Tech Friday: Losing my long time Miami University email, a Google Workspace account and cloud backup storage

| September 29, 2023

Decades ago when I was in graduate school, I taught classes at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio as a GT, I continued to stay connected to the university. As a student I was given an alumni email address (an alias at the time forwarded to another email address) and as part time faculty was granted […]

Tech Friday: Switched to "Google Drive for Desktop" on my iMac

| July 9, 2021

For the last few years, I’ve been using Google’s Backup and Sync software on my iMac to back up mostly archival data to my free Google Drive space that was part of my legacy Miami University EDU teaching account. I haven’t taught in Oxford, Ohio for decades, but did spend a few dollars for Taylor’s […]

Tech Friday: Using Grammarly for Chrome (Brave in my case)

| December 11, 2020

Not that it would ever be noticed in my “rarely proofread” blog, but for the past year I’ve been using a plugin app called Grammarly (it unfortunately doesn’t work with Open Live Writer, the aging software I use for blogging ever since Microsoft abandoned LiveWriter). So far it has been helpful in checking my emails […]

Tech Friday: CCleaner marked a PUA by Microsoft Defender

| August 7, 2020

It is always concerning to use and recommended a software product for years and to hear negative news on the software from a reputable antivirus. Last month, Microsoft Defender marked the “crap cleaner” known as CCleaner as PUA (Potentially Unwanted Software) likely due to the “PC cleaning software’s bundling unwanted add-on and annoyance software. The […]

TechFriday: Dropbox paid cloud storage is tough to justify

| June 26, 2020

Besides Google’s less intuitive cloud storage, Dropbox was the first cloud service that I gravitated to “back in the day.”  I’ve posted about them before on TechFriday (2015 comparison) and they are still one of the best cloud storage services for the way I work on computers and devices. Unfortunately over the last few years […]

Tech Friday: Word processor WordStar in 1980 for the Apple II

| April 3, 2020

Above is a graphic sent by a friend, who knows of my long time Apple addiction … and it had me pondering the Steve Jobs vs Steve Wozniak struggle when trying to grow Apple Computer back in the early days (watch the Danny Boyle movie called Steve Jobs). One of the founders was an advocated […]

Tech Friday: How safe is data with cloud storage services?

| August 2, 2019

Even if you don’t regularly using cloud storage services (likely your smartphone is), most of us are at some point backing up data from our computers or using services online that store our data on major cloud storage companies.  I’ve personally had a growing concern over the race for quantum computing which eventually will make […]

Tech Friday: Options to subscriptions services raising prices

| January 18, 2019

The recent price increases rumbling through the economy are starting to be felt in the products we all use and have learned to appreciate. One of the services I’ll likely eliminate before the monthly price increase is the streaming service Netflix. We did this once before, but with all the new added content and lack […]

Tech Friday: Are Windows registry cleaners hokum?

| December 28, 2018

Those of us who manage our own computers likely do our share of “desktop” cleaning and are regularly warned by our anti-virus software that we need to do more than prevent viruses and hackers from accessing our computers. The current “free” anti-virus companies all push to sell their paid software … and regularly highlight registry […]

Tech Friday: Google changes their paid Drive cloud storage plans

| May 18, 2018

Like most longtime savvy Internet users, I use Google more than I would like to admit. I try not to depend on them for everything, but just like with online shopping using Amazon … Google is simply the best at what they do: Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Drive/Cloud Storage. The latter has been a […]

TechFriday: Apple announced iOS11 at the WWDC17 conference

| June 9, 2017

Along with all that is happening with hardware and innovation at the Apple developers conference — WWDC — one of the more anticipated upgrades to the mobile operating system was announced. Along with the likely "millions" of suggestions from daily users, my iOS11 suggestion/request was probably lost in the shuffle … although I’ve made the […]

TechFriday: Jumpy cursor? Uncheck Enhance pointer precision

| February 3, 2017

The cursor on my new Lenovo Yoga 710 Windows 10 notebook has been driving me crazy. It jumps around the screen when I’m typing and often ends up add or deleting text in previous paragraphs. In an attempt to diagnosis the problem, I’ve fiddled with the trackpad thinking that my palms or thumbs must be […]

TechFriday: Spending a few hours installing old software

| November 25, 2016

It is easy to forget just how much software one ends up with after 9 years using a computer. There was everything from odd ball utilities to a variety of outdated Adobe Creative Suite design software that I occasionally need. These were all versions installed from CD and are not openly supported anymore. Unlike my […]

Remapping a couple keys on the new Lenovo Yoga 710

| November 20, 2016

I couldn’t take the continued typos anymore and had to map the "right-shift" key on my new Lenovo Yoga 710 to the "arrow-up" key. So as not to lose my "arrow-up" key, I mapped that to the rarely used "right-ctrl" key. Now all is well with the world.   … although I really struggled coming […]

LiveWriter for blogging is alive and hopefully being revitalized

| January 6, 2016

This past December, after hearing in July that one of my favorite applications would be givng new life as open source software, Open Live Writer was released. The parent application was retired by Microsoft a few year ago but has remained available. Unfortunately after my move to Windows 10 and issues with sFTP support, it […]

Updating TWC Internet and the iMac virtual to Windows 10

| December 18, 2015

A couple improvement to our Internet connectivity at the house this past week as I quarreled with Time Warner Cable yet again about our service and our bill. Of course they once again wanted to schedule a tech to come out and look at things to determine why our paid for turbo speed was only […]

TechFriday: No FREE Windows 10 for Parallels on the Mac yet

| July 3, 2015

So much for “considering” Windows 10 on my iMac (Parallels). And here I was thinking that upgrading a couple of Windows machines wouldn’t be as expensive as in the past … with Microsofts FREE upgrad offer and all. (Parallels is working on a solution) Microsoft is making Windows 10 available as free upgrade for qualified […]

TechFriday: iCloud apps are not just for Apple users

| March 20, 2015

Although cloud based apps aren’t for everyone, they have made inroads over the past few years. Googles’ online Docs, Sheets and Slides have been slowly improving and many other players have entered the foray including Microsoft with their Office Online.   Apple has improve their iWorks online apps and offers their Pages, Numbers and Keynote […]

TechFriday: My favorite new iPad app — Blogsy

| March 6, 2015

One of the reasons for adding the @Blogsyapp to my iPad is so I have an easy way to write and include the media items that I often post. So far, it is almost as easy as using my notebook computer and the “no longer supported” Microsoft Livewriter software. I say “almost as easy” since […]

TechFriday: Apple iOS users have new free Microsoft Office apps

| November 7, 2014

Microsoft is offering standalone versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iPhone, giving users a much better productivity suite for the mobile devices. Prior to the new mobile apps, users who wanted to use Office on an iPhone had to use “Microsoft Office Mobile,” which really only allowed users to view documents and input text. […]

Tech Friday: Annoying Microsoft Windows Automatic updates

| December 13, 2013

     As the big tech companies look for ways to push the use of their products, some of us are looking for ways to keep them from taking over our computers. I welcome having the option (easy option) to disregard the intrusions, but often spend too much time ignoring, opting out or disabling something […]

Browser and Windows 7 upgrades

| March 24, 2011

The DSL connection at the hotel was shockingly fast so I took advantage of the speed to update my Windows 7 with a Service Pack 1 update … and decided to update a couple of Internet browsers too. After installing Mozilla’s Firefox 4 and realizing that several of my add-ons needed to be disabled, I […]

Does the Microsoft Kin resemble the Palm Pre

| April 13, 2010

Although they are late to the party, Microsoft is targeting the younger demographic with a social networking smartphone made by Sharp called the Kin 1 and Kin 2. The one with the slightly larger screen sure looks like the Palm Pre to me? Microsoft Corp. introduced a family of cellphones tailored to young consumers, seeking […]

Windows 7 Release Candidate soon to expire

| February 16, 2010

There are still a few of us running Windows 7 RC and putting off the inevitable reinstall headache. I suppose I’ve been hoping that there might be some kind of extension or that I might end up with a new computer? Alas, the time is drawing near to install either Windows 7 Home Premium or […]

Windows 7 OS arrived today

| October 23, 2009

The copies of Microsoft’s new computer OS  Windows 7  arrived today! I’m not planning to update anytime soon as I’m  currently running  Win 7 RC on both of my PCs.  (they should operate until 2010)  I’m certainly not planning to ruin this weekend by stripping the computer and re-installing all my software (the scheduled colonoscopy […]

The Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 Ultimate RC headache

| June 23, 2009

I’ve been struggling to finish and tweak the install of the Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate OS before my Beta version expires — 8 days from now. Unfortunately for me, I embraced Windows 7 after switching from Vista back in January and couldn’t imagine going back, so onward I planned to go.  The initial install […]

Running Windows 7 Beta and am surprisingly happy

| February 4, 2009

After downloading the .iso and creating a Microsoft Windows 7 Beta installation DVD last month, I’ve been ‘on-again off-again’ while contemplating taking a chance on a Microsoft Beta OS replacement for my Gateway notebook computer. Finally after hearing the positive reviews (compared to Vista), and the fact that the cut off day to download and […]

Walt Mossberg gives his first impression of Windows 7 Beta

| January 22, 2009

The Wall Street Journal‘s Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg has given his preliminary review of Microsoft’s recently released beta Windows 7.  According to Mossberg, the most important improvement from the much maligned Vista OS is speed. In his initial tests, “even the beta version of Windows 7 was dramatically faster than Vista at such tasks […]

Trying out Google Chrome — just for the fun of it

| November 9, 2008

Although I’ve installed IE7, Firefox and Safari browsers on my Vista OS Notebook, I was curious to see just how Google Chrome would compare. It surely is a simple install and quickly handled a variety of initial websurfing tasks. I enjoyed the out of the box minialist look and feel and loved getting back some […]

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog