Sep 9, 2009

Hanging out with a wizard, troubleshooting flash drives, and Ellen on Idol???


Yeah, I admit it. I am a friend of Selena Gomez (from Wizards of Waverly Place - it's a TV show for kids). Why am I her friend? Because Emily doesn't have FaceBook. So, tonight (Wednesday), Selena had a live webchat via FaceBook and I stopped by to catch some of it. Why not?

First of all, there are a LOT of idiots out there. Participants could see everything everyone was typing. I can only imagine Selena had some kind of filter or delay or something - or maybe she is good at weeding out and ignoring the junk. "You're so hot," "What shoe size are you?" and other questions whizzed by. Lots of people asking for shout-outs, and she complied with lots of them. I actually thought that was kinda neat. If Emily had been here, I would have asked Selena to say "hi" to her.

I was only in long enough to catch Selena laughing hysterically while trying to say, "Sally sells seashells by the seashore" five times. She barely made it through one time. It was very funny.

It also made me wonder just what celebs thought of such venues. I guess a lot of that has to do with how old the person and how 'connected' they are. It amazes me all the things people want to know, but mainly, it seemed to be a way to send a note saying "hi" to a famous person. We all (okay, maybe not ALL) like to do that, don't we? I mean, I met and talked with Danny Glover once (he was in Lethal Weapon, for those that don't know or are too young to remember). Shan has her picture with Bill Clinton. There is just something 'cool' about getting to say you have met or know someone famous.


John and I were at a school today (yes, the same one with the network problem) swapping out fiber media converters and such, and the tech asked if I would look at a flash drive problem they were having.

The first computer I sat down to work on had all kinds of issues so I moved to another one. John opened the first one up, jiggled a few cables and it started behaving. Weird.

I went to the second computer and plugged in the flash drive. Windows prompted me for a driver disk. Okay, XP does not need a driver disk for flash drives. I poke around online and find a possible solution that involves revealing hidden devices and unplugged usb items. I went through the steps and that did not fix the problem we had. But, it did lead me in the right direction of the "fix," which I will share with you should you ever run into the same problem...

When prompted for a driver disk, select the SECOND option to install from your own location. Click NEXT. On the next screen, click the checkbox that reads something like "FROM THIS SPECIFIC LOCATION: and then fill in the location with C:\WINDOWS\INF and click NEXT. This should make the computer see the fact that a USB device is plugged in. Then, another "new hardware found" window may pop up and you have to repeat the procedure. After that, your drive should appear as a removable drive in My Computer!



How in the heck was Ellen Degeneres chosen to replace Paula Abdul on American Idol!? Let's see, this is a show about... singing. The contestants have to... sing. The judges have to judge the singers based on their..... singing. Do you see a pattern here? Ellen Degeneres does not sing. She does have an Elaine-esque dance that she does, and she can crack a good joke now and then, but singing is not on her resume'. Even she admitted it. Talk about the end of a good show.... Bye-bye Idol, it was fun while it lasted.



As a side note, today was a good day for foot-in-mouth disease for me. It started out with a rant to LuLu.com for not being snappy with the tech support. Problem? I had not given them the allotted 24 hours to even respond. In my defence, I hate form-letter replies. I also tasted a bit of my own foot during a conversation that took place on the statewide technology listserv... Let's just say I did not stop and think before complaining about a message that was passed along to a vendor. In my defence, messages posted on a listserv are meant for members of that list only. I don't really care if the Superintendent's wife works for said vendor! And, finally, well, let's be honest... With me, there is no 'finally' when it comes to the number of times I will speak before I think... Heck, I'm not even sure how much thinking I do in general. :-)

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