April 22, 2013
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The Daily News
1 Happy Mondeeeeeeee!2 I'm excited to be back.
3 We return to somewhat normalcy today.
4 After almost a month of massive stress, our school returns to a week of actual learning without visiting teams, testing days, grade deadlines, or weird schedules.
5 I won't mention Spring Break, because it is a blur.
6 During that period of time, I also lost a laptop and somehow inherited this nightmare called Windows 8.
7 Yeesh.
8 I guess sometimes life has to knock you around a little.
9 Or a lot.
10 I decided I would try to conquer Windows 8.
11 If you haven't had the pleasure, it is one of the most intrusive things anyone trying to live on the Internet could go through.
12 The changes are pretty radical.
13 They're based on cell phones, and doing two-finger enlargements.
14 Touch screen concepts on a touchpad.
15 Last week I tried writing the DN on this nonsense and the fonts suddenly went to size one.
16 If you know me, you know I'm not a size one.
17 It's a handy-dandy thing if you have a lot of time on your hands.
18 It's a nightmare if you're multi-tasking, which I now do on a daily basis.
19 Fortunately, I have a Geek squad from Best Buy. They are a King's army
.20 I put Microsoft Office into this ordeal the other day.
21 Well, I tried to, and ultimately succeeded.
22 I had to go through an act of Congress to install it, and to pay for it.
23 They wanted me to remember some password I gave them in 2007.
24 Dude.
25 2007 was six years ago.
26 They also want a new password. It has to have eight characters. Two have to be from West Virginia. One has to have some sort of loop. A third has to be capitalized. A fourth needs to be anything Arabic.
27
28 Then they made me try to imitate some cryptic group of letters like CyBrkLmWff. They had a cute little thing that said something like, "We just want to make sure you're not a robot."
29 A robot would have done it in one shot.
30 I kept typing in whatever I thought it said.
31 Each time it said, "Nope." I was afraid that if I wrote some pixie's name backwards, that I might get hurled into the fifth dimension.
32 I found myself yelling at my puter.
33 I was saying stuff like, "Um...I'd like to PAY you now. Would that be okay?"
34 Nevermind.
35 I actually think I conquered the stuff though.
36 Technology isn't going to back down. This much I know. I embrace it, and I hope to use the improvements to my advantage.
37 Anybody looking?
38 Moving on, Part One: I think I conquered Xanga. I think.
39 I didn't. I had a Geek do it. I paid extra to have an army of Geeks.
40 I also figured out how to make the fonts do my bidding.
41 Sort of.
42 Xanga insists on changing fonts and on NOT posting pictures.
43 It's sort of like trying to paint a painting but the paint becomes Alice-in-Wonderland alive and refuses to turn the colors you want it to.
44 You push a button on a computer, and it is supposed to do what you want it to do.
45 I think computers are getting SO intelligent that they are developing attitude.
46 Like, "No, I don't wanna do Comic Sans anymore. That's Old Skool."
47 My old laptop is on my workbench in a straight jacket.
48 I still have it on, even though it refuses to work.
49 I have a few cherished pictures I would like to pull out of the thing, but it hovers in a corner like a madman going through withdrawals.
50 I'm waiting for it to blow up or something.
51 Meanwhile, I think I have somewhat a handle on Windows 8, even though its functions are irritating.
52 I disabled a lot of their stuff. Anything involving vertical or horizontal movement on the touchpad has been disabled.
53 The Alice-in-Wonderland enlarging and shrinking is gone. Who NEEDS that? Some Geek must have thought it was a dandy idea, I imagine.
54 AnywayZ...
55 I think the DN is safe. I have no control over the artistic integrity of it any longer, and it is a tad annoying.
56 It will still land on your porch, but it will never look the way it looked.
57 I'm not going to battle it too much.
58 I write this in the middle of the night. Then I coast off to sleep.
59 I'm a fan of normalcy.
60 Hopefully we have that back.
61 Have a great Mondeeeeee!!!
62 See you again.
63 Peace.
~H~
www.xanga.com/bharrington
