than 50, IME).

Give me some hints, please. What am I overlooking?

(I'm not intentionally ignoring anything, so I translated 'ignored' into
'overlooking'.)

Char Jackson wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:42:50 -0600, GreyCloud wrote:

Everything gets rolled back to a previous date when you know that the
system
was working properly. After the roll back, then do a Windows update.
Your system is now in the state that it should be in. It won't mess with
3rd party software, unless that is what got hosed. Usually, a
reinstallation of the 3rd party app is in order... but I'm talking about
the system itself.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. I'm glad it works for you, though.

I find it rather odd that MS did put rp in there then.
I think David Cutler knows what he is doing.

On 03/15/2015 08:58 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:32:14 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 06:05 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:37:36 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 02:26 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 10:56:32 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

I'm not sure what problem you might be referring to, but the way I see it
replacing a battery is something you might possibly do every few years, if
that, so as long as it's replaceable I don't care if it's a snap-on panel or
if a few screws are involved. Truth be told, I'd almost be willing to bet
that most people NEVER replace a laptop battery. I never have, on any of my
personal laptops.

My old laptop battery holds its charge for only an hour or two, which is
enough for the few things I do with it untethered, so I just leave it
plugged in most of the time.

Instead of doing that, I would have replaced the battery, but then I
priced it online. IMO, it would cost more than the computer is worth.


Hi Gene,

A few of my customers will replace theirs, but most have
the same reaction you had to the price.

So what's the problem with removing a few screws? At least it's field
replaceable.



Every two weeks !?!?!? What a pain in the neck! That is why I had her
(grown) son just remove the stinker.

If they had/have to remove the battery every two weeks, something is
seriously wrong and I'm disappointed to hear that your solution was to have
them pull the battery. That did them an awful disservice, IMO.


Removing the battery fixed the problem with an unstable operating
system crashing the motherboard.

We will have to agree to disagree.

And please find someone else to condensed over. Maybe
even try helping people for a change.

On 03/15/2015 06:30 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:35:26 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 06:25 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:46:16 -0700, T wrote:

Those panels are not easy for older hands to remove. And those
screws are really small and can get lost in the carpet really
easy.

I always disassemble notebooks in a very large, shallow baking pan. If you drop
a part such as a screw or break a plastic tab, it always ends up in the pan.
Makes the process much simpler.


Hi Stormin',

Impressive. I love it!

I go searching through the carpet with a magnetic screwdriver.
I wonder if the customers will think I am crazy if I ask them for a
cookie sheet. NO SELF RESPECTING GRAND MOTHER IS WITHOUT A
COOKIE SHEET!

Bring one with you as part of your kit. As for whether they might think you are
crazy....... You gave me that one as a gift, right?


And I am, regifting it! :-)

On 03/15/2015 08:51 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:46:16 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 08:56 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
Noticed one model of Dell laptop that you have to unscrew
a panel and more screws to get the battery out. Made
for a nightmare for one lady who was running Frankenstein
(w8). Since she used her laptop of a desktop and never
took it anywhere, I had her kid just remove the stinking
battery permanently. Now when Frankie does its thing,
she just jerks out the charger cord and problem solved.
What was Dell thinking!

I'm not sure what problem you might be referring to, but the way I see it
replacing a battery is something you might possibly do every few years, if
that, so as long as it's replaceable I don't care if it's a snap-on panel or
if a few screws are involved. Truth be told, I'd almost be willing to bet
that most people NEVER replace a laptop battery. I never have, on any of my
personal laptops.


Hi Char,

Those panels are not easy for older hands to remove. And those
screws are really small and can get lost in the carpet really
easy.

Then the solution is simple. Have the old guy step aside and do it yourself.
I assume you're a teenager, right? You should have relatively good
dexterity.

You should never run a laptop with a difficult battery
removal with an unstable operating system.

XP and later OSs aren't inherently unstable. Heck, even W2k wasn't unstable.
Are you going all the way back to 98 and 95 with that statement?


Haven't you got anything better to do with your time than condescend?

On 03/15/2015 06:40 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:42:34 -0700, T wrote:

I get called by the general public. So I only see things when they
go wrong. It is a whole different environment than a corporate
I.T. guy who is stuck inside a box. I see a lot of wonderfully
varied stuff. It is an absolute blast.

Corporate level IT is vastly different and far more technically complex than
supporting consumer grade situations. You might think of it as being stuck
inside a box, but the box has near infinite dimensions and requires a
perfectionist with a vast personal knowledge base, extreme levels of patience
and above all else, tenacity.


Hi Stormin',

My experience with Corporate IT is that they know a hell of
a lot about certain specific things. This is what I mean
buy stuck inside a box. I wasn't meaning they did not
know what they were doing.

I service both small businesses as well as consumers. I get
a very broad eclectic exposure. And often times I am able to
bring my knowledge of how others do things to the table
and offer solutions. It is a blast.

And probably couldn't help at all with a corporate IT
problem, as I would not have any experience with their
specific situation. But, I love a challenge. And I
will work on anything from DOS to Frankenstein, from
Apple to Linux.

Corporate IT and small business often do not cross paths.
But sometimes they do.

I have also come across some home situations with more
complicated networking than some businesses. Always
a blast.

-T

On 03/15/2015 02:32 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:18:47 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/15/2015 02:05 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:56:43 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 06:15 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
No, it just led to a subtle put-down.

Hi Gene,

Uh, when did I do that? If I did, it was by accident.
It is important to me that we are good with each other.
I respect your technical opinion and value our
efriendship.

-T

I see from your later post that I misinterpreted your question "What
kind of I.T. work do you do?", so it's mea culpa...

I'm sorry about that.


Hi Gene,

No problem.

This brings to an interesting topic. In written correspondence,
it is sometimes easy to be misinterpreted, especially
since you can't see facial inflections. To help with this,
I encourage folks to use emotocons, even though they
feel like 12 years olds doing it.

:-) :-) :-)

-T

Here's the problem: sometimes I leave them out because what I wrote is
so off-the-wall that it's obvious I must be kidding.

Shows what I know :-)

I'm joining friends at a new place for someone's birthday later today. I
mentioned in an e-mail to the hostess that there's little parking and
she pointed put that there's underground parking in one of the buildings
near the restaurant.

I told her (without a smiley) that I had forgotten to turn on the x-ray
mode in Google maps, so I didn't see it. Her response: I didn't know
they had that.

I replied that I didn't either.

I had thought she was cleverer than that...


:-D

On 03/15/2015 09:05 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:52:12 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 06:00 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 14:28:28 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 19:33:27 -0700, T wrote:

It BAFFLES me how you have not been caught up in a single
one of them. You must be the luckiest technician to
walk the earth! I hold my breath.

I guess I'm another lucky one.

Still breathing, too.

Great. Now he's going to be doubly baffled and he may feel that he needs to
hold his breath for himself plus the two of us. That could lead to a red
face, or worse.


Char,

Did you even go to the web site I gave you with all
the botched updates?

Of course not. I'm already aware that a statistically insignificant number
of people experience issues after applying certain updates. I'm able to
accept that without freaking out, especially without freaking out in front
of customers, because I took Statistics in college (and did quite well). ;-)



Who is freaking out? Oh, I am sorry, you were condescending and
protecting the reputation of your favorite vendor. Don't you
have anything better to do with your time? Try helping other for
a change.

On 03/15/2015 01:38 PM, GreyCloud wrote:

To each their own.
It hasn't failed me yet.

Hi Grey Cloud,

I like to try to fix it first. Then roll back if I
have to. You kind of get a feel when it is time.
You sound like you have a good feel for it.

-T

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:57:42 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:55:53 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 20:35:26 -0700, T wrote:

On 03/14/2015 06:25 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:46:16 -0700, T wrote:

Those panels are not easy for older hands to remove. And those
screws are really small and can get lost in the carpet really
easy.

I always disassemble notebooks in a very large, shallow baking pan. If you drop
a part such as a screw or break a plastic tab, it always ends up in the pan.
Makes the process much simpler.


Hi Stormin',

Impressive. I love it!

I go searching through the carpet with a magnetic screwdriver.
I wonder if the customers will think I am crazy if I ask them for a
cookie sheet. NO SELF RESPECTING GRAND MOTHER IS WITHOUT A
COOKIE SHEET!

-T

Stormin's idea is great. (Should I have written Stormin''s?)

I sometimes use a towel on top of my work surface, one without too much
nap. Screws tend not to bounce and are easy to find - but not as easy as
in a cookie sheet :-)

How does the magnet do with brass screws?

I once lost a crystal from a pocket watch I was working on. The floor
had wide gaps between the boards and some sand in the gaps. But somehow
I found the jewel. Pure luck (I almost said blind luck...).

After searching for a while, did you 'stumble' upon it?

Since that was before my (adult) folkdancing days, I hadn't thought of
the pun yet, so I wasn't authorized to stumble at the time.

But besides the allusion (for which thanks!) to my adjective, the mental
picture you gave me - stumbling over a bit of ruby whose largest
dimension is under a millimeter - is funny as hell. Thanks for that
picture :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 19:06:38 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 14:09:42 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 10:56:58 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:04:54 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 19:53:20 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 12:19:13 -0600, GreyCloud wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 13:03:48 -0600, GreyCloud wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:

I don't use Restore Points, and in fact that's one of the very first
features I disable on each of my personal systems, but I didn't know
that rolling back to a previous RP would also clean up the filesystem.
I'm very surprised to hear that, and if it's true, it makes me extremely
happy to know that this feature is disabled.

At the time I was busy cleaning up the remnants off my hard drive that was
eating up a lot of space. Unfortuanely, one particular remnant directory
was also tied to VS. VS wouldn't load any projects. So I resorted to the
restore point. Problem solved. All you have to do is make a restore
point once a week and you won't have any problems.

Regarding that last sentence, I'm sorry but I don't believe that for a
second.

Then you apparently just don't do much system cleaning then.

No, that's not the problem with that statement. The problem is that you're
saying that if everyone made a restore point once a week then no one would
have any problems. Restore points don't prevent problems, as you surely must
know. In the best case, they might fix an issue, but you never know what
else they might 'fix' at the same time. Restore points aren't able to read
your mind. Instead, they just change everything they think they should
change, all at once. In anything less than the best case, they make one or
more changes to your system without fixing the issue you're currently
interested in, so you're left wondering what got changed while knowing that
the thing that was surely broken is still broken. It's sort of a lose-lose.

I'd say "In anything less than the best case, they make one or more
changes to your system without fixing the issue you're currently
interested in" is quite an exaggeration...

How about "in some of the worst cases" as a more moderate - and IMO
*much* more accurate - qualifier?

I've never experienced the extreme of which you write.

I re-read my text and compared it to yours, and I think I have to stay with
mine. Aren't there really only two possible outcomes when you roll back to a
previous restore point? Either your issue is resolved, or it isn't. Either
way, the user has no idea what else was changed in the process. I don't see
a gray area in between "my issue was resolved" and "my issue wasn't
resolved", and in both of those cases there can be other things that got
changed that you may not even see until later because you're focused on the
thing you were trying to resolve.

Am I looking at it wrong?

You have ignored a range of grey shades (way more than 50, IME).

Give me some hints, please. What am I overlooking?

(I'm not intentionally ignoring anything, so I translated 'ignored' into
'overlooking'.)

For one thing, many people have already posted about having their butts
saved by restoring to an earlier restore point, me among them.

But let me quote again your statement that I had already called out,
"In anything less than the best case, they make one or more changes to
your system without fixing the issue you're currently interested in".

That paints your so-called "best case" as a pure blinding white like
what people see in their near death experiences, and all other outcomes
are painted a very matte anechoic pure black.

I will say no more on this topic.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)