Nothing! After several attempts to do anything I finally get the dreaded message, "Internet Explorer--Not Responding". Boy was that the understatement of the year. Not only was Internet Explorer not responding, but Mailwasher, AVG, Outlook, and Windows Task Manager. NOTHING! After a considerable amount of time I had to manually shut down. That's right. I had to push the button. Then I sat and looked at the computer waiting for it to come on. Oh, that's right. I shut down manually, that means I have to turn the thing on manually also. Great, it rebooted and ran through all of the diagnostics. After the computer was through doing it's thing I was able to do mine which was to continue sifting through the old mail and check for new. Next, I began working on the Blog.
After working on the Blog for a short time I remembered---Fantasy Football. I had forgotten to check my teams progress and adjust the rosters. I have 2 Fantasy Football teams. Their names are The Texas Fire Cats and The Feuerkatz. Both of my teams made the playoffs with first round byes. The Texas Fire Cats record was mediocre at 5-8. The team has also been mediocre in the playoffs. We finished the season in 8th place and are in the Consolation bracket of the playoffs battling for 9th place. Go figure!
My other team, The Feuerkatz did better with a record of 9-4, finishing in 2nd place. I lost a game in the playoffs (Thank you Dallas Cowboys!) and will be playing for 3rd place this weekend. I will let you know how both turn out later in the week.
Back to Blog. I think I have gotten this mornings problem with the computer ironed out. Everything seems to be perking just fine. My son Scott gave me a Western Digital Passport HD to try to help with the External HD that is not inclined to divulge any of the information stored on it. I imagine much of the holidays will be consumed trying to recover all of the info on the drive. When this is done, more pictures for the blog.
I was reading the Latest Issue of PC Magazine yesterday. It is their 25th Anniversary. There is an interesting article in the magazine looking back over the past 25 years. (Sorry, it is not posted on-line yet.) Among the interesting things in the article: In April 1983-A hard drive (unknown size) cost $1795.00. That is equivalent to a 1GB drive costing $367,616.00 today. September 18, 1984 brought us the AT&T Dataphone 2400 baud modem for "...super-fast data communications...". Wow! And that was fast 23 years ago.
I am sure there is a lot more but I did not have time to finish yet. I had to work on the printer. Last Thursday night at approximately 9:00 PM I was preparing things for the last day of school. I wanted to make a coloring book for my students so they would have something to do over the holidays. I sit down and begin to locate likely pages on the Internet. After making my decisions I click on the little printer icon. I hear the printer making the normal sounds; loading paper, adjusting print heads, etc. Then nothing! (I suppose this story should be at the beginning since it occurred first but it sounds better here.) A notice pops up on screen and informs me of "Cartridge Error 50C--Refer to Owners Manual)". Great! I have now idea where the manual is. That was put away 6 years ago when I bought the thing. So my next stop is the Lexmark website and quickly look for a fix. I am in a hurry and half way read the answer and try to fix it. Long story short, I stopped because I still needed to finish preparing for school.
I finally had time last night to get to the printer again. I looked up the error message and methodically went through the prescribed procedure. Turn off printer; Lift scanner deck; Remove color cartridge; close deck, Turn printer on; Look for error message. I did all of this--No Message. The website then instructed me to: Turn off printer; Lift scanner deck; Replace color cartridge; Remove black cartridge; close deck, Turn printer on; Look for error message. GREAT, I think! I got the error message again, now what does it mean? I checked and find out that the color cartridge is shorted. How does that happen? I replaced the cartridge and now I'm back in business.
While in the printer I decided to clean it up. I achieved this feat by transferring the old gooky ink and dusty paper lint mixture to my fingers. Now this incredibly sticky mess came off the inside of the printer quite easily. I was very proud until it came time to take it off my fingers. It apparently doesn't work that way. This must be the ink that is designed to smear and run when it gets wet, but stubbornly stays on your fingers for next to forever after a good scrubbing.
Blog tomorrow--Getting Ready For Christmas Day
© 2007 Barry T Horst
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
