GooRoo's unscheduled time away from the Forum

[GooRoo]

I lost my Internet connection Saturday night, and just got it back this morning (Monday). (No support on Sundays. ) That's a scary feeling! I was afraid that I had a hardware problem ... the lightz in my computer room flickered Saturday night, so something might have been 'fried' inside the computer ... luckily, everything is all right. If support was not able to help me get reconnected this morning, I was going to try using my wif'e computer to get in. The problem is, I am always 'logged in', and I may not have been able to get in as 'GooRoo' from another computer. (I am going to test that out today, and if I cannot be logged in twice, from two different computers, I will change my SOP to log off when I am done for the day. That won't help if I am truly disconnected with a hardware problem, though.)

[GooRoo]

Taking note of a prediction of 65mph wind storms in this area, I turned off my computer around 7:00PM Thursday evening (it is 10:00AM Sunday now). At 12:10AM Friday, we lost all power. at 3:10AM this morning, power was restored, and I am recovering from 60 hours of problemz. Since I have some thingz that I must do today that take precedence over even my personal recovery, it will be about ten hourz before I get back to do anything substantial for this Forum. I hope that also explainz why I did not release any more Custom Levelz on Thursday and/or Friday.

[GooRoo]

Well, perhapz you faithful Gruntzerz noticed that I have not been posting at all for almost a week.

It seemz that my DSL modem became brain dead, and I was unable to get on-line since early in the week. About two hourz ago, the modem was replaced by the QWest repairman, and everything worked fine on his laptop. It didn't work at all on my computer. But when I re-started the computer, I had an opportunity to add a new network connection, and everything magically worked once again!

I managed to catch up on my reading of postz on this Forum, and cleared my e-mail inbox of about a megabyte of SPAM, and replied to those e-mailz and PMz that had stacked up since I was last able to get on-line last Monday. But the schedule of the day has me off-line until about 7:45PM (it is just after noon, as I am posting this). Hopefully, I will be able to get back on-line when I return home!

[GooRoo]

There is a windstorm in my area, up to 60 miles per hour winds. We have already had one power outage that lasted about an hour, and the worst of the storm has not hit ... yet. So I am turning off my computer until the storm is over. (Most electrical components fail when power is turned on ... or off ... and I would rather turn off the computer 'gently' than have it turned off forcibly again. I was lucky this time ... might not be so lucky, next time.)

[GooRoo]

I have taken on the task of re-typing the script of "On Golden Pond" as it is necessary to trim the play down to about one hour ... and the 'cuts' are becoming unmanageable in the current working document. So until the 75 pages are re-typed (eliminating the 'cut' portions), I will be spending a minimum of time on Gruntzy thingz. I hope to have the task completed by next Wednesday, so this is not expected to be a long-term project. But I just wanted everyone to be aware of the reason why I may not be responding to many questionz for the next few dayz.

[GooRoo]

Thanks to a Microsoft system upgrade, I was locked out of the Internet until about 12:30PM today.

It seems that this upgrade changed the firewall settings to "highest security" ... meaning that there was no web site in the world that was secure enough for me to visit!!! After two outgoing telephone calls, and one returned call, I was given the fix for my problem. In the interim, I have been working on some of my walk-throughz, especially the Glossary ... which I will now re-upload to the web host.

[GooRoo]

I lost one computer due to the heat wave we have experienced, and I have had the new laptop computer powered down during the heat of the day. Since some dayz I have had early morning activitiez scheduled (usually matchez), and some eveningz with activitiez that kept me from the (hot!) computer room, I have fallen behind on many Gruntzy thingz. Today I have managed to test three Battlez Custom Levelz (won two, lost one ... let my last Grunt die). I am spending a bit of time in updating the itemz that go into the Gruntz Extraz CD-ROM, but have less than three hourz before I have to get ready for square dancing. I hope to have the Battlez and one Quest ready for distribution by Monday evening. And I hope to have the Gruntz Extraz CD-ROM ready to mail out, as well.

I am having a bit of trouble getting labelz created on my LightScribe CDz ... 21 minutez to 'print' a label on a CD, and not a thing appearz on the label side. I have tried Roxio and the LightScribe 'Simple' and 'Template' versionz, with the same result ... nothing appearz on the label. Anyone have any luck with labeling CD (or DVDz) on LightScribe media? I would appreciate any help, tipz. easy-to-use (free) software) to allow me to spruce up the CDz.

Thank you for your help!

[GooRoo]

I simply have to take some time to clean up my desk, filing away those completed projectz (not many of those ) and organizing the onez "in progress" so that I can actually complete some of them! So I will be off-line ... and even away from Gruntz testing/walk-throughz/etc. for at least a few hourz. I still hope to be able to distribute "Run Cloudy, Run" this afternoon, though.

[GooRoo]

I thought that my other ProBoards Forum, dedicated to Square Dancing in my area, would have been deleted, just as my Test Forum for Gruntz was deleted ... due to inactivity. But when I checked, it was still there. Now, there are local area square dancerz who want the Forum revived, so I will be dividing time between Gruntz and Square Dancing for a while. So all of my Gruntz projectz are going to take longer ... even longer than I already thought they would take to complete! I just updated the definitionz for 23 square dance callz, out of 53 in the lowest level of the activity. And there are three higher levelz in this area, with hundredz more movez to get updated. (But I get bored easily with "cut and paste", and have to do something else ... Gruntzy ... to re-awaken myself. )

[GooRoo]

Once again, I lost Internet access some time Saturday, and just got it back this afternoon, about an hour ago (Tuesday April 28th, 2015 in my area). What a frustrating feeling, to not be able to check in on happenings in this Forum, and being unable to update the web host with new Custom Levels that have been distributed in the last week!

On the telephone to my ISP, I was asked for the model of my DSL modem ... which (if it exists ... still not sure if what I found was a model number ) was NOT on the front of the device. So (because my setup is such that the various cables were too short for me to just look at the back, bottom, etc.) I unplugged everything to read out everything that was on the bottom of the device. None of that information was what the tech was looking for ... and the incoming telephone line dropped behind the desk which is my computer station. That desk is five and a half feet (167cm) wide by three feet two inches (96cm) deep and (loaded with files) weighs about 500 pounds (220 kilos)! So there was no chance of moving it (at MY age!) to access the dropped line. Fortunately, we have "an arm extender" ... a folding gripper with a trigger type mechanism for clamping at the far end. There is only about two inches between the back of the desk and the wall ... and the handle is closer to three inches, so it was a bit of a hassle to make the grab of the telephone line which was near the floor (about two feet (51cm) from the top of the desk. Praise God! When I got things reconnected, and booted up the computer (a six minute process, in itself ) I tried to access the Internet ... and despite an inordinately long delay, I was rewarded with a connection to my e-mail account. After deleting the 27 SPAM messages, I went to work on catching up on the important things I had missed during the outage. And here I am again!

[GooRoo]

A tree fell over the power lines leading into our housing area at around 2:00AM on Saturday. Power was restored at about 6:40PM Sunday, but Internet access lagged behind. When I got up to have breakfast this morning, the telephone worked (connected in the same way as the Internet) so I knew we were back online. Today, tomorrow and a few more days are continuance of the snow storm that has caused the problems. So if I am not detected online, news about the west coast of the US may provide a clue as to why.