For the past few months, since a little while after I got my new computer, I set up Remote Desktop on my old desktop computer so I could log in and use it from inside my laptop. This is a tool that I have seen, but never really knew how to use, or wanted to use. But now that I have a portable computer, it is nice to control the desktop from anywhere in the house. This little gem that is built into Windows is a fantastic tool.

It was a little time consuming to get it set up because the desktop only had one user account. This made me have to create my own user account, with a password, so I could log in and control the computer remotely. I also had to use a piece of software to hide the user so the computer stays logging into the main account when the computer is turned on. After that, the software is great.

Probably the two reason I use this the most, is to administrate the desktop and do necessary maintenance, start uTorrent and downloads, and to test software. I used the computer to test Firefox 3.0 Alpha 7, also known as Minefield. Because the computer wasn’t my main system with all my important stuff on it, I felt it was the perfect environment to take the plunge with playing around with Alpha software. More recently, I also tested Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta and had a play around with it. I now use both of these applications on my main computer because I have felt they are stable enough to use and they do run very well, but I wanted to check them out a little bit before taking the plunge with them on my main system.

It is really nice to be able to use these little gems hidden in your system. There are a lot of things included with Windows that I don’t use, or don’t even know about. Remote Desktop is one of those and it is a great application that is bundled with Windows. I wish I could use it more and for other things and connecting to other computer, but unfortunately I cannot. I wonder what I will discover next, hidden in my computer.

As you should know, a couple of months ago, my laptop went to the repair center to get fixed. Well the story is that I didn’t get the computer back in its full glory. Other than the missing ExpressCard blank, a hole that now fills with dust, I was also left with one dead pixel. You probably think I am crazy for getting annoyed and complaining about one little pixel on my monitor, but it is a big deal. I am getting one less pixel than I should be getting. Not only is it the fact that it’s dead, but its that it died when it was at the repair centers hands. Call me crazy but I blame them for it. I think they were careless and that’s why that poor pixel died.

I do know my poor laptop, the one I treated like a million dollar diamond, perfect, clean and mark less. When it returns to me, it has scratches, it has a giant dust collecting hole in the side, one of the grips on the bottom is gone and one pixel is dead. Just so you know how big of a deal this is, the pixel in question is located just a bit up from the bottom about half a finger on the left. Its well hidden by Vistas black taskbar but I know it is there, a millimeter under the iTunes quick launch icon. It annoys me. I want a perfect screen with every single pixel in working order. Call me crazy but I should be getting all the pixels I paid for, not one less.

This is not the only thing in my possession with problematic pixels. My PSP happens to have a stuck pixel, a damn red one. It is about 2.5 cm from the top and left. You would think it wouldn’t be a problem but it is really irritating when watching a movie or doing something other than pushing buttons in a game. When playing a game, you are so into the game that the pixel becomes invisible, but when doing other things, that red dot is irritating and very noticeable, so much that it is distracting.

When a small dot on a screen with many more pixels dies, its not really a problem if it is out of the way, but a pixel on a small screen close to the middle, now that is just irritating. When will the day come that pixels don’t have problems. One day I would like to now worry about the little guys inside my screens dying or getting stuck, its something that I shouldn’t even think about, but since they are annoying me, I am worried. I am crazy for getting agitated about something so small and insignificant. Maybe I have some kind of disorder, or maybe I just want things perfect!

As you should know, my laptop has gone back to the repair shop to get the wireless fixed. Its been gone for three days now so I presume they are either lazy, or waiting for parts to come or something. I really miss my laptop and would trade this desktop in anyway, just to have it back. Lucky I am not going to have to do that and can have both. Here are a short list of things that I miss about her. Don’t worry, its not a top ten list.

I really miss Vista. Some people will think I am crazy but there are heaps of little things in Vista that I wish they had in XP. One of the things is the quick search. Finding applications in “All Programs” is a tedious task and is becomes very easy to miss just typing in the first few letters on an app and hitting enter. Not only that, but I miss the stylish black bar and the blue Windows orb. XP looks so square and unclean, if you know what I mean.

I also miss the smooth video playback this temporary computer doesn’t offer. I have had to suffice with jumpy, poor video playback. I assume it is due to the crappy video graphics this computer has but I wouldn’t know to be honest. Video looks great on my laptop, its also in nice widescreen so there are not huge black bars above and below a video. Also the glossy screen makes the video look so much better, not really but it makes me feel better about watching TV shows on it.

Another thing that I miss about my laptop is it being portable. I can use it anywhere, in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bedroom or even in the bathroom/toilet if I please.  I miss being able to snuggle into bed with my laptop on top of me watching a few TV shows to finish off the day before I go to sleep.Its a luxury I wish I had but obviously this desktop computer can’t provide me with that. Being stuck to this desk with and uncomfortable chair is annoying, I just wanna hop into bed and watch some shows.

The thing I miss the most about my laptop is that fact that it is mine, all mine. No sharing, no one else’s grubby mits on it, no one else’s hard drive space or anything. Its 100% mine and I can do anything I want with it.  Not having to worry about losing other peoples files or having stuff running that will slow down the computer for other people is great. This desktop is so slow and if I lose my families documents, or pictures like I have in the past, I’m in trouble. Everything that happens with my PERSONAL computer is my problem and I will be the one to suffer any consequences.Too bad that it feels more like HP’s computer than mine at the moment with all the problems as well as the stupid junk software that got loaded onto it when they reinstalled Windows.

Hopefully my computer is back to working order every soon. It will probably Tuesday if the problem isn’t too deep. I really miss the little thing. To be honest, I wish they could have just replaced the whole dam thing with a nice working one. We all know that that is never going to happen though, haha. They don’t wanna lose money, which is why they wanted me to attempt a stupid system recovery to reinstall Windows  so they hopefully didn’t have to pay for repairs. Sucks they they are paying for it twice. Come home soon lappy, I miss you

And this is the first week of term four over. I though I wouldn’t be able to fit everything into my week but somehow I managed, even with the many obsticles. I have two more tv shows to watch and one more podcast to listen to for the week that that all my media consumed, for this week at least. Having no laptop and having a lot of other events, such at my other commitments as well as my grandmothers 80th birthday,  have been some distractions of the week and I will easily fit everything into a regular week. Because of the week, the posts here have been a bit weak. I promise a couple of post with more in them next week.

Onto another subject, I want to remind you all that this is a personal blog. No news here, just me and my life. If you are not interested in this, please do yourself a favor and unsubscribe from the feed. It sounds odd that someone is asking for people to subscribe, normally people are harping on for people to subscribe and such. To be honest, I don’t care about how many people read this, how many people subscribe here or how many people comment here. If you want to, you are most welcome. I don’t need people to criticize my posts , especially about spelling and grammar. If it bothers you that much, refer to what I said a few sentences back, I don’t need you commenting on grammar errors. If you don’t want to get over it and really must say something that is irrelevant to the topic of the post, email me.

With that out of my system, I will continue to do what I normally do. I hope to get my laptop back before Heroes, Prison Break and Chuck on Tuesday. I hate watching these widescreen shows on a standard monitor. Its amazing how much I miss my laptop. You don’t really realize how useful something, or someone is and how much they mean to you until you do not have them. This is how I feel about my laptop and I hope that she never has to part from me ever again. I miss you lappy!

We my week back hasn’t been so good. Laptop died as I have already mentioned enough this week, I am stuck to using a annoying desktop computer that is crap and just doesn’t feel personal enough to be my PC. School is really boring and I would rather be at home doing nothing. I managed to watch about half a dozen of my favorite TV shows because this computer can’t play video well. I have a dozen more TV shows that I have downloaded that I need to watch in the weekend. I will have to find time to fit in in because there is a lot going in this weekend. I got my school report and it was extremely average. So my week hasn’t been that great. I can’t believe I am going to click on the publish button, I should just click the red ‘X’.

As I ranted about two days ago, my wireless in my notebook isn’t working.  yesterday I rang Compaq and they told me to do useless crap that I had already tried. I told them I had done it but they insisted that I tried it again. Anyway, without luck, I was told that I would have to restore my system. I backed up my files and waited for the call center to open up the next day.

They walked me through restoring it with their recovery software and I had no luck with that. The software stalled at the par where it re-installs the operating system. I tried restoring from the recovery disc but no luck, same error.  Now I had no way of restoring my computer. The hard drive had been reformatted so there was nothing on the disc. I then had to drop my laptop at the HP certified repair center for them to put Windows Vista back on it and test the wireless adapter and replace if need be.

I have no laptop now and I won’t be getting it back for at up to seven days. That is a long time to wait for her I miss her already. Now I am resorted to a slow, crappy Windows XP desktop. I hate this machine! It will do though, better this than nothing at all. I’m going to have to convert my TV Shows to watch on my PSP because this stupid computer doesn’t play well with Divx. Poor Me!

I am a little pissed of at the moment. Things aren’t working how they should be, people aren’t doing what they should be, things should be happening that should be and people are doing stupid things they shouldn’t be. Sounds complicated, well really its simple, my wireless adapter isn’t working, hp online support didn’t help me, hp call support works only in business hours and some asshole decided to rar a bunch of rars, all these things have pissed me off.

I was using the wireless in my bedroom about two hours ago, it was going fine. All of a sudden the connection dies. I try to reconnect to my home network. Oh god! BSOD! An error message about a driver or something. I let it do its thing and restart. I don’t see my network, for a matter of fact, it doesn’t find any networks, none of the random ones in the neighbourhood (default and linksys.) Something is not right. I do to device manager to have a look at the network adapters and my wireless adapter is not on the list.

I decide to communicate to HP support. I took the online support rather than the phone support due to the fact that there could be a possibility of talking so a foreigner with an accent hard to understand. I though I would skip the pain and frustration of that if I could. I talked to a support guy, gary was his name. He was kinda helpful in the sence of not asking stupid questions and skipping straight to the part where my options are to take it out and put it back in or ring NZ support to figure out how to get it fixed.

I decided to call the HP support number but later realize that I need the Compaq support number.I don’t get why HP support doesn’t give the the option to redirect to Compaq support or at least use the same support center. I ring the right number after getting it off the internet. I am greeted by a familiar voice, the guy from HP Support Line. The hours of Compaq support are between 8:30am and 6:00pm. I don’t get why, chances are they use an international support center because its cheaper, if this is the case, I should be able to call anytime of day. This is stupid and means I am going to have to fit them in between 4:30pm and 6:00pm, else I will have to wait till a few days.

Not having wireless is very inconvenient. You don’t realize how great it is until you are reduced to using wired. Its great being able to ly in bed with the internet on your lap. Its wonderful. I decided that I will connect to a wired connection to download some TV shows to watch in my bed since I won’t have any internet. The first show I download, the fool rared a folder full of rars. Why couldn’t he have un-rared it and re-rared just the individual file. People are stupid, things are stupid! I am having a shit day! Things shouldn’t just randomly break, support should be 24/7, and people shouldn’t do asshat things. If all these though could happen, the world would be a better place!