Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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I want and iPad but I don’t need one

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I keep seeing advertisements for iPads and I can’t help myself – I want one. I’m sure that I really don’t need one. My laptop keeps me busy enough … but oh with the iPad I’d be all the more mobile, it’d be so much more easy to move around and play on the internet. Or so it seems.

Of course, once I start looking online at actual iPads and see the prices and then start adding up all the accessories that I’d probably want to get for it I end up talking myself out of getting one. I mean, just trying to decide between ipad cases alone is mind boggling! LOL

I’m sure I’ll have an iPad or some future version someday, but at this point I just can’t justify the purchase. Of course if I suddenly come into a lot of extra money or something well … maybe …

Do you have an iPad or have you been toying with the idea of getting one?

Having trouble with my new Laptop computer

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Remember that Laptop computer that I bought back in February? Well … it’s been giving me a lot of trouble this week. In fact, it took about two hours just to shut down on Wednesday night and since then – all day Thursday and now today I’ve been desperately trying to figure out what’s wrong with precious computer.

Last night I was so frustrated that I felt like picking up the computer and throwing it at a metal building or something.

Now after taking a few things out of the startup, and using CCleaner to cleanup the registry it’s working a little better. I actually think that my Firefox browser might be causing all the trouble. Windows just keeps freezing and it keeps getting that blue spinning thing like it’s working working working or busy doing something .. for minutes or even HOURS at a time! I mean it’s literally taken hours for my laptop to shut down. Nothing I did would shut it down. I had to unplug it and wait for the battery to die and then it finally shut down.

The odd thing is that the computer seems to work fairly well in Safe mode. It was while I was in Safe mode that I discovered that Chrome seemed to work fine, but if I started up Firefox all the webpages I visited were sort of in text mode. Even after I updated Firefox the pages are still in text mode. I have no idea why … but the computer seems to be working better in normal mode at this time … I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s a software problem.

If anyone has any ideas for any more things that I can do to fix my Laptop. It’s running on Windows 7 – 64 bit. Thanks!

Keeping in touch with a family that’s spread across the country

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My family is really spread out across the country. I have a niece that just moved to New Brunswick with her husband, and my middle brother lives in Vancouver … just those two alone cover both sides of the country! So … we’ve all been talking lately by email and we’ve decided to try either setting up Skype or Google Chat.

A couple of my brothers have already set up Skype, and one of my brothers who happens to have just treated himself to a Mac computer is really experimenting. He’s been trying out things like Nettalk on his iPod and I think another application on his Mac and iPad, plus he’s the one who got all of us thinking about trying Google Chat although it seems like most of us are more familiar or more comfortable with using Skype.

I haven’t set up Skype on my computer yet. I’ve been too busy getting my yard and garden in order after all the Fence whoha. I’ve spent the last two weeks working on my garden and yard doing all the stuff that I would have done in the last two months if I hadn’t had to delay everything for that darn no character fence. Yes I’m a tired and not so happy camper .. but hopefully I’ll get happier as my garden recovers. Oh and speaking of the neighbors who put in the fence? They’ve barely spoken to us since they put it in and their kid is making a racket again. I almost feel like they were nice to us and got their kid to be a little quieter so that we’d go along with the fence and now that it’s in they could care less that their little girl is waking me up. She’s even back to slamming doors again. Sigh … I don’t think I’ll be using the video side of Skype … I’ll scare my family with how tired I look lately.

Anyway … I will install Skype and maybe set up Google Chat soon. I keep telling my family that too. Hopefully by this weekend. I want to experiment with it. In the mean time I’m still communicating the old fashioned way with my family … ie by phone. My second oldest brother’s birthday this past Friday, the one who bought himself a Mac, so I was sure to call him on his birthday. He had a great day with his family. Picnic with his wife, dinner out with his kids and I think he said he was thinking of getting a golf buddy tour gps watch for himself … yes another treat. Oh well he deserves it.

If I do manage to set up a Skype account I’ll let you guys know … maybe I can Skype with some of my blogging friends too. Of course if I do I’ll never get any of my work done …





I might have a problem with my laptops keyboard

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I’m still trying to get used to the keyboard on my new laptop.

Last night I was convinced there was something wrong with the left shift key because sometimes when I was typing, perhaps I’d use the left shift to capitalize a letter, and the cursor would suddenly jump up a paragraph.

Now I’m not sure if there’s something wrong with the keyboard or if I’m just having trouble getting used to the layout. It is different than my other laptops keyboard and it’s possible that I’m hitting a key that I’m unaware of as I type. Anyway the shift key cursor jump thing has happened a little less today than it did last night so maybe it was me. Hopefully that is the case, I’d hate to have a problem with the computer when I’ve only had it for two weeks.

I am having fun with all the new features on the computer. I’m even working on a to do list .. maybe a shopping list for tomorrow with all the things that we need at the grocery store, some new flours to use in our bread maker, and some l-leucine for my husbands cousin because we’re seeing him later in the evening tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll gradually discover more little gems on the computer via windows 7 that I can experiment with over time.

Do you ever have problems with your laptop keyboard? Have you had trouble with a shift key causing the cursor to jump up a paragraph?

Trying to set up my brand new laptop

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Well I mentioned in one of my last posts that I was thinking about getting a new Laptop computer since the one I was using was getting slower and slower – well I broke down and ordered one online a week ago and it arrived on Monday afternoon.

My old laptop is still working, but it’s five years old and the hard drive is small and considering how much work I do with graphics etc it makes sense for me to have a computer with a big hard drive and a fast cpu.

So .. to make things more affordable I bought an Asus Laptop. The new Notebook is an Asus N53JF has a 500 gb hard drive, 4 gb memory, Intel Core i5-460M 2.53GHz, Blu-ray DVD player burner, 15.6″ Full HD display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M graphics.

I know I’ve been saying that we have absolutely no extra money and here I am spending quite a bit of money in the last week on a new computer, a flip camera and even an iPod … but well … the computer is pretty much how I make my money and therefore living these days and the flip camera might fit into that picture too because the videos will help make the blog posts more interesting once we get them going. The iPod … well .. that was just for my husband and I .. a splurge that we’ve been wanting to buy for a long time.

The only other technological gadget that we need to update is our cell phone. The cellphone that we’re using is one that I got for free from a marketing company back in 2006. It works but it’s kind of outdated. I think it’s time I start looking for a new cell phone or as they say in Quebec .. Téléphones cellulaires … soon … but not quite yet.

Ok .. back to figuring out how to get my email settings from my old computer to my new computer …. it’s just not working! Grrrrrr.

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