Where is everybody?

[electra225]

It's been really quiet on the forum the last few days. I hope everyone is okay. I miss you guys......

[Doug]

In the house in cold ohio. Hate cold rain.
Trying to get organized and posting stuff on the bay

[electra225]

I'm glad you took a minute to post and that all is well. Maybe it won't be too long before it will be too cold to work outside and you can work on, AND SHARE, projects inside where it's warm......

[Conelrad]

Doing the headless chicken dance...

DG

[TC Chris]

Going to work.... Trying to adjust to it not being summer. As a bicycle commuter, I have to get the body adjusted to leaving the house at 27 deg. F. and then dealing with the wind chill--nobody thinks about that when they are hiding behind a windshield. As a naturally lazy person, my brain starts asking "What are you doing out there when you have two nice red trucks in the driveway?" Then the exercise warms up the body and the brain explains to itself that I'm really old and need to keep moving.

Waiting for the new Yakima rack to arrive for the new truck. (Times change: the rack system cost 10x what I paid for the wonderful '62 Corvair that I bought in 1970 and drove a full year before selling it for what I paid.) Finishing the fall chores--raked one tarpful of leaves when I got home--just barely light enough--and dragged them out front to curbside so the city can haul them away (as long as the snow doesn't start in). Still need to tuck the sailboat dinghy away and get the Xmas lights out. They won't be turned on until Dec., but every time I'm putting them up in finger-aching cold, I promise myself to do it earlier next year.

Today's mail delivery included two little kits from Jameco--green circuitboard Xmas trees with flashing red LED lights. They are in memory of my uncle, an EE. As a kid we visited once when he had made a little sequence of neon bulbs that flashed sequentially, a capacitative charge/discharge thing that sat on top of their TV. I thought it was so cool and have remembered it almost 70 years later.

I ride the bike downtown to the movie theater every Tuesday night for the film festival series. Sometimes in Wed. nights too, for the community-partners series. Now that it's winter and dark, I may see a current film at the commercial multiplex on the weekend (that requires driving). Still haven't seem the new Springsteen biopic. Going downtown, it's dark both ways now, but the trip home id the magic part. Most of the traffic is gone and it's just quiet, dark, and magical.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

It's good to hear from you guys. DG, we need to pick a Saturday and do "boy's stuff". It's been too long since the last time we did that.

Chris, the wife was telling me about a big crime spree in TC. Said that "in her day" such things were unheard of there. Seems like there are knotheads everywhere, trying to mess things up for the rest of us. One side of me wonders why a man your age would ride a bike to work in frigid weather. The other side of me says it's because you can. Have fun and stay safe!

[danrclem]

I'm still kicking even though I don't have a lot of kick left in me.

I'm trying to figure out why my computer temporarily freezes from time to time and certain things operate very slow almost all the time. From what I've read I suspect it's the CPU but I'm going to try and add some memory to it first because it's the cheapest thing to do that I know of. It might not fix it, but I don't think it'll hurt anything. Well, before the memory addition I'm going to dust the CPU very well especially around the fan to see if that helps. I might do that tomorrow morning. If that doesn't help, I'll probably buy a new CPU and try that out. I've priced them on ebay for a little over $20.00 but I need to verify that it's the right one. I bought this computer probably in about 2016 but I'm not really sure. I might be better off trying to buy a new one but then I'd have the hassle of transferring all of my information from this one to a new one.

My wife likes to celebrate Thanksgiving when she knows that everyone can make it so we're doing ours this Saturday. It won't be long until the real Thanksgiving gets here and I wish all of you a good Thanksgiving.

[electra225]

When we were rehosting the forum a couple of years ago, Mark taught me the value of clearing cookies and cache on my computer. I'm not sure I understand 100% of what those things do nor what conditions they create, exactly, but I know it sure helped my setup when I made this maintenance a routine. I probably should do it every month or so, but that stretches to six months before I think to do it. You might try clearing cookies and cache on your computer. It won't hurt anything. Good luck.

[Doug]

I have a computer that runs slow.
One thing is to empty your deleted files.
Y hen restart.
Restarted daily helps.

Run defragment.
I luck up on the web computer running slow and try the suggestions

[TC Chris]

Greg said: "One side of me wonders why a man your age would ride a bike to work in frigid weather. The other side of me says it's because you can. "

Chris entertains both thoughts every morning.

TC had a genuine tragedy the other day. Two teens were busy breaking into cars, but took a few moments off to shoot the attendant at a downtown parking garage. One of them--on camera--calmly walked over to retrieve his vape device as the man lay dying, took a few puffs, and then went about their business of breaking into cars again. Later they were suspected by cops and chased, and they took 5 shots at the officers. One pierced a pant leg but missed the cop's leg. It's incomprehensible. My theory is that too much of our entertainment is violence-focused, and there are too many guns around. When I was a kid, teens did not have guns. Maybe hunting guns, which were used for hunting. A local retired sports writer had a piece about taking his shotgun to school for bird hunting. Put it in his locker, a completely normal thing back then. Took it out after school to go hunting. But 17 and 18 year olds did not go around shooting strangers and letting them fie while they puffed away.

Chris Campbell

[William]

Danny, another very important thing to do is unplug your modem and router on a monthly basis. This comes from my computer geek friend and off the internet as well. Appartantly, they get constipated and by unplugging them it clears things out.

Bill

[stbasil]

Well, I've been sanding, sanding, sanding on my coffee table stereo....

[danrclem]

I can't promise that I did everything right, but I tried the things you guys mentioned. I cleared the cookies, I emptied my deleted files and I'm fairly certain that my computer has a scheduled defragment program, but I'll try to see if I can find that and check it out. Bill, I unplugged my modem from the phone service for 20+ seconds while it was still powered up. Is that the correct way to do it.

I tried a couple things that it's usually slow about doing and it seemed to help that out a bit. When I tried to open my photo gallery up it took a long time for that to happen like it usually does.

Thanks for the tips and even if it doesn't help right now it could be helpful in the future.

[electra225]

I have to reboot the modem and the router on my system about once a month. My computer is connected by a cable, the wife's is wireless. Typically, hers gets to where she has no Internet connection. I have to remove power to the modem and to the router, leave it off for one minute, then re-connect power. If I don't leave it for that long, the reboot doesn't usually work. I'm sure all systems are different in that regard. Since Mitch upgraded my computer to Win 11 and put in a solid state hard drive, I haven't had any problems with my computer running slow. SSD is the way to go.

Don't forget to reboot your computer after you make those changes....

[William]

Danny. I log off everything and shut then shut everything down. If you have a smart TV and it is running on WIFI I unplug that too. Basically anything that your internet connects too. Is your internet provided by a phone company or cable/internet company? On a service call that I had to have about a year ago the guy that my local cable/internet company sent told me to disconnect the line coming in from the street along from the modem and unplug the modem. The unplug the router and anything that connects to WIFI. Let it set for about 5 minutes before connecting. (I let mine set for an hour so everything cools off). Plug the street feed in first, then plug your router in and let it start to boot up before you plug in the modem. The modem needs to find the router as it is booting up. Then continue to bring everything back up. I have done this ever since the service guy told me how to do it and it has worked for me. I hope this helps.

Bill

[Doug]

"When I tried to open my photo gallery up it took a long time for that to happen like it usually does."

Maybe your hard drive is almost full or maybe need more memory.

[danrclem]

I tried everything you guys mentioned but didn't do the router/modem exactly like you all recommended. I'll do that after I shut it down this evening. I'll probably keep it unplugged overnight. My modem/router is all built into one and I don't have anything running off of the wifi except for the TV and it's not smart.

I ordered a 4-gig memory stick that was in Indy this morning, so it'll probably be here tomorrow or Monday. My hard drive is 1 TB and I'm thinking I looked at it some time back and it wasn't full, but it won't hurt to check again. The reason I'm think it may be the CPU is because I read that if it operated at 80% or more all the time that something was wrong with it and mine is operating at above that.

My granddaughter's husband is supposed to know a lot about computers, and he'll be here tomorrow, so I'll have him to take a look at it.

[electra225]

We have a local guy, Mitch, who runs a computer business, but also speaks "old guy" so we can understand what he is trying to tell us. The thing I appreciate about Mitch other than his affable personality is that he not only knows computers, but also knows audio, how to get audio to a computer and process it. That is rare nowadays. I'm trying to figure out how I can use a Windows 7 version of Windows Media Player with the Windows 11 operating system. Media Player went out with Win 7 as far as I know.

[danrclem]

I wish I had a Mitch in my area that I could talk to. There might be but my wife won't let me get out much.

I checked my storage, and it said the hard drive had 337 GB used and had 582 GB free so there shouldn't be a problem there. I figured those numbers would've added up to 1000, but they didn't.

I went back and opened up the task manager, and it was still showing a high percentage of usage for the CPU. I scrolled down and found that my photos were using 44% (give or take a little) of the CPU usage. I didn't have any photos open so it seems strange that it would be doing that. I almost nothing about computers so it's possible that it may be normal.

[electra225]

The numbers won't add up to 1000 because of the room the OS takes up, plus all the junk the manufacturer loaded onto the computer before you got it. 1T is a lot of room. Not likely you will ever use it all.....