Computer magic.
Oct. 16th, 2004 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringI've got two computers on my desk, apart from the laptop, and I had a power outage a couple of nights back. That's OK, but I couldn't work out why yesterday I got up in the morning and the server had rebooted but the workstation hadn't. Then this morning the reverse was true, but I managed to snag a little pop-up that said an update had been downloaded, installed and the machine rebooted.
Mystery solved. I thought I had pixies or something.
Bit of a pain, because I usually have a ton of things open all at once. My inventory program, my accounting program, a spreadsheet that summarises sales and entries for the day, the scanner window, Outlook (with about a dozen emails in various stages of being read and responded to), a newsreader, about a dozen Explorer windows with everything from ABE to Bookcrossing open as well as GMail, Sauce Reader for blogs, my current book open in Word for me to scratch away at, Visual Studio if I'm coding, a whole heap of stuff and it generally takes me an hour or so to get it all open and read and working the way I want.
Drives my wife batty - she works on one thing at a time and I can generally tell when she's been using my computer because something vital has been closed.
Google Desktop is my latest toy. Installed it this morning and already it's paid for itself. well, it's free, but it's paid for my investment in time. Got an order for a book a few months back, came in via email rather than ABE or Alibris or BiblioQuest, and I promised to send the book out with an invoice and then found that I couldn't find the customer's address when i finally hauled out the book. Had some other things going on, but I searched for that email a couple of times and Outlook was no help at all and the customer never wrote back and said where's my book? so I was stumped.
Typed the name of the book into Google Desktop and up she came straight up. This thing apparently searches and indexes everything in your cyberlife and you can google it all. So now I've got a Google toolbar on my browser, Gmail for mailing lists and Google Desktop. God help us all in a few years when all this stuff is linked together and it becomes self-aware, like the big computer in Heinlein's story.
Another election today. Fool of an official couldn't tell me how many candidates were standing, so I had to count them up and number every square. 33. Started at both ends and met in the middle and made sure that I hadn't made any mistakes. Start at the bottom with the people I don't want in under any circumstances, then I started at the top with some independents who weren't getting in and gradually working my way up to my real choice at about number seven preference. In the middle were a whole bunch of people in apparently random order.
I pity the poor bugger who has to key it in so that the system can work it all out, because I certainly wasn't voting along any sort of party lines.
Ran into one of the candidates browsing the bookstall at the school fete held in conjunction so as to catch the voters. He was pretty high up on my list and he's a decent stick.
20c a book - I bought about thirty all up, and got some bargains. Most I'll be Bookcrossing of course, but there was enough good stuff to pay the bill and make a profit. Now I've got to enter them or register them and find space for them.
Mystery solved. I thought I had pixies or something.
Bit of a pain, because I usually have a ton of things open all at once. My inventory program, my accounting program, a spreadsheet that summarises sales and entries for the day, the scanner window, Outlook (with about a dozen emails in various stages of being read and responded to), a newsreader, about a dozen Explorer windows with everything from ABE to Bookcrossing open as well as GMail, Sauce Reader for blogs, my current book open in Word for me to scratch away at, Visual Studio if I'm coding, a whole heap of stuff and it generally takes me an hour or so to get it all open and read and working the way I want.
Drives my wife batty - she works on one thing at a time and I can generally tell when she's been using my computer because something vital has been closed.
Google Desktop is my latest toy. Installed it this morning and already it's paid for itself. well, it's free, but it's paid for my investment in time. Got an order for a book a few months back, came in via email rather than ABE or Alibris or BiblioQuest, and I promised to send the book out with an invoice and then found that I couldn't find the customer's address when i finally hauled out the book. Had some other things going on, but I searched for that email a couple of times and Outlook was no help at all and the customer never wrote back and said where's my book? so I was stumped.
Typed the name of the book into Google Desktop and up she came straight up. This thing apparently searches and indexes everything in your cyberlife and you can google it all. So now I've got a Google toolbar on my browser, Gmail for mailing lists and Google Desktop. God help us all in a few years when all this stuff is linked together and it becomes self-aware, like the big computer in Heinlein's story.
Another election today. Fool of an official couldn't tell me how many candidates were standing, so I had to count them up and number every square. 33. Started at both ends and met in the middle and made sure that I hadn't made any mistakes. Start at the bottom with the people I don't want in under any circumstances, then I started at the top with some independents who weren't getting in and gradually working my way up to my real choice at about number seven preference. In the middle were a whole bunch of people in apparently random order.
I pity the poor bugger who has to key it in so that the system can work it all out, because I certainly wasn't voting along any sort of party lines.
Ran into one of the candidates browsing the bookstall at the school fete held in conjunction so as to catch the voters. He was pretty high up on my list and he's a decent stick.
20c a book - I bought about thirty all up, and got some bargains. Most I'll be Bookcrossing of course, but there was enough good stuff to pay the bill and make a profit. Now I've got to enter them or register them and find space for them.
