Ever have your printer quit just when you need it to run a couple of quick prints? That’s what happened last Monday before the LDPCSD Board Meeting. Well, that and a bunch of other stuff.  (But to be honest there were some other sporadic minor printer malfunctions (aka WARNINGS!) prior to this that were annoying, ie, partial prints, low quality prints, long pauses while the printer was working out internal difficulties, etc.   — should have made time right then to investigate, yeah?….But, but, but….I can hear the hillside weeds growing right now……listen……if I don’t get them now it will be much more difficult when 3-4 feet high!)

I had drafted a quick Public Comment for the meeting while rushing around getting everything loaded in the truck (even the dog recognizes this pattern which signals to her the approach of numerous “no fun days” at the computer for either of us) – hit “PRINT” and continued preparing for the meeting departure while explaining she could not also attend.

The next time I checked the printer…..nothing.  Turned it off, unplugged power and data cables…waited, plugged everything back in — (this often works) tried to print again – but at the next “fly by” check…. still nothing.  So…turned off both computer and printer, waited, restarted, tried again, nothing. Starting to panic a bit so while attempting some common “printer fixes” scratched notes from the monitor on a legal pad for the public comment later – better rough notes than nothing at all right?   Well, maybe.

That was the most cursive handwriting I’ve done in a while and after days of weed eating, raking, pruning, and burning not very comfortable.  The legibility alone would have qualified for me for writing medical prescriptions – extremely difficult to read or forge – not to mention the poor spelling, grammar, and all those lines and arrows indicating where particular comments would be better placed in the rambling blah, blah, blah ……

Anyway, turns out the drivers for the printer had been corrupted somehow (turning devices on and off and unplugging them?  lol) but I was now stuck in a BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH “boot loop” due to a failed attempt at resetting the computer to a previous RESTORE POINT…… (thought maybe some of those untimely and “aggressive updates” might have been responsible)  around and around…..”we will diagnose the problem and repair computer”…..wait, wait, wait…..”Sorry could not repair, please try again”…….wait, wait, wait….. “sorry could not repair, please try again”……doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result? Hum, sounds familiar….what was that again? Oh yeah…INSANITY!

Fortunately the suggestion of reloading printer drivers from my site tech proved to be the answer that solved the problem. [Of course a RECOVERY DISK was required to escape the BSOD boot loop to enter “SAFE MODE” for some basic repairs following the failed restore point.  YIKES! A couple of recovery disks/thumb drives might be advisable considering how long it took me to locate the one that eventually saved me!  So pleased that I had at least created such when I upgraded to, yes I’ll say it, WINDOWS10.]

I should also mention that without a backup internet connected device to decipher error codes (or someone you could call and ask to research what a bunch of numbers and letters meant), I would have never known what the problem actually was.  (Paying online techs $199.00 is not the way to go!)   Through all this I also discovered my hard drive is again reaching max capacity so I’ve been shuffling files and folders around with external drives to make room for the meeting reports.  (Not too keen on this CLOUD STUFF.)

So, was this lack of disk space the underlying reason I couldn’t initially listen to that Mariposa County BOD audio presentation?  Probably, since everything else sure seemed to slow down.   (EXCELLENT SYSTEM BY THE WAY – something like that for the LDPCSD would be great considering the low meeting attendance and scattered customer base.)

Then on top of all this (or intimately related) my fat numb fingers evidently pressed some micro switch on that handycam which instructed it to format the video in the highest possible resolution – NO NO NO NOT AGAIN!   Believe it or not 41GB for one video file which equated to:

Select a command ……..get something to eat.

Select another command……maybe do some laundry……

Select a command….. well, you get the idea – slow as molasses in January!

(Reminds of the AutoCad program when it first came out and the inadequate computers used to run it!)

Gosh, wonder if the National Security Agency (NSA) would ever consider granting us access to our own information they have already stored in their Utah spy facility anyway?

Might make things a lot easier for tech challenged big mouths like me yeah?

Probably not.  The online paid tech lobbyist union would fight that tooth and nail.

 later Lew