The Visible Woman...January 11, 2001

Awake/asleep. Here/there. Actually, all these (six-digit) dates like 01/10/01 and 01/11/01 have me chasing for the programmer's calculator. Also, have you noticed how blithely everyone writes those six-digit dates? Will people who are babies today, suddenly wonder as 2100 approaches...did someone account for 01/01/00 being GREATER than 12/31/99??? Programmers still let us type two digit years year and there. Of course, it can just have a meaning in the context of the program you are using. But will we know for sure? I'm always thinking how my great nephew, if he lives to be 100, will celebrate on 02/19/2100 or is that 2/19/00?

Foggy day. In my head, too. I really, really have to sleep properly. When I get up, I try to decide whether to pack up my mom's computer and get ready to take it to her. Or maybe actually take it over there. In the end, I decide to burn it in for a few more days and take it on the weekend. Figure out how I'm going to 'train' my mother. Dell sent it with this Attune software from Aveo. What it seems to do is broadcast stuff to some place on the WEB about what kind of Dell it is and what region you are in. Then it collects any alerts from Dell and distributes them to you. That's a pretty cool idea, in a way.

Other Windows ME things baffle me a bit. Why hide the File Explorer under Accessories? Oh, well, there is a great pinball machine. I have two machines set up with the keyboards and mice one above another. This is occasionaly annoying when I start mousing or typing for the wrong machine. Still, my stupidity aside, Windows ME boots slowly, does unexpected things (do they know my mother?) and doesn't seem, well, rock solid. What did I expet? One thing that is weird is that is keeps wanting to connect when it's actually already on the LAN and has an Internet connection. I find places to tell it to 'dial only if there is no connection' but they seem to get reset? Well, Mom won't have this problem...she will always be dialing. Probably shouldn't have put in a LAN card but it makes downloads nice if I have to fix anything and, of course, it means I could use this box here if we ever switch around without having to go out and get a card and install it. I note that the installed software takes 2.26 GB of the 10 Gig drive I got her. Remember when one gigabtye was unthinkably large? Indeed, the computer I have a zillion pictures on has only about 5 gig used. Wow..things are F-A-T these days . Why I remember when we had to fit programs into 64K. And that was on a mainframe and we hadn't a clue we'd ever have PCs.

The day was spent mostly working on something that I feel I shouldn't have to do. Except for lunch at Brio Vista and a quick trip by Barnes and Noble. (OK, my spending was out of control today. But the books I bought were in the bargain category.)

We had dinner at our club. I overhead conversations about pretty beaches and falling stocks. Doesn't that sound pretentious? Not pretty beaches and falling stocks. 'Our club.' We worked out at the Metropolitan Club for years. They quit having regular dining during the bust. Maybe that'll be the 'last bust.' We'll see. Now that the Met Club was evicted from downtown office space to make way for lawyers who could pay more. Maybe they will continue to be able pay more during the next bust. After all, lawyers get theirs anyway. Real estate boom or bankruptcy. Like the sign makers. 'Now Hiring' in two-foot letters. 'Now Leasing' or 'Free Microwave on Move-In' in two-foot letters. What's the difference? There was a tennis event for men going on at the club. Tennis didn't really sound fun as the sunny day had turned cold and damp. But I've got to get into tennis again since I have this lovely place to play.

Win ME surprised me again. I was bringing up documents in WORD. I hit print and it had found and installed all the shared printers on the network. With '95 and '98 you have to install each one. At least I think I did. I actually learned something from the Dummies book, too. There is an icon to minimize all windows. It says, in the caption that pops up, 'Show Desktop.' Of course, if you click away and everything is minimized, you say 'Hmmm.' And it goes in reverse, too. So it doesn't really minimize the Windows, it hides them. That's cool. I've been busy deleting the shortcuts that would take Mom to DellNet or MSN. I'm not necessarily going to uninstall any programs. I have dumped a bunch of family pictures and stuff into the My Pictures and set that to the screen saver slide show. This will amuse my parents.