Data Lost. . .and Found

This is a true fable in the life of The Ancient One. It is a fable of the age of technology in which we live and how precarious data are.

The story begins a few weeks ago when Donna could not find her Palm Tungsten E2. She looked for it for several days to no avail; it was gone. As it happened, she was not happy with her current cell phone and was eligible for one of those special deal upgrades that the various providers of mobile service offer their loyal customers. So off she went and got a great deal on a Palm Centro. Now she had a combination phone/PDA and could HotSync all her data from her Palm Desktop (which she did).

As often happens, a few days after getting her new phone/PDA, Donna found the lost PDA. It also happens that my Palm Tungsten T/X had gone berserk; while I could HotSync it with the desktop, I couldn't bring up the screens. I would touch the appropriate spot on its little screen and it would act as if I touched another part of the screen. The Ancient One thought that it would be nice to get a Centro too but he is not eligible for a special deal until next January. But Donna said he could have her E2 if that would help. Of course it would. But, whenever he tried to HotSync it with his desktop, it refused to do so. Once an identity has been established on a Palm PDA, you can't just change it even though you can have several identities on the desktop.

Then The Ancient One had a brilliant idea. He would do what is called a "hard reset" on the E2, wiping it clean so he could then set it up in his identity with his data. Fair enough. But he also did a couple of other things that turned out to be less than smart. First, he thought he would try to resurrect his T/X by doing a hard reset on it, which he did. However, while that wiped the PDA clean, it did not solve the problem of the device thinking that it was being poked at distance locations on the screen from where it was being tapped. So he declared the T/X dead and got ready to HotSync his desktop to the E2.

Now here is where it gets really stupid! Before starting the HotSync, The Ancient One looked at the Palm website and found that there was an updated version of the desktop available for downloading. We all know that with technology newer is better. Right? Well, not necessarily. He downloaded the new software and installed it. It easily replaced the earlier version. Then he moved on to carry out the HotSync only to discover that there were no data to move from the desktop to the handheld. ALL THE DATA WERE GONE!

So, for the past week-and-a-half, The Ancient One has been searching for his data. He knew that the address book, datebook, and memo and notepads were somewhere on his computer. But, oh my, they were hidden well and he had nightmares about how long it was going to take to rebuild those data files. Finally, this afternoon he got lucky and found the files. It took a couple of hours but he did figure out how to transfer all those hidden backup files on to the new Palm Desktop and eventually was able to HotSync them with the handheld.

And just in time too! The next doctors' appointments are coming up in the next couple of weeks and The Ancient One really didn't want to call the various offices and try to explain why he had no idea when the appointments were.

As with all good fables, this one had a happy ending and The Ancient One is smiling again. : - D

Testing. . .a New Camera

Donna got back from San Diego yesterday afternoon and arrived bearing additional birthday gifts for The Ancient One. She knew I had been thinking about anew camera and presented me with the very model I have been looking at for several months; a Nikon Coolpix C18.

This 8.0 megapixel (bright red) digital camera should provide much clearer photographs than I had been getting from my old 3.3 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot. I just got back from testing it and present the first "test" photos I took. First, is a photo taken from the same vantage point as my banner photo:

Next, since it is a relatively clear day (without interference from smog) is a view of Catalina Island taken from a vantage point on Via Zumaya in Palos Verdes Estates:

The last 2 provide a flowery close-up and a set of palm trees who seem to be standing guard over the neighborhood:

I'm pleased with this first effort with the new camera. It should be a lot of fun over the coming months and years.

Thank you Donna!

Old Dogs and New Toys

Since daughter Alicia was visiting, the family decided to celebrate my birthday about 2 weeks early. After a dinner with neighbors last Tuesday evening, we went back to (ostensibly) see for the first time the apartment into which son Seth moved about 2 months ago. It is very nice; about a block from the ocean in Redondo Beach. While we all were sitting there, Donna presents me with one of those gift bags and brings out a large brownie and they all sing happy birthday to The Ancient One.

Inside the bag I found an iPod nano. It is one of those music players (whatever they're called) that young people have attached to their ears with little speaker "buds" while they listen to the music contained thereon. I had just read about this particular device (along with many others) in a recent issue of Fast Company with heralded the arrival of SSDs (solid state drives) with a prediction that they would gradually replace the current HDD (hard disk drives) in our computers and such. This little iPod nano that I received contains 8GB (gigabytes) of memory which is a lot although my son told me I would fill it far more quickly than I thought possible.

My nano (I immediately became attached to the cute little thing) measures 3½ inches by 1¼ inches. It is all of ¼ inch thick. To get a better sense of its diminutive size I took the below (not too clear) picture of it in the palm of my hand.

Although I am a septuagenarian, I decided to not let myself become intimidated by such a tiny piece of new technology. Since Tuesday, I have been uploading my (mostly jazz) music collection on to my computer's external hard drive (an HDD drive) using iTunes software. Then I plugged the nano into the computer via a USB port and downloaded it all to my new toy. Thus far, I have moved 25 albums, containing 17.1 hours of good music to the nano using about 942MB (megabytes) of its memory. In other words, it is only about 12.5% full. Amazing! But then came the test: How does the music sound?

Off I went on my morning walk. Since the device is solid state, it can be shaken and jostled about without a problem. Following the claims of the literature, after I inserted the buds in my ears (they're even marked L(eft) and R(ight), I gave the nano a good shake which put it into "shuffle" mode and songs, randomly selected by the toy, began to play. I must say that once I mastered the volume controls (sliding a finger left or right around the center dial), I was amazed by the high quality of the sound entering my ears. If I had not decided to "shuffle" the music, I could have selected the album or artist or musical piece I wanted to listen to. It truly is amazing.

Yes, this old dog is hooked on his new toy. And now I face an additional challenge: Am I up to multi-tasking, i.e. can I continue to read my thrillers and mystery novels on the morning walk and listen to fine music at the same time? I think I am up to it. You know, some things happening in the 21^st century are pretty nice.

An Observation on Counting Visitors and Vanity

Some time back when I hit one of my "milestones," I mentioned my suspicions that Sitemeter (my visit counter of choice) was missing visitors to The Ancient One. I decided that I would test this out.


One month ago today I added StatCounter as a 2nd monitoring tool to determine how many folks were stopping by whether on purpose or by accident. The new counter was set at the same number as the old one.


Just before I started writing this post, I looked at the counters all the way down on the bottom of the page. Sitemeter read 6930 and StatCounter read 6980. Now a difference of 50 might not seem like much but if it is annualized it comes out to a difference of 600 over 6 months.


Yes, those of us who blog let our egos get in the way. We want more visitors; somehow it makes us feel like we are more important, or better writers, or have something to say that others find interesting. Whatever. The Ancient One is no different.


From this moment forth, while both counters will remain visible, milestones will be measured by the higher number. In a day or two I will announce my 7000th visitor according to StatCounter. (SiteMeter will take a few days longer to reach that number but I don't care.


Ah, the wonders of blogging and its ability to feed my vanity.

Quirky Internet Technology. . .

Occasionally I write about the lovely quirks in technology. For me, the latest example came over the past weekend. I'm still scratching my head.

Like many other bloggers, I am sometimes too wrapped up with wanting to know how many people actually find my site and, possibly, read what I wrote. To assist in managing my curiosity, I added "sitemeter" to the bottom of my blog in mid- 2007.

It is a nifty piece of whatever-you-call-it-ware that counts the number of visits to my site and even lists where they came from on a number of different statistics pages. Like many other tools we use in life, sitemeter is not fully accurate. I noticed, for example, that I would get a comment to a post from someone whose visit did not appear to be recorded by my sitemeter. It seemed that it was choosy about who it would list. Or perhaps, some referring sites had a way of sneaking in without being counted. Being a bit anal, I realized that when I would post about reaching a new milestone (or is it a thousand-visit-stone), the count was actually low.

Then, a couple of weeks ago whenever I would go to sitemeter to check my numbers, I would get a pop-up message about the "new" sitemeter to which all subscribers would be migrated on Saturday, September 13. It explained how much more accurate the new incarnation would be; visits would no longer escape the counters. Or something like that.

Sure enough, last Saturday sitemeter disappeared. Finally, sometime about midday Sunday (PDT), the site reappeared with instructions about reactivating accounts. The problem is, I couldn't get it to work. I drove myself crazy for about 2 hours trying to find the listing of visits and all the other statistics that were promised. There seemed to be no page with listings on it. And there was a wavy section in the middle of the screen that proclaimed "loading reports." The problem was no reports were ever loaded. I took a break for an hour figuring that resting my weary, aging brain might help me find some clarity about how to actually obtain statistics from the "new" sitemeter.

When I returned, I clicked on my sitemeter bookmark and up popped a new message. It said, and I paraphrase a bit, that sitemeter would be offline for a couple of hours while they migrated back to the original version. Huh?? It wasn't me that had the problem? It was the dear techies at sitemeter?

Sure enough, a few hours later the original sitemeter was back and I was smiling again. But how many visits were not recorded while all this immigration/emigration was going on? I assume I will never know. But once again I can reflect on how quirky technology can be when delivered over the internet.

Let's see, last time I looked, my counter read something like 6525. I'll settle for that even though I know it's low. Who knows, maybe sitemeter will actually come back with a new version that works. Now that would be something different!

Quirky Technology

I am the victim of a quirk in DSL technology! Yesterday morning about 8:30 local time, I lost my DSL connection. All day long it looked like my modem was trying to pick up the signal; occasionally it would actually get it. . .for as much as 23 seconds. . .and then it was gone again.


Somewhere deep within me I knew there was a simple answer but the problem was not solved and the signal was not gone when I went to bed last night. I figured that I would have to call my ISP this morning and convince them that it really was a "signal" problem as opposed to the fault of my computer or the modem. Those techs want to blame it on anything as long as it is not the company's signal that has faded away.


About 2:00 a.m., I had a brainstorm; I just knew what happened. But I was in bed and it would just have to wait until I was actually awake. Then I had to leave early this morning and before I returned, Donna called to tell me that the DSL signal was back and she could get her e-mail and lots of good stuff like that.


When I got home, I was pleased to see that it was working. I called son Seth who had left by then and asked him a question: "By any chance, when our second phone line was tied up with outgoing calls yesterday morning, is there any chance that you plugged the phone in your room into the first line in order to make a call?" His answer: "Yes, but I moved it back to the second line . . . this morning."


If I wanted to test the occasional readers who pass this way, I could have a contest and see who could guess why that simple connecting, and disconnecting, of a phone to the first line could affect the signal. But I'd rather explain it here and get on with my internet life.


DSL requires that a line filter be attached to every phone jack that carries the line on which the DSL signal is received. That's the quirk of which I speak. When I went to high speed, I was short one filter. Our DSL is on the first line and so a decision was made that the upstairs phone would only be connected to the second line. When the switch was made by necessity yesterday morning, the unfiltered connection disabled the DSL signal; when it was undone today, DSL returned to our home.


I often say that I love (or hate) technology). I only wish my brain worked at a pace fast enough to keep up with the quirks that bombard us. It took about 18 hours before I figured out what had to be the cause of the problem. And before I could act on that bit of intuition, the line had been switched back and life returned to technological normalcy.


I must say that it's good to be back on line!

Thank You Doctor!

The good doctor was here at the house yesterday. He arrived about 4:00 p.m. and did not leave until after midnight. And while Colin is an outstanding MD who has a special way with children, that is not why he was here. For the price of one of Donna's wonderful brisket dinners, he was willing to apply his skills to attacking the various gremlins that have afflicted our computers recently. Like the good doctor that he is, he arrived with not one but two emergency kits. And he went to work.

As a result of Colin's visit we now have a true wireless network among our computers. . .and it is secured against outside intruders. Unwanted software is gone from the computers, Donna's Vista operating system is running a bit more smoothly, Microsoft XP's Service Pack 3 is now installed on my computers and I am a much less cantankerous curmudgeon than I was a day ago. The only remaining obvious glitch is that Microsoft Office Outlook still won't send and receive messages but I can simply stay with Outlook Express a bit longer.

There also is some back story that goes with our friendship with Colin. We met him in the latter 1980s when he was a classmate of my eldest son Bill at Occidental College. I can't remember what he did right after college but around 2000, he decided that he wanted to become a doctor and was accepted to medical school. If my memory is accurate, he received his MD from USC the same weekend that daughter Alicia received her B.A. from Occidental College. Prior to yesterday's visit, Colin's most recent act of friendship to The Ancient One's family was to accompany Alicia on her drive last week from L.A. to Wilmington, DE. (By the way, they were there by Friday, the moving van arrived Sunday, and Alicia is settling in.) Colin truly is both a true friend and a member of this family!

So, as I sit here writing this on a more perky, responsive computer, there is only one more thing to say. . .

THANK YOU DOCTOR!!!! Your assistance makes technology a bit more agreeable!

Those Gremlins Are Driving Me Crazy

The gremlins are back and I am going crazy. When we got home Wednesday evening, I had no connection to the internet. I was convinced it was a "signal" problem and was poised (on Thursday morning) to call my ISP in order to chat with one of its friendly Techs in India. But before I did. . .


I decided to first try to reconnect through my old ethernet hub and. . .lo and behold. . .I was back online. But without the wireless router, no one else in the house was. I couldn't get the ethernet to work on Donna's computer and my laptop was dependent on the wireless network to gain access to the outside world.


Today I spent about 2 hours trying to reinstall the wireless router but it insists that it is not receiving an internet signal. Alas, alack and many other stronger epithets!


So here I am back via the ethernet hub and when I post this, I will figure out how to get Donna's computer to work on it as well. I do need some luck and a lot more patience than I have had the past couple of days.

Technology! Bah!!!

Gremlins Strike Again. . .

There I was, a few minutes ago, doing a final read through before uploading a post about the wonderful concerts performed in Redondo Beach last week by Charlotte Diamond. She enthralled 2,400 preschool age children and their teachers. I was feeling good about what I had written and looked forward to sharing it with those who happened by.


And then the gremlins attacked! The computer froze. The saved copy of the file simply disappeared. The working copy could not be opened; all attempts to do so yielded a message that the file was "corrupt." How could that be?


Once again the technology reminds me that I am less in control than I think I ought to be. I don't know if I can recreate the post. It is getting late and I am tired.


As I say whenever the gremlins strike: Arghhhhhh!!!!!!

If at First You Don't Suceed. . .

Let's hope that old adage holds true. After yesterday's 70th birthday post, I saw the pictures but visitors (friends) didn't see them. Then I checked back this morning and I couldn't see them either.

So, I tried again and reposted them. Again, I see them. Hoefully when you scroll down, you will see them too!

Once again I face the necessity of being more stubborn than the technology. We humans must remain in control.

A (Technology) Postscript

Ever since Earthlink helped me "solve my DSL problems," I have not been able to receive and send a signal through my wireless router. The router simply could not work with the new modem Earthlink sent me for the cost of the shipping charges. The new modem was okay running through an ethernet router, but not the wireless one. Finally, since the original problem was the line signal, I decided to see what would happen if I reinstalled the old modem.

It worked!!! Not only does that modem still work (contrary to what the first 2 of many Techs told me), I was once again able to install my wireless router which has been communicating very nicely with the modem for the past 24 hours.

Having succeeded in getting my system to operate using the same configuration it had before the line signal problems began, I called Earthlink and suggested that they ought to give me a credit for the overnight shipping charges they billed me since I neither needed the new modem nor did it allow me to use my wireless router. Believe it or not, they agreed, with just one proviso. They are sending me a shipping label so I can return the modem to them. When they receive it, that will give me the $39.50 credit.

I have learned a lot about both myself and Earthlink during this process. First, I know something about computers; my initial diagnosis of the problem was correct even if the first 2 Techs I talked to insisted it was the modem, not the signal. [If they only had agreed to test the signal when I first called, it would have saved both them and me a lot of trouble.] Second, Earthlink ought to train all the tech staff to recognize that occasionally customers know what they are talking about. Too many companies refuse to recognize that the problem may be their service and not the customer's computer. Finally, I once again discovered just how persistent you have to be in order to get problems resolved and to not get stuck with footing the bill for the service provider's shortcomings.

And now to continue my journeys on the internet.

One More Small Step

Well, instead of calling earthlink (I just couldn't deal with them any more), I went to the website of Linksys where they have a Live Chat option. A wonderful Techie named Jocelyn F. gave me detailed instructions, which I cut and pasted to an MSWord document on my computer, on how to manually set up my wireless router. She also treated me like someone who had a problem, instead of the person who caused it. It was almost too good to be true!

Actually, it was too good to be true, at least after 3 attempts which seemed to do what they were supposed to do except that I still could not access the Internet when the signal was directed through the router. Very frustrating again. . .

BUT. . . I did find a partial solution which now has Donna back on line for her e-mail. I dug out my old Ethernet router and hooked it up. Fortunately, when I installed the wireless router some months ago, I left the Ethernet cable running between Donna's and my offices in place. It works!!!

Now only Seth has no connection from the house, nor do I from my laptop unless we find a kindly neighbor who will consent to let us go online through their signal.

At least one more small step has been taken to have us all in touch with the internet. Sigh . . . . . .

Success at last. . .Well, sort of

I have my home DSL back. After hearing nothing for 24 hours, I called Earthlink again and again I was speaking to a Tech in India. But this time I got someone who knew what he was doing. And he was talking to me on one line and to the "signal" or "line" technicians on another line. In less than an hour (which was relatively fast compared to the other calls this week), my DSL was up and I was connected to the internet.

Actually, I was connected with the Ethernet cable running straight from the modem to my computer. As the call was ending, I innocently asked, "This will also work when connected to my wireless router, right." The answer was a pleasant and confident "Yes."

Well, that is not quite accurate! When I redirected the cables through the router and then to the computer, there was no internet signal. I found the Linksys installation disk and have now tried to reinstall the system 6 times. I have not yet succeeded. Linksys tells me that it can't read the internet signal. I can get my work done but dear Donna cannot get her e-mail or surf the net; I may just have to reinstall the old Ethernet router but that won't help with any of the laptops in the house, especially Seth's.

So, it looks like there may be one more call to Earthlink to straighten this out although I do have the feeling they will tell me to call Linksys since it is the router that doesn't recognize the good internet connection provided by my ISP.

That's why I attach "sort of" as a modifier to "success at last." Stay tuned for later installments.

The DSL Saga Continues. . .

Well, Earthlink kept their promise and a new DSL modem awaited me when I got home yesterday afternoon. That's the good news.

On the other hand, I am still without DSL service at home. I opened the package, followed all the instructions and . . . voila . . . still no signal.

Back on the phone with another nice Tech in India. After a frustrating, long period of time with no solution revealing itself, he politely put me on hold to check with his "supervisor."

Eventually, an equally polite chap came on line and we tried some more things. I jokingly commented, "I see I have advanced to a Tech 2." "Oh, no," he replied proudly, "I am a Tech 3."

When success was not forthcoming, he gave me a ticket number, told me that he was passing my problem on to a "signal specialist," and that I should call back 4 hours later to a direct line for which he provided a new phone number. I called at the appointed time, entered the numbers requested by the recorded voice, and heard a new recording telling me that my phone company was checking the line and I should call back in 24 hours.

After I hung up, I thought to myself: They are utilizing a "signal specialist" and having the phone company check my line. Isn't that what I told them on the first call 2 days ago? Didn't I tell them I was no longer receiving a signal? It really took the inability of a new modem they provided to receive a signal for them to realize I might have been right in the first place.

Well, it's a new day and the saga continues. Currently, I am using dial-up to download my e-mail and the supermarket free Wi-Fi zone to carry on other business and write silly blog posts like this one.

Deja arghh vu!!

Here we go again. I woke up this morning to find that I was not receiving a DSL signal. When I reached an Earthlink Tech by phone (A pleasant chap located in India), he assured me that the signal was fine and told me it was a modem problem. Even though "Earthlink" is printed on the modem, he claimed it was not one they provided. A couple of senior Techs later, they acknowledged that they no longer serviced this "old" modem and a new one would be sent at no charge other than shipping costs. I had that old feeling of having no choice but to accept the "offer."

It will be interesting to hear what they say if I am right and the problem is the signal not the modem. We will see in a day or so.

Meanwhile, I can only post from WiFi hotspots using my laptop. Thank you to my local Pavilions market for providing not only WiFi but some tables at which to sit.

OK - my e-mail is checked. And this post is finished but it may be the last for a few days.

My First Remote Post

A new blogging milestone today. This is being posted from my laptop in a hotel room in San Diego. We are here to celebrate my father-in-law's 85th birthday. I will write more on that after tonight's party.

And to further test my skills. I have added the below pictures of trolleys spotted on my daily walk this morning.

Arghhh!!!!!!!!

Once again, I can't access any site that has BlogSpot in its URL. Did a live chat with Earthlink tech who tried all sorts of tricks to alter my computer's configuration AND rejected out of hand that it could possibly be an Earthlink system problem. An hour-and-a-half later, after following his instructions, I had to reinstall my wireless router. The tech seemed to think it was everybody's fault but Earthlink's.

I did get a couple of workarounds so that I can access my own site and a couple of others. But, for the first time in many years I have begun to consider the possibility of changing my ISP. My loyalty to Earthlink is about to wear out.

Arghhh!!!

I Can See (Blogs) Again. . .

At last after more than 2 days in never-never land, I can once again read blogs (including my own) that have a BlogSpot URL. After losing access on Sunday, I tried every thing I know (which, admittedly, is not much) to get any of the computers in the house to access BlogSpot addresses. Then, about midday yesterday, I found a Blogger help site where many people were complaining about the same problem. It seemed that most of us blog-reading-challenged souls were Earthlink customers in the Los Angeles area.

Then it was on to Earthlink's chat line where, after 30+ minutes, the tech messaged me that they were getting enough complaints that they were kicking it up to a "higher level" to find a solution. This morning. . .still no access. I then did both virus and spyware scans (which revealed nothing bad). BUT. . .when I returned to the computer after the scanning process. . .voila!. . .I could get to those favorite sites I like to visit on a regular basis. Tonight or tomorrow morning, I will try to get caught up on my own posting.

It is so good to no longer feel disconnected!

Time Out. . .

For some reason unbeknownst to me, I have not been able to access BlogSpot since yesterday afternoon. I thought that maybe they were down but BillyBlog confirmed for me this morning that he was viewing this site from New York. So. . . I guess I have been given a timeout until the problem is fixed. If you actually see this, then there is hope because it means I can still post items from Word2007. I'll be back ASAP.

The Printer Solution. . .revisited

Back in February, I talked about having to switch printers with Donna because Lexmark had not updated their printer drivers to be compatible with the new Vista operating system on her new computer. At last the new drivers are in place and now we are both happy; Donna with her Lexmark, me with my Epson. Amazing how our dispositions improve when technology catches up to the reality in our lives.