Computer Problems In case anybody is wondering what is going on with the website, there was a crash during the night which blew out my main computer which I had everything on writing articles. When you post articles on the Internet on a website you maintain, you need a lot of web tools, otherwise known as apps. Sometimes, these tools are expensive so even though you may have a backup computer you can’t afford to get a license for more than one instance of a particular program. Some of these programs can cost as much as $700 each. As most of you know there is no advertising on my website to cover any of this course so I have to bear the burden myself. I decided on this course a long time ago because I didn’t want to be under the thumb of advertisers telling me what to do and I didn’t want advertisements popping up all over the place while people were trying to read the articles. I think it was a wise choice if we take into consideration the way things are going today. I never planned on making any money off the website it was just more of a hobby for me. Originally my first website was named About Facts Net. This name is no longer connected with me. I had that site for quite a few years but things didn’t turn out well in the end because the hosting company was run by a man who wasn’t interested in doing the right thing. You can host websites all over the world from where you are and it really doesn’t matter because of the way the web is set up. I had been on a Romanian website for several years without a problem but when I switched to a different plan the person who ran the hosting didn’t want to fix a problem with the site which was why I was never able to get it running. He wouldn’t return the money and was very nasty about the whole thing, so I did what most people would do, I called the credit card company and stopped the payment. This infuriated him so much he left my site up for a year which meant even though it wasn’t working, I couldn’t transfer the name to another site. I decided to speak with the man and was very cordial and said to him there should be no hard feelings here I never used the site and said I wasn’t cheating him out of anything and it never worked. I asked him to be a nice guy and released the name. His reply was when you pay me I will, so that’s how I lost the name and had to start over. That was how Truth Facts was born. I had other problems before with equipment, but this one was very strange. Everything was fine when I went to bed and the next morning the computer just wouldn’t turn on. I know some people are experiencing a problem with Windows updates claiming they were getting blank screens after updates were made during the night. I know this wasn’t my problem because the equipment wouldn’t turn on, so it wasn’t just a blank screen. One other time, many years ago, there was a spike in electricity which blew out one of my computers. That computer I had built myself and used all the best parts to construct it. Even though the one I used today is far more expensive, in real dollars they might of cost about the same. The computer I was using was a monster and allowed me to do things I could never do on a laptop I’m using now. It would have been considered a supercomputer years ago because it has 16 cores and makes short work of all backups no matter how large they are and is precisely why I bought it so I could backup my entire website in just a minute or two. For the next few weeks I will have to content myself with the laptop. It is very slow, but I guess that’s my fault because I had two faster laptops which I gave away to my children when I purchased this huge computer a few years ago. I used to build all my computers, until it became cheaper to buy them already assembled. I probably could’ve fixed my big computer but I didn’t want to go out and buy a bunch of parts and be stuck with them if that wasn’t the problem since I have no way of testing anything. I have a hunch about what’s wrong but that may not be the problem. All computers have a power supply and sometimes these burn out. I thought about buying one replacing the one that was in the computer but the one I would need was about $80 so I didn’t want to take that chance. I remember one time when I had a similar problem with the computer, it just wouldn’t go on and I managed to solve the problem and it was something so simple I couldn’t believe it. The object causing all the problems was the cord leading from the computer to the outlet. Something happened to the wire in the power cord. You have to wonder how a power cord can go bad just hanging there. I guess the electricity going through it can weaken it if it isn’t properly manufactured. I decided to bite the bullet and take my computer to the local computer store for repairs. I always liked the store called Micro Center and they have a big repair department. There’s a downside to bringing it there. First of all, its huge and heavy because it is housed in a full-size computer case. Once I got there it wasn’t bad because I got a wagon, brought it to the car, and loaded the computer into it and wheeled it into the store. The real bad news was waiting for me at the repair counter. I was told it would take two weeks to fix it because they had a backlog. This is going to make writing articles much harder for me. I’m used to a dual screen set up and backups which happen in a couple minutes instead of a couple of hours. I was able however to put most of the useful programs for writing articles onto the laptop. I was lucky because the most expensive one had a license for two computers. Actually, all of these licenses should be set up that way because many people like me have a backup computer. It’s funny but with all of the backing up I’ve done, I still had a really big problem when I tried to enter some of the passwords I’ve been using for years. I watched a whole day yesterday just drift away from me as I was trying to get things to work on the laptop and it took me from seven in the morning until 1 o’clock the next day to finish what I was doing and then another hour or so when I woke up. If I miss a day here and there you will know what the reason is, which is because of equipment, but hopefully this will only be temporary.
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