5 Ways to Effectively Use a Mobile Phone

Advancement of technology is leading to new inventions and discoveries. From the desktop computers to the laptops and still advancing to palmtops and now the latest is the mobile devices which has everything that a computer can give PLUS a way to communicate with the family and friends as well as business partners.

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Short Audio News

Tech news of the last 24 hours in a short audio format. What's not to like ?

TNWDailyDose 24-02-2011 by TNW Daily Dose

For Want of Some Screws

For want of some screws a hard drive was lost.
For want of some screws two hard drives were lost.
For want of some screws three hard drives were lost.
For want of a hard drive the laptop was shipped.
For want of a computer poor Tammy was miffed.
And all for the want of some itty-bitty screws.

In honor of the folks at Dell's Technical Support who need to pay attention to the seven screws circled in red in the illustration above. . .

From Tammy, the poet who doesn't even know it, who sang the Hallelujah chorus when she saw this:



P.S. Beware of reading blogs with a full swig of coffee in thy mouth.

Learning Styles Pages

Just a quick note! I finally updated my original learning styles page and added a new one! The new page is a literary look at learning styles, based upon a presentation I gave at the 2006 Charlotte Mason Conference. My next goal is to convert my notes on narration into a web page, so stay tuned.

Speaking of learning styles. . . Pamela is visual, like many people with autism. For her, a picture speaks a thousand words. In this case, Pamela did not want to believe me when I told her in my most declarative voice, "Your sweater is dirty" with a scrunched-up face. Pamela could not see the stain from her angle, so she proceeded to argue and throw a fit. I had the camera nearby, took a picture, and showed it to her. End of argument. She whipped off her sweater immediately without another huff or puff.

We're Back

Last Tuesday, we received our new computer, a Dell Inspiron 1720, and she is a beauty. Since then, I have been busy wrapping up the old school year with required annual reports and planning the new year. We school year round, so my kids had the week off when the neighborhood kids started school. I will post my planned typical schedules later in the week.

I thought I would hate adjusting to Vista, but we have not run into any glitches yet, All of our old software has survived the transition (even a 1995 version of MGI PhotoSuite). The graphics are sweet on this machine, and the screen is wide enough for me to see the entire year in my Excel spreadsheet in one glance!

Keep It Simple Stupid!

The good news is that I resurrected my "dead" computer. The bad news is that I missed the obvious and reformatted for no reason!

When the computer was acting up, I fell back into my typical troubleshooting procedures: when things are really bad, make a copy of important files (which I had done the day before) and reformat. At first, everything looked normal and the computer survived long enough to download and install one service pack. Then, the memory began dumping and rebooting again. It appeared to me that I had not changed a thing by reformatting. Frustrated, I shut it down and called it a loss.

The next day, I booted up the computer and tried again. It worked great for about fifteen minutes and began the dump and reboot thing! Then it hit me! The computer might be overheating. Then, I realized DUH--the fan was not working! I spent the morning experimenting to see if my hypothesis might hold water. I placed the laptop on an air conditioning vent and continued doing all of the Windows updates for my computer, checked my email, and surfed the Internet. The computer stayed cool, and it worked beautifully for several hours!

We decided to pay a little visit to the Geek Squad and find out how much it would be to replace the fan. Feeling smug, I told them to skip the diagnostic because I knew I had three hardware issues: the broken fan, three inoperable USB ports (two dead and one half-dead), and a broken sound jack. The friendly geek checked out the USB ports and told me they were not cracked, and it might be dust. In fact, he said dust might be clogging the fan, too! He pulled out some canned air and blew through the USB ports and the fan. That was all it took to fix all three USB ports! The fan did not respond, so Steve and I decided to let the Geek Squad to ship off my baby to Geek Central in Atlanta. We will have to survive at least ten days sans a 24/7 computer.

I felt fairly stupid overlooking such an obvious fix for my USB ports! However, I redeemed myself because I already knew what a Chill Mat was, which I am considering buying to extend the life of our laptop, which turned three years old last May. The friendly geek saw my Targus notebook backpack and asked me how I liked it. Maybe, he was just being nice, but I felt a little bit better.

Giving Up the Ghost

Have you ever read a wordless picture book like Noah's Ark by Peter Spier? Well, try reading my practically wordless blogpost called "Giving Up the Ghost: Or, I Know What You Did Last Night."









P.S. I am at my parent's house right now and will be at one of those mega electronics stores this weekend! Yes, I reformatted my laptop. No, it did not work unless you count dumping everything and rebooting every two minutes as acceptable.

Bedroom full of laptops

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Woman deserves more attention ( FULL ) than laptop.
Indians are learning this hard way.