Bon Journal

Laptop woes

No sooner had I finally got connected to the Internet, a window popped up, warning me that my system will be shut down by the NT Authority\System. Something about a Remote Procedure Call (RPC).

One minute in cyberspace doesn't provide enough time to say hello, let alone chat in instant messengers. I managed to upload my updated journal entries, send and receive e-mails, and work very fast before my laptop shut down and reboot again.

Until today, I suspected that it's due to the ADSL Internet provider here in Holland. I had some problems installing the ADSL software, for my system pointed out that the software did not have a Windows logo or a digital signature to say it's Windows compliant.

When I'm offline, I have full control of my laptop. However, I have noticed that my hard disk is churning away every second. There seem to be many memory-resident programmes running at all times. I pressed <shift> <prtscrn> to take a snapshot of my Windows Task Manager screen and edited the image in Adobe Photoshop before saving and transferring to my web site. Why are there so many processes running at the same time? Even if I have no applications running, there are all sorts of things going on that I don't understand.

My cyber-friend James diagnosed my 1-minute shut down as a result of the infamous blaster virus. He kindly sent me a programme to fix it. While offline, the fixblaster.exe programme found 3 files and deleted them. But by clicking on YES - please get me a patch, the Internet delivered a new msblaster.exe programme to my C:\winnt32. So I've had to run it again.

"Frustration" is my middle name. Lately, I seem to be innundated with interruptions to my workflow -- having to set up my computer connections, fix my web sites, and fix my computers.

I just want to get back to the good old days when things ran smoothly. Those good old days were when I got paid to write and somebody else got paid to fix my computer problems. As a back-up, I had a boyfriend who loved fixing computer problems - so much that he was constantly trying to find things to fix on his computer.

Smooth, continuous operation comes at a price --- that of being self-sufficient and tolerant of imperfection and hiccups.

8 January 2004 Thursday

Snapshot of my Windows Task Manager processes:

offline

online

Cyber-friends are people you have never met in person but you have a friendship and rapport with --- in cyberspace.