Computer

I like my computer again.

Those of you who know me know that over the last few months, I have been MASSIVELY frustrated with my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop computer. And I do mean MASSIVELY frustrated.

It's not a bad computer. In its former life, it served Brandon faithfully for his first few years in college. When he upgraded to some ridiculously modern Mac, I bought the old laptop, thus eliminating the conflict between Cathy and I, who were having to share one desktop between the two of us.

When I first started using it, things were great. It was fast, wireless, and ALL MINE! No sharing, no begging. Cathy and I were both happy with the arrangement. Really, it ran well for a couple years.

But, over the last few months, two problems have cropped up that have driven me NUTS. First, the wireless card has become flaky. I'd be on the internet one minute, and off the next. Sometimes it would reconnect by itself, but other times (many times) I had to reboot. And rebooting this computer is about a 15 minute process...

The other problem cropped up when I "upgraded" my antivirus software from Norton 2006 to Norton 360. In short, Norton 360 is the worst software I've ever used. It completely slowed my machine down to a standstill, worse than any virus I ever had! Its biggest problem was that it would decide, on its own, to run a virus scan in the background, WHILE I WAS USING THE COMPUTER. Not at midnight, not after detecting 30 minutes of non-use... And to make it worse, there is no way to change the settings to prevent these background scans. After reading literally hundreds of negative reviews of N360 on the internet, I decided I had had enough.

So, Sunday, I made two changes. First, I ran a wire under the house from the router in the bedroom to "my seat" on the couch, where I keep my laptop. Is my laptop wireless now? No, its wired. Is it faster and more reliable connecting to the internet? YEAH BABY! One down, one to go.

The second big change involved completely uninstalling Norton 360 (even though it is paid for through next year), and installing the highly-rated, free anti-virus program "Avast!". Avast is much much much easier on system resources than Norton 360 ever thought about being.

The overall result of these two changes is that my old Dell is faster and more reliable than it has been in many months. The internet is fast, always connected, and rebooting doesn't take 15 minutes (and actually isn't required very often now). Needless to say, I'm a pretty happy camper!

So, no excuses now for not blogging!!!

Patience

I've never really been a patient person.

Just ask my sons Brandon and Zach about my parenting style, they'll tell you! Ha! I'm significantly more patient now than I was 25, it's true, but I still have a long way to go.

Why all this talk about patience, you ask? Well, ten minutes ago I came really close to throwing my laptop on the floor and stomping the screen. No, not figuratively, literally.

You see, my laptop is pretty old, and has one of those wireless cards you stick in the side of it. Normally it works well, but every so often it has spells where it just doesn't want to work. It will connect to the internet for say, five minutes, and then disconnect, and not let you reconnect. Very annoying if you are wanting to do something NOW, like make a blog post. This is exactly what happened to me ten minutes ago.

I finally had to reboot the computer in order for it to recognize the wireless card again. Problem is, this computer takes about ten minutes to start up, load the bloated "Norton Antivirus", and get to the point where the hourglass goes away and you can actually do something. When it finally came up, I knew exactly what I was going to blog about -- what a (*#&$@ hunk of junk this laptop is! Sure, I realized I should probably not blog to vent my frustrations, but I had reached my limit. I was gonna tell everyone just what was what, how unjust it was that I should have such a crummy PC, etc.

Just before going to blogger.com to start my rant, I decided to read Part 2 of Brandon's latest post about his Mac laptop. Which I did.

And something happened.

Brandon's post is really a God thing. You see, Brandon recently went through a big ordeal with his Mac laptop, and was real close to writing a blog post blasting the seller for all the hassle he had to go through. But after some thought (and prayer no doubt), Brandon did the adult thing, the mature thing, the Christlike thing. He showed restraint, and instead wrote about the situation in a way that did not tear anyone down. Did not name names. Did not trash a reputation, though it might actually deserve it.

After reading Brandon's post and letting it sink in, the urge to write a whiny blog post about how slow my laptop is just sorta left me, if you know what I'm saying. In fact, I am thankful for this laptop, because 95% of the time it works really well, and has been a blessing. Plus, I hate hearing other people whine about insignificant stuff, when so many people are fighting cancer, starving, homeless, etc. So shame on me!

It's cool to know that all those lectures and speeches I gave Brandon must have sank in. It's even cooler to be able to learn learn lessons about proper behavior from your children.

Can I come out of my room now?