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Show Date: 2007.10.28

TechByter Worldwide is "on holiday" this week

Sometimes around Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's Day I take the week off. A quick review of the calendar will reveal that the closest of these holidays is Thanksgiving and that Thanksgiving is still several weeks in the future. The closest holiday I could hang this hiatus on is Halloween, which is next Wednesday. And that might be appropriate.

I'd planned to finish this week's program on Thursday evening because I have to attend a half-day training class on Saturday for the Board of Elections. Instead of complaining about elections, I'll be a poll worker this year and, because of the weekend schedule, the TechByter Worldwide program had to be complete by Thursday so that the podcast could be recorded on Friday.

Thursday afternoon, I took my aging Toshiba notebook computer to TCR for a hard drive upgrade. Then I started putting the finishing touches on this week's program. That's when the desktop system crashed. Again. And once again I wasn't able to boot the system or, on the rare occasions when I could get it to boot, I couldn't keep it running for more than a few minutes. Someday I'll recount the entire ugly story about how difficult troubleshooting this problem has been—if the cause of the problem is ever located. So far, TCR has performed Herculean work, but the precise cause of the system failures continues to be a mystery.

When the desktop system isn't available, which has been the case a lot recently, I use the notebook computer. It wasn't available, either. The one computer available to me (a Mac Powerbook) didn't have the applications I needed to finish the program or access to the files, which were on a backup drive on the other side of town. After the last round of repairs at TCR, the desktop system had been running so well that I thought I'd be safe releasing the notebook for 24 hours.

When it comes to computers, anything that can go wrong will. And even if you've eliminated all opportunities for something to go wrong, it still will go wrong. So now I'm out of time and still without the equipment needed to produce the program.

And that's why there's no TechByter Worldwide this week.

Creating the information for each week's TechByter requires many hours of unpaid work. Please consider dropping a little money into the kitty to help.

Bill Blinn
Bill can turn any computer to sludge, whether Windows or Mac.

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My attorney says I really need to say this: The TechByter website is for informational purposes only. I assume no responsibility for its accuracy, although I do my best. The information is subject to change without notice. Any actions you take based on information from the radio program, the podcast, or from this website are entirely at your own risk. Products and services are mentioned for informational purposes only and their various trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. TechByter cannot provide technical support for products or services mentioned.

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