I now have both laptops on the network. I don't know what I did. I don't know why it started working. But it is. Good night!
Recently in Projects Category
I am not a gardener. My father is a gardener. He kept a beautiful and bountiful garden at the house I grew up in. We worked our tails off in that garden, and enjoyed the fruits (and veggies) of our labor all summer long -- for that matter, year round, since my mother canned and jellied and froze and pickled and otherwise preserved all manner of produce. I loved being outside with my dad (and mom, too -- shucking corn, snapping beans, pitting cherries, etc.) and I still love being outdoors. But I'm not into growing things the way my dad is.
I am not a gardener. But I do like to scape land. I think it is tied up with why I am an engineer. I like to build things. But I'm not so fond of the work that it takes to tend the things I make. It's an area I'm growing in tremendously, both at work and at home.
We are going to make a concerted effort to keep a modest sized garden going last year. We grew a lot of tomatoes last year, but I'm convinced that a monkey could have grown tomatoes as well as we did. They took very little work, in other words.
I have done some landscaping around the garden to help keep out the grass this season. And I hope to use a rototiller to get the soil turned over a bit better than I managed with the spade last year. Our blueberry bushes got hit pretty hard by the late frost in early April, but they seem to have bounced back. Likewise the apple tree I planted late last summer.
I'll keep you posted on how things turn out. I am planning on growing 5 children (so far) into good gardeners, because I think it is a very useful skill and the reward is worth the work; likewise, the work is worth the reward. Our Father is an attentive and patient Gardener and I'm glad He tends me with more patience and diligence than I tend the people and plants entrusted to me.
This morning I went to a men's breakfast with pretty much the entire adult male population of our church. I was glad to have the time to do it. I have spent the rest of the day supervising the children playing outside (it's gorgeous spring weather here) and trying to fix our main computer.
So far, so good. I installed and partitioned the new hard drive, and installed and configured and updated Windows XP. So now it's time to start installing other programs, and I have a question.
I have a wireless firewall router (an old one which is next on my list of hardware to replace) and for the past 3 years I have been running ZoneAlarm on all my computers. My question (directed at Dave, Jacob, Slacka, Nagi, and any other computer/security types who read this blog) is, do I really need ZoneAlarm? My subscription is coming up again. Since I started using the router, it seems that ZoneAlarm has been pretty much useless (except for the anti-spam, which is nice). Would I be just as well off running XP's built-in firewall software and saving my money, or do I need a real software firewall to back up my router? I guess the real question is, how important is anti-virus software if you are running a firewall, and where can I get the most bang for my buck? I would like to run the same sofware on both desktops and the laptop, so I want something (like ZA) with a subscription that covers multiple units.
ZoneAlarm seems to slow performance considerably. Other than that, I have been pleased with it. Any and all comments/suggestions (including picthes for other firewall/antivirus software) are welcome. Thanks in advance!
Our garden is doing very well so far. It looks like we'll even get some blueberries this year. Unfortunately, the bunnies have destroyed my spinach and they have been keeping the lettuce cropped such that we haven't been able to enjoy any ourselves. So one of our trips to Lowe's this weekend was to get some rabbit fencing for the garden. Hopefully that will take care of the problem. The tomato plants are doing great and we are looking forward to fresh tomatoes and peppers and strawberries all summer long.
I finally got around to calling Julie this weekend (the Illinois undergound utility marking service) and they are supposed to be out by Wednesday to mark so that I will be able to dig a hole for our new apple tree.
The most humbling thing a man can do is ask for help. I submitted a service ticket to ATI today. I think I must have a defective card. Their tech support is somewhat lacking -- only available over the phone between 8 AM and 7 PM eastern time. Well, that doesn't help me since I don't get home on most days until 5:45 PM central time, and I'm always at work (or at least most of the way there) by 7 AM central time. C'mon, what self-respecting company doesn't have 24-hour tech support these days?
I really don't want to spend any more money on my new computer. On the other hand, I really want it to work. Blech.
By the way, if anyone wanted to search their XP directories and see if they have the file BDAPLGIN.AX, and then email me a copy of that file, it would make my day. jacob(doht)stoltzfus(aht)sbcglobal(doht)net. Thanks in advance!
Once I get everything working on this silly thing, I'll give a full rundown on the specs. I took Dave's advice on a motherboard/CPU combo. I'm still fighting with the ATI All-in-Wonder 256 MB graphics card to get it to install properly. The stupid thing is made for XP Media Center Edition, and it still doesn't work. I keep getting a message on startup that the driver isn't installed. But the driver IS installed, and it is listed in the device manager area as having a driver. I have tried both the original driver on the CD-ROM and the newest driver available from ATI. Still not working. Bah.
But I will win. Of course, my struggles with this graphics card on the last system I built ended when the machine finally decided to stop powering up. So far we're not having that problem on this system.
This post, by the way, was written using the new system.
