[OT] Crash and burn

"Yowie" wrote:

And poor old Fluffy. She knew she was in terrible trouble, but her poor
little brain cell had no clue as to why. I wish I could explain to her whats
going on in the world sometimes and the reason why her Hoomins suddenly
start yelling at her, but that ain't going to be (unlike Shmogg, who I
*swear* understands English). She looks so remorseful and sad when she gets
roused upon, but forgets *everything* at the sight of her ball (her world
revolved around it). Guess Fluffy is good training for dealing with the
Yowlet.

That reminds me that I recently read an article that reminded me of
you and Fluffy. I've put it up temporarily at this URL:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Takayuki9z/sydney1.jpg
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Takayuki9z/sydney2.jpg

"Takayuki" wrote in message
...
"Yowie" wrote:

And poor old Fluffy. She knew she was in terrible trouble, but her poor
little brain cell had no clue as to why. I wish I could explain to her
whats
going on in the world sometimes and the reason why her Hoomins suddenly
start yelling at her, but that ain't going to be (unlike Shmogg, who I
*swear* understands English). She looks so remorseful and sad when she
gets
roused upon, but forgets *everything* at the sight of her ball (her world
revolved around it). Guess Fluffy is good training for dealing with the
Yowlet.

That reminds me that I recently read an article that reminded me of
you and Fluffy. I've put it up temporarily at this URL:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Takayuki9z/sydney1.jpg
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Takayuki9z/sydney2.jpg

Awww, what a gorgeous story. And Fluffy looks very much like Sydney does!
Unfortunatley Shmogg on just barely marely manages to tolerate Fluffy, but
never fear, Fluffy will be able to raise the Yowlet like her very own (And
so I'll tell The Yowlet that we had him because the dog wanted a
companion!). I suspect Fluffy will make a wonderful "second Mum" to the the
baby, although he'll have to live his formative years in several layers of
dog-spit.

Yowie

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
Yowie wrote:
Frankie 2, my trusty old Pentium 400 committed suicide yesterday.

SNIP

I'm very sorry to read this. Coincidently my old Pentium 400 committed
suicide about six weeks ago, it just wouldn't switch on. Thinking it must
be
the power supply I rebuilt it in a different case but it was just the
same.
So I bought a 2.8 GHz running Windows XP and installed the old hard drive
as
slave and recovered all my files. I would have been very upset in your
position. I still have the instalation discs for DOS and all versions of
Windows since 3.1, I doubt any of them will be used again.

Nothing wrong with DOS! It was quite useful actually, and on occasion I drop
back into it to do some of the things Windows *should* be able to do but
won't (like print-out a list of all the files in a folder, for example).

Of all the windows versions so far, I like W98 best. Unfortunately I no
longer have a "legitimate" copy (having lost the OEM) and so next time, it
will either have to be WindowsME (puke) or bite the bullet and buy XP. But
then again, I don't even know if XP can run on slow machines, nor how much
space it takes up?

Yowie
fondly remembering the time when a 386 DX66 was really fast, and 20mb of
hard drive space seemed close enough to infinity.

"CK" wrote in message
...
Yowie wrote:

Frankie 2, my trusty old Pentium 400 committed suicide yesterday.

snip

So, RIP Frankie. You were a good machine that did what needed to be
done.
Not sophisticated, smart or "up to date" but nevertheless served your
purpose well. I'm sad to see you go.


Oh no!! That's one of my nightmares too. Now I have made a folder that I
can copy off the instant the 'puter shows signs of doing something to
itself, or being attacked by stuff my horde of defence programs can't
handle. And the most important stuff, my "bookkeeping file" and my list
of usernames and passwords I keep backed up on a floppy, should I not
get a chance to copy off the above mentioned folder.

Now Vicky, to keep your computer free of spyware, you need to download a
couple of freeware programs that clean out these pests. Programs I'd
recommend a
- Ad-Aware, available at http://www.lavasoft.de/
- Spybot Search and Destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org/
and one I haven't yet tried myself, but have heard praises of on
computer ng's
- Pest Patrol from http://www.pestpatrol.com/

I assume you have your anti-virus programs up-to-date and purring, but
should you be interested, there are freeware programs in that department
too that do seem to do a decent job in spite of being freeware, the one
I'm using now is:
- AVG Anti Virus Free Edition, available at http://www.grisoft.com/
Others that have been recommended, but that I haven't tried are Avast!
and AntiVir.

Thanks for these.

Believe it or not, I ran for years without virus protection, and only ever
caught one. And was well aware that I had been infected the moment I had a
brain-burp and clicked on the infected file. Symantec was my saviour, and
thankfully no damage was done (that I know of anyway). Although I use OE at
home, I have set it so that the "default" e-mail account is inoperable, so
that if I do get one of those e-mail viruses, it can't be sent out using the
default identity.

Although these days I hear that there are some viruses you can get without
ever being aware you've got anything - in that they don't require you to run
anything to be able to infect your PC. I don't know how true that is, of
course, but I don't take chances these days. Its a shame, because as I said,
for years I ran without any sort of software virus protection (just used my
brains) and didn't even mung my address when posting to newsgroups. Sadly,
that era is well and truly over thanks to SWEN and its ilk.

Oh, and thats why Jean (JPHobbs) isn't posting, if anyone wanted to know.
her inbox has been swamped by SWEN's garbage, and she is kind of stuck as to
what to do at the moment as she doens't want to log back on to download
anythingelse (can't say I blame her). I tried to talk her through some steps
over the phone, but since I can't see her screen, its been difficult, and
she's just a little too far away from me to just pop on over and fix stuff
up (and if I wasn't so pregnant, even that wouldn't be a problem, its only a
day trip after all).

So she says "hi" to everyone and hopes that her son can sort out her PC for
her soon.

I can pass messages on if anything is urgent.

Yowie

"Yowie" wrote in message
...
"Adrian" wrote in message
...
Yowie wrote:
Frankie 2, my trusty old Pentium 400 committed suicide yesterday.

SNIP

I'm very sorry to read this. Coincidently my old Pentium 400 committed
suicide about six weeks ago, it just wouldn't switch on. Thinking it
must
be
the power supply I rebuilt it in a different case but it was just the
same.
So I bought a 2.8 GHz running Windows XP and installed the old hard
drive
as
slave and recovered all my files. I would have been very upset in your
position. I still have the instalation discs for DOS and all versions of
Windows since 3.1, I doubt any of them will be used again.

Nothing wrong with DOS! It was quite useful actually, and on occasion I
drop
back into it to do some of the things Windows *should* be able to do but
won't (like print-out a list of all the files in a folder, for example).

Of all the windows versions so far, I like W98 best. Unfortunately I no
longer have a "legitimate" copy (having lost the OEM) and so next time, it
will either have to be WindowsME (puke) or bite the bullet and buy XP. But
then again, I don't even know if XP can run on slow machines, nor how much
space it takes up?

I wouldn't recommend running XP on a slow machine. It takes up a lot of
room and will make your computer run even slower. My computer *just* meets
the minimum requirements, but I'd never install it. However, if you want
Windows 98, I can send you a copy with the key. That stuff is only $5 here
in Thailand...not legal of course, as long as that doesn't bother you.
--
Britta
Check out pictures of Vino at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/badwilson click on the Vino album

"Yowie" wrote in message
...
"CK" wrote in message
...
Yowie wrote:

Oh, and thats why Jean (JPHobbs) isn't posting, if anyone wanted to know.
her inbox has been swamped by SWEN's garbage, and she is kind of stuck as
to
what to do at the moment as she doens't want to log back on to download
anythingelse (can't say I blame her). I tried to talk her through some
steps
over the phone, but since I can't see her screen, its been difficult, and
she's just a little too far away from me to just pop on over and fix stuff
up (and if I wasn't so pregnant, even that wouldn't be a problem, its only
a
day trip after all).

Yowie



You might suggest that Jean set up a "throwaway" box through Yahoo and also
munge her new address to make it a little more difficult for spammers to
find her. I refer to it as throwaway because Yahoo is free, and she could
always discontinue that box and start another if spam becomes a problem. I
also use Norton AV, Ad-aware, and Spybot S&D. The last two are free.
Ad-aware is virtually a no-brainer once it has been set up, but Spybot might
create some difficulties since Jean isn't very familiar with computers. I
have had very few problems with my own "throwaway" since I started to use a
munged address. In my own case, I also use a router, but that's because I
am always connected via cable.

MaryL

"Yowie" wrote:

Awww, what a gorgeous story. And Fluffy looks very much like Sydney does!

I thought they looked similar too, and they're the same breed, so I
thought you'd find it interesting. Plus, Sydney.

Unfortunatley Shmogg on just barely marely manages to tolerate Fluffy, but
never fear, Fluffy will be able to raise the Yowlet like her very own (And
so I'll tell The Yowlet that we had him because the dog wanted a
companion!). I suspect Fluffy will make a wonderful "second Mum" to the the
baby, although he'll have to live his formative years in several layers of
dog-spit.

You mean that you're not going to be one of those new mothers who
sterilizes everything in sight?

"Yowie" wrote
Frankie 2, my trusty old Pentium 400 committed suicide yesterday.


My Frankie send commiserative purrs to you for the loss of your Frankie.
Nikki too. I dread the day when my puter starts to act up. It's three years
old already, so it will probably be any day now. I have to get a CD burner
to store all my photos. shudder at thought of losing them all

--
Marina, Frank and Nikki
Email marina (dot) kurten (at) pp (dot) inet (dot) fi
Pics at http://uk.f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/frankiennikki

"Takayuki" wrote in message
...
"Yowie" wrote:

I suspect Fluffy will make a wonderful "second Mum" to the the
baby, although he'll have to live his formative years in several layers
of
dog-spit.

You mean that you're not going to be one of those new mothers who
sterilizes everything in sight?


Good. That means the child will probably be much healthier, both mentally
and physically.

MaryL

"Takayuki" wrote in message
...
"Yowie" wrote:

Awww, what a gorgeous story. And Fluffy looks very much like Sydney
does!

I thought they looked similar too, and they're the same breed, so I
thought you'd find it interesting. Plus, Sydney.

Unfortunatley Shmogg on just barely marely manages to tolerate Fluffy,
but
never fear, Fluffy will be able to raise the Yowlet like her very own
(And
so I'll tell The Yowlet that we had him because the dog wanted a
companion!). I suspect Fluffy will make a wonderful "second Mum" to the
the
baby, although he'll have to live his formative years in several layers
of
dog-spit.

You mean that you're not going to be one of those new mothers who
sterilizes everything in sight?

Nope, I'm not sticking *my* nipples in boiling water for 10 minutes!
Anyways, I figure that by the time the child has started crawling and
therefore can get into anything and everything, his immune system should be
able to cope with dog spit, snail slime, that gooey stuff at the back of the
lounge, stale cat kibble and all else he will stick in his gob. Sterilising
everything he encounters up until that point will not help his immunse
system deal with the sudden onslaught once he gets himself mobile.

My mother, quite wisely, stopped sterilising everything the day she
discovered I enjoyed eating backyard dirt (and has a*lovely* picture of me
"snacking" just to prove it) :-)

She didn't bother with sterilising at all with my sister. *Clean*, yes, but
not sterilised. I plan to go the same way.

Yowie