Tech Troubles
I'm cutting this entry for those of you not interested in tech and computers. But if you are, and if you could read it and offer me some advice, I would sincerely appreciate it.
As many of you may remember, I bought an Acer Aspire One D255 netbook back in March. I knew, from the start, that it was a cheap computer, and only wanted it for portability. Still, it was a handy little thing to have around, as it had built-in mic and webcam, perfect for making Youtube videos. Of course, it didn't have any of the ports, slots etc. that I normally like in laptops, except usb, but I didn't complain. Some time ago, something happened to the screen. I can only imagine that I sat on it, causing it to look strange, with lines etc. But since I can't see anyway, it didn't effect me. Some time in January, the original adapter stopped working with it. I bought a new one, back when I thought that I had broken the old. It turned out that the part that actually goes into the wall can be taken off, I'm assuming, for travel to other countries. Anyway, the new adapter worked, but was very loose in the jack. Then, some time towards the end of the month, I was writing something and NVDA stopped reading properly. It would read only the first few sounds of a word. So if I wrote "the dog likes bones" it might read "th do li bo". I restarted the computer and it began beeping at me, for a very long time. Once Windows started up, I discovered that I couldn't use all of the keys, including escape and all of the keys on the bottom row, to the right of the space bar, like alt, control etc. As a blind user, some of these keys are essential, since I don't use a mouse! At any rate, I learned that, if I was fast enough, I could tab over to the desktop, when the computer started, and launch the programs there or go into My Computer, Program Files etc. to find them. I could also get to the start button, but only once, when the computer started. Once I was in the desktop, it was pretty much impossible, unless I restarted. My hypothesis was that I shorted out the keyboard with my wet hands. So I bought an external keyboard from Ebay. I chose it because it was silicone and flexible, and more importantly, it was washable, meaning that you could literally run it under the tap and it would be fine. So I figured my sweat wouldn't ruin it. They said English Europe/US. So I thought "how different could it be?" Boy was I surprised! I've never seen anything like it. The numbers, letters and function keys are all in the correct places. But the right alt is two keys from the space bar, the left alt is three keys from it and the keys between them do nothing. There is only one control key, on the left and the shift keys are not large, but the same size as the other keys. The arrow keys exist, but aren't standalone, and there's no six-pack (insert/delete, home/end, and page up/page down). There's a home key but that's about it. I kept it, out of curiosity and for emergency purposes, and eventually did figure out how to use it, though awkwardly.
In the meantime, the netbook wasn't charging properly. I had to jiggle the cord, and sometimes, it would die while plugged in! So I pulled out the ridiculously old Dell that Spiros left here. To get an idea of just how old, it has a 364mhz (not ghz) processor, 512mb of ram and a 6gb hard disk! I tend to name my machines and have dubbed it Pattakos, after General Stylianos Pattakos, since it's old and slow but has saved me at least four times when the modern machines took holidays. They really don't make them like they used to, that's for sure! I used it to write the previous entry. My other option was to use the Mac with Snow Leopard, which I'm using to write this entry. Obviously, it's much faster, but I seriously hate using VoiceOver. From the stupid interacting, to the silly voices, to the way I have to insert things differently, to the fact that it can't read Greek without a $100 synthesizer and can't save it properly for a Windows machine and so on. Oh, and let's not forget the stupid automatic spelling correcter, which is why I'm now editing this entry with Pattakos! Safari also won't read the mobile version of Facebook, forcing me to use the main site, which is a total nightmare. Then, I remembered my HP Pavilion ZE5385US, which I love so much that I call it Papadopoulos! It really is the best of all my machines, and has just about everything: 2.66ghz processor, 60gb hard disk, which is plenty for me, floppy drive, cd rom drive, pcmcia slot, parallel port, 56k modem, ethernet, wireless and a normal keyboard! The only things it doesn't have are a serial port, a built-in microphone and webcam, and a working power jack. Needless to say, the jack is why I haven't used it in so many years, and is also why I had to resort to buying my first netbook (no longer have), the IBM Thinkpad X32 (no longer functional), the Mac (bought for me, of course) and my second netbook. Finally, after years of searching, I found a standalone battery charger. A friend bought it for me, for which I was very grateful. But my old battery wouldn't charge in it, no matter what I did! So I bought a brand new one from Ebay and it worked! I then got a cheap 6 LED webcam with built-in microphone. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with either Debut Video Capture Software or Windows Movie Maker. But I know it does work, at least somewhat, since the microphone works correctly with Stepvoice recorder. I'll need to see if I can find a generic camera driver that Debut will recognize. Anyway, I then bought myself, again from Ebay, a brand new Logitech Clearchat Comfort USB Headset. It was brand new, and I got it for $16 instead of $39. While the microphone had no real base, it definitely made my speech sound clear. It even worked with the Mac, which was great! Ever since I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, it makes horrible fan noise, which is clearly heard when I use it to make videos. Many others have had the same problem. Anyway, instead of having 3.5mm plugs and a usb adapter, the headset was pure usb. Unfortunately, the end, where the cord ended and the usb part began, was exactly like an adapter. That is, it wasn't small, like all other such devices, but long and bulky, like one of those thumb drives or the Muvo T100 mp3 player. The difference there is that you don't usually keep them conntected to your computer for a large amount of time!
As fate would have it, Rod, my old boss, called me out of the blue. He wanted me to work for him again. Naturally, I agreed, especially now that I had this new headset and a fast computer! He told me that we wouldn't be using Skype this time, but something called X-Lite. He sent me an older version, since it's more accessible than the new one. I forgot to install Navigational Sounds for Firefox on the HP, so believe that I tried to install it before it finished downloading. Whatever happened, it changed my audio playback to the usb headset. Rod said that's normal, but it's only supposed to do that for X-Lite. Instead, it did it for the entire computer! When I unplugged the headset, I got no sound from the speakers! When Spiros came, we set it manually to Connacent AMC Audio (the speakers) and got the same result. I tried a system restore, but it would begin the process, ask me if I wanted to restore my computer to an earlier time, then give me an error message, with a send error report button. This happened even after I rebooted. Oddly enough, that problem reminded me of my desktop! In all of the excitement, I'd completely forgotten about it. It's headphone jack is broken/blocked, so I couldn't use it, except with a usb device. Now that I had the headset, I could use it when my laptop battery was charging! I could only use mine for a little over two hours and then had to charge it for about the same amount of time. So I asked Spiros to bring his old one, since he has a computer similar to mine. Well, his worked perfectly. But once I put mine in again, it was completely dead. I'm not sure if it was something to do with X-Lite or if his battery somehow did it. I had dropped mine twice, but from a very low distance, and the last drop was well over a week earlier. None of this happened before the installation of X-Lite. Anyway, when we went to New York, he took the old HP, since I wanted to see if my battery would work in it, and sure enough, it was dead there as well. I tried the new one that he's using for his HP, and like his old one, it charged in my external charger and worked in my laptop. Now I have to figure out if I can send my battery back and get a replacement or if it could somehow be recalibrated, along with my original battery, which, as you may remember, is also dead. That's $33 and I'm fucking furious! To make matters worse, the usb part of my headset kept bending. It got so bad that a part of it separated from the plastic, but it was still usable. The phone rang and I put my HP down. When I picked it up, the headset wouldn't work at all. I tried fiddling with it with my hand, as I had done earlier and the whole thing broke. Now, the part that goes into the machine comes off and all the pins are revealed! So that's another $16 down the fucking drain, and I highly doubt that either A. they'll take it back or B. it can be repaired. That means that I can't use the HP or the desktop! The netbook is absolutely shot and I doubt I could get it to charge. Luckily, I found a cheap headset that Mom got me. It's the regular 3.5mm, so I bought two usb adapters for $6 and am now waiting for them.
On the good side, last weekend, Spiros and I went to Best Buy. Mom had a $25 gift certificate, and knew she wasn't going there any time soon, so gave it to me. I got a new external compact flash card reader, for the desktop, since mine broke (but it was several years old and I got a lot! of use out of it), a so-called standard keyboard and a usb hub. Surprisingly, when I took them home, all worked! Hopefully, they'll stay that way. The keyboard is much better than the flexible one, but still lacks the six-pack, the standalone arrow keys. It really is a pain not being able to use ctrl-home to get to the top of a page and ctrl-end to get to the bottom, not to mention not being able to skip through things with page down! But at least the rest is pretty standard. It even has a few hot keys at the top, one of which brings me to a Calculator program, which I never knew existed! I wish I could program the others.
So that's what's going on in the world of tech. I just can't wait until all of this is over. What I really want is to have my HP fixed, once and for all. That means a clean install of XP Home, repair of the power jack and an upgrade from 512mb ram to the maximum of 1gb. But I'm terrified of the cost! I would install XP on my own if I could, but need an unattended disk to do it, since, of course, I can't use NVDA while Windows is being installed.
As many of you may remember, I bought an Acer Aspire One D255 netbook back in March. I knew, from the start, that it was a cheap computer, and only wanted it for portability. Still, it was a handy little thing to have around, as it had built-in mic and webcam, perfect for making Youtube videos. Of course, it didn't have any of the ports, slots etc. that I normally like in laptops, except usb, but I didn't complain. Some time ago, something happened to the screen. I can only imagine that I sat on it, causing it to look strange, with lines etc. But since I can't see anyway, it didn't effect me. Some time in January, the original adapter stopped working with it. I bought a new one, back when I thought that I had broken the old. It turned out that the part that actually goes into the wall can be taken off, I'm assuming, for travel to other countries. Anyway, the new adapter worked, but was very loose in the jack. Then, some time towards the end of the month, I was writing something and NVDA stopped reading properly. It would read only the first few sounds of a word. So if I wrote "the dog likes bones" it might read "th do li bo". I restarted the computer and it began beeping at me, for a very long time. Once Windows started up, I discovered that I couldn't use all of the keys, including escape and all of the keys on the bottom row, to the right of the space bar, like alt, control etc. As a blind user, some of these keys are essential, since I don't use a mouse! At any rate, I learned that, if I was fast enough, I could tab over to the desktop, when the computer started, and launch the programs there or go into My Computer, Program Files etc. to find them. I could also get to the start button, but only once, when the computer started. Once I was in the desktop, it was pretty much impossible, unless I restarted. My hypothesis was that I shorted out the keyboard with my wet hands. So I bought an external keyboard from Ebay. I chose it because it was silicone and flexible, and more importantly, it was washable, meaning that you could literally run it under the tap and it would be fine. So I figured my sweat wouldn't ruin it. They said English Europe/US. So I thought "how different could it be?" Boy was I surprised! I've never seen anything like it. The numbers, letters and function keys are all in the correct places. But the right alt is two keys from the space bar, the left alt is three keys from it and the keys between them do nothing. There is only one control key, on the left and the shift keys are not large, but the same size as the other keys. The arrow keys exist, but aren't standalone, and there's no six-pack (insert/delete, home/end, and page up/page down). There's a home key but that's about it. I kept it, out of curiosity and for emergency purposes, and eventually did figure out how to use it, though awkwardly.
In the meantime, the netbook wasn't charging properly. I had to jiggle the cord, and sometimes, it would die while plugged in! So I pulled out the ridiculously old Dell that Spiros left here. To get an idea of just how old, it has a 364mhz (not ghz) processor, 512mb of ram and a 6gb hard disk! I tend to name my machines and have dubbed it Pattakos, after General Stylianos Pattakos, since it's old and slow but has saved me at least four times when the modern machines took holidays. They really don't make them like they used to, that's for sure! I used it to write the previous entry. My other option was to use the Mac with Snow Leopard, which I'm using to write this entry. Obviously, it's much faster, but I seriously hate using VoiceOver. From the stupid interacting, to the silly voices, to the way I have to insert things differently, to the fact that it can't read Greek without a $100 synthesizer and can't save it properly for a Windows machine and so on. Oh, and let's not forget the stupid automatic spelling correcter, which is why I'm now editing this entry with Pattakos! Safari also won't read the mobile version of Facebook, forcing me to use the main site, which is a total nightmare. Then, I remembered my HP Pavilion ZE5385US, which I love so much that I call it Papadopoulos! It really is the best of all my machines, and has just about everything: 2.66ghz processor, 60gb hard disk, which is plenty for me, floppy drive, cd rom drive, pcmcia slot, parallel port, 56k modem, ethernet, wireless and a normal keyboard! The only things it doesn't have are a serial port, a built-in microphone and webcam, and a working power jack. Needless to say, the jack is why I haven't used it in so many years, and is also why I had to resort to buying my first netbook (no longer have), the IBM Thinkpad X32 (no longer functional), the Mac (bought for me, of course) and my second netbook. Finally, after years of searching, I found a standalone battery charger. A friend bought it for me, for which I was very grateful. But my old battery wouldn't charge in it, no matter what I did! So I bought a brand new one from Ebay and it worked! I then got a cheap 6 LED webcam with built-in microphone. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with either Debut Video Capture Software or Windows Movie Maker. But I know it does work, at least somewhat, since the microphone works correctly with Stepvoice recorder. I'll need to see if I can find a generic camera driver that Debut will recognize. Anyway, I then bought myself, again from Ebay, a brand new Logitech Clearchat Comfort USB Headset. It was brand new, and I got it for $16 instead of $39. While the microphone had no real base, it definitely made my speech sound clear. It even worked with the Mac, which was great! Ever since I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, it makes horrible fan noise, which is clearly heard when I use it to make videos. Many others have had the same problem. Anyway, instead of having 3.5mm plugs and a usb adapter, the headset was pure usb. Unfortunately, the end, where the cord ended and the usb part began, was exactly like an adapter. That is, it wasn't small, like all other such devices, but long and bulky, like one of those thumb drives or the Muvo T100 mp3 player. The difference there is that you don't usually keep them conntected to your computer for a large amount of time!
As fate would have it, Rod, my old boss, called me out of the blue. He wanted me to work for him again. Naturally, I agreed, especially now that I had this new headset and a fast computer! He told me that we wouldn't be using Skype this time, but something called X-Lite. He sent me an older version, since it's more accessible than the new one. I forgot to install Navigational Sounds for Firefox on the HP, so believe that I tried to install it before it finished downloading. Whatever happened, it changed my audio playback to the usb headset. Rod said that's normal, but it's only supposed to do that for X-Lite. Instead, it did it for the entire computer! When I unplugged the headset, I got no sound from the speakers! When Spiros came, we set it manually to Connacent AMC Audio (the speakers) and got the same result. I tried a system restore, but it would begin the process, ask me if I wanted to restore my computer to an earlier time, then give me an error message, with a send error report button. This happened even after I rebooted. Oddly enough, that problem reminded me of my desktop! In all of the excitement, I'd completely forgotten about it. It's headphone jack is broken/blocked, so I couldn't use it, except with a usb device. Now that I had the headset, I could use it when my laptop battery was charging! I could only use mine for a little over two hours and then had to charge it for about the same amount of time. So I asked Spiros to bring his old one, since he has a computer similar to mine. Well, his worked perfectly. But once I put mine in again, it was completely dead. I'm not sure if it was something to do with X-Lite or if his battery somehow did it. I had dropped mine twice, but from a very low distance, and the last drop was well over a week earlier. None of this happened before the installation of X-Lite. Anyway, when we went to New York, he took the old HP, since I wanted to see if my battery would work in it, and sure enough, it was dead there as well. I tried the new one that he's using for his HP, and like his old one, it charged in my external charger and worked in my laptop. Now I have to figure out if I can send my battery back and get a replacement or if it could somehow be recalibrated, along with my original battery, which, as you may remember, is also dead. That's $33 and I'm fucking furious! To make matters worse, the usb part of my headset kept bending. It got so bad that a part of it separated from the plastic, but it was still usable. The phone rang and I put my HP down. When I picked it up, the headset wouldn't work at all. I tried fiddling with it with my hand, as I had done earlier and the whole thing broke. Now, the part that goes into the machine comes off and all the pins are revealed! So that's another $16 down the fucking drain, and I highly doubt that either A. they'll take it back or B. it can be repaired. That means that I can't use the HP or the desktop! The netbook is absolutely shot and I doubt I could get it to charge. Luckily, I found a cheap headset that Mom got me. It's the regular 3.5mm, so I bought two usb adapters for $6 and am now waiting for them.
On the good side, last weekend, Spiros and I went to Best Buy. Mom had a $25 gift certificate, and knew she wasn't going there any time soon, so gave it to me. I got a new external compact flash card reader, for the desktop, since mine broke (but it was several years old and I got a lot! of use out of it), a so-called standard keyboard and a usb hub. Surprisingly, when I took them home, all worked! Hopefully, they'll stay that way. The keyboard is much better than the flexible one, but still lacks the six-pack, the standalone arrow keys. It really is a pain not being able to use ctrl-home to get to the top of a page and ctrl-end to get to the bottom, not to mention not being able to skip through things with page down! But at least the rest is pretty standard. It even has a few hot keys at the top, one of which brings me to a Calculator program, which I never knew existed! I wish I could program the others.
So that's what's going on in the world of tech. I just can't wait until all of this is over. What I really want is to have my HP fixed, once and for all. That means a clean install of XP Home, repair of the power jack and an upgrade from 512mb ram to the maximum of 1gb. But I'm terrified of the cost! I would install XP on my own if I could, but need an unattended disk to do it, since, of course, I can't use NVDA while Windows is being installed.