Random Rants Q': I protest against subtitles

[Samson]

Why do I have such problems with technology?

I have totally gone over to google for word processing and presentations. However I was sent a complex administrative form as a word document with "do not share this document" instructions (for no good reason). So I have been working on it in libreoffice. Last night it crashed, and I could not restore it, I think it overwrote the backup and main file with the original I was sent (but it may have been me panicking late at night). I have spent most of the night recreating my work. Now I am knackered, but have lots to do for a meeting this afternoon.

In a way I am glad. I lost a few hours work, but there are plenty of documents I work on that take days or weeks. At least I know now to not let libreoffice near them.

 

[Arakhor]

I have noticed on occasion that long files with multiple tables can corrupt more easily in LibreOffice, but otherwise, I've had no problems with it.

 

[Samson]

I have noticed on occasion that long files with multiple tables can corrupt more easily in LibreOffice, but otherwise, I've had no problems with it.

My documents tend to be fairly long, with lots of complex data presentation in one way or another.

 

[EgonSpengler]

It's 8F/-13C outside. I mean, I like cold weather, but that's getting close to "okay, this isn't funny anymore."


p.s. That's not accounting for wind chill, which could be around -10F/-23C to -15/-26, I guess?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Seems normal for January. Actually, according to Environment Canada, the winter here has been much warmer than usual (I won't complain about the temperature, as long as we get enough snow).

 

[really]

I must be getting old.
My chrome browser updated on my phone and I don't like change.

 

[Chicken Pizza]

If you pee against the side of the toilet bowl instead of straight into the water you'll be almost noiseless.

When women start doing that, maybe I will

 

[Takhisis]

Actually, women can aim but they're never taught to and urinals are seldom built having women in mind.

That said, you could just use a bidet to urinate and wash it down afterwards with far less water than needed in a full toilet flush.

 

[GenMarshall]

I must be getting old.
My chrome browser updated on my phone and I don't like change.

You must construct additional RAM sticks!

 

[amadeus]

Turds. I boned my graphics file, so now I have to go through and fix them.

Such is life.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

In one of those weird cosmic convergences re. Samson above:

I &%$#ing hate Microsoft.

Two days ago I put my computer in hibernation while I was off doing other things. For whatever goddamn reason it somehow crashed in the process, and when I went to wake it the system loaded fresh. I'd had a WordPad doc open I use for idea scrapbooking and off-the-cuff practice vignettes (one of several, actually)—not stuff I'd ever publish on its own, but which occasionally yield useful inspiration for proper projects. We're talking months, and in some cases years of accumulated notes.

"No big deal," I thought, "I'd saved my progress before closing up."

Dead. Wrong.

I open the doc the next day, and it's blank. The file is the same size, and there are about as many characters as in the original text, but playing around with font and colour and text size yields nothing. I start looking up advice online; some people mention a File History feature in Explorer—too bad I didn't know a) that existed, and b) I had to turn it on first. Someone mentioned .tmp files, which might have actually had it, but of course in order to know I had a problem I had to open the doc, so that got overwritten. Next step, file recovery program: I tried four or five, including one for disk recovery that actually produced a 'salvaged' file for one of the other docs in full, but only the first few paragraphs for the one I needed (one appended with a whole lot of nonsense for what seemed to be photography metadata).

That last program had a preview feature in hex code, so then I thought, open the file with a hex-editor and see if I can decode it manually.

It's nothing but rows of 0s.

I have some older backups lying around, but I'd been making steady additions to this for the past 3–4 months. All lost.

Let me recap: having suffered crashes before in similar circumstances without issue, a Windows crash managed to corrupt and overwrite a pre-saved document simply because it was open in WordPad. And based on the forum posts I dug up looking into this, this has been a problem for years.

WordPerfect 12, a word processor over a decade obsolete, will make salvage copies of unsaved salvage copies.

I really need to switch to Linux.

 

[The_J]

Seems I have an allergy flare up after working out yesterday (happens regularly) :/ .

 

[GinandTonic]

Dead. Wrong.

I open the doc the next day, and it's blank. The file is the same size, and there are about as many characters as in the original text, but playing around with font and colour and text size yields nothing.

Around the end of the naughties I was at university. I went home for the weekend, wrote the W.B.Yeats essay that was due. Laptops were in their early days, but as I was on the train back to uni I fiddled about with the essay until the battery warning came on. I saved to floppy (yeah, that long ago). Turns out the power died mid save. The whole essay gone from the laptop and on the floppy turned mostly into random characters. Odd bits of text remaining but mostly gibberish.

There in the middle of the gibberish, perfectly formatted, was the quote "A terrible beauty is born".

 

[Birdjaguar]

Around the end of the naughties ....

When do people grow out of the naughties?

 

[Ajidica]

It's 8F/-13C outside. I mean, I like cold weather, but that's getting close to "okay, this isn't funny anymore."


p.s. That's not accounting for wind chill, which could be around -10F/-23C to -15/-26, I guess?

Windchill is starting to get nasty, but 8F is pretty normal for winter where I live. (Indeed, we've had a very warm winter in Minnesota so far.)

 

[GinandTonic]

When do people grow out of the naughties?

Seems they just get more subtle as they get older.

 

[Chicken Pizza]

I have totally gone over to google for word processing and presentations. However I was sent a complex administrative form as a word document with "do not share this document" instructions (for no good reason). So I have been working on it in libreoffice. Last night it crashed, and I could not restore it, I think it overwrote the backup and main file with the original I was sent (but it may have been me panicking late at night). I have spent most of the night recreating my work. Now I am knackered, but have lots to do for a meeting this afternoon.

In a way I am glad. I lost a few hours work, but there are plenty of documents I work on that take days or weeks. At least I know now to not let libreoffice near them.

Kind of too late now, sorry.

Creating a backup.bat file somewhere, for example in C:\, and scheduling it daily, takes only ten minutes and is not as heavy as installing a backup program.

@echo off

for /f %%i in ('date /t') do set date=%%i

xcopy /e /h /i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Diablo II\Save" C:\%date%

One xcopy line per file or folder, obviously.

 

[amadeus]

My stomach hurts and I’m at my stupid job and everyone is conspiring to hit me with their bicycles.

 

[Syno]

My stomach hurts and I’m at my stupid job and everyone is conspiring to hit me with their bicycles.

Why are there bicycles in your office?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yes, and swinging them around to hit people is quite an effort.