Tag Archives: #computer problems

Computers!

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I’ve been having so much trouble with my computers! It’s unbelievable!

All I really want to do with them is write and work on my photography. And, of course, to check email and do a little bit of surfing. Is that so much to ask?

Since I got back from Mexico (end of February), I’ve had nothing but problems! I don’t usually get pissed off that easily, but after days and days of doing everything I know how, calling (on hold for hours), dealing with repairmen, turning everything off and leaving for hours, it finally got to where I was screaming at the computer in total frustration. It got so annoying I actually broke 2 computers. Broke the screen on one, dented one up pretty badly. Of course that did not help.

I’ve already bought 2 new computers. First I bought a new windows (forced to buy a windows 10, which I did NOT want- I HATE IT). Hoping that would solve the problem. But I guess I got a lemon! First problem was- something wrong with the screen. The size of the writing would change for no reason. I would be typing something (or even just trying to read an article) and it would zoom up to 300% and the next second down to 5%.

They fixed the screen, but it still doesn’t work right. It’s soooooooo sloooooow. And, it does the same thing all the other computers around here have been doing. Not just my computers (and iPod and kindle), but my 2 friends computers too. Freezing up constantly, randomly, can’t do anything about it but wait till it decides to go back to work! It’s brand new! I still can’t use it for anything!!

So, I bought another Apple computer. To replace the one I banged up so badly. Looking at it, I’m not sure how long I can expect it to last. Besides, it’s stuffed FULL already!

I had them add extra storage on the new apple, since I really don’t have that much on the old one yet. I finally got it the other day and tried to install my photography programs on it. I use Adobe Lightroom to edit my photos. I’ve been trying to find ways to earn some income. One way is to upload photos onto stock photography sites. They MUST be edited first!

On my old windows computer I had Lightroom, Photoshop, and Portrait Professional. I had tons of photos on there, thousands and thousands of them. I never had any problem with it being ‘full’.

On the apple, I don’t even have a quarter of my photos on there. I only have Lightroom on it. It’s stuffed full. Constantly telling me I need to remove items! That might be OK, if I could figure out HOW to remove items that I don’t really need!

Windows computers are so much better in that regard. I can clearly see which are programs, which are apps, which are simply files- written or photos. On the apples, I can’t tell a damn thing about anything! I don’t want to just randomly start deleting things! I can’t even tell how large the files are! At least on windows, you can tell the size of a file and can get some idea of what they are that way.

So, now I have another new apple, with more memory. I don’t have anything on it but what it came with. I’m trying tonight to put Lightroom on it. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with that too. It seems I have put it onto too many computers already. I went and bought another copy, just so I could put it on this new computer. I’ve tried for 4 days now to get it to download.

Tonight I tried again with customer service (online chat) and after having to give them remote control of my computer (which I REALLY don’t like to do), they finally got it working for me. Apparently, there was a ‘block’ from their end!

I hope, now, finally, I will be able to get some work done around here!

Iffy Internet- Crappy Computer

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Trying to blog with shitty internet and crappy computers.

I’m still struggling to grow my audience. It’s been so hard the last few months with all the issues I’ve had (still having) with the internet and my computers. I’ve tried everything I can think of to fix the problems, but nothing’s really worked. The only thing left to do is to move!

And yes, I would LOVE to be able to do that! Trying hard to find ways to support myself somewhere other than the USA. Being unemployed gives me plenty of time to spend working online, trying to do that. I’ve been trying to sell my writing and photography. Not having working computer or internet kills that whole deal!

Of course, I would very much prefer to be able to go back to work at sea! Working out there gives me the time off to travel, and the money to go.

In the meantime, while I wait for the price of oil to go back up-so the ships will go back to work, so they’ll start hiring people again, I spend my time working on writing, photography, blogging, and looking for jobs around town. None of that is easy without working computer and internet! 🙁

Back to the Shop Again

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I’ve had enough with this NEW computer! So, it’s back to the shop with it again.

I only got this new one because none of my other ones have been working for 3+ months now. I can’t do anything online without constant extremely frustrating struggle.

The technicians keep telling me the problem is with my computer. I have no idea how that is possible, since I have an Apple, a Toshiba, an Asus, a Kindle, an iPod and now a new Lenovo (plus my friends 2 Apples) and they’re ALL having the same problem.

I’ve called and called and called, they’ve sent the repairmen at least a half dozen times. Nothing they’ve done has helped even slightly, except the last time when they actually found bats in the box up on the telephone pole (and full of bat shit).

They cleared it out and it helped some for a day or 2.

So, I went and bought a new computer (that I really can’t afford right now) just on the slight chance that it might be something with my computer(s). This new one does work slightly better as far as not constantly freezing up every 10 seconds (literally).

It has a different problem! It still freezes up, just not as constant. It only does it about every 3-5 minutes instead of every 10 seconds! The problem with it is, that in between the times it freezes up, it constantly changes the screen size.

For instance, I’ll be trying to read my email on yahoo and I have it set at 100%. All by itself (even when I am just reading and not touching the computer), the screen size will suddenly blast up to 250% and then shrink to 10% and all in between too. While I try to change it back to 100%, it eventually allows that but DAMN it pisses me off!

SO, I’m taking it back to Best Buy and hope to hell the Geek Squad can at least fix the screen size changing issue.

Maybe after that, I can deal with trying to work on something productive again?

Still

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Having computer issues! I can’t believe it! After calling dozens of times, 5 visits from technicians, 1 visit from IT gurus, replacing interior and exterior lines….. I STILL can’t connect to the internet!

I’ve tried 8 different devices, NONE of them work!

Do I need to move to McDonalds or what???

A to Z: Just Do It!

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I thought I had posted this here last night. Turns out, I had only actually posted it on my old blog. I always write my posts here and copy them over there. I must have been getting tired. Also, still having huge problems with the computers and internet here.

The tech finally showed up this morning, only to find out that his computer worked fine. None of the 8 devices we’ve been using here in the house for the last couple of weeks works (all the sudden)! So, I’m right back to the starting board. 🙁

Anyway, here’s yesterday’s post for the A to Z Challenge. I’ll have today’s up in a little while. I have to think of something to do with “K”.

Today’s post for the A to Z Challenge is “Just Do It”!

That’s what everyone’s been telling me since my post yesterday.

I have so many things running around my brain. I want to ‘just do it’, but I don’t know how. Basically, I’m scared.

How do you all get over your fears? How do you prepare to do something you’re really, really worried about.

Anybody else have some inspiring stories to share?

A to Z: Freedom

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I’ve been getting behind in the A to Z Challenge. Today we should be on the letter ‘H’ and I’m only on ‘F’. I’ve been having so many problems with my computers and internet here, it’s a wonder I’ve been able to get on here and post at all.

I thought things had finally returned to normal yesterday, but noooooooooo. I am stuck right back where I was to begin with. I have to return the computer to the shop on Monday. No idea how long it will take to get it fixed. It was never actually fixed when I brought it home. 🙁

Nothing around here seems to be going right at all.

But today’s post is supposed to be about freedom. As you can tell from my blog header (She sails the seven seas in search of FREEDOM), it’s extremely important to me. Just about all I can say about that at this point is: thank god for the internet!

It is the only hope I have that we will someday be able to reverse the trend, educate people and bring this country to where the people can ever have real freedom to live their lives the way they choose. The way we were supposed to from the beginning. The way our founding documents explain to the world.

If people really understood what was going on behind the scenes (and more and more out in the open), they would rise up and FIX what’s wrong. Even Henry Ford thought so, here’s a quote from him on just one subject (banking/money)…

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

But the entire system has been against them ever learning- the education system, the media, the government (of course), big business, and on and on. The internet finally gives ordinary people the means to investigate and learn for themselves, without interference from special interests with their own agendas.

Our founding principles were basically enacted into our system of government so that everyone could do whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t hurt anyone else. Simple.

We have been losing more and more of our freedoms here in the USA. “The home of the free and the land of the brave”. Not so much anymore. 🙁

The PATRIOT ACT (spying on everyone-everywhere, strip search at the airport, biometric IDs), the NDAA (indefinite detentions, they can kill anyone they want, anytime, with no due process), etc, etc, etc are stripping us of our freedoms daily and hardly anyone seems to care. Obviously, they are completely UN-constitutional! Our founding fathers would be spinning in their graves!

Take a look at our presidential candidates (if you can stand it). Not ONE of them running in the major parties has the slightest respect for individual liberty or the principles this country was founded on. The democrats and republicans are really only one party- STATIST.

That means that they are supporting the state over and above the people. In this country, we were founded on the complete opposite of that- INDIVIDUAL liberty.

Since the democrats and republicans own the televised debates, most Americans will never learn they have another choice until they’re actually in the voting booth! The republicrats refuse to allow ANY other party into the debates. So, what use is a debate when you all belong to the same party? The internet is the only way to find out more about all the other candidates (tho they did have a nationally televised debate with 3 Libertarian candidates on Fox Business News- 1st time ever last week).

Ask yourself this one question. Do you own yourself? Yes or no?

If you answer yes, then you should think hard about supporting anyone in any major party here. Only the Libertarian Party has even the slightest respect for your freedom. As they say “we’re secretly plotting to take over the world and leave you alone”. 🙂

I truly believe everyone on this planet deserves to live the best life they possibly can, by their OWN choices. That everyone has the right to decide for themselves to do whatever they want, as long as they don’t hurt anyone else (and they will take the consequences for their actions). That is true freedom. That is how I believe we were meant to live and is absolutely, no question, the BEST way for mankind to live.

A to Z: Dreamstime

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Yesterday’s post for the A to Z Challenge is “Dreamstime” (I skipped it yesterday cause I was just too busy and too tired by the time I got home after midnight). For the challenge, I’m posting every day in April (except Sundays), one for each letter of the alphabet.

Some bloggers have chosen themes. I haven’t. I’m just doing what I normally do- mostly maritime, travel, and photography- but also anything that interests me. That includes food, drinks, philosophy, history, religion, politics, culture, art, music, science, astronomy, jokes, etc. You might find anything here. I hope you like surprises. 😉

Anyway, today’s post (which should have been done yesterday) is on Dreamstime. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know I’ve been trying to find ways to earn income other than just working at a regular job.

One way I’ve been trying to do that is to break into ‘stock photography’. Dreamstime is one of the places to do that. I’ve been accepted on there for about a year.

Check out my Dreamstime portfolio- here.

I’ve only managed to get 26 photos uploaded and accepted. My acceptance ratio is over 95% which I think is excellent. I’ve only tried uploading photos already accepted at Bigstock on Dreamstime, that helps.

So far, I’ve earned a grand total of $4.11!

I need to work on getting more photos on there. The last couple of weeks would have been perfect. The only problem has been that my computer with all of my photos has been in the shop and the internet has been giving me fits! I have my computer back now, but I have to download the programs back onto it. Now just have to wait for the new modem to show up so I can get proper internet access again.

It should get here by Friday. 🙂

How to Stay Motivated

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How to stay motivated? I have no idea!

I have been trying, for years now, to find some way to earn a living on my own. I’ve known for a long time that working offshore was not going to last. I did my very best to prepare. I saved all I could. I invested the best way I could figure out how (stocks, real estate, training, etc). I spent a lot of time trying to learn photography and writing. I started blogging. I even went to Mexico to get certified to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL).

I’ve spent my life working at sea. I’ve earned the highest license there is. I’ve been laid off the ships since mid-September 2015. I haven’t had a single interested response for any of the thousands of resumes I’ve sent or applications I’ve filled out. I don’t expect to see any until the price of oil goes up quite a bit and stabilizes. Maybe then I can go back to work. IF my licenses are still good.

I’m trying everything I can think of to earn income even if I can’t get back to work. Some are predicting the oil field won’t recover for 3-5 YEARS, if ever! That means I’ve got to make my savings last for the rest of my life. At the rate I’m going now, they won’t last even for the rest of this year.

In the meantime, I’ve been working as hard as I can to make my blog interesting and figure out how to ‘monetize’ it. I’ve done all I can to promote it, but there is some issue with it where it’s keeping people from easily being able to ‘like’ a post or ‘follow’ the blog. I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it on my own and I can’t find anyone who can help me. It doesn’t help that my computers have been on the fritz for a couple of months and my internet has been completely out for the last few days.

I’ve also been trying to work on my photography. I would like to find a way to promote them to the world and hopefully someone out there would like one enough to buy one every once in a while. It seems the universe is totally against that idea!

From some sick, greedy bastards hacking my thumb drive and blackmailing me to get my photos back, to having my computer refuse to open the photos so I can see them because it’s stuffed full, to now having almost none of them transferred to the new hard drive! I’m also unable to download the photo editing software I use (Lightroom), since the internet keeps dropping off before the program finishes downloading.

So, I am getting incredibly frustrated. It seems for every thing I try to do, there is another roadblock set in front of me. I’m having a hell of a hard time trying to stay motivated to do anything. I’m just trying to find a way to survive financially before I lose everything I’ve worked so hard for all these years.

I’m about to give up on getting the computer to work until the modem comes. Does anybody have any suggestions for how to promote, or sell photography online? I’ve tried Craigslist and Varage Sale, no response yet. Trying to figure out eBay but would rather avoid that one.

If anybody has any ideas on selling photos, please let me know! These 2 are just a couple of examples. I’ve got thousands! Look around my blog for more, almost all of them here are my photos (I occasionally have to find something on google).

Sunday Struggles

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No posts for the A to Z challenge on Sundays. Good thing, cause my internet is still not working right and drops off constantly. At least it’s coming on now and then. It’s been completely gone for the last 4 days. Now I only have to wait for the new modem to show up (3-5 business days- no overnight delivery!), set it up correctly and then MAYBE I can get my internet working properly again after almost a month!

I’ve been trying to download Open Office for the last 8 hours and STILL can’t get it to go all the way til the end! Same thing for Adobe Lightroom.

I finally got my computer back from the shop on Friday and hoping to have everything working correctly. I knew I was going to have to download and re-install all the programs I use, since they can’t be moved from the old hard drive to the new one. I didn’t figure it would be that big of a problem.

Today was my first chance to try it out and nope. I’ve lost ALL of my pictures! I hope to hell they’re still on the old hard drive, but that still means I’ll have to take the computer back to the shop so they can take it all apart again to reinstall the old hard drive and copy those pictures over. Jeeze!

It seems that for everything I TRY to do, there are 15 roadblocks thrown in my way. I hate to be so negative on here all the time, but this is the only outlet I have, other than screaming at the walls and throwing my computer across the room.

All I am trying to do is to get a working computer in the house! I have 5 of them! I am only trying to get ONE of them to the point where I can write, research and edit my photographs. It really shouldn’t be so hard.

 

No Internet

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Sorry All,

My good computer is still in the shop. My internet at home has been going off and on for the last 2-3 weeks. Some days it shuts off altogether and won’t come back on no matter how much I fiddle with the computer, modem, phone lines, etc.

Today has been another one of those days. 🙁

I spent another hour on the phone with tech support, (after doing the same last week for the same issue- which did nothing to help). They said they would have to investigate further and it would be another 2 days before I could expect them to get back to me. 🙁

I have a couple of friends staying with me. One of which is kind of a computer geek. He’s tried a few things to figure out what’s going on and his conclusion is there is something wrong with the modem. I concur.

Let’s  see if the internet provider finally figures that out and gets me back online.

I guess I’ll be spending a lot of time at McDonalds for the next couple of days. 🙁

Computers

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My regular computer is in the shop. Still!

I have all my pictures on there and also my photo editing software. I haven’t been able to do any work on my photos because of that. I have thousands and thousands of photos on that computer and at least a few hundred of them have already been edited.

It’s a lot of work to fix them up the way I’d like them to look (and I don’t really do much to them). I was so upset when those hackers stole my photos and blackmailed me over them. I called the police and even the FBI. The police said they couldn’t help and the FBI wasn’t even nice enough to TRY- or to tell me that they just weren’t interested. I couldn’t figure out how to get the money to the bastards in time so I just had to get over losing almost my entire trip to Nicaragua. Thousands of fantastic photos- gone forever! 🙁

Thank god they only corrupted my thumb drive! If they had got everything on my computer  I think I would have done something really stupid like throw the computer against the wall and then light it on fire! How could someone NOT be frustrated and MAD AS HELL?

I was going to work on uploading to the internet this week since I’m still not working. I hope they’ll finish with my computer tomorrow!

I have a feeling it’s going to take me a while to get everything back in order. They had to put in a new (larger) hard drive and move everything over. I just hope everything is still THERE.

Moving Day

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Class is over and they’ve already started picking up new students for next months class. I need to move out of this apartment I’ve been staying in all month.

I found a nice looking place downtown. I’ll be packing up and moving out later this morning. I still have some food here, I’ll give it to the other girls in the class. They’re all staying on here for at least a few days.

We went out for a celebratory drink last night. We found a place right on the beach with margaritas for only 15 pesos (less than $1)!

I would try to put up a couple of photos, but my computer is refusing to let me see them! It is apparently stuffed full and I need to delete some programs to make room. I’ve already been storing all my photos on thumbdrives, they’re not even on the computer. I have no idea what I can delete without screwing up something I need. I guess that means I can’t look at any photos til I get home to see the computer guy. 🙁

Screwed Up Again!

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More shit to deal with! My computer is screwed up again!!

Not JUST my blog now, but the computer. I’ll have to take it to the shop AGAIN and hope they can fix this one. 🙁

I hope I can get the old one to work, at least for the next few days.

 

Update: Internet

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I posted previously that my internet was down at home.

I got home from the FRC course last night and it was working again. It seems I had a phone line down somewhere outside my house, I got a call from the repairman while I was in class the other day. I’m still on dial up. Mostly because I use Juno as my internet provider and they’re cheap. Also, I really don’t want to have to change my personal email address. I’m terrible about stuff like that.

I was glad to find out that at least my phone was working again when I got home. 🙂

So, I was hopeful that my computers would be all nice and back to normal. But, noooooo, neither one of them is working normally now.

I took the Apple to the shop today. It seemed like it might be the easier one to fix. Basically what it was (is) doing is not staying connected to the wi-fi. It connects up but then drops off after only a minute or 2. I can’t get online with that one any other way than wi-fi, so it’s not much use to me now.

Actually, the guy told me I ought to take it to the Apple store. We don’t have one of those here so it would take me a minimum of 2 days to get that one fixed and probably not worth the price. What to do? I went and got a new one. 🙂

I did buy the Geek Squad protection on it this time. Not that it helps a whole lot when you travel as much as I do and you have to send it off, but I’m hoping they’ve got local expertise there on the Apple stuff.

As for the other computer. Still not working right. I will try taking that one to the shop in the morning and hopefully it can be fixed in a couple of hours.

In the meantime, I’ll have my new Apple to set up and play with. 🙂