My Life Since Friday

Saturday morning I again went to the village center and walked a mile on the indoor track. I really do need the tally counter to keep track of the laps. I thought I had counted correctly and completed a mile. When I checked my pedometer, it said my distance was only 0.84 miles. I walked some more until it said 1.08 miles. The tally counter was received in the Dallas Post Office on Saturday so I should receive it today.

 

Saturday evening I went to the Flix and Mingle gathering at the village center. The movie was The Prestige. I checked the Internet Movie Database. The Prestige received an 8.4 out 10.0 user rating. I don't know what is wrong with me, but I was in absolute misery as I watched the movie. I would rate it as one of the worst ever. I don't think the user rating at Frisco Lakes would have been more than 1.5 out of 10.

 

I really, really miss listening to podcasts on my iPod. Yesterday afternoon I began to wonder if Microsoft's music player called the Zune worked with Windows Vista. It costs $200, and I don't like the idea of spending that much when I have a perfectly good iPod. After I read some reviews of the Zune I realized I would not be happy with one after using the iPod. I then looked at Apple's web site and saw that Vista was now listed as a supported Windows operating system for iTunes 7.2. I read the tech. notes. The only problem Apple now mentions is with computers with SATA drives and Nvidia controllers. My computer has SATA drives and the Intel controller. I then did more Google searches and read reports of iTunes 7.2 working, but the users were also upgrading to a new version of the Intel Matrix Storage Console.

 

I then reread the article in the Sony Knowledge Base. It said to check with the music player application publisher for a Vista compatible version before installing. iTunes is now Vista compatible. I then called Sony technical support. The tech who answered my call spoke perfect English. At first I thought I was talking to someone in the U.S.; but as the call progressed, I could tell he was not fully understanding my question. He asked me if I wanted to upgrade to the new version of the Intel Matrix Storage Console. I told him I was reluctant to do so. He said he agreed--he used the phrase, if its not broke--don't fix it. I asked him to search the database on the latest information on iTunes. He did said so, and he said there are reports of it now working. He gave me a case number and asked if there was anything else. I thought I would go ahead and get it documented in my record about the problems the PC occasionally has with not doing a complete shutdown or hanging when it is put in the sleep mode. He said there is probably some program still running that conflicts. His solution was to run Windows recovery which would lose all of my data and put the computer back in its original state. I said no thanks to that. This computer shipped with the problem originally.

 

To my dismay, this morning Internet Explorer stopped responding. That happened all the time when I first got the computer, but Microsoft's patches had, I thought, fixed that problem. I finally hit control-alt-delete which brings up a multi-choice screen in Vista. I just chose cancel and was returned to the desktop. IE 7 then shutdown. I thought it would be a good idea to restart the computer. It had a normal shutdown. When I started backup it hung during the loading of Vista. This was a first. I waited and waited. I finally, with much reluctance pressed the power button. The computer shutdown. I then started it again. It came up with a strange new screen that said "Windows Resuming". The bootup completed very slowly, but finally things appeared to be normal. I then did a restart without powering down. The computer rebooted and so far so good.

 

It is frustrating to have spent so much money for a new computer, and then have to contend with these issues. The only thing I can do is hope that the bugs will eventually be removed. In the meantime I keep backing up my data.