COVID, COMPUTERS AND KITTIES

It’s been a month since I last posted on this blog and it feels strange coming back on! There are several reasons for my prolonged absence.

Covid

Earlier in September my hubby caught Covid, and being the generous soul he is, he made certain that he passed it on to me as well! I think I got over it more quickly than he did but I did suffer quite a lot of severe fatigue afterwards, probably because with my ME, my energy baseline is already lower than normal. However, I now feel pretty much back to normal.

Inevitably there was quite a bit of catching up to do, having been out of action, and we had some cancelled appoinments that needed to be rescheduled. One was for a blood test for me – they usually do one about once a year to check my kidney and liver function since I am taking an anticoagulant. The rescheduled appointment was due to take place a couple of days ago but the surgery phoned to postpone it yet again because now the nurse is off with Covid!

We also had a rescheduled dental appointment – our six-monthly check-up. I was fine, but my hubby has to go in again next week for a filling.

I am due for an eye test at the beginning of November and this time I am really hoping they will tell me that my cataracts are now ready to be done. I am having increasing difficulty with my vision these days and can’t wait to have it sorted now. Everyone says how brilliant it is and that they can’t believe how clearly they can see afterwards!

Computers

This section is more for my own benefit, to remind me of what happened and what I did about it, so please, dear reader, don’t feel obliged to plough through it all!

During my enforced resting post-Covid, I took advantage of all the time on the recliner to work on a lot of old (and some very old indeed – over 25 years old!) files on the computer, mostly Bible study articles which I’d downloaded over the years and which required re-organising and some editing to conform with my standard template. This has been an ongoing project for many years – I do a bit and then run out of steam and it gets left until the opportunity arises to tackle it again. I have made pretty good progress with it this time.

Accounts

I thought it might be useful to be able to access the accounts on my main laptop which is downstairs, and perhaps work on them a bit if I didn’t feel up to sitting at my desk in the office. For many years I have used Microsoft Works for this – this suite of programs is now defunct but the spreadsheet has always worked well for me, and for many years I’ve continued to use the templates I set up. I tried to install it on the main laptop but it is too old and the computer spat it out again… I then got a bit worried that the old laptop in the office might give up the ghost at some point, leaving me quite unable to access these important records, so I bit the bullet and decided to install Excel. I’d been putting this off for years because setting up the accounts templates and manually inserting all the necessary formulae into the spreadsheet is a complete nightmare, but I got down to it.

I have One Drive 365 and you can work on Excel online with that, so I started to set it up. Only to find that it messed up my beloved old version of Word which have been using for years – it’s very old (2003 version) and I am still using it because I simply hate the “ribbon” on later versions of Office programs. When I tried to open Word, lo and behold, there was the hated “ribbon”! I tried installing it again, from the disc I have, along with the same version of Excel, but I couldnt get rid of the “ribbon.”

I tried a system restore and it failed. Grrrr. Mega, mega grrrr.

Hard drive re-format

There was only one thing to do – to format the hard drive and reinstall Windows. You may think this was a bit drastic, but I’ve done it several times over the years and it’s good to start again with a clean slate every now and then, as it’s a good opportunity to clear out a lot of old rubbish. The computer starts in a flash, just like a new one. I usually do this every couple of years or so.

Since getting badly burned in my early computing days, losing stuff through hard drive failures etc., I have for many years been absolutely paranoid about backing up, so it’s never a problem getting all my files back on again. I have a folder containing details of all the licence keys and recipts for various programs I’ve downloaded, so I don’t need to purchase the pro versions again.

This time it was a bit more tedious than normal and I encountered various problems along the way, the main one being the confusion between two apparent user accounts. Logging onto Windows isn’t a problem – just one account shows, but in my file manager under “Users,” I have two – “Default,” and “platy” (the first five letters of my email address). The Libraries seemed to be a mixture of the two and I was having horrendous problems not being able to find various files. I decided to delete the “platy” one, which caused all my desktop icons to vanish, and because there were too many files to go in the recycle bin, about half of those disappeared too!

System restore

This was clearly the wrong thing to have done, and the simpest remedy seemed to be to do a system restore, which worked, and everything was back, except for the my lost files, of course. Trying to reconcile these with the backup folders on the external hard drive proved too time-consuming so I simply deleted the incomplete folders from the computer’s hard drive and re-copied the backed up ones from the external hard drive. This took ages as there are literally thousands of files, occupying several gigabites. Mostly documents and photos, with a few videos. I keep all my videos and music on an external hard drive, backed up on a second one.

I then made sure that all the folders in the Library (“Documents,” “Downloads,” “Music,” “Pictures” and “Videos” were linked to the “platy” user and everything seems to be OK again.

Word and Excel

Word and Excel are now safely installed from the original disc, sans-“ribbon,” and all my files and I are happy with the result of that!

One Drive

Yesterday another major problem raised its ugly head. My One Drive’s default setting is to back up all my files automatically – I had forgotten about this as I had disabled the feature ages ago. It’s a total pain. Not only does it back up all sorts of extraneous rubbish like images from downloaded web pages (buttons, banners etc.), but every time I tried to turn off my computer it warned me that it was still uploading files, and the process was slowing everything down, too. I stopped it, and decided to delete the files. This was too succesful – I had set up my “Free Stuff” folder and this was now empty. More work, to restore it! Only yesterday I had a request from someone on YouTube asking where she could find the template for one of my cards – the video is from way back, when the template was on my old blog (now defunct – Blogger/Google managed to delete 8 years’ worth of photos in one fell swoop and this is when I decided to migrate to WordPress). I prefer to control what I upload to One Drive, and will eventually get around to uploading other stuff that I want up there, mostly things that I want to access from other devices. This is particularly useful when I am working in the studio and want art stuff that is on the downstairs laptop.

I have now restored the “Free Stuff” folder, and the link in the page above (“My Free Stuff”) has been updated. I think I’ve got everything back that was there before (and some more besides) but I know I had some embroidery charts on there, and for now, I can’t find them.

Norton

Something I have finally sorted out is to set up my Password Vault on Norton – I am at long last able to open this with my phone. I tried many times, without success, to get this to work when I first started with Norton. That program is not exactly user-friendly and it took me the best part of a day to get it right, searching for answers on various forums as well as on Norton’s own website.

Photos

Whenever I take a photo it is transferred from the phone to the laptop, edited, filed in my own folder system and backed up onto the external hard drive. If I want to upload photos to my blog, they also have to be converted and reduced in size or they won’t go up. Each folder has a “Converted” subfolder. Before formatting the hard drive, I was able to use the file conversion feature in Directory Opus (my file manager) which was super-quick and easy, but I now find that when I’ve converted the photo as I’ve always done, it vanishes without trace. I can locate it by doing a search from the Start button on the laptop and looking at the properties in the resulting file of that name, but when I navigate to that location, the photo is not there. I’ve tried looking in the “Default” user as well as the “platy” one, to no avail. Who knows where those photos have gone…

Anyway, I have now re-installed my AVS4You media suite, which includes programs for editing videos and audio, burning discs, converting files… you name it – a wonderful suite of programs that I couldn’t live without! I used to use their photo converter which was accessed through a right-click context menu on each photo but that feature doesn’t seem to be present since the hard drive re-format. I am now converting them by opening the photo converter program and dragging and dropping the various photos into it. I’ve set up a custom preset which takes care of it, but it’s considerably more time-consuming than  the old Directory Opus method. Maybe I’ll be able to sort out that problem at some stage. There doesn’t seem to be any help available for that…

Debit card

Just before all my computer woes started, my debit card was rapidly approaching its expiry date at the end of this month. I had to spend an afternoon going through the accounts to find my regular (and occasional), and some automatic, payments made from this card, and then visiting the respective websites to update my card details. (It was during this process that I thought how useful it would be to be able to access the accounts from the main laptop downstairs.)

iPhone

To quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”

Finally, to add insult to injury after all that lot, my phone decided to misbehave. The microphone was muted and I could find no way to turn it on again. My friend phoned me from Brazil and I couldn’t speak to her – she had very kindly left me alone for nearly two weeks to enable me to recover from Covid – she knew how exhausted I was! – and this was the first opportunity we’d had for a chat, so it was frustrating to say the least! Eventually I found various websites with possible solutions to the problem, and as there was an iOS update pending, I performed that, and fortunately it resolved the problem.

The home stretch?

So… I think I am on the home stretch now. Some things are working in unfamiliar ways, and each time I open a program for the first time, I tend to be confronted with “Updates available,” or “Please enter licence code,” and I’m having to re-enter various custom settings, so everything is taking longer than before, but these are one-off events and soon everything will be running as normal again, I hope.

Technology

Technology, technology… how we love it and hate it! I look back to the days of my youth when the phone was a permanent fixture in the hall (you’d freeze to death speaking on it because we didn’t have central heating either!!), there were no computers, no Internet… If you wanted to buy something, you had to go to the shops or order from a physical mail-order catalogue and wait for ages for the parcel to arrive. If you wanted to find something out, you had to go to the library. If you wanted to contact friends and family, it was just the post, especially if they lived a long way away as long-distance (what used to be called “trunk”) calls were so expensive. There was no fast food (and weren’t we all so much healthier in those days!!) and no microwaves. When we eventually got a TV (later than most people), if you wanted to change the channel (only 2 or 3 to choose from), or adjust the volume, horror of horrors, you had to get up out of your chair and cross the room to do it!!!

With all I’ve had to deal with lately, it’s made me think about “the good old days.” However, I think most people would agree with me that given the choice, I wouldn’t go back to them!  We’ve got far too dependent on our beloved/hated technology for that, and we’ve got to the point now that if we inadvertently leave the house without the phone, we go into panic mode!! However did we manage in the good old days?

Kitties

It is a long time since I’ve uploaded any kitty photos. This batch is mostly Ruby, with a few that feature Lily thown in for good measure!

Ruby – my boxy girl.

I love this picture. The box is too small for her to get her tail in, and I love how her fur is poking out through the hole. The “Tear Here” looks as if it might be a bit painful, though!

Sleeping…

and then waking, in a box of scrap paper on my hubby’s study floor.

Sleeping together in the basket chair. Ruby likes to be on top of Lily as she’s so lovely and soft. They are spending a lot more time cuddled up together now the weather has got colder.

Ruby asking to come in for tea…

…and waiting… while I mess about, pointing my phone at her!…

… and both patiently waiting for me to open the door!

Two little beanies in a pod.

Ruby keeping Daddy’s ear warm with her tail.

Finally, Ruby loving her sister as they sleep together.

Not my usual style of blog post, but I am hoping that I will soon be free to get back into the studio again and pick up the threads once more. My creative mojo seems to have fled recently and I haven’t even felt the urge to do any gentle drawing while I’ve been on the recliner!

At least I’ve been able to make use of the time to sort out all the tech problems, and I hope my life will be back to normal again in short order now.