da tomāto

Lost 4 working hours when I updated Windows on my laptop... and about an hour more to repair the error on the Office programs after the update.  Good thing that Office only needed the "Quick Repair" to fix that 0xc0000142 error. This is the easiest fix. My Office is working again without that error after running Quick Repair. The Windows update can be unnerving because the screen would go black sometimes or be stuck on a % and you don't know if your computer froze or it's just running in the background. I usually check the "processing" light - if it's blinking, it's still doing something so I leave it; but if it's steady, it probably froze and I need to hard restart.

Myskgras Comforter by Ikea Hope it can save my ass from pressure sores...

They call it the "anniversary update." It was forced on me yesterday. It lasted 3 hours. I thought today is Friday. It's Saturday. I feel I lost a day. Now my sticky notes look bad. I'm not updating Windows again. My wifi is now set to "metered."

The fudge! Less than 2 years into buying my HP Pavilion 11" laptop, its hard disk fails! It happened yesterday: It froze around 2 minutes in. I thought the HDMI cable to the monitor was loose. I shut off the laptop and put it on my lap to reach behind the monitor... The base of the laptop was HOT! I tried to boot it a few more times but it would freeze before it can load Windows. F2 during start-up -> Quick System check. All passed except Hard Drive Short DST Check: Failed (screenshot's at the bottom of this post). This HP laptop was pretty expensive for me, too. Sigh. Says I should call HP to know what the failure id/code in red means but, I don't have the energy for this anymore. I need to work. I ordered a new laptop online last night, a different brand at a fraction of what I spent on this HP at the mall less than 2 years ago. I can't get over it - it's not even 2 years yet, I could've bought 2 more new laptops back then; a spare and a spare of the

MAY 20, 2016 FRIDAY Fudge it . If I can't see clearly, I can't work. If I can't work, I don't earn. My eyesight is worse: -8.00 for both eyes with astigmatism (R 1.75 & L 2.00). My new prescription eyeglasses is ₱₱ kahit net na ng 20% (PWD-cardholder discount). It will have anti-glare coating to relieve eye strain from looking at a computer screen too long. It will have to be special ordered. The frame I chose. Dropped by Verona Optical in SM Muntinlupa on our way home from Alabang for this. Their shop is on the 2nd floor beside the food court. At least it's done. We can pick up my new specs next week. MAY 23, 2016, MONDAY I can see clearly now, the rain is gone... No glare. Good. I like the case too. Magnetic closure, shaped like a Toblerone box so it's steady on a flat surface.

My lamp is broken . Bought this USB LED bulb from the online shop, Lazada PH. Note re: Lazada, since I've signed up, I've received email spam... a lot of it... everyday. From shopping to gambling sites (mostly from gambling domains). Lazada can share our email address with their "affiliates," says so in their terms last I checked. Bad. 04/04/2016 1:58 AM MONDAY No Internet connection. Lost it around 1:10 a.m. Couldn't reach the pldt modem to power-cycle. Waited 20 minutes, thought that maybe it'll come back. It didn't. OK, can do nothing about it now. It'll have to wait till morning. Hello, bed. 04/04/2016 8:59 PM MONDAY Got up at 10 a.m. Still offline. Went to modem. All lights good. Turned modem off. Checked dial tone. It's fine. Checked pldt account. It's current, paid in advance pa nga e. Turned modem on... we're online. SIGH.

I knew this was going to happen . Last weekend, I turned the desktop pc on. After several long beeps, it did not boot and the fan was on so, I powered it down. When I turned it on again after an hour, the fan ran but no post and no boot. I gave up. Good thing that I already bought a laptop and my files are backed up. I opened the tower today to remove the hard drive. I already unplugged the data and power cables from the hdd in this picture. I'm going to sell the rest so I can at least get something out of it now. I already spent so much money fixing it these last 3 years. One thing that I'm thinking about is my Win 8.1 license - what if I want to use it on a new machine? A solution from the MS forums so far was that if you were to get the "not genuine" prompt after installing it on the new machine, you then call Support (call from the new computer, I believe), try to get a human being on the other line, convince them that the old machine is dead, that it

Oct. 13, 2015, Tuesday What now? Did i press the power button the wrong way? My Win 8.1 desktop was on a "repairing," bsod ("...a problem...), restart loop tonight with "bios update... creating bios image..." and error descriptions on the bsod occasionally showing up. Must say though, the bsod on 8.1 is not so scary. *bsod (blue screen of death) Of course, I tried to boot from my usb media but it wouldn't go through from 1-time boot, not even when I put it first on bios. Is my mobo faulty? Dunno but something is. Just waited for it to hang a 3rd time so I can power down for a fresh try in an hour or so. 4th Round. Somehow, it managed to repair itself and I was able to work until a bsod/restart came on. Twice, I had a 15-minute window to work. But before another bsod could come on again, I shut it down properly. Will see if it will be better (or worse) tomorrow. When it rains, it pours. Been having one tech problem after another. It's wo

when there are issues on your website... and it's the vendor's fault... and all you can do is wait till they get it back to normal

Sudden blackouts -- Another reason to use a laptop instead of a desktop pc - and I am considering it. While working last night, I heard a loud boom(!) from the street and the power went out! Waah, the machine! Electricity returned 5 minutes later, maybe less. I was too scared to turn the computer on again right away (and frying something inside ) so I turned the AVR off and waited 15 minutes. It booted up OK, no errors or anything. I did not want to keep it on any longer in fear of another blackout so I just shut it down properly and went away. I did what work I could do on my phone (which was not a lot - last night was not a productive night). What was that noise? It sounded like something blew up.

I prep'd for it so I'm going to do it, dammit! I prepared on and off for a week: researched, went through the steps and what to expect in my head, learned possible snags and their fixes (from other people's first-hand accounts), prep'd what I needed to use, backed up drivers and my files, wrote down my key and printed out my step-by-step notes. It took a while but I was ready (and pumped). August 5, 2015: Clean install of Win 8.1 via bootable USB. Success! There were only 2 things that my notes didn't cover: There were multiple one-time boot options on my mobo (press F12 to get to this boot menu on GA-A75M-UD2H). There were 4 choices for USB. Obviously, USB-Zip and USB-CDROM were out. I thought, "Oh, USB-HDD but what is this USB-FDD?" [Six minutes later...] Ok, not FDD. Should've went with my gut and picked HDD the first time but no harm done and lesson learned. Uhm, yeah, pick USB-HDD. NOTE: The bootable USB was easily created with Window

7/6/15, Monday A desktop PC user with Win 8.1 will eventually come across an issue when shutting down the machine. That issue is the hybrid shutdown. Apparently, this default setting keeps the power on long enough as it preps for a "fast startup." I only discovered this last night. Two weeks into upgrading the system, I already noticed that when I shut down, the monitor powers off first but the tower will run for more than 10 secs before it then completely powers off. I was OK with that, I could wait. But at last night's shutdown, 5 minutes after the monitor went blank, the power led light and fan were still on. The processing indicator light already stopped blinking and was off. Hesitantly, I had to hold the power button down so it will turn off completely. Now, given my recent computer problem , that was done with a sense of pending anxiety. I looked it up and saw that "shutdown but power still on" was an old issue for desktop PC users with Win 8 (an

June 19, 2015, Friday Short story: Hard shutdown. Overclocking error. Messed up display. Restarts by itself. Bluescreens. Then, PC fan turns on but no beep and no post. No joy. Long story: It was on. I just turned the monitor off and forgot about it. I pressed the power button (quick press) thinking I was turning it on which actually shut it down. I realized my mistake. The power light on the tower was still on so I had to do a hard shutdown/shut-off (hold down the power button) so I can start again. On bootup, It showed the "boot failure because of overclocking" screen. I continued as normal. Related: The only other time I had this "overclocking" screen was last month. I remember that the machine took longer than normal to boot. I did a hard shutdown, powered on, saw the overclocking screen which I took a picture of (see image above), continued as normal and was able to work without a glitch. Back to the long story... PART 1: While working, the displ

Waah! Had to install the big G's Chrome browser for quality checks and it ate up a chunk of what little system space I had left. I am seriously thinking about adjusting the sizes of my partitions. Hmmm... most of the mobile visitors are on iOS. Should I get one? It will be for... quality checks.

Q: For websites with responsive designs/templates, how do you keep small images from being distorted (in other words, enlarged and pixelated = ugly) on smartphone screens? A: The simple solution is to set the width within the IMG style tag. For example: Your image is 150px-wide. To lock it at 150px (the upper limit should be the image's actual width so it will still look nice), use: <img alt="#" src="#" style="width: 150px;"> Up Next: How to center (awkward... verb) an image when the <div> or <p> elements don't work. These alignment tips from w3.org clearly explains it all. It says CSS but we can use the style code within the body's html source which sort of trumps the CSS (if you're using a template) so we can still make style changes per page. OK, here's the fix: <img src="#" alt="#" style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; width:#px;"> On a responsiv

Have been posting less frequently over the years. There are no new experiences to write about - good or bad (though I prefer the good). I did get extremely annoyed that someone went through a cartridge of printer ink in one week. The ink is not cheap and I would rather they economize and go outside to make photocopies instead of printing several copies in one go. When it was my turn to print something, the output was horrible and the low ink levels sign was in my face. I only print one two-page document a month, I expect everything is fine when I do.

Upset that the mobile web version of Evernote stopped working for me this week. After signing in, it does not adjust to my screen properly. And to log-out, I have to manually type "/Logout.action" pa. Hay, sayang.

Situation We have our domain and email on GoDaddy. We will change nameservers from custom to standard (park the domain). Question Will our email (mx records) be affected? Will our email stop working? Answer Not at all. Email will work as if nothing's changed. Source Personal experience. You're welcome.

I have a partitioned HDD, partitioned while we still used XP. The man allocated 20 GB for the system. Did maintenance work regularly and kept that baby running smoothly. Fast-forward X years, I updated to Win7. Problem is most of the system partition is used even with the bare minimum of programs installed (only what i need, the biggest hog is adobe reader), free space was only 3.+ GB. Boot up was fast enough but still, it may suffer if it gets any lower. So, I still go through regular disk cleanup for a few megabytes of space (and peace of mind). Then Glenda happened. After the power flickered, it created a system restore point which ate up memory. After a normal start-up and restart, it deleted itself. But memory was down to 2.4 GB -- not OK. I didn't want to start over (format, etc.) for more space which typically takes a very long time. After defrag+cleanup it was still a low 2.6 GB. I could try extending the partition but no, too chicken. So, what else could I do for n

... because I had to. Someone said our custom-built desktop computer's hardware and parts have a useful life of four to six years, and then, you'll either have to upgrade or replace something. That was six years ago (2008). He was right. The motherboard died last year . Useful life: five years. We replaced it with Gigabyte A75M-UD2H and upgraded the memory and processor. Last week, on June 26, the bottom display of the AOC 16" widescreen monitor went bad. The bottom 1/3 of the display was covered with a white, not-totally opaque row where image changes rendered in slow motion. Did it look like that at startup? Yes. Take a screenshot (print screen button) and paste it on Paint, is it still there? No. Definitive test: We hooked it up to another machine and the white row did not disappear -- the monitor is shot. Useful life: 6 years. Go and buy a new one. The recommendation? HDMI for higher resolution (min. 1080p) AND buy an HDMI cable too because it doesn