miscellany
Jun. 6th, 2003 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dchenesLast night I made Vietnamese spring rolls, and discovered that the cats like cooked rice noodles. This does not compute. Cats are supposed to be carnivores, right? On the other hand, they like bok choy, too, so what do I know? (They also like shrimp, but I had a reasonable expectation of that.)
This morning, the person doing the NPR weather forecast called today's weather "seasonable". That's the first time this year I've heard that.
Dr. H is in New York today, which begs the question of what I'm doing here when it's this nice out. (I'm doing the time entry for the staff, and faxing things to the Saudi Cultural Mission.) If I didn't have to be at work, I'd be lying around in the grass someplace with a book and a cooler with lunch in it.
The only thing I really have to do this weekend is hunt up a stepladder and replace about five light bulbs in various places. I really hope the problem with my bedroom overhead light is with burned-out bulbs.
I'm out of embroidery again. I don't have the linen for the next project yet. I may have to put it off anyway, because it calls for cream or white linen, and I know better than to try to do that in the summer since my hands sweat a lot.
Like most people who are trying to lose weight, I wish I could just wake up tomorrow morning and be 20 lb. lighter. It always seems to take me ages to lose any weight. Most of the time I don't care what I weigh, but lately I don't want to think about how my bathing suit would fit me. I don't object to exercise, either, but I object to the idea that the only exercise that's good for all parts of you is running. I can walk for hours, but running is Right Out. I hate it. There is no bra tight enough to keep running from being painful, for starters.
Well. I didn't intend that to turn into a rant, but it sort of did anyway.
Speaking of rants, I've got a good one in the works about the computers the students have access to. Keep in mind that I fall into the category of "user with some clue". I am not a sysadmin, and I categorically refuse to mess with Windows networking. However, back when CD-RW drives were a quantum leap of technology and internal Zip drives were New and Exciting, I somehow got to install them in the department's computers. Ever since then, anybody in this department who has a computer problem asks me first. When I get to the point where I don't have a clue what's going on, I call the IT department.
Yesterday I was trying to figure out why one of the student-access computers wouldn't print labels. In trying to fix that, I noticed the whole machine was running very slow. I ran Disk Cleanup on it and got rid of 28 MB of temporary files, and some other obscene number of temporary Internet files, and that helped a little. Then I got a semi-brilliant idea and tried to get it to download AdAware. It wouldn't connect to anything. I checked all the connections and anything else I could think of, and it still wasn't having any. I rebooted it and got in as the administrator and tried the Internet again, and lo and behold, it connected. So I downloaded and ran AdAware, which came up with 679 files of spyware and other miscellaneous cruft. I deleted all of them, rebooted as a student, and was shocked (but not really) to discover that the machine ran a lot faster, knew what to do with both IE and Netscape, and (getting back to the original problem) will now print anything, including labels.
679 files. Ye gods. I'm waiting for the complaints to start, because one of the things I got rid of was Kazaa Lite. I'm going to keep right on deleting it when I find it there, too.
This morning, the person doing the NPR weather forecast called today's weather "seasonable". That's the first time this year I've heard that.
Dr. H is in New York today, which begs the question of what I'm doing here when it's this nice out. (I'm doing the time entry for the staff, and faxing things to the Saudi Cultural Mission.) If I didn't have to be at work, I'd be lying around in the grass someplace with a book and a cooler with lunch in it.
The only thing I really have to do this weekend is hunt up a stepladder and replace about five light bulbs in various places. I really hope the problem with my bedroom overhead light is with burned-out bulbs.
I'm out of embroidery again. I don't have the linen for the next project yet. I may have to put it off anyway, because it calls for cream or white linen, and I know better than to try to do that in the summer since my hands sweat a lot.
Like most people who are trying to lose weight, I wish I could just wake up tomorrow morning and be 20 lb. lighter. It always seems to take me ages to lose any weight. Most of the time I don't care what I weigh, but lately I don't want to think about how my bathing suit would fit me. I don't object to exercise, either, but I object to the idea that the only exercise that's good for all parts of you is running. I can walk for hours, but running is Right Out. I hate it. There is no bra tight enough to keep running from being painful, for starters.
Well. I didn't intend that to turn into a rant, but it sort of did anyway.
Speaking of rants, I've got a good one in the works about the computers the students have access to. Keep in mind that I fall into the category of "user with some clue". I am not a sysadmin, and I categorically refuse to mess with Windows networking. However, back when CD-RW drives were a quantum leap of technology and internal Zip drives were New and Exciting, I somehow got to install them in the department's computers. Ever since then, anybody in this department who has a computer problem asks me first. When I get to the point where I don't have a clue what's going on, I call the IT department.
Yesterday I was trying to figure out why one of the student-access computers wouldn't print labels. In trying to fix that, I noticed the whole machine was running very slow. I ran Disk Cleanup on it and got rid of 28 MB of temporary files, and some other obscene number of temporary Internet files, and that helped a little. Then I got a semi-brilliant idea and tried to get it to download AdAware. It wouldn't connect to anything. I checked all the connections and anything else I could think of, and it still wasn't having any. I rebooted it and got in as the administrator and tried the Internet again, and lo and behold, it connected. So I downloaded and ran AdAware, which came up with 679 files of spyware and other miscellaneous cruft. I deleted all of them, rebooted as a student, and was shocked (but not really) to discover that the machine ran a lot faster, knew what to do with both IE and Netscape, and (getting back to the original problem) will now print anything, including labels.
679 files. Ye gods. I'm waiting for the complaints to start, because one of the things I got rid of was Kazaa Lite. I'm going to keep right on deleting it when I find it there, too.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-06-06 08:08 am (UTC)Excellent job in nailing all that crap! I'm sure you also probably wiped cookies as well. Kazaa Lite is actually expressly the version without spyware (Kazaa regular has tongs), but it still doesn't belong on an office machine. Apparently there are now 'poison' web sites that install crap on your machine.
Another useful program is Spycrafts "Search and Destroy" - sort of like Ad Aware on steroids.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-06-06 08:29 am (UTC)One of the other things I took off that poor computer was Xupiter. I've heard that's one of the more pernicious spyware programs.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-06-06 08:48 am (UTC)User with a clue
Date: 2003-06-07 09:07 am (UTC)You take care of all the easy stuff and know when to call for help.
I remember at University, they set up all the new networked Windows and MAC machines to restore the entire system from a disk image every few days. I'm sure that took care of a lot of issues.
Gentoo Linux has "Live" cds that let you boot a working OS from the CD ROM. You don't even need a hard drive, just enough RAM. I LOVE the idea, as it makes it harder for users to muck things up.
Spyware really eats up our network admin's time, and keeping it off computers is a massive pain.
He did however figure out something useful.
As long as the users don't log in as an Administrator level account, you can log in as the admin, and make the default install directories for most the problem apps writable by the administrator only. Make sure the directories are empty.
You'd be amazed many users can't figure out how to install Kazaa to a different directory.
He all but killed AIM at work by doing that.