Keyboard Karma Blog ~ Helen Crozier

technology crashing all around me!

I'm just having one of those technology failure weeks! Computer graphics card failing on the laptop so it's impossible to use. External drive that I was to use to back up data before laptop is sent for repairs - dead! Flip video camera distorting videos on transfer to any computer - hmmm what else may go wrong? I have heard that electrical/technical issues happen in groups for other people too - what catastrophes have you had happen all at once? I'm looking for a way to prevent these disasters as it seems to put a halt to not only business but life itself!
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Crazy busy? Overstretched, Overbooked, About to Snap?

  

Almost two years ago I purchased this book - Crazy Busy by Edward M Hallowell from Amazon and got a lot out of it. Who wouldn't be attracted by a tagline Strategies for handling your fast paced life?

I've decided to read it again! I feel as if I'm finding so many 'time poor' people that I need to revisit Edward Hallowell's strategies with a view of helping those who are feeling shattered and scattered.

I have no doubt that developing one's technological capabilities can and does help make things easier. It is unfortunate that people don't treat themselves to the tools and skills that will definitely help without breaking the bank! I so agree with the author when he says "You should make sure that you do not meely make your life faster and more full of data - more difficult to follow and keep rack of -in an effort to make it more fulfilling".  One woman I know has recently just left her web development business to persue a photography career - she's unplugging and I think that's fabulous! Conversely this week I also heard about a woman with 50,000 emails in her inbox!!

What do you think? Is technology providing you with more quality time or is it just filling your life up with more 'things and stuff' of the digital/electronic variety?

When PDF documents won't print.....

 

My oh my I've just spent close on an hour trying to get a pdf document to print for my partner. He was cursing the computer, the printer and everything else - threatening to drive down to the office to do it and I of course said 'don't worry I'll get it happening...'

Well eventually I did but I resorted to my very old trick of basically giving up really and downloading the latest version of Adobe Reader which is now 9.1. We were working with 8.1 on this laptop so I thought a freshen up would not go astray. Sure enough after all the palaver of downloading, updating and restarting the much needed document printed.

It's not something I can explain but I have seen PDF printing issues resolved several times before by the simple task of updating to the latest version of Adobe Reader which is available .

Chapura Key Task issue resolved

I had crashing problems with my task list on the iphone! Chapura support were very prompt in getting back to me with the solution. I needed to remove any & or < > symbols in the category names. Yes.... something quick and simple...what bliss that it works and now my lists are synchronising and keeping me sane.

Chapura key tasks for iPhone crashing

Was loving Chapura's Key Tasks for iphone especially since categories were added but today I went to sync (over the air) and got this lovely crash. Last time it happened the only solution I found was to take the app off then reinstall. Support didn't know of the error. Have emailed them again asking for help. My task list is on the laptop which I left at the office and also on the Chapura server but I can't get to it. Should I possibly consider using a moleskine notebook? Anyone else finding this error?

Technology is making me nauseous

Not having a good experience at the mo;ment with technology and my productivity is at an all time low.

Last Monday my laptop came back with a new systemboard. All appears well with that however I'm still to restore all the software back onto it.

On Wednesday my home broadband suddenly slowed down to dial-up speed and despite protests of innocence from family members I was unable to ascertain what had caused us to go over our 12gb limit. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with my provider trying to get to the bottom of it. Seems I've not done such a good job at emphasising 'honesty is the best policy'. Someone who shall remain nameless had got a little bored in the las week of the school holidays. The offending computer was removed from the premises for two weeks. I tried not to be livid..... I tried to stay as calm as I possibly could!!

I spent virtually the whole of Thursday on the phone to both Apple and Microsoft. My appointments were not synchronising from the iPhone to Outlook. I seriously wasted 4 hours on this. Finally I took the advice from someone on an Apple forum and started with a fresh calendar. There must have been a corrupt entry causing havoc. It seemed to be fixed.

On Friday I tried to catch up ...... !!!

On the weekend I could not go on the computers at home because they were so unbearably slow. Despite upgrading my acccount to 20gb that would not take effect until the next billing cycle (ie) the first of August. grrrrrr.....

Yesterday I did however manage to reach the web on the iPhone and was very sad to discover that Randy Pausch had died on Friday.

This morning I set my alarm nice and early on the iPhone because it was back to a decent chance of work after 4 weeks of overlapping school holidays. The alarm went off at 6.15 and the iPhone decided to blow up at the same time. The alarm would not shut off and I kept getting error messages more or less telling me to remain calm but the iPhone could not take or receive phone calls. What the??

So.... another call to Apple. I've posted the faulty unit back to them. I'm back to my Treo which I had actually passed over to my daughter yesterday!! Lucky I could get it back. I'm also seriously considering only using a moleskine notebook and pencil!

I'm not feeling very secure in my productivity tools at the moment and it's a very unpleasant feeling. I was loving the iPhone .... it is beautiful. It does smart things .... I was very attached to it..... hopefully the trust will be restored after the repaired or replaced phone is returned within the next 7-10 working days!!!!!

Technology merry-go-round & iPhone day 6

Spending far too much time on the keyboard as it were - sorting stuff out. Of course being the impatient one, I couldn't wait for my laptop to come back from repairs before I started using the iPhone. This was a bit silly but I suppose understandable to a degree. I was synchronising the iPhone to the old toshiba then the repaired Lenovo returned Monday morning and wanted a piece of the action. Since then I've been spending far too much time getting things 'right'. I found I was entering appointments however on the iPhone and they wreen't coming through to my Outlook. Panic stations! Have spent a lot of time today on the phone to apple who were pretty helpful. They think there was a corrupted events section of Outlook causing the issue. I'm not so certain as there were loads of people on the Apple forums complaining about similar problems. Yuck!!

I also found out this strange fact. The iPhone has bluetooth but it only works with Apple headsets - nothing else!! Go figure!. So if I want to synchronise via bluetooth or god forbid send some data to another iPhone it won't happen. Weird.

I've found a suitable Outlook tasks replacement which I'm very happy with. I'll write about it later in the week. I think it will actually work better than Outlook which is great. There's the ability to link tasks to goals which I think is pretty cool. Back to work tomorrow, no more fiddling or tweaking!

All complaints aside I'm still loving my new phone.

My Lenovo Idea Pad dY510 has died or is at least very unwell

Disaster has struck and I'm so upset. My Lenovo laptop which I was just so happy with has crashed and burned. A couple of weeks ago it started to do some strange things when I turned it on (ie) it would turn on, the fan would make a loud noise then it would turn off before windows had even booted. I started to worry when it was happening every second day or so consequently I called Lenovo service on Wednesday.

My call went through to Canada of all places. However, the service man was exceedingly polite and apologetic for the inconvenience. We tried a restore to default bios as the first remedy.

That  night I went to write a blog post and the damn thing started blue screening me and shutting down. I couldn't do anything.

Thursday morning I spoke to Candada again - we tried a system restore but it would get to 20 percent then turn off!!  I have to say my heart felt like breaking. I'd been so very happy with it - to make up for all the dramas with the stupid ACER I bought last year. For once I thought Ihad a machine I could rely on!
When I broke the news to Poppy she said "Don't you ever feel like doing a job that doesn't involve computers?"

I have to confess I was momentarily attracted by the idea however it's going to a service centre and will fingers crossed come back as new. Compared to ACER service - Lenovo has been a charm - all the service reps in Canada (Jeremy, Chris & Chuck) were incredibly polite & helpful which does take the edge off the experience just a little.

Acer Power 1000: ready to throw it in swimming pool!!

I absolutely hate this machine and I'm afraid to say that others are going through a similar situation.
CNET Australia user reviews are here.

The random restarts were replaced by just pure shut downs - in the middle of some work - nice!!
It continues to make a horrific noise - sounds like a jet taking off - this is obviously the fan or cooling system but I can't stand it. The Lenovo in comparison is whisper quiet at all times.....
Now we have the cursor freezing - also in the middle of anything more demanding than a word document.

I've had frequent visitors to my blog arriving via google search pages "acer power 1000 restart" (or shutdown) so I'm not imagining it. I'm getting ready to reformat one last time and if any of these issues occur again I'm going to take this further. It's completely unacceptable for ACER to keep telling me that 'there's nothing wrong with the machine'.

If anyone else is going through similar behaviour with the ACER Power 1000 feel free to contact me and we'll contact them en masse.......

(I'm now glad I took out extended warranty - the 12 months was up last month......)

Rewired just in time for Christmas with the Grinch

On Friday in the heat poor Bagman drove 50km to get our digital set top box/recorder (TOPFIELD) sorted out. Long story (like the ACER) but we've had problems with bad recordings and jumbled pictures. It's been back for checkup 3 times and we were promised a replacement should it continue to muck up and providing we had the tv antenna checked. We did the new antenna and every thing seemed fine for a week or two but then back to crazy pictures again. The techs could find nothing wrong with it but I wasn't prepared for Bagman to come home with the same machine and the tech supervisor relented, giving us a temporary replacement box while they try to ascertain what the problem is (the whole time saying 'there's nothing wrong with your box'. Enough to drive you to tears.

Anyway I spent 3 hours trying to reconnect the tv, topfield and dvd recorder. Drove me nutty. Had pictures show it was wired last time but couldn't get a signal. All of a sudden at midnight we had a picture. Hurrah. This morning I got Poppy & ET to take photos of the connections AND draw pictures of how the connections were made. We really had to get it going in time to watch the Grinch. Funny Christmas movie - lots of great lines - well worth a look even from an adult's perspective. On that note, have a stupendous Christmas, one and all.

Calm Tech???

Last night I was playing with my new & wonderful GPS - mapping out the route I might take on our holiday after Christmas. In the middle of doing this I got a 'fatal error occurred, restarting' error. I didn't think much of it but went to go back into the maps section. Same error. Tried again. Same error. Tried to do a 'restore' which is like a reset which normally fixes all technology ailments. Strangely enough the 'restore' did not erase all data as I was warned so therefore it was not a proper reset and consequently the blasted error remained. I was furious but at midnight on a Saturday what could a girl do?

Today I googled and researched and could find nothing but praise for this MIO C520 model. What I could not find was any help for my restart error which stubbornly remained throughout the day. I took the next step of updating firmware from the mio website - feeling optimistic that this would be a certain cure. Nope. I sent a "Help please, I'm very upset" form to technical support and even tried (in vain of course) the tech support help line. No answer. I had imagined I would be 'out there' adventurously exploring. I guess I was secretly grateful it was raining for most of the day and I stayed indoors. Unbelievable..... my partner said "why is all this technology around you failing? Is it your titanium hip?" Could it be?

Technology casualties in my life right now are:-

• ACER desktop - randomly restarting with no warning - tech support deny there is anything wrong
• Treo 680 occasionally restarting when a call comes in and I press 'answer' - Palm suggested I do a 'hard reset' which I did. Symptoms still persist.
• Mio C%20 GPS (it WAS love at first touch) - fatal error, unable to access maps
• Topfield Masterpiece PVR (Personal Video Recorder) failing terribly - scrambled signal, sometimes no picture at all - it's been back three times for repair as well and is still not resolved
• Canon IXUS 65 digital camera- Poppy's birthday present in January - has this crazy lens error where it goes crazy then beeps at you before shutting down (a whole website has been devoted to this issue so it's obviously common)
• My toaster also gave up the ghost last week as well - does that count?

Enough is enough!!!!!How wonderful!!!I am no doubt going to spend the entire week before Christmas trekking all over town demanding justice and seeking technology that damn well does what it is supposed to do.

Excuse my language but I'm feeling very cross!!!

Good tech/bad tech

Practised with the GPS today and love it to bits. You know it has 500,000 points of interest and you can add your own as you find/think of them. Had it mounted on the windscreen on the car - very easy to install. I've even downloaded some photos onto it to show off. On the way to the city this morning I searched in POI for 'dental' - typed in bio - the first three letters of my dentist's business name and up popped their name, address and phone number! I could dial if my phone was connected by bluetooth as well as set that as the destination and off we go. Felt a bit silly as I walked through the streets testing it out - definitely need to plug in the headphones so people don't stare at me while 'Jason' the speaker tells me where to go!!

ACER came back today. On the piece of paper they said they tested it for 5 hours and there was nothing wrong. Running a bit slow because of all the startup programs I'm running. That wasn't the issue. The issue WAS the random restarts. I even had the random restarts after I had reformatted and was running very few programs. I couldn't face calling them today . Will face it on Monday.

Technology Rage: is there an anger management course?

I finally packed up my ACER desktop and sent it off by courier to the service department this afternoon. It's had three service calls and continues to randomly restart which is more than a little unsettling. I bought this computer in May and it's never been right - the problem is that after some action (either mine or the technician's) it takes anywhere up to 2 weeks before it plays up again - so the whole saga just drags on. I hate it when technology behaves badly and I also hate that I put up with it for far too long because I can't stand watching my life tick by on hold with customer service.

Richard Glover very eloquently spoke of similar despair in his Sydney Morning Herald article, "An Amish State of Mind"  on Saturday.

"There seems no other solution than to burn down your house and start again"

Fixya needs fixing

Desperately looking for help with a Treo 750's inability to sync via bluetooth and thought I would go to Fixya (a technology help website run by users) and this is what I found!!! Does this mean that technology generally is messing us about? Give me strength .... I think it's time for the week to end :-)

Calm Tech Coach & ACER Power 1000

I've had this ongoing saga with ACER for over 2 months. The stupid thing restarts randomly and it doesn't feel good. The poor service guy came yesterday for the third time and replaced the power supply. He said that if it mucks up again I would need to escalate the call and get the machine replaced. It crashed twice on Monday when I was accessing Outlook. Today it crashed and restarted when I was installing Jing. I've been saving and saving but I do a lot of work in 10 minutes and I'd lost it. I've put an escalation web form in - instead of waiting on hold on the telephone for 50 minutes but of course I've heard nothing back. It's really frustrating to get a 'lemon'. I don't feel settled when technology mucks up because I can't trust it. I've been worried about doing remote support in case the damn thing restarts in the middle of it. Now I know for sure I'll be using my laptop until I get a replacement. My 'rule' is that no matter how horrid the process is - you've got to perservere and get things fixed even if it means terrible times on the phone.  Sometimes clients pay me to do these calls for them because they can't stand it. I'm really good doing it for other people but not 'so calm' when I'm doing it for myself. Here's hoping tomorrow brings a positive result.