RIP Geraldine Colle Lobel, Grandmother

9-27-1920 to 4-1-2015 From Eric, per his request.

RIP Ronald Seiden

From Eric, per his request.

Paul McCartney Rocks SunLife Stadium

It was twenty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. Okay, that’s totally inaccurate but it remains a fine way to begin a Beatles related post. The concert began with a pre-concert meal at the Hard Rock Casino, but since I was a bit early, I decided to donate some money to […]

The Quagmire Of My Mind

I guess I actually need to make a post with the title of my blog in it after all these years. Having bad memories you can’t get rid of, try the Death Bear. Yeah. Right out of the LA Times comes a story on this New York City performance artist who has taken his craft to a […]

April Fool’s Day 2010

Today’s been a busy day on the Internet with April Fool’s jokes though this year’s crop is less than stellar on average. One of the more amusing ran in London’s Telegraph newspaper revealing that Virgin Media uses ferrets as the key to bridge the digital divide. Many major news outlets ran articles on everyone else’s jokes. Some of the better ones […]

Dark Side Of The Moon Tattoo

I was wondering if I was going to blog today as I had a lack of content. Thanks to Paul, I now have content. He sent me a group of “20 worst” links [LINK?] and I thought I’d share this one with you. The twenty worst tattoo typos. I won’t mention that the guy made […]

Insomnia Is Wonderful

Not. I’m starting this post at 2:35am local time. Why? Because I went to bed at 1130pm and gave up trying to sleep at 1250. The cough doesn’t help the sleeping. I did email, checked AFDB, and sent some IMs. Almost nobody was awake to bother, though I did bug SWMBO for a bit. I […]

How to Train Your Dragon

I wasn’t going to see this film. I thought the previews looked silly and the title made it seem uninteresting. The film needs a better name. The reviews were pretty good so ultimately, I decided I’d go see it. The Higgi, Mom, Timmy and went along with me. And with the aid of a shitload […]

Tickle In My Throat Still

Being sick sucks big time. I don’t even feel bad. There’s just this tickle from the dreaded sinus drain that keeps making me cough. I hate it. A lot. And when I lie down, it’s brutal. I had a great dinner with Steph tonight. She’s an ex-employee — the only one I’m actually friends with […]

Offensiveness And Videos Galore

Sometimes it’s fun to be offensive, especially if it means getting under the skin of someone without them even knowing why. This example pleases me greatly. Sometimes a post begs a reply and this one was no exception. My reply was especially pithy with double meaning inside. I never imagined how quick the bait would […]

Computer Things That Vex Me

April 4, 2005 / by Eric / 0 Comments

Firefox got rid of my favourite Mozilla feature. Mozilla had many flaws that Firefox does not, but it could give me a pop-up window when my favourite sites were updated. Many go months without a change. I miss that feature. Any way to make it happen on Firefox Mac?
I use MacLink Plus to convert WordPerfect Mac (OS-9) to MS Word for OS-X. For many documents the printed results are, well, just wrong. It’s no secret that MS Word blows chunks, but there’s no other alternative. I know it’s not the conversion process because MS Word in OS-9 could read WP files and it couldn’t print them correctly either. (The bug occurs in documents with columns or mixed justifications on one line).
I still can’t convert my Claris Resolve documents to any OS-X spreadsheet easily. I can load them one at a time, save them in a very, very old Excel format and then load them into the new Excel and re-save them. The resulting document does preserve my formulae, but the formatting is mostly lost. Claris Resolve rocks. The thing is, AppleWorks spreadsheet is a stripped down version of Resolve (which is actually Informix Wingz* in disguise). So it should be easy, but it isn’t.
I couldn’t print from OS-9 and my driver wouldn’t install in OS-9 because you have to boot in OS-9 to install the OS-9 version. Well, I got pissed today and found that if you do a “get info” on the file hidden inside the package, there’s a check-box to force the program to boot in OS-9. It installed and I can print again.

I claim another victory in the “one person at a time campaign” — my friend Jan is very happy with his new Mac and is dumping his last remaining PC. He has thanked me numerous times and is wondering why he didn’t listen to me years ago. Now, he’s just converted his parents to the world of the Mac. Make a difference: find someone, and convert them. Save another soul from the dark side.

Lastly, if anyone has solutions to any of the computer issues above that vex me, I’d appreciate them.

— E

*And Informix Wingz is a version of a very, very old PC program called “Smart” and while we’re at it, Excel is derived from an old Apple II program called Microsoft Multiplan. True fact. Little known.

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