Mouse With the Other Hand

I am right-handed, but with having had two kids and having to hold them all the time, I had to get used to using either hand to move the mouse or using the touch pad.

Although I’m ambidextrous anyway, I still wasn’t used to using my left hand to move the mouse, so I still had to learn. Surprisingly it wasn’t all that hard and it actually feels more comfortable than using my right hand. Obviously, this will not work very well if you have a mouse made to use with the right hand.

I just read about why you should mouse with the other hand over at LifeHacker. Check it out and maybe you’ll start using your left hand.

My Desktop Computer Is Wasting My Time

If you have noticed the lack of blog entries from me, you can blame my computer.

I don’t know about anyone else, but my desktop computer wastes a lot of my time. Something goes wrong with the hardware and I have to figure out what is wrong. Is it the hard drive, the RAM, the cable, the motherboard?

On Friday, my computer crashed in the middle of working. I use my laptop and Remote Desktop Connection to access my desktop computer. My laptop can’t handle a lot of software running due to the lack of available memory, so I use RDC to use my desktop computer’s resources instead, with the convenience of sitting wherever I want to. While on the laptop, I noticed read/write errors just popping up and then the Internet disappeared (I use my Nintendo DS WiFi Dongle).

Anyway, there were a lot of read/write errors and Windows wouldn’t start up again, just show blue screens after trying to load. And I couldn’t read the blue screens because they would flash and the computer would restart. Trying to repair the hard drive didn’t work either. Nothing would work. I even tried installing Windows on another hard drive, but there were read/write errors with it. One try even had the setup telling me that there wasn’t enough space on the 80GB (empty) hard drive. That had to be a joke! It said I needed to remove some things from installing, because it required 2211958.7 MB! What!? (I have a picture to prove it.)

Just yesterday I tried removing RAM to see if any of the memory sticks were bad. I have 2.5 GB, and my computer has always been very picky about how they are put in there. Now I cannot even get all three of them to be happy in their original spots. My computer just beeps. So far, only the 512 MB one will go in just fine without me hearing beeps! If I want only 512 MB I will use the laptop!

I have even looked at the book for my motherboard for correct placement of the RAM, but the computer still doesn’t like it. I think when I had upgraded the RAM, everything had to be taken out (video card, etc) before it would take the RAM. How annoying huh?

My computer appears to work okay right now with just the 512 MB in there. But I’m not giving up. If I can only have 512 MB, my computer is dead to me! Over the weekend, I will probably try again.

Anyone else have more problems with desktops than with laptops?

The History of Backup

History of Backup is a very well written article, which discusses the different backup solutions that have been used over the years. It all starts in 1951 with punch cards and ends with network and online backup solutions.

For years and years, people have always known the importance of backing up information and files. This caused the need for larger storage. I even find myself making more than one backup of the same thing. Paranoid? Maybe, but at least I’ll know when one backup fails, I have another.

I remember when using floppy disks were very common and now it’s hard to find computers with floppy drives in them. Eventually though, with stacks of floppy disks, it made more sense to purchase larger storage solutions, such as CDs and then DVDs. With the constant need of backing up more and more files, better solutions are created.

According to Graziadio Business Report, Pepperdine University, hardware failure in 2003 was the number one cause of data loss, which means you would need to create multiple backups because of the possibility of a backup becoming corrupted due to hardware failure or physical damage. This article shows a table of causes and episodes of data loss.

It is very interesting to see how backup solutions have evolved over the years. There is even a timeline at the end of the article displaying when backup storage from punch cards to blu-ray disks and HD-DVD first came into use. It also shows when network storage and online backup solutions started coming around.

Besides reading History of Backup, check out the links provided throughout the article for more related information, especially The Evolution of the Major Computer Storage Devices PDF.

Read this article if you’re interested in seeing how data storage is evolving through the years. And, as always, I recommend backing up your data and if needed, make a second copy to be stored online so it’s in another location in case of fire or water damage.

Where do you think data solutions will be in several years from now?

Sponsored by SoftLogica

Keep the Footer at the Bottom

Keeping the footer at the bottom of the page when there is very little content on it can be very hard to do sometimes. I did everything I could think of, but the footer still didn’t stay at the bottom like I wanted it to. Or it would, but it was at the bottom of the browser and would cover content on a longer page.

Working on a client’s website, this was one thing that needed to be done. So, I looked all over Google for solutions and found several. Several solutions that didn’t seem to work. Because I don’t give up very easily on this kind of thing, I kept searching, going over the same solutions again thinking that I just might change something about them and get the footer to do what I wanted.

After a while of searching, I eventually came across one solution. Since I was desperate at that point I tried it out knowing that I could be wasting some more time. Entered in the correct CSS, refreshed the page and the footer was at the bottom of the window. Went to a longer page, the footer was below the content at the bottom of the page. I couldn’t believe it had actually worked!

If you have also had this problem before or just want to learn how it’s done for future reference, check out footerStickAlt. This is a very easy to understand solution!

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Well, I’m not sure how this one snuck up on me, but I have never heard of this day until yesterday when a client wished me a Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day. Then Justine Ezarik had mentioned on Twitter about it getting out of hand.

It seems that yesterday, every year is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. September 19. How come I have never heard of this before? I was very curious so I entered it in Google and the first result was www.talklikeapirate.com. I guess it’s the official site for the day, so go check it out if you’re as curious as I was.

Did I talk like a pirate? No. But, I did have a good day yesterday!

Happy belated Talk Like A Pirate Day!