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Sunday, March 1, 2009

One More Update (From the 98 Box)

Sorry.  I feel bad that I haven't been here in so long and, when I finally return, all I have for you are decidedly non-Cyberculture-related posts.  I wanted to let you know a little more about what's been going on because I doubt there will be many posts this week, either.

What happened the week of Valentine's Day is that I tried to install my scanner on the 98 machine.  Now, this is a machine an ex-gf gave me.  It belonged to her mom, who had given it to her.  It would turn off and on on its own (in the middle of the night or day, it would suddenly spring to life of its own accord) and it took forever to do anything.  It had a host of problems.  She told me if I could fix it, to just keep it.

I did all the usual things (ran AV, registry fixes, defragged, etc.) and that made a huge improvement.  As for the turning on and off, it was due to an outdated video driver.  I wanted to do a clean install, but seeing as how no one supports 98 anymore and you can never get a computer back to the way it was once you do something like that, I held-off.  At the time, it did everything I needed it to, anyway.

But then the cats killed the old camera (which only worked with 98) and I really needed a fax machine, which meant installing new software and the old scanner (which, again, also only works with a 98 box).  I started having problems right off the bat.  Finally, something just broke.  I did everything I could, all to no avail.  Eventually, I threw my hands up in disgust and stayed up the entire night, reformatting.

I wrote posts detailing some of that and I'm going to give you some of those, because having a 98 box in my house is important -- for a fax machine and scanner, if nothing else -- but suffice it to say, I was... frankly ashen at all the hoops through which I had to jump to get it up and going.  Just no sense in all that, honestly.

Granted, XP is nearly 10 years old at this point, and 98 is just over that but, when you consider the fact that Microsoft started releasing new OS about a year after they released 98 (and released a "Second Edition" almost immediately), and XP came out roughlyt two years later, you realize that 98 is still pretty useful.  Not to mention that 98 was pretty much the last build that allows you to get your hands dirty under the hood (even XP severely limited your options).

At any rate, I need a 98 box and, since I can network it to the Internet and use my broadband connection, I had to go ahead and set it up, and I had to do a reinstall at this point.  That took days and was incredibly frustrating.  Following that, I had my landlady come through to inspect the home for mice and bugs and she failed me -- even though I have no mice or bugs.  Then, I got the flu...

So, it's just been one thing after another the last few weeks and I simply have not been able to post.

Now, the landlady comes back tomorrow, which means I will be busy literally all day, then I'll be gone all Tuesday to pay bills and so forth, and I go for another doctor's appointment Thursday.  Like I said, I'm not sure there will be anything this week, either.

But hold tight, because I have a lot to talk about if I can ever get things here to the home front stable long enough to do so.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009

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