Tech Mumblings

I decided to leave that post up there for a bit to savor the moment. Now back to your regularly scheduled babbling. If anything, you know that I've had my issues with software running on my new system. The early adoption idea may have bitten me in the butt here and there but I am finding some work-arounds.

Although, iTunes does not support the 64-bit version of Vista, I wound up connecting two dots. The issues that I had with trying to burn discs seems to have surfaced in iTunes. The main error message that I was getting talked about problems with burning discs and importing music. During a bit of searching, I discovered a driver that some people were using as an alternative. No more errors.

Things were looking great. But we all know that when things are going well... hide the cutlery. I believe it was an update to FireFox that caused the new issues. What issues? When using the browser (which is what I use for 98% of my work) the bookmarks are missing. If you have the program running right now, feel free to click on your bookmarks tab and see what it shows. The only options shown are manage and organize bookmarks. The bookmarks come back once I click on one of the two options but only for that session. Next problem is also with the bookmarks as once they show up, you can't click on one to open it. Which makes them useless. Then, after closing the browser, it remains running in the processes not allowing it to be reopened. Lastly the bottom of the browser (maybe about an inch and a half) is grey and just takes up space. My solution... I just stopped using it and imported those bookmarks to Internet Explorer. Takes some getting used to again but it'll work until I discover a fix (as reinstalls didn't help and going back to an earlier version might create problems with other saved files.)

Of course, for those of you that haven't looked into Vista, there is something called User Accounts. They are pretty interesting as a level of protection similar to a firewall but they could be too good. You see, Microsoft doesn't give all the information on the new operating system to people writing software to be used by it. One program (which allows me to start Talkshoe where I record the podcast) will not get necessary updates if the User Account is turned on. So, I must turn it off to start the show. I don't know how many other programs have this issue but it's a pain. But, no major technical issues with the show in the last couple months.

Lastly, in a non-computer tech issue, my stand-alone Cyberhome DVD burner went kaput. I discovered that as there were a ton of fuzzy lines on my screen during Sunday football. The only fix was unplugging it. It's not like I don't have another burner and now the player on the computer works.