Tips for advanced users

Well, got the ol' computer working again after a bit of a crash. Nothing lost except my recording of last week's live radio gig at PLU. Otherwise my computer is up and cruising again. Allow me to offer everyone out there a couple simple (yet vital) tips to avoid crashes like the one I just had.

Tip #1
Avoid creating single files on your computer that take up more than a gigabyte of hard drive space. Last Friday I hooked my PC up to my stereo receiver and recorded the entire broatcast of the PLU Jazz Ensemble playing Christmas music. Now, seeing that I was the one starting and stopping the recording on my computer, I had to start it about thirty minutes before the concert and ended up stopping it about thirty minutes after. Saving the file in WAV format resulted in a single sound file that was about 2 hours long and topped off at over a gigabyte. Unfortunately, I don't think this PC enjoyed having to deal with such a file.

Tip #2
Netscape has its bugs. The spark that lit the digital explosion the other day was a simple (or so it seemed) crash of Netscape. PLU's server was down yet I attemped to connect to it via Netscape Mail. Not able to connect I cancelled the action. This had been crashing just Netscape all day. Normally when one closes down the browser it leaves an incidence of itself secretly running in the background so the next time you open it up it seems so lightning fast that you wouldn't dare trash it for some substitute. SO, being the concious computer user that I tend to think I am, I closed Netscape and CTRL+ALT+DELETed to end the task of that other incidence of Netscape. The task ended, then (because it wouldn't connect to PLU's server) it crashed. This is bad because all occurences of Netscape had been closed already. Only then did it decide to crash. Well, this time it froze the whole works and, long story short, I've been picking up the pieces ever since.

Everything is (knock on virtual wood) working again now and at a delightful pace. Amazing what a clean reinstall of Windows can do! In celebration (not really) of this occaision, I'm going to head into town with my sister, my best friend, and his sister to see Toy Story 2 for the third time. Should be great to see again because it's a fantastic movie. I will, however, probably leave this as my last time so I can see the other movies on my list (Man on the Moon and Magnolia). Have a great, sunny day!

Oh! Don't forget that the Moon will be really huge and bright tonight due to it's orientation to us and our orientation to the Sun.

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