Seriously. Now I’m pissed off. I have so little time that I can work on this thing, and this is the second time in 3 months that I’ve written a long article/diatribe, spent hours on it only to have it go up in smoke.
“Internet Explorer has encountered a fatal exception error and will now close. Would you like to inform Microsoft?â€
You sonofabitch!
It had been so long since my last post that I’d forgotten where my last article went. I was using Windows 98 then on a creaking AMD 400 K6-III. Now I’m using XP Pro (which hasn’t crashed since I bought it) on a P-4 2.4 ghz monster with 768 megs of RAM. I just *finally* figured out which side of our wobbly Iraq fence I was on and laid it all out in a brilliant (heh) diatribe that took well over 2 hours to complete. After I restarted Internet Explorer and went into the Elburro composition area, because surely, it must have posted. Somewhere… my opus was missing.
Too bad my memory’s too short. Too bad I thought XP Pro was invincible. Ah, who knows, it may well be B-2, the blogger I’m using. But it’s killing me.
For this rant, I’m using Mozilla. And I’m actually typing it in notepad and saving the sonofabitch so that I can copy/paste the bastard on the web.
When I was a kid, a cranky neighbor had a bumper sticker on his car that said Dimmit Dammit. Not being a driver, I had no idea what it meant to dim one’s headlights when following another car. I thought it was just his cranky way of expressing his view of the world.
Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit. Dimmit Dammit……
Ah, yes, the bite of the form boxes. I learned it from Blogger long ago … the hard way. ”%$#@!” For quite some time, I’ve kept a document open (In NoteTab Pro, my Notepad replacement) to collect URL’s, quotes, etc., and to create drafts of my posts. I only use the weblog interface to paste text, and select categories. It’s a lot less frustrating.
Heck, I sometimes do it even when I’m just leaving a comment. Living risky on this one, though.
As for the invincibility of XP Pro, well, did your system go down? No, an app did. It’s a bit perverse that we now have an operating system that can look at the fallen apps around it and say, “yep, I survived that. What’s next?” Well, we’re going to try that stupid app you crashed again, Mr. Survivor.
I think I’ve had three crashes of an app in about 5 weeks of using XP Pro. Very calm and orderly. Heck, I didn’t even know what would happen the first time I hit the three finger salute; “ah, a task manager. How civilized.”
All in all, pretty amazing, considering I’ve been slinging around 200 MB files in Photoshop like they were made of cotton, while also running Mozilla, Dreamweaver, and checking e-mail.
On my old system, I could have done that for, oh, about 15 minutes before something would lock up, and take down the whole system. This system has been up and DSL connected for 5.5 days, during which about a dozen 200 MB files were created and printed.
That’s a minor miracle.
Fri.March.03 @ 11:32:24
Man, I’m glad to know it’s a “blogger” thing. When it almost crashed Mozilla too, I started ruling out Microsoft and looking toward my webhost or my MySQL configuration. Ya just gotta work with notepad open. I can do that.
XP Pro is indeed a marvel. After fighting to keep DW and Photoshop active while avoiding the dreaded “freeze-up” on my old AMD 400, this is almost more luxury than we deserve. After all, there’s a war on. There’s something immoral about listening to my favorite net radio or cd with DW and Photoshop juggling files that are bigger than the hard drive on my first computer. On the rare occasion that I’ve rebooted this thing, it’s always been for something like installing a new update. This is something I can set my mother up with. I’ll log her in as a plain user, so the grandkids can’t install anything. Then I’ll maintain it for her through remote administration over the net.
Printing 200 meg files? Must be coming out with a fairly tight resolution. You (or someone) might even want to hang them up somewhere. I’ll have to try one of those on my printer. It only has 64 megs of RAM (and expensive RAM at that) but I might be able to spool it on the computer first to save it from barfing.
Fri.March.03 @ 18:29:00
My will is weaker than yours. I feel no sense of immorality slinging these apps around at whim, nor do I over do it … I still use a stereo to play CD’s when I’m working at the computer. But it is oh-so-refreshing to have a tool that does what you want it to do. For more than 15 minutes at a time.
AS for file sizes, you have to understand, I’m insane. These files are probably ~40 Mb if they were flat, but I have highlight layers, shadow layers, etc., and before you know it, it’s 180-200 MB.
If I’d tried to manipulate those files on the old system, well, I’d be even more insane than I am now. Life is too short for slow processors and big files.
Fri.March.03 @ 23:42:45