I've had this Lenovo for over three years now and it's the one PC I've had the longest with the least amount of issues. It hasn't failed catastrophically (yet), nor has it had major processing issues...until lately. It's not significant, as things are still running fine. It's just small weird things, like the File Explorer lagging for a few seconds every time I use it, or the fact that the Plex Media Server would disconnect for no reason. 

*sigh* Maybe this PC is finally starting to show its age?

Today I've done a bit of fiddling with the settings and while it's working better now, it's focusing on Performance rather than Appearance so the fonts are looking a bit weird and spindly. I might need to tweak it a little bit more at some point, probably on Thursday when I have a day off and have time for it. Amusingly all the text kind of looks like it's reverted back to Ye Olde Windows 98 Dayes which, y'know, not pretty to look at but at least it's behaving.

If anything, though, if I'm going to have to buy another PC at some point in the future, I'm thinking I'll get another Lenovo because this warhorse has been the best PC I've had in years!

Being without my main desktop PC is always a weird thing...I've had a desktop PC every day since 1996 and used it on an almost daily basis for my writing ever since then. [Contrary to how it sounds, my music collection wasn't a part of my PC setup until about 2001, when I started burning compilation cds. I listened to the physical cds for the most part and didn't start ripping them to a hard drive well until about 2004.] And currently, when I'm not on the PC, I'm using my laptop instead. So either way, you could say I'm online and/or working on something pretty much every single day.

That's not to say that I'm chained to the thing. When we're on vacation, I've been using my Nook or my phone to go online and catch up with things if I so choose. I get the occasional twitch that I wish I had my music with me, but it goes away pretty quickly. I can easily check my email and Twitter feed on my cell phone. I still try to work on the occasional thing longhand like my poetry, and plan on doing more of it once the Great Trilogy Revision calms down a bit. Still, it's nice to have the thing when it's needed.

So in light of yesterday's sad and pathetic death of Spare Oom PC [for the record, it turns on, it just doesn't want to run Windows anymore], it's made me think about my writing output. Since I work from home, I have to balance my work stuff and my writing stuff, and creating things like this blog post, which would probably take twenty minutes to type out on any other day actually takes a good couple of hours, hastily typed in the occasional free minutes between things. And the Blogging the Beatles posts usually worked on all Sunday afternoon and posted that evening--that's why one of my ideas was to try working on those over the course of a few days rather than an entire day.

I'm trying not to opine about how I time-managed my writing in the past this time...instead I'm trying to learn from how I did it then and implement some form of it in the present. A lot of it really does have to do with how much time I waste...as much as I try to convince myself I'm cutting down, I'm still driven to distraction by social media and my music collection. It's a work in progress, I suppose. I'm not going to go the "disconnect the internet for x hours" route, because I do end up using it a lot for quick reference when I actually am writing. And besides, my boredom level with the internet in general has dropped to the point where I'll goof off on Twitter or YouTube for a half hour simply for some mindless downtime after work. The music collection can be a black hole sometimes, though. Having the temptation to reorganize, retag, peruse it for hours on end for listening to things I haven't heard in a while, or what have you...but over the last few months I've actually been a LOT better with it than I have. I think a lot of it had to do with narrowing my focus on the task at hand: in this instance, the major revision of A Division of Souls. I gave myself ten minutes to decide on what I'd listen to during that writing session, and stuck to it while I focused solely on that revision, and I think it's working.

Either way...it does feel kind of weird not to have it on, after all these years of constantly having it turned on for hours on end. I am doing a bit of comparison shopping in the interim...as mentioned yesterday, I'm kind of leaning towards another Gateway, since this one worked so well during the time I had it...it was worth the price I paid for it. And while I'm not exactly devastated without a desktop PC--I'm adjusting just fine with my laptop, if working just a bit slower--it'll be nice to have a replacement as soon as possible.

So as mentioned on Twitter, I'm surrounded by PCs today: I've got my work laptop up and running (I get to work from home until the end of the year, woo!), I've got my Lenovo laptop on my desk that I'm using to post this, and I've got my main PC which is currently going through a major cleaning. I was listening to Save Alternative earlier today via this laptop, but it seems it was causing everyone else's PC to act wonky in the process (more on that in a minute), so now I'm going lo-fi by listening to KFOG via my old alarm clock radio that's across the room.

The Spare Oom PC has been acting a little wonky lately, and I'm not exactly sure why...it could be that I had way too much stuff (read: mp3s) taking up space on the hard drive that it was slowing things up, or it could be that an update did more harm than good, or maybe just that one of the sectors decided to wig out. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm taking precautions. All the mp3s are now over on the big external, the pictures and other things are over on the other, my writing's on Dropbox, and so on. I've just made a list of programs I use that I can redownload or reinstall just in case I need to reformat. I'm currently doing a CCleaner run that's wiping the free disk space just to clear everything up. Hopefully it'll act better once I'm done here in a few hours, but we'll see.

As for the Lenovo laptop...weird thing, this. For some reason this laptop is the culprit for our router to say ONOES TOO MUCH INFO and crash any open browser on any PC that happens to be up. If I have the time this week I should take a look at the wireless settings on this laptop to see if it's hogging bandwidth or just being stupid. Now that I'm not streaming music and have only this browser up, it seems to be working just fine.

As for the work laptop...well...not much to be said there. As I like to say, it's a POS model, just like most of the others we use at work. ;)

Not because I break them, but because the newer versions of software more often than not completely fuck up something on the system.

You'd think that Gateway would have reformatted everything, but no...I think what they did was take out the original cd/dvd drive, test it elsewhere, and put it back in and reuploaded a driver for it, and called it done. As soon as I turned on the PC, I noticed everything on the PC was still there, so it looked like they did the absolute bare minimum. Which meant that when I put in a cd to test it, it still didn't read.

Yeah. Paid money to send it out, I EXPECT that they fix it. Irate, I called Gateway asking them what the hell they did. He suggested to do another factory restore. So I do that, and Lo! CD works, if I put it in. It plays on Windows Media Player. It isn't my favorite media player, but it does the job.

As soon as I download the newest version of Media Monkey, which I prefer for many reasons?

Nothing. The drive refuses to read any cds. Even when I uninstall MM, it still refuses to read it.

So...at this point:

I'm thinking that Media Monkey must be screwing with the registry, because the cd/dvd drive is reading cds, but as soon as I upload MM it decides not to read them at all. It really irritates me, because this is the third media player I've used that I like, that has decided not to work anymore. This is mostly due to an upgrade that messes with the registry, or decides not to read cds anymore, or something stupid. I love MM because the library function is one of the best I've seen around...similar to much older versions of MusicMatch, the player worked great and the rip function worked quickly and without errors. Also like MusicMatch you could sort a collection in very intricate ways, unlike iTunes or WMP. MediaMonkey could also play all types of formats, not just mp3s--you could play iTunes' mp4s, and WMAs that don't always read elsewhere. And the biggest thing, you can format the release date of each track with mmddyyyy, not just by year--something that I haven't seen elsewhere, and something that was actually going to help me on my Walk In Silence project.

This pisses me off, because I did not have any problems in the past. And after all this pointless and irritating (and costly) stupidity, I hate the fact that I may have to give up an awesome media player due to a newer, non-functioning version. It would piss me off even more if this was ultimately the reason for my PC's recent issues.

SO.

I'm going to try WMP, since it comes with the PC setup. And if that doesn't let me rip cds or do anything, and if I also can't use some other programs either (this means both other media players like iTunes as well as non-media software like Google Earth), then I'm going to call back Gateway and DEMAND a complete replacement or refund. Hell, I still have my old craptacular PC in my closet...if it comes to that, I'll use that in the interim.

But if WMP does, work, I'm going to give the gang at MediaMonkey a good chewing out. I shouldn't have to buy a Lifetime key only to have it crap out a few years after the fact. Luckily I didn't pay too much for it, but it still chafes my butt that it happened with both MediaMonkey and MusicMatch.

In the meantime, guess I'll have to do some research to find another media player that has what I'm looking for.

*sigh*

I give up. Norton 360, you were great. I had no problems with you. You were less intrusive, never acted up, and only scanned when I told you to.

Norton 360 v4? Not so much with the love. I'm pretty sure you're the culprit for my PC acting up as of late. Please note on my last PC posting, I mentioned that the drive worked fine when I ran the software disc for the wireless adapter. Once I uploaded you? BANG. Problems with the drive again.

You're fired, I'm getting a refund.


I'll stay with the old Norton 360 for the next few days. I think I have a few weeks' subscription left.


In the meantime...I admit defeat.

Table's open--give me suggestions for the best PC protection (non-Mac) (and if you say "buy a Mac" I will personally come over there and kick you) that does the following:

--isn't a power hog
--does a decent job of protecting
--doesn't do all sorts of stupid conflicting
--Likes Windows 7


Sure, I'm asking a lot, but I'm looking for ideas here. I'm open for anything at this point.

Okay, so after a quick online chat with Gateway support, they said that it might not be the cd drive or its driver, but the registry that got hosed, which makes sense to me, due to the following:

--I'd done a registry cleanup a few days previous to this problem
--The Device Manager is showing all is well, driver and drive-wise.
--After rebooting the PC successfully, everything's running okay *EXCEPT* the drive.
--Chances are I may have also hosed the registry during one of the hard reboots.

So! This means that a System restore (a good time back might be good, just to distance myself from the problem), and, failing that, following the directions on a link they sent me that might fix the registry.

And barring that, I guess I might have to bite the bullet and get more support on this. Luckily I'm still under warranty, so that's a good thing.


But for now? Even though all those tasty new cds are glaring at me, I'll be staying with a streamed station for the rest of the week. I've wasted too much time on this and list writing time, and I gotta get work done.

So...things are looking up, hopefully. :)

Okay, I quit again for now. I've spent most of the day trying to figure out what the problem is and still ain't getting anywhere. But the good thing is that everything ELSE on my PC works fine, so I have that.

I just can't print. I HAVE NO PRINT SPOOLER AND I MUST SCREAM. X(


So...maybe I should just call it a day, do some actual writing work, finish the laundry, and start doing some packing for our trip.