We have crossed into the 80 degree range here on the south side of Route One. I put this down in my Glorious Day category. The sun is blazing away and since it’s still shy of noon as I begin this little missive, I think the temperature will continue to climb for another couple of hours at least. Let me remind you the temperature isn’t official but rather taken on my home weather station, which is safely out of the sun.
I now have two working laptop computers. Well, actually three but one of this is so slow I can brew a cup of coffee and, if I smoked, have a cigarette while that third one booted. But I had an inexpensive one for about a year before it slowly began to die. Even its internal wireless connector stopped working. Before it completely left me and after my wife had listened to enough groans and moans, I bought a new one. I must say I love my new Vista controlled laptop.
Today I decided to take a look at the other one and see what I might be able to accomplish to make it at least usable as a backup if anything happens to the new one. First I ran a registry cleaning program and cleaned out a whole bunch of invalid entries. Next, it was the add/remove programs. First to go were several AOL entries. I don’t think I’ve used AOL for several years, at least, and don’t even have an AOL account. I may even be one of the few people in the world that doesn’t use AIM, too. So all the AOL stuff is gone.
Of course my big nemesis Norton Internet Security was on the computer. With it still running, I downloaded a popular free anti-virus program that has received great reviews. I know better than to have Norton running with other anti-virus software so I held it for later installation. Then I began the arduous task of getting Norton off that computer. Somewhere around an hour or hour and a half later and multiple reboots I think Norton was gone. That included, I thought, registry entries which my registry cleaning program had cleaned.
Another registry scan showed that I still have bunch of entries with “Norton” or “Symantec” in them. They’re still there. I’ve got to work up some courage to do any more eliminations. Perhaps I’ll wait until my fearless friend visits again.
But the best of all happenings, the network connection on that computer once again roared into life. The computer boots quickly and easily and I think It’s working better than ever. Without Norton. I’m not sure my wife is going to be happy when I tell her how well it works now, especially after I shelled out some bucks for this new one.
I have grown to like my new laptop, though. I know there are many people who hate MS Vista OS, but it has given me no trouble at all. It has never had Norton on it and I think runs faster than my XP computers. Vista does take a while to get used to, and I suspect purists who like to go deep into a computer’s system find it difficult. My fearless friend is also an amateur radio buff, Ham, and he says his fellow Hams tell him that connecting Vista to the radios is a very daunting task. I have nothing like that and all my programs and peripherals are post 2003, so I’ve had no trouble so far.
I am a happy person today as I’ve had what I call a success, and at my place in life a success makes a great day.
GiM
Post note: I never saw a temperature higher than the 80.4 I recorded as this was started. It is now falling through the 70s. The TV temperature at noon was only 73 and right now it’s 74. But that doesn’t take away a thing about this being an absolutely glorious day.
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