Sunday, July 20, 2008

How I will be spending my day "off".

Tracking down all of my bills, going to their websites and bookmarking them in Safari in hopes that I'll be able to pay my bills. I had all of them bookmarked in firefox, but firefox lost all of those bookmarks. I suppose I'll have to do something like create new passwords or something equally tedious. This sucks. I hate computers. I owe real money on this piece of shit and I can't trust it to do simple things that my windows '95 computer that I bought in 1996 could be counted on to do. Fuck this.

5 comments:

ib said...

Definitely a tough break. I fucking hate having to do repetitive tasks when something screws up like it has for you ; that's the whole point in having a computer - so they tell us.

Are you using an Apple, Jon ? If you're using Safari, I guess so. If you are you won't have been exposed to Malware which could do this kind of damage. If you have moved your original Firefox program out of the folder it was in before you upgraded it, that - apparently - can screw up the file directory for bookmarks and corrupt the plist files. Try this Mozilla link:

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?comments_parentId=74990&forumId=1

Later.

Mr. Beer N. Hockey said...

Since I do not know how to use or care to learn about more than probably 1% of what my computer could do I do not seem to have much trouble with them. I just write, tack a picture on top of the writing and that's it. Sometimes I do a little research on things I do not know about or look for good places to camp I have not visited. Don't ask your computer to do too much, they are not up to it.

Your driver said...

Ib, the link does seem to have something to do with the problem. On the other hand, once the inscrutable geek talk is removed, the solution seems to be, "Go someplace in your computer, find the missing bookmarks there, move them back to the other place where they used to be." Of course, if I knew where they were, I wouldn't be having this problem. I have a bad, bad headache so it all seems like those little geek talk forum discussions where people jargonize at each other about the fact that downloading their favorite "app" may cause your computer to explode into radioactive flames rendering your neighborhood hostile to all life forms for approximately 25,000 years, but that in no way takes away from the utility of this "killer app" because the merest thousand lines of code, written while wearing lead underwear, may or may not solve the problem.

Yes, I'm using an almost new MacBook, which is currently running Safari. My experience has been that Apple computers are treacherous, will crash with no warning, will lose all of your most important files at the worst possible moment and will only do about 20% of what it is claimed they will do, which is to say that they are much more dependable than PC's.

Then there's the fact that it's an absolutely beautiful day outside and why would I want to fuck around with computers?

Beer, if I had a functioning brain I wouldn't use a computer at all, but the truth is that my brain spends most of it's time on endlessly complex loops of absolutely useless information. I am amazed by people who can think two sequential thoughts on the same subject. I am utterly floored by people who can act on the information their brains have processed. I seem to be a reasonably bright fellow, but I have the attention span of a chicken. I am absolutely dependent on my computer to keep track of things. Without it, I would have to give up my car, consumer credit and most of my possessions, move back to a rented room and handle all of my money in cash.

My computer allows me to enjoy a laughably haphazard approximation of a lower middle class lifestyle. Is this a good thing? I don't know, but that rented room and the crumpled dollar bills were definitely getting old. My father solved the problem by getting married young and just staying that way. Didn't work for me. My wives and girlfriends often had a way of expecting me to do all of the housework, manage the money and bring in most of the income.

And so, I am married to a computer. I thought maybe I could squeeze a couple of laughs out of the thing, but that hasn't really been working. Complain, com-fucking-plain.

ib said...

Jon. Here is where you should find your bookmarks before the Firfox 3 debacle.

1/ Go to your home folder. Select Library. Go to 'Application Support'; from there go to subfolder 'Fiefox'; go to subfolder 'profiles'; in there or the next subfolder should be a bunch of files - the one you want is 'bookmarks.html'.

To import them back into Firefox do the following: Go to 'Bookmarks' on the Firefox menubar ; scroll down and select 'Organize Bookmarks'. This opens a new window. Ignore it. Go to 'File' in the Firefox menubar.
Select "Import" and follow procedure 1/ to select 'bookmarks.html'. THIS SHOULD WORK, NO JARGON.

I know it's a fucking pain when the sun is shining, but do me a favour and let me know if this gets your shit back.

Your driver said...

Ib, thanks for your concern, but the only import option I was offered was to import the old book marks from safari. There was no menu just "import from safari? Yes/No". I went to the "plist" (whatever that is) bookmark thing as directed and found a document written in some kind of machine font that seemed to include something about the safari bookmarks I had brought over, but none of the missing bookmarks. Mostly it was a thousand lines of code. I did not tamper with it because my lead underpants are at the cleaners. I may or may not go back to blogging, but I am done with Firefox. Where the fuck did Firefox's great reputation come from? I've had more trouble out of it than I had out of Netscape when it went to shit.

Seriously though, thanks for your help and concern.

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