Still waiting on an electrician to show up so I can finish that apartment, which is annoying. The Yukon Quest starts this weekend and Mardi Gras and the Chinese New Year are next week.
I need to actually get an entire day on which I can do exactly what I want to do, even if it is just reading a book, or doing nothing 🙂
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Established: 21 November 2004
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I’m preparing for the Super Bowl. Which is going to be 2 miles from my house. Oh joy. Think police barricades and random searches, grim looking men in Imperial Stormtrooper armor fondling M-16’s all over the place, Blackhawk helicopters hovering around, the works.
I am trying to decide whether I will huddle in my house all weekend long (because I certainly won’t be able to go anywhere) or whether I’m going to bug out for the hills tomorrow morning and not come back until Monday. SIGH.
All because our city fathers had a chip on their shoulder about Santa Clara being considered a suburb of San Jose and wanting to be a “big time” city, which means having a big football stadium and a Super Bowl. SIGHHHHHH….
No city has ever made money hosting a major sporting event. It doesn’t make any difference whether it is a one day event like the Super Bowl, or a long term event like the Olympics. These were loser even before 9/11 and have gotten worse since.
My advice: Give TMF tranks, and hie thee to the wilderness, because it will be a mess. I don’t understand why anyone would want to inflict this pain on their citizens.
Everyone needs a day to do nothing every once in a while, that’s for sure. I’ve been in the “waiting for an electrician” hell before and an unoccupied dwelling ends up being last on their list.
A good friend of mine had water in her basement. When the contractor came by, he could only stay a few minutes to assess the situation because he had to go to another house that had sewage in the basement. Priorities, man, priorities!
OT, I always come here when I have a computer question because everyone here is light year’s ahead on these things. But Microsoft is becoming very insistent about their Windows 10 upgrade now. The updates are now “recommended”, so I’ve had to stop auto downloads. Have you or any of your wise friends updated a Windows 7? Do you know what type of problems they encountered? ‘Cause I’ve never updated ANYTHING with Microsoft that didn’t blow up my computer, one way or another.
I updated one of my machines to Windows 10. It went seamlessly. All my programs worked afterwards and my system seemed a bit snappier because they highly optimized the bloat out of the Windows 7 kernel to make it small and fast enough to make Windows 10 work on their Surface tablets. The user interface works pretty much like it used to work, with the exception that their new Start menu is…. weird. I resolved that problem by simply installing a program called “Classic Shell” that replaces the Start menu with a clone of the Windows 7 Start menu. And oh, Windows 10 *finally * officially supports a feature that MacOS and Linux have had for literally decades, “Spaces” or “Virtual Screens”. If you’re not a software developer or photographer you’re probably saying “huh?”. If you are, you’re probably saying “Finally!” because you can run PhotoShop or IntelliJ on one Space, and your web browser and email on another Space, and just flip between them with a hot key rather than having to hover over icons on the bottom bar.
In my opinion Windows 10 is a winner.
Only thing I’d be careful of is if you’re a gamer. Some games won’t run on Windows 10 yet because it tightens down the security settings to prevent a lot of the direct system access methods that hackers use to break into Windows. Other than that…
Well, you should also be advised that Win10 is much less customizable than previous versions, and the “flat” design and low contrast graphics and fonts will make your eyes bleed. You may find some workarounds, but they are subject to being broken by forced updates, as the garden variety of Windows10 will not permit you to refuse updates. You have to pay extra for that.
It’s customizable, Painted, but you have to use 3rd party programs to do the customizing, it’s no longer built into Windows itself. The “Classic Shell” program that I mentioned lets you return the windows to using Windows 7 style window decorations, for example.
This is the Classic Shell link, the utility that Badtux is talking about. It is free, but they accept donations. Some of the things the utility does with Windows Explorer makes it more useful.
Yes, Juanita, like everyone who has ever been a caregiver, you know the value of getting an occasional day off. As for the electrical problem, the guy in the apartment has no hot water until this is fixed. I have no idea why the tenant who moved out failed to mention there was no hot water. I’m angry with myself for not noticing the water heater wasn’t working as soon as I went in there.
Good luck Bryan (& badtux).
I’ve decided to dual-boot w7 & 10 & see which works best with my VM s/w. I also want to try the new Paragon Go Virtual 2015 for w10 which they are currently giving a full free license for (I posted a link in the Busy thread if anyone is interested). Now that I have s/w & ways to block most, if not all w10 privacy issues, I’ll try it. 🙂
Ashampoo (a German s/w developer) have a free tool to modify or disable some privacy/security setting in Win 10.
* Configure security settings
* Protect your privacy
* Disable location services
* Prevent Windows 10 from sending diagnostics and usage data
AntiSpy for Windows 10
I also use Ashampoo’s WinOptimizer 12 which works with w 7 – 10 to customise & clean up win. There is a limited free version, or you can trial the full version. If anyone wants to buy it, I have a 60% discount coupon code: DQ2-3JC-F48
Yes, ClassicShell is good. 🙂 Will be interesting so see how it compares to the “Smart Switch” s/w Gigabyte provided with my new motherboard. I see other manufacturers are doing something similar. 🙂
I also use DisplayFusion, & liked the Classic Explorer, but I use JPsoftware’s Take Command for many reasons. One is that it can emulate a bash shell, & supports pretty much all common script languages. 🙂
Thanks everybody! Really appreciate the advice because I only have one computer (my laptop) and if it goes down, I’m reduced to using my android phone for business until it’s replaced. Manipulating documents on it is possible because it has a large display, but still not optimal.
Badtux, it’s really good to hear from someone who’s done the upgrade and survived it! I’ve had some less than stellar results when upgrading Office on two separate occasions, so my trust in upgrading an entire software system was shaky. Your experience has given me the nerve to attempt the upgrade today. Since it’s Sunday, I’ll have all day to adjust to the new system.
I’m interested to see what the graphics look like, paintedjaguar. I like a high contrast as well.
Bryan, thanks for the link for the Classic Shell. I think I’d like to stick with the old start menu. While I don’t mind a learning curve when it’s something I really want to do, I’m a big believer of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. Which I guess is why this whole forced change is irking me because Windows 7 has been reliable. Also, I have some really old programs that I like to use, and I’ll bet they won’t work on 10. One old program is the one I use to make brochures. It’s simple and user friendly, and it still manages to do beautiful work.
Kryten, I wasn’t able to get the AntiSpy link to work, but I can search it.
Oh well, on with the new! I have my Sunday planned now…
Hi Juanita.
Sorry about that. The link above doesn’t work for me either. Probably a typo error, or the stupid auto-correct on this supposedly *smart* phone! Here is the plain address:
http://www.ashampoo.com/en/aud/pin/1004/security-software/Antispy-for-Windows-10
Thanks, Kryten. Some days my smartphone is decidedly not all that smart either.
Yeah. 🙂 I pinned an image on Pinterest that said:
“Smart care, smart TVs, smart phones…
When will they start making smart people?”
It’s been popular. 😆
I hope all is well with you. 🙂
I think I’ve fixed all of the links and will pull them and slap them on a sidebar for reference.
In both Windows and Linux I use LibreOffice because of all of the annoying things that M$ Office did when I attempted to upgrade. I had used OpenOffice until Oracle got the rights to it. Oracle is easily the king of of disastrous upgrades. At one point I was warning people to not just backup their data and software, but their hardware before attempting an Oracle upgrade.
just in case you’re still waiting for the electrician, here’s a little something Siberian to help pass the time –
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/01/the-huskies-of-aviemore/424680/
They were very nice, and I actually got to see them after hours of iffy connection. I may be changing my router if things don’t get better.
Thanks Bryan and everybody. I now have Windows 10 downloaded and everything went as seamlessly as Badtux described. What a relief. It’s a long process, and I was biting my nails the whole time. I had to completely reformat and reinstall on one Microsoft Office “upgrade” which is a complete misnomer and should have been named ‘Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here’.
I’ve tried to leave Microsoft alone since then…sleeping dogs and all that. And Bryan, I agree with you about LibreOffice. After the reformatting hell thingy, I downloaded OpenOffice which worked beautifully, then migrated to LibreOffice for much the same reasons as you mentioned. Oracle probably makes so much money with their enterprise systems, this small stuff is just an annoyance.
And opening large programs, like LibreOffice, really is a little snappier than with Windows 7. Overall, I’m glad I finally got the nerve up to just do it. Thanks, everyone.
Start Menu: That really is a busy little piece of work. I guess it’s optimized for tablets, smartphones, and juveniles.
Kryten: Yes, things are fine with me, and I hope you’re doing better. Healthwise, you and Bryan have both had a tough year, sounds like!
I’ve grabbed the logos of Classic Shell and Antispy and will be dropping them along with the links in the left sidebar.
Glad to hear that it was as painless as Badtux said. We tend to underestimate the problems associated with loading software because of assumed knowledge.
I’ve long since tired of the hassles of loading software, that’s why I waited a year before upgrading to Windows 10, and only did so after it was clear they had all the bugs out (as much as any piece of software can be said to be “bug free”). I did it to a virtual machine first, and believe me, if there had been the least bit of friction that would have been the end of it, I’m not in the mood to patch up other people’s buggy software anymore, I have plenty of buggy software of my own to fix up :).
Amen, Brother ‘Tux, amen!
Amen, Brother ‘Tux, amen!
Bryan, I see Badtux is preaching to the choir there!
When Microsoft added 10 to the recommended updates, it made it all too easy for me to accidentally click on something that would start the update while I was in the middle of something important. Would I be able to stop it once it got going? With Microsoft’s aggressivenss in forcing everyone to migrate to 10, who knew?
So, it was time to accept the inevitable, and do it at my own pace. I really appreciate all the advice and the links.
The only Microsoft products I actually wanted to buy were their Z-80 card for the Apple II and their mouse, Since then I wore gloves, safety glasses and had a fire extinguisher handy when I had to use their products. After the first 30 years you really develop a high level of distrust.