Lynn’s Daughter of the Bright Moon is now available for sale.
A New Book Up in Closed Circle: Lynn Abbey
by CJ | Mar 16, 2010 | Journal | 39 comments
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And bought; thanks for the head’s up!
Very,very weird. I was really angry everytime I at my desktop covered with all those files that
support the MSReader so in a childish revenge move I went to the control panel and took out the
MSReader. Later I went looking for something and
was startled to discover that all the files had returned! Linda said that this was impossible(and
muttered something about voodoo….). I swear I did look for all my files everywhere before declaring a catastrophe.
I just had a thought,something called “Norton Ghost” is in my programming and I vaguely recall
the Jerk mentioning something about recovering
something with it???
Bought from work, will download this evening when I get home. Minor glitch noted: Is it possible to add the donation to the shopping cart, so that instead of paying two transaction fees, we only pay one? PayPal tells me that I’ve double-clicked the pay button instead of making a donation and a purchase? I suggest something like a radio button that then shows up in the shopping cart on checkout with the opportunity to specify the amount.
That extra 35 cents or so deduction adds up to a large percentage loss for the author after a while when we readers use modest contributions to encourage posting of new books. This is NOT an “URGENT, MUST BE FIXED” type of problem, just a suggestion for down the road. Keep up the good work. I’ll be posting to Lynn as well.
A really good suggestion. I hate to be ‘forward’ with the donate button, but maybe we could do it for a while on a new book.
We’ve had a power outage since Saturday at home – big storms brought down huge trees all over – so I need to wait to buy this one until I am sure I can download it – hope that will be tomorrow. I agree with Ready regarding the donate button. I am happy to use whatever process is easiest for you, but it is a shame if you get dinged with paypal expenses twice.
I hope you’re ok. Boy, we would be in trouble with a 4 day power-out: a marine tank doesn’t get along well without its pump! Ask OSG that one!
Hurricane force winds and again high winds!! Been seeing it on the news. Hope that you guys get a break!
CJ,
The icons were the ones for the MSReader’s support files. I purposely got rid of the MSReader and it’s 20 support buddies.
the files that I had lost were my personal files
in “Documents”,”Shared Documents”,”Local Disc” etc.
I got everything back when I removed the MSReader. I don’t know how or why….? Maybe
magic?
I’m going to have to go into the Closed Circle and
get familiar with it and how to navigate it. I think that a donation button would be very good and should be easy to see.
Be forward!! I haven’t noticed anybody else being
shy and it helps us help you.
Closed Circle has some places to wander, but mostly it has the Store area, which is where everything purchasable is. We’ve been sooooo sick with con crud and so behind in our writing (I have not even BEGUN the taxes!) that we haven’t gotten the Cafe Press stuff up, but I am determined to get it up soon.
Well, we got home from dinner out, having thrown out everything in the freezer and fridge this am, to find the power back on. what a lovely sight! We don’t have a fish tank any more, I having done in all the fish a few years ago (I think before OSG ever came to stay), and the cats did fine in the cold. fuzzy little beings. We think a generator would be a good idea, since people seem to lose power where we live now very often, for days at a stretch. WHY don’t they bury the wires? surely it would be cheaper than bringing in crews from as far away as South Carolina when we get hit, to help. Shades of 9/11.
But I think I”ll still buy Lynn’s book tomorrow. too much to do now to get things back on track.
Yep, burying the wires is a good thing. Perhaps if someone bought the power company a nice shovel?
Kokipy, no, you’ve never had fish when I was there. Just cats!
BTW, Carolyn & Jane have heard this many times but I must interject here & let everyone know what a WONDERFUL hostess you are and thank you publicly for the wonderful times I always have when visiting the Eastern Association.
And I do have to say OSG is innocent of the demise of fish! When the main pump fails, most marine tanks have 4 hours to live. When you also have a rare breed of Japanese pump that, to save itself, simply decouples the impeller while continuing to run (meaning the pump stops, but keeps making noise)—and certain people don’t tell OSG that can happen—well, it was a miracle she noticed it had a problem! The tank lives.
It didn’t take too much intellect to surmise the Glorious Tank was imploding. First hint: corals tightly retracted like I’ve never seen them retracted before. Second hint: 2 dead fish at the bottom of the tank.
What a horror show. I couldn’t believe my eyes and felt like *I* was going to implode.
I can’t save or backup my files. Linda and I spent 3 hrs digging into my computer and the Jerk has blocked me from moving them. We also found a
live monitor with alert, showing a graph readout with 24/7 output. We discovered that he has me locked into a remote computer. Linda is both outraged and appalled. I’ve been telling people that he uses my computer,but nobody believed me.
Surely this is criminal?
Azureblu, this is beyond strange. What on earth kind of rig is this?
He is the guy that I bought my computer from. He has himself as the Administrator of my computer. I thought that I understood that because I was a blank as far as a computer went and he did help me from his shop(80 miles away at the time)through his computer as a remote connection. However,I began finding tweaks to my computer that I didn’t authorize. Several times I caught my laptop on and working. When I left Dialup service he put my Thunderbird email address up as a spammer and got it blackballed where they would not let any email
out,BLOCKED!
I want some of my files when the new computer comes,but I’m afraid to transfer anything that he could move with.
That should read his Dialup Service. Also he is
one of the BridgeMaxx agents here in Missoula and
that is my new wireless although with a private
password protected group(Linda’s).
Lord, how awful! To my mind that is totally unethical, if not downright criminal.
The big problem is backing up the data. That needs to be done asap to an external drive. Although the tech doing the reformatting should be able to do it for you. Also, forget Internet Explorer – use Firefox (also free) with less problems. I believe the new Microsoft Essentials Security is pretty decent or there’s other freebies available. 2-3 days o grunt work should get it lean, mean, and clean. Unfortunately the scenario we’re talking about means having a licensed copy of XP to install.
It might actually be worth talking to the local police about this, before you do anything to tip the guy off. If he’s done this to you, it’s likely that he’s done it to others, and that means, if nothing else, that he has access to a lot of personal information (social security numbers, bank passwords, etc.), and may be doing really bad things with the information. Identity theft is the first thing to come to mind (it may be worth it to check your credit reports and see if anything odd is going on).
He might be farming her computer (and likely others) to process “stuff”. At work we have a virtual network where when we leave our computers on after hours it becomes one giant brain that processes work stuff in packets. In our case it is thousands of variable images we spin off of mailers. Kind of awesome when you think about it. I know some researchers use this system to let civilians donate cpu power to process scientific data during their down time. The government is trying to link together a bunch of universities to create a teraflop (I love when nerds name things) of power to do lord knows what with. But in a non-legal context it could be used from anything like massive spamming, ping attacks, or the creation of our future robot overlords.
We were part of the SETI hook-up processing data from the telescope at Arecibo.
Can somebody with computer knowledge second me here?
Your computer can be fixed without referencing him or dealing with him at all,—and honestly, if you can afford another technician, one alternative would be to get somebody in a good shop in Missoula and have them format c, do a security erase, and reinstall xp. It’s not rocket science for somebody who’s ever done a disk wipe and reinstall, but you would then have to reinstall every program you own.
Basically if you called in a good technician who had the ability to do that, he would set your computer to run for a while rewriting the hard disk as all 0’s and 1’s. He’d probably leave and come back after it had become a brainless disk (takes a while), then install System and ask it to install XP. Which he would do as a freestanding computer with no remote links or dependency on any other computer. He would leave you to install your software again—or do it for you if you wanted to pay his time. You need to have the software: that’s the hitch. If your guy back wherever has all your disks and passwords you would have to establish those. Win XP comes with, I believe, Internet Explorer, and Outlook (mail). If you have other programs, those would be independent. Another fast way would be to have him take out the old hard disk and install a new one with the operating system, as if you had had a disk failure. Again, a re-install, but clean. And hard disks no longer cost very much.
There is also an Open Source word processor, Open Office: that means it’s downloadable without charge off the internet. Word Press is the same. All CC reading software is donation-based or completely freeware. Depending on what you need/have within your possession, you could be up and running and free of this other setup forever within 3 days, because once the hard drive is reformatted, it’s a new drive, with no reference to the old stuff. Some shops also have the ability to “stream on” an operating system, as a part of their operation, as I understand it. Someone please clarify on this. You also have the choice of a Linux operating system, which is open source and an array of free or open-office softwares which are either Microsoft-friendly or Linux-friendly. I’m Microsoft-based, but they certainly aren’t the only operation going.
The MS Reader incident may have been fortunate, if it leads to your getting set up independent of this remote operation.
Possibly when your other computer arrives, you could ship your hard disk (easy to remove) or whole computer CPU to your—is it nephew?—who’s working up a laptop for you—and have him do all of the above. Should be a piece of cake for him. I can assist your getting set up with your original screenname and a password on Wave, but the problem is, this other guy has ALL your passwords, I’m betting. You’ll want to set up new accounts with ‘strong’ passwords, on every site. It’s just the password that matters, something not guessable. We can help you with that. But do not transfer data to your new disk until your nephew can vet it as ‘clean’. My guess is this system is remoted to his, which means he’s probably got ways to get back in until this disk is totally reformatted. Once a system is formatted and brought up new, it asks for a new Administrator, and my strong suggestion is that should be You. You can by yourself and your friend, if she knows your password, all ok.
And one way to recover data from a suspect computer is pretty blunt-force: print it, and scan it in or otherwise enter it by hand back into a clean new program.
A system that would serve you very well would be a housenet. I sit in my chair with a laptop, and my laptop can wirelessly reach the printer, the main house computer, or Jane’s computer. I can easily back up stuff onto the main computer, or drag it down; I can trade pix, etc, with a few keystrokes. The best router is Linksys, and I do not know what server you may be using—we use Comcast, for both cable tv and internet, and their technician will come out, bring you a router and set you up as a house network, so you can use both your laptop AND your re-incarnated old computer without much fuss. Sadly, my best advice is to treat the current disk on that problem computer and what it stores as if it has the plague: you can sanitize it by printing, and other people may have good advice in this regard; but I’d break off with that chap who’s set this up.
*nods* I couldn’t imagine doing any online banking or even Netflix with someone else having remote access to my computer 24/7 as they please. I’d be worried about my digital photos too. It is much easier to get Geek Squad (the real life version of Chuck’s Nerd Herd) or other less evasive help to come over and fix it up. They are well known and have a reputation to maintain so they will do a good job and not mess around. Back before I knew how to fix my own stuff I had Geek Squad from Best Buy do it and it was a pain free experience. Most problems are things someone could come in, fix, and leave all in one day. They don’t need access all the time. As long as you are doing normal stuff (internet, word processing, basic image editing etc) there is no reason why you can’t be your own administrator even as a novice computer user. If you are really paranoid maybe have someone come in and do spring cleaning now and then. I do that for all of my family members who have difficulties remembering to defrag and dump temp files or have the horrible habit of saving tv shows right onto their desktop. 🙁
Also, if this guy is as sketch as he sounds I’d let him think everything was ok until after the big switchover. Wouldn’t want him to get revengeful for losing your business and sink the ship to spite you. Ideally he’d just wake up one day and access would just be mysteriously cut off…
I have been broken off with him since Nov.,the problem is HE didn’t. I guess Shawn is my second
cousin,his mother is my first cousin.
I can’t afford to get this one reprogrammed right now.
Linda went to his shop this morning and came unglued!! When I first got on my laptop about 10am he had it locked into “Work Offline” and
would not let me in. After about 15 min. he was gone. I figure that he either cleaned out his hooks or hid them even deeper.
Oh sure,no doubt he has them(passwords)all,and
changing them while he still is connected won’t
change anything.
I didn’t know how bad it was until last night.
I have never considered online banking to be safe!
I don’t do that.
sweetbo,
I had never even looked at a computer until 2 yrs.
ago. I was living pretty remote and had no body to teach me. I had to call he Jerk to find out how to turn it on. Now,it’s a different story I still don’t know a lot but I don’t see any reason
not to be the Administrator.
You’ll have a lot of fun ahead of you once the bugs get worked out. Don’t let these early troubles scare you off. Here’s a thought: If you have a library nearby often times they have free computer classes there for basic stuff. With the economy as it is a lot of people who never had to bother with computers are being forced to retrain so there are lots of free classes and ones at jr colleges for a small fee. I have a friend who is out of work so she took a part time job training people with little to no computer experience. There are lots of you out there. It might be nice to get some instruction in an environment where everyone is at around the same level.
Thank you everyone for your help! I will be taking your advice as I can. This has been a rock
in my craw for a long time and finding out that it was even worse than I thought was a bummer and
a downer! I have gotten very good advice from you
all! Thank you,thank you.
Azure, I am APPALLED. Unbelievable!
Thank you all for chiming in! My own favorites series for info on complex systems: http://www.amazon.com/Pcs-Dummies-Computers-Dan-Gookin/dp/0694518247 Computers for Dummies. I own HTML for Dummies, which was a big help when I was starting out with my own website. I don’t know if they have a chapter on hardware, but whether or not, this would be a good read for somebody trying to recover from a situation like this—it will at least reassure you that once the hard disk is cleaned up, there should be no more problems.
Best Buy’s Geek Squad is a good suggestion: there is a Best Buy in Missoula on Reserve St. Price out the job beforehand so you know what you’re getting into, and if you set up with them, they’ll come to your house/apt, do their work in a matter of an hour or so, and go away. If they tell you you have to buy a copy of Win XP, there’s always Linux for a choice; and DON’T let them sell you Win 7: it’s a huge program, and I doubt your computer (if older, as I suspect it is) will have the memory to make it run well. I don’t know what you’re on now, but most machines of 2004-2009 vintage are XP.
Tell them set you up as Admin, tell them your situation, and that you want NO connection possible to this old situation, and then after they’ve left you’ll be able to go in and change the passwords on all your passworded systems except for the computer’s main password.
The Geeks will ask you what password you want on the main system. Choose the most exotic, hard to spell foreign name you can think of: then creatively add some numbers and write it down somewhere so you don’t forget it and get locked out of your own system…because it will be real stubborn about letting you in without it!
Once the whole system is password protected, it’s harder to crack, the other guy will be out of your hair, and you’ll find your system probably will run faster (without a leech in the works) and you’ll not have trouble saving things or putting MS Reader onto your computer! (Mine came in with only ONE icon!)
Get a small notebook and write down every software and every password you henceforth devise, and store that little notebook as carefully as you would a savings account passbook.