Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 16, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 16, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1
It is late at night and I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension. I have of course come to the conclusion that I am talking to myself. No one exists in the universe except... me.
It's been an interesting week here at KEOS. Someone volunteered to take all but four hours of my air time. I thought I could spend the extra time punching up this show. You know, write the script up and then edit it and make it coherent and all that. No such luck.
Last week, a woman asked me to help her get her computer up and running. She and her husband ran a bunch of small businesses locally and she wanted to have Internet service from home. She had installed this FAX/printer/copier combination and knocked herself off the Internet. No, that doesn't make any sense, but it happens.
So I got over to her home and started messing with it. I installed the printer and then looked at the cable modem. The light that should have indicated she was on-line was off. So we called the cable modem place and the helpdesk was helpful. I was astonished. Ummm... You might not understand why that would surprise me. Well, in computer work most of the time the help desks are no help. Anyway. The guy ran all kinds of tests and said that the woman was off-line, so they would send a tech to look at it... the next morning between 8 and 10am. Are you getting this? It was about 10am on Tuesday and they were going to send someone the next day. Normally you get a date in March or something. There was nothing else I could do, so she dropped me off at my apartment and I went to my Kiwanis meeting.
That night I got email from her. The Internet connection had come back online. Why? Got me.
So she calls me the next day and wants me to come over and fix the popups problem. Popups are advertisements that show up when you open a web site. They are really annoying. So I went over a second time and opened a web page that sold a Pop Up and Spam filter for less than $20. I installed that and discovered that she had been infected with spyware. This is a program that tells someone what you are doing and gets in the way. What was really weird was that the computer kept on crashing. I'm kind of used to Windows doing that to me, so it didn't bother me. I was trying to get to the point where the email would open and I could check on the popups and the spam filter. Every time I tried to do something, the computer would freeze up and I'd have to reboot.
By the way the tech support guy for the cable modem had come by her place and double checked everything. He didn't see how to turn off the popups in Windows Internet Explorer, because this was an old version.
Anyway. I got all these programs to work and decided to punt.
When a computer crashes a lot, one way to fix it is to run defragmentation. Fragmentation is a term that means files are all over the disk and the operating system is messing around hunting down files you need. When you run a defragmentation program, it sometimes clears up some other problems, because the operation system has all the files closer together. Why that helps, got me.
So I started the defragmentation program and told her that it would take forever to run. She bought me lunch and took me home. She sent me email later and said that the problems had disappeared. I was a bit weirded out by that. I mean, these are kind of common problems I run into on the computer, so her praise for getting rid of them were strange to me.
Another odd thing happened on Saturday. KEOS airs Earthsongs at 5pm on Saturdays. I come into the station and mount the CD. The CD for Earthsongs comes from a download from the Earthsongs web site.
Saturday morning, the guy who does the burn sent out email saying that he couldn't find the file for Saturday afternoon. I decided to see what I could do to help. So I hunted up the website for Earthsongs. Gregg McVicar, the host, is in California. The producer is in New Mexico. The station they're associated with is in Anchorage, Alaska. I sent email to the producer and Gregg McVicar. They point me to the download site. I said, 'Where's the file to be aired on Saturday.' Gregg said something like, 'What? It's not there.' So said something like, 'I do not see it.' He goes, 'Oops.' and uploads the audio file. It took quite a while for the upload to occur AND the download web site to update. Two hours before the show is to air and I still don't have the file. In the meantime I downloaded the program from the week before. It was in MP2 format. My software doesn't handle MP2 files. I need an MP3 file. So I use a software package I have to convert the MP2 file to an MP3 file. The clock is ticking. The new program showed up on the web site and I started downloading it as I'm translating the program from the week before. So I open another program called RealPlayer and it will handle MP2 files. I finished up burning the program from last week. I started burning the program for this week.
I finished up, JUST in time to get over to the station. I'm twelve minutes early when I arrived. The guy who normally does the downloads has in the meantime downloaded the new program, burned it and the new CD is setting on the Board ready for me to play. I threw away my burn and prepared to play his CD. 4:59pm comes, I play Hightower and then play the CD with Earthsongs on it.
If I had stayed in contact with the guy who does the burns regularly, I could have saved myself some sweat. On the other hand, this is KEOS. Communications? What's that? Anyway. I thought it was kind of funny that I'm in Texas, Gregg McVicar is somewhere else in the world and the server with the download was in a third place and we were all working to get this program on the air. Thus is the world of the Internet. People who would not normally come in contact with each other can be closely aligned and work on projects together.
Segment 1
It is late at night and I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension. I have of course come to the conclusion that I am talking to myself. No one exists in the universe except... me.
It's been an interesting week here at KEOS. Someone volunteered to take all but four hours of my air time. I thought I could spend the extra time punching up this show. You know, write the script up and then edit it and make it coherent and all that. No such luck.
Last week, a woman asked me to help her get her computer up and running. She and her husband ran a bunch of small businesses locally and she wanted to have Internet service from home. She had installed this FAX/printer/copier combination and knocked herself off the Internet. No, that doesn't make any sense, but it happens.
So I got over to her home and started messing with it. I installed the printer and then looked at the cable modem. The light that should have indicated she was on-line was off. So we called the cable modem place and the helpdesk was helpful. I was astonished. Ummm... You might not understand why that would surprise me. Well, in computer work most of the time the help desks are no help. Anyway. The guy ran all kinds of tests and said that the woman was off-line, so they would send a tech to look at it... the next morning between 8 and 10am. Are you getting this? It was about 10am on Tuesday and they were going to send someone the next day. Normally you get a date in March or something. There was nothing else I could do, so she dropped me off at my apartment and I went to my Kiwanis meeting.
That night I got email from her. The Internet connection had come back online. Why? Got me.
So she calls me the next day and wants me to come over and fix the popups problem. Popups are advertisements that show up when you open a web site. They are really annoying. So I went over a second time and opened a web page that sold a Pop Up and Spam filter for less than $20. I installed that and discovered that she had been infected with spyware. This is a program that tells someone what you are doing and gets in the way. What was really weird was that the computer kept on crashing. I'm kind of used to Windows doing that to me, so it didn't bother me. I was trying to get to the point where the email would open and I could check on the popups and the spam filter. Every time I tried to do something, the computer would freeze up and I'd have to reboot.
By the way the tech support guy for the cable modem had come by her place and double checked everything. He didn't see how to turn off the popups in Windows Internet Explorer, because this was an old version.
Anyway. I got all these programs to work and decided to punt.
When a computer crashes a lot, one way to fix it is to run defragmentation. Fragmentation is a term that means files are all over the disk and the operating system is messing around hunting down files you need. When you run a defragmentation program, it sometimes clears up some other problems, because the operation system has all the files closer together. Why that helps, got me.
So I started the defragmentation program and told her that it would take forever to run. She bought me lunch and took me home. She sent me email later and said that the problems had disappeared. I was a bit weirded out by that. I mean, these are kind of common problems I run into on the computer, so her praise for getting rid of them were strange to me.
Another odd thing happened on Saturday. KEOS airs Earthsongs at 5pm on Saturdays. I come into the station and mount the CD. The CD for Earthsongs comes from a download from the Earthsongs web site.
Saturday morning, the guy who does the burn sent out email saying that he couldn't find the file for Saturday afternoon. I decided to see what I could do to help. So I hunted up the website for Earthsongs. Gregg McVicar, the host, is in California. The producer is in New Mexico. The station they're associated with is in Anchorage, Alaska. I sent email to the producer and Gregg McVicar. They point me to the download site. I said, 'Where's the file to be aired on Saturday.' Gregg said something like, 'What? It's not there.' So said something like, 'I do not see it.' He goes, 'Oops.' and uploads the audio file. It took quite a while for the upload to occur AND the download web site to update. Two hours before the show is to air and I still don't have the file. In the meantime I downloaded the program from the week before. It was in MP2 format. My software doesn't handle MP2 files. I need an MP3 file. So I use a software package I have to convert the MP2 file to an MP3 file. The clock is ticking. The new program showed up on the web site and I started downloading it as I'm translating the program from the week before. So I open another program called RealPlayer and it will handle MP2 files. I finished up burning the program from last week. I started burning the program for this week.
I finished up, JUST in time to get over to the station. I'm twelve minutes early when I arrived. The guy who normally does the downloads has in the meantime downloaded the new program, burned it and the new CD is setting on the Board ready for me to play. I threw away my burn and prepared to play his CD. 4:59pm comes, I play Hightower and then play the CD with Earthsongs on it.
If I had stayed in contact with the guy who does the burns regularly, I could have saved myself some sweat. On the other hand, this is KEOS. Communications? What's that? Anyway. I thought it was kind of funny that I'm in Texas, Gregg McVicar is somewhere else in the world and the server with the download was in a third place and we were all working to get this program on the air. Thus is the world of the Internet. People who would not normally come in contact with each other can be closely aligned and work on projects together.
posted by aRandomTexan at
3:28 PM
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