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Sunday, February 03, 2002
New tools
I'm on the hunt for a cable connection to the wonderful Internet! I'm going to buy a cable modem. I think it would be cheaper in the long run. AT&T will sell you a modem for $199, but I've found some for half that. Plus AT&T as a new user's offer for $25/month for 6 months. I need to get rid of HBO and my Audible subscription. My monthly fee for dialup went up 3 bucks. I should get rid of that, too. But I might need it for backup. Or I'll just switch to Netzero or something.
Then I need to get a scanner. Probably this one but the cnet review says it doesn't scan slides and negatives well which is what I need it for mostly.
There's also this thing. But both are pretty pricey so I dunno.
Then I need to upgrade the old Compaq with more memory and voice recognition software, so my mom can use it (if indeed she ever will). But for some reason that machine won't boot.
One of the things I did today was attach the old HD to the new machine. I was going to try a dual boot because my A+ book made it sound easy. Well, it wasn't, but I didn't really pursue it because I didn't want to screw things up. I was trying to retrieve my books database from the old HD. I created it in Quattro Pro 7, but QP7 won't run on XP. And I couldn't retrieve it into StarOffice in QP7 format. So I was going to go into Win95 and convert the spreadsheet to something StarOffice would read, but I couldn't get the the old machine to boot. I can read the old HD when it's setup as a slave drive on the new machine, but that doesn't help me.
So anyway, I discovered that I had the file on the new box, so I just imported it into WordPerfect (which works on XP although QP does not for some evil reason) as a table. Saved it as an MS Excel spreadsheet. Then I imported that into StarOffice and ureeka! it worked. Whew! All that messin' with the old drive for nothin' and now it won't boot. I might have the jumper settings wrong. But I got my books spreadsheet in an accessible format, so yay!
I visited campmor looking for a balaclava, but found a bunch more stuff I want.. hmm.. decisions.. decisions...
Executive Desicion is a rather chilling movie to watch in light of 9/11.
I got these Creative speakers for my new machine and when I play DVDs there's this wierd sound on the soundtrack kinda like a audio ghost. I don't really know how to describe it. I don't know if it's the speakers or the sound card or the DVD player or what.