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Bloviating Zeppelin: Out? Not Hardly!

Bloviating Zeppelin

(in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Out? Not Hardly!


More people wish Hillary Clinton to step aside, in order to allow Barack Hussein Obama to take the Demorat nomination:

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont senator who endorsed Obama in January, said she was never going to win enough delegates, and he suggested she should throw in the towel in "the interests of a Democratic victory in November." A number of Democrats have expressed concern that Republican John McCain is getting a head start while Obama and Clinton fight on.

In response, Hillary has essentially said "no way" to any thought of quitting:

I know a little bit about comebacks," she said to cheers. "I know what it's like to be counted down and counted out. But I also know there is nothing that will keep us down if we are determined to keep on.


Asked what she thought of Obama's comment Friday that the Democratic primary race resembled "a good movie that lasted about a half-hour too long," Clinton smiled broadly and said, "I like long movies."



Well, again, I don’t take anything for granted, but hopefully with Pennsylvania’s help, she will be our next president, and yes, I do think she’ll be a better president."

WHAT YOU WON'T READ IN THE DEM (Defeatist, Elitist Media):


Charges against a US Marine allegedly involved in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha were dropped on Friday ahead of his trial, the military said in a statement. A court martial for lance corporal Stephen Tatum had been due to start on Friday on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault.

However in a statement released from the Marines Camp Pendleton base outside San Diego, the military said the charges had been dismissed "in order to continue to pursue the truth seeking process into the Haditha incident."

Just a bit of a clue: had the military possessed any real evidence against this Marine from the beginning, under the UCMJ he would have been hung out to dry and moved to Leavenworth forthwith. But likely the JAG-IC received specific prosecutory instructions from far above. Once again, our military bends and sways to the feminized political machinations from Washington.

BZ AKSZ FOR CONFUSER HEP:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I received some very base instructions on how to remove programs that would cause a slow start-up in Windows XP, the OS in my HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop -- which is my primary confuser.

I went into the depths of my confuser, say, 6 or more months ago and clicked and unclicked a bunch of stuff that I cannot now recall. Imagine that. . .

In the meantime, my laptop makes me want to scream and throw it out the second story window. Essentially, every form of input and every physical manipulation made on this laptop is screwed up. The keyboard won't input every letter, won't make every space, won't move the cursor accurately, won't enable the first click on a field. And that has only been the case since I went into its depths and attempted to eliminate programs on Start-up. Quite frankly, I have no idea what I did. But I evidently did something; and it wasn't good.

Courtesy of Mrs. Lefkow's typing 7th grade typing class I have been measured at a rate of 13o wpm, which is "cooking with gas." I used to piss off my Homicide transcriber (and my P.O.S. female partner) because I spent time transcribing my own tapes made at crime scenes -- I soon learned that I was light-years ahead of Wanda, our secretary, because I was faster, more accurate and ultimately responsible for my own reports. So with that in mind, you can perhaps imagine my chagrin at having this stupid keyboard demand my backspacing on most every word.

My questions to those readers who are confuser/digital/HTML/internet/laptop/Microsoft savvy:

  1. Is the problem with my HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop a matter of physicality? That is to say, its keyboard is shot, its fingerpad toast, its every manner of input wrecked?
  2. Or, in the process of my stupidity did I somehow manage to eliminate some very important shit that controls each and every one of the things that I now complain about?
  3. If #2 is correct, is the situation repair-able?
  4. Or is it time to ditch this HP laptop?
"Help me Obi-Wan; you're my only hope!"

BZ

17 Comments:

Blogger KurtP said...

I have an HP Pavillion (mod????) that I thought was having problems from the position I was typing on (prone on the bed) that missed alot of letters and keystrokes, and have to go back and redo the missing letters.

It may be a keypad problem.

(I'd expand, but the Blogger comments won't let me see the original post.)

Anyway,,, look at the keyboard- that may be the problem.

Sat Mar 29, 09:59:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

usually, even if you have too much shit going on in the background, the stuff you type should come up right, albeit slower than you are actually typing. so my guess is the keyboard is trashed. try opening control panel, open keyboard, click the hardware tab, then the troubleshoot button and play along with the stupid questions.
I think you can test your touchscreen in the mouse settings (in control panel) too.

If your keyboard is trashed there's two things you can do, buy another one or buy a usb plug and play one at any staples office supply, etc. like this the usb plug n play is the easiest cheapest option. replacing the keyboard in the laptop is often a real pain in the ass.

Sat Mar 29, 10:08:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Bloviating Zeppelin said...

KurtP: but is that a SOFTWARE problem or a HARDWARE problem that I need to solve differentially??

But anyway, Dude, thanks for daring to answer!!

BZ

Sat Mar 29, 10:08:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Bloviating Zeppelin said...

Mark: it's a LAPTOP. There IS no other keyboard. That was my POINT.

BZ

Sat Mar 29, 10:09:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

that first link i sent you is a replacement keyboard for your laptop, should you choose to tackle it, or, hire your local geek.

Sat Mar 29, 10:13:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

found forums with hp problems like yours, one a BIOS problem one a mechanical problem.

mech problem

reset BIOS defaults

new keyboard for zd8000

Sat Mar 29, 11:15:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

read the thread on that middle link on my last comment, HP has lots of screwy problems I've never heard of. but there's a few different fix's in that thread.

Sat Mar 29, 11:27:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Rivka said...

BZ,not a tech here, but looking up stuff online will help. That is how I fixed mine.. Think about it like this.. Try to get a temp. fix and even if it isn't perfect, at least it will work UNTIL you can buy a different one. That is how we see it. Our computer STINKS and has issues of slowing down etc.. We just have to wait until we can buy a mac with cash..

Sun Mar 30, 05:01:00 AM PDT  
Blogger Rivka said...

By the way, I knew you did homicide work and stuff, but I was just curious how that effects you after a while. I have always been interested in stuff like that. I would have loved to have been a forensics expert.

Off the subject a bit.. But the closest I got to catching 'bad guys' is when I used to work for a bank and investigated credit card fraud. I loved doing it too. We would do the investigating, then gather all the paper evidence, then we would get together and argue each case as to whether or not it was truly fraud then send it to our attorney. It was an interesting job.

It is unbelievable how many people will get a card and charge it up over the credit limit like in 2 months, buy stuff like big screen t.v.'s, then file bankruptcy. THey think they can get away with it. It is stealing and it was great catching them.
Anyway, just an F.Y.I... Totally off subject, sorry.

Sun Mar 30, 05:07:00 AM PDT  
Blogger A Jacksonian said...

Ok when the system gets slow your problems are usually in this order:

1) The hard drive is full of junk. First you have to get rid of temporary internet files and other temporary files, plus files no longer useful to anything.

First up is the free utility: REVO Uninstaller. It is thorogh... very thorough. Once you are done with everything, whenver you need to uninstall a program use REVO, it gets things all nice and tidy.

-Also check your Admin Event Viewer and see what the heck is popping up problems on the system. It will usually tell you hardware (usually disk related) or software. If it is hardware, backup all your data files immediately. Get a new drive and start brand-spanking new.

2) Defragment your hard drive(s). That is a right click on the drive, Properties, Tools defragment. Note that Windows also has on the first tab of Properties a built-in cleanup tool. If you have never done this, set aside a nice morning or overnight when your machine will just be doing that... it will take forever.

3) Once you have gotten rid of excess files and files in your user directory in the TEMP sub-directory (C:\Documents and Settings\[username whatever that is]\Local Settings\Temp) which is to say, all of them as they are temporary, and done a disk defrag things should be working a bit better. The amount of garbage programs leave there is astounding and so rarely used as to not be noticeable. If things are *still* slow there is a tool from the MotherShip to look at:

User Profile Hive Cleanup Service It can help find some problems in the registry.

If you do not have MS Defender installed (an anti-spyware utility based on the GIANT engine by SunCoast Software), then go here to get it. Clean the spyware off the machine... strangely enough MS-Defender does a very good job of it.

A good anti-virus is also necessary, I use Alwil's Avast! which has the right price: free. Rated in the top five and usually one or two in most run-offs between A-V software. If you have McAfee: ditch it. It will make the fastest system into sludge upon install.

Run a full A-V and anti-spyware scan.

Update all your drivers from HP.

Update Windows via the MS Update site.

If the system is still running slow there are more thorough things to do: like re-install XP which *should* get you a brand-spanking new registry with your registered files and without the junk. It is a PITA to do and untrustworthy... but it can be *magic*.

If you adore troubleshooting, you get your own suite of tools over time that address every need you can ever have... no matter what the OS is. Software publishers and hardware driver publishers tend to have a distant relation to actually troubleshooting a system... There are other registry fixing tools, check PC Mag or PC Computing to see what is half-way decent.

Thus:
Check Event Viewer
Remove the junk files
Run AV and anti-spyware
Defrag
Update
Update
Fix Registry
Recheck event viewer and see what the problem is if it still there. You may need to rip out some software via REVO and re-install it.

Sun Mar 30, 09:53:00 AM PDT  
Blogger Bloviating Zeppelin said...

Wow! What great responses! Thanks folks! I'll keep trying to make the thing work but it's frustrating as hell.

BZ

Sun Mar 30, 03:33:00 PM PDT  
Blogger shoprat said...

I do not like Hillary but one has to admire her nerve.

Sun Mar 30, 04:09:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Bloviating Zeppelin said...

Mark: I thank you particularly for the various links; I tried the key thing, then tried the BIOS restart thing; the damned keyboard still isn't working. I suppose that's what I get for ordering a "used" laptop from eBay. What the hell; I got about 4 years' use out of it -- I suppose that's about average.

Anyone have any recommendations about a good, RELIABLE PC laptop? My next DESK confuser is gonna be an iMac. But I still want a laptop PC. Suggestions?

BZ

Sun Mar 30, 04:17:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

On the thread with the BIOS bit some users had their keyboard work ok if they removed the battery, seemed strange to me but several HP users reported the same problem you do and removing the battery fixed it. others cleaned the keyboard plug.

if you are looking for a new laptop my favorite toy store is newegg You'll notice that they sell apples, as well as many others.

Sun Mar 30, 04:42:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Bloviating Zeppelin said...

Mark: shoot, my battery died at least two years ago. This display and processor eats only shore power. But okay, I'll try the battery removal thing.

BZ

Sun Mar 30, 07:24:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Dionne said...

In doing research for the radio show today one of the articles I read called the Dem race "toxic", I thought that was a perfect way to describe it ;-)).

Mon Mar 31, 06:25:00 AM PDT  
Blogger A Jacksonian said...

Remember the system battery is not the BIOS battery... HP should have the user's manual to find the latter online. The latter *do* die, but rarely... if the BIOS is cleared on next reboot go to the BIOS setup menu and make sure you know what each of the major parts does... update system time is the biggie for a laptop, a flakey battery will cause no end of grief.

Normally flakey behavior after you have had a system for a couple of years is not hardware. I have seen exactly *two* BIOS batteries die in the last 20 years of all the systems I have worked on and helped others fix.

The main culprits for a normal desktop don't normally apply to a laptop: internal wiring and memory. The wiring is nearly impossible to go after in a laptop, but the memory sticks can be accessed: look at manual, take out, reseat snugly. Most have a satisfying light snap or securing mechanism to make sure they are seated.

Your system battery is unlikely to be the cause, and an on-board diagnostic once booted should tell you its status.

On Windows bootup a hit of the 'F8' key will bring up the start-up menu. 'Last Known Good' is the target if the system hasn't been played with, operating-system wise, too much. For the Repair and Recovery console: you are on your own in the great halls of the MicroSoft Knowledgebase, which may actually have the location of the Lost Ark there hidden in a reference file to a mouse made in 1996. There are, indeed, nuggets of Wisdom in the bowels of the Knowledgebase. Find Indiana Jones... you will need him.

After that you are to my section on software cures.

Remember if it is a flakey hard drive then back up data immediately and without fail *now*, not tomorrow. Hard drives are the next long-term part to go on a system after wiring and memory. Mean Time Between Failure for most is 5 years, but that is *mean* as in *average*.

Registry fixing software: you are on your own, check the last tests done by major reviewers.

A last and time consuming fix is to use REVO and uninstall everything save necessary operating system updates and such. The Hive Clean it with the previously linked tool.... but if you have gone that far, you are close to just re-installing the OS and starting out with a nice, new, unupdated copy of XP, letting it update, putting Defender and A-V on first, then REVO then everything else you need. A lovely 6 hours or so, but if you have a problem on brandy-new install, then it is the system, not the OS. A cheap replacement drive is good for this too - take out the old, put in the new, install OS and voila! Actually with an old system that might be the *cheapest* and *easiest* thing to do... and has the benefit of letting you install the second drive in the spare (if your system has that capability) and then you can run all newly installed proggies from the new drive and get data from the old.

Mon Mar 31, 08:59:00 AM PDT  

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