I’ve been looking at re-arranging the partitions on my Sony VAIO desktop. They gave me a 15GB C: and a 100GB D: and even with installing everything I could to D:, it was still getting tighter and tighter. Looked at some fairly scary Linux-based partition shrinking software. Problem is that all of my partitions are NTFS, not the older FAT file system. Nothing (easy( and free that I could find would downsize D: and then increase C: ...
I downloaded something written in Word for my wife, who’s a Mac user, and printed it for her. Now, every time I open Microsoft Word, I get an unintelligble message about “The function you are attempting to run contains macros or content that requires macro language support. When this software was installed you (or your administrator) chose not to install support for macros or controls.” OK. What function that I am trying to run? Where is it? Microsoft.com is totally unhelpful. In searching Google, I ran across a pretty good screech about Microsoft’s Scripting Addiction ...
I was really pleased with myself. Not only have I been running AdAware and SpyBot - S&D on a regular basis but now I’d added Microsoft’s real-time anti-spyware to the mix in addition to running Norton. I’m locked down, right? So I downloaded a home page editor that looked good and didn’t pay too much attention to the agreement. Who does? Then it wanted to update the toolbar it brought along with it. Looked at the agreement. “Oh, dear” as Maxine, my two-year-old would say. Track everything I do in IE and send that off? I don’t think so. Even though I almost never use IE any more. So OK, remove that sucker. Hmmm. Things are acting funny. Must be time for a reboot. Hmmm. This is weird. I can’t get out to the network. Haven’t touched the cable. But XP says we’re operating with reduced or no capacity. That’s OK, I’ll switch cables. After all Max or her younger sister Charlie might have damaged the cable. ...
Well, Microsoft had decided to do something about the bad publicity that they’re getting over peoples’ computers being hijacked by various things that IE downloads. So they’ve released their own anti-spyware program. As usual, it’s got a gotcha: it not only requires you to let it look around by running an ActiveX control but you also have to type in your 25 digit validation key. In the picture they show, the sticker is neatly attached to the side of a tower case. In my world, the sticker is attached to the back of my Sony mini-tower. Or on the bottom of my Dell laptop. So I got to practice building up my short-term memory by remembering 5 digits at a time. ...