Welcome to Club Services'
Slaves
of the Proverbial Ellipse
On Being Lost Forever
Once,
there was a young man with a brand new 1100 CC Sport Bike. This was his
first bike, but the dealer considered the physical size of his customer,
and went with, as we say, to a school parking lot where it could
be ascertained that there was plenty of caution and respect at hand, and
considering all that he'd observed, the dealer sold the big fast bike
to this new first time owner.
The new first time owner loved the bike immediately. He rode it around very cautiously, and his years of prior professional driving + pedal bike riding experience gave him an impeccable defensive driving platform from which to safely and carefully learn.
But one thing bothered the
young man; at around 3.800 RPM, there was a buzzing you could feel just
at ... maybe at 3,310 to yes, it looked like it was at its worst at around
3,600, and then that buzzing began to taper off at maybe 3,700. Long before
going out on the highway, the new rider went around carefully, over hill
and dale, sometimes, slowly, and even through town in traffic, and yes,
that buzz was there but only in that narrow band ... and he took the bike
back ... where he was met warmly and asked how he liked the bike.
"I like it fine, and that's an understatement," he said. "But there is one thing ..." and he told the bike shop people (who kept a wood burning stove going in the winter) all about the buzzing at around 3800 RPM. He was careful to iterate about the different gears and situations and how yes, at around the key numbers, sure, yes... there was that buzzing.
They listened in a respectful pleasant way. They only smiled and nodded.
"What can we do about it?" He asked at last.
"The buzzing happens at
3800?"
"Yes..."
"Don't ride at 3800," they advised him.
What is the sound of a light bulb coming on?
He was ready for the highway.
Problem: In the middle of what
I'm calling an active operation that is: requiring regular input and needing
to be done now and on line ...
A major application namely Word Perfect 9 from which I've been drawing
the data I'm uploading, by cutting and pasting, suddenly hangs in the
background. If it crashes, experience tells me the system, at least Explorer,
will go down with it.
If the Explorer goes down, data I'd like to call "semi volatile" because it is in RAM and I don't know how much their server would have received at the time of the crash I'm trying to avoid, is going bye-bye.
It would be like data snaps loose and is gone like a comet. Data of indeterminate size.
Yes I have copies but how much of a copy might I be needing? Wouldn't implementing these copies just duplicate all these chances for error?
I can most easily ascertain that unpleasant eventuality's effect by logging off, and coming back in 12 hrs + and seeing what consequences have been realized.
I'm talking about a bank ...an online bank ... Wingspan. I believe it when banks tell you how changes may not be in effect for 24 hrs.
The bottom line is, I don't want to stop this ongoing activity ... changing the payment date on about 20 individual payments each time requiring the loading of a new wingspan page and interacting with it: "Do you want to update this payment?" YES /NO
Didn't I just click "yes?" I ask myself ... I'm cautions about overclicking with Word Perfect looming like a lead dirigible in the background threatening to bring us all down to new levels of happy thrashing with the ellipse ...
How did I come to this place? Aren't more of us sharing these situations than we'd like? Your machine sometimes crashes. Do you ever anticipate the failure?
Error messages ... lockups ... fudgedowns!!
Can I duplicate the error? If I can, that's a bug. Talking about this bug documents the mundane activities of your all too typical PC user in 2001. This one had a happy ending.
To duplicate the problem maybe you'd be running Windows 98 ME. You'd be using the Explorer in a window tiled horizontally with an open Word Perfect 9 document. You'd be cutting and pasting from the WP document to the on line form at Wingspan. At the WP window, you try to open a new file; a calendar, just create one from a macro.
WP 9 starts to do this, then hangs. She does not respond to a discrete single press of the escape key. It is important not to hit escape when the explorer window with the Wingspan form is active because I don't want to leave this secure window as I've explained ... if the connection were lost, how much I'd need to replace would be in question.
The comet? The unknown size of it?
At least for now, the system is running ... slowly.
We need to keep it that way
until the on line business is done.
There is a new icon on the task bar at the right: macro calendar running. When I right click on it to stop it does not respond.
I don't dare Cntrl Alt Del. If memory laden fingers should accidentally do this, then only a ginger single tap of the escape key could "save" us.
I need to free Word Perfect to close, but she's hung. I maximize the explorer window and carry out the line by line task of updating individual transactions carefully.
How'd I even get here? Payments scheduled for the 1st of June? When I first logged on Wingspan's Account window, I thought the red "payment not until" window read, "6/3." This was fine ... but after setting up all the transactions and transmitting, I went back to check, and they were all on the bar for 5/30. They needed changed.
Oh, I'd seen the 5/30 tag before going for the act, but often, "experience has shown me," it is just better to click "next," "submit," "Enter," whatever. Because at Wingspan, when a payment date is impractical for holiday reasons, you get the payment update page, modifying payment date.
This is why I was trying to get WP to "run me a calendar" in the background.
Manually correcting each item takes about 15 minutes. I skirt WP 9 carefully ... from the task bar, I right click and try a "minimize" no go ... the window says, "macro running ... please wait." Or words to that effect.
Like not riding at 3800, there are times when you must cross back and forth ... on our way to other places. We just don't dwell.
That selective enforced abstinence can be hardest in the realization of the need to invoke it. To know what not to do, and then, not to do it.
This time when I logged off Wingspan, the "you are logged off screen" came up mercifully quickly. I closed the explorer window, then opened the fruity looking MSN Explorer used here to log on for multiple and younger users, closed that ... hearing the "good-bye" from the machine. Is that a synthesized voice? Probably a real *.wav! It is like she's trying to sound cheerful: "Good-bye!" One can picture the fluttering handkerchief.
"Safely" off line, we look at WP 9. Still there. The macro dusts itself off and puts a calendar on the screen. After a few seconds, I opt to close WP once again. This time, WP 9 responds, apparently normally: Wanna save this? (Talking about the calendar.)
"No."
This? (My phone list)
Well, since you seem to be acting normally, "YES."
This this and this? Yes, no, and yes.
Another Good-bye.
Here is where it is good to reboot. If apps are locked in the background,
rebooting will close them. Sometimes rebooting activates a virus, but
the detection software is up to date and running, and I'm not Cntrl Alt
Del from a blue screen.
In fact this time things are
looking normal.
I click on Restart, from the
shutdown menu, and I'm rewarded with the cleanest sweetest apparently
fault free reboot you could imagine.
Now here I am.
OUR ADDRESS:
Club Services
Wheeling, West Virginia 26003
Previous Page
Top of Page
Home Page