Fun's over, back to serious stuff

[codenaught]

Well my Summer break has officially ended. Today I had my first day of school for the new school year. I am now a senior.

Today was a mess with my schedule. Let me save you of the boring story and just sum it up with the fact that I only got to attend 3 classes today. My new teachers don't seem bad, I really haven't had bad luck with teachers throughout my schooling years. There have only been about a handful of them that I wasn't so crazy about in the past, and by now I have had a lot of teachers. Too bad I will have to hold my breath with a few more teachers I will be seeing for the first time tomorrow. Hopefully they aren't too bad themselves.

I also sent my laptop into Gateway (now owned by Acer though). Basically my problem is I cannot get the battery to charge. I hope it doesn't take them too long to both fix it and send it back. Besides the charging problem I have really been fairly happy about it overall.

As for the world of SMF...well all has been going rather well. I sometimes get a little restless with providing support, mainly because so many questions asked could have been solved if the user had taken the time to search. I also hate to see requests (mainly mod/minor functionality change requests) that are so brief it is almost impossible to decipher. What people may not realize is some of us who actually do help out and answer them are spending A LOT of time to work on their request. So out of respect I feel each person who asks for a mod or minor feature alteration should be sure to be very clear about what they want. This can apply to regular support as well.

More on SMF, and more to my work with it, I have been doing some work updating and writing docs with SMF 2.0 information on the Online Manual. But really I have been VERY proud of some fine members who have been helping me out on the way. Some are not even on the team either. I feel it is very generous of them, and I really do appreciate the help. Anyone is welcome to help. I can add those interested to a special membergroup on the Online Manual called the "Doc Help Sqaud" where members of the group get to post in a special board, their advice and documents that they write.

And cheers to another excellent blog post by Mr. Buggy. Cheers to SMF 2.0, my life moving forward, and everyone else!

[shadow82x]

School time for everyone.

My new teachers don't seem bad

Lucky for you all my teachers are bad.

Well my Summer break has officially ended. Today I had my first day of school for the new school year. I am now a senior.

Good luck in the school year.

I feel it is very generous of them, and I really do appreciate the help. Anyone is welcome to help. I can add those interested to a special membergroup on the Online Manual called the "Doc Help Sqaud" where members of the group get to post in a special board, their advice and documents that they write.

Tons of docs.

[karlbenson]

With regards to your battery. I had the same issue with my laptop battery not 5 months ago for my 3 year old laptop (Compaq/HP)
Had to fork out a decent sum for a new battery (as not covered under warranty).  Then my power cable broke (luckily within 3 weeks of warranty) so got a new one after a week without a laptop).

I sincerely hope you don't get the same issue.

As for SMF. We SMF'ers all appreciate the time spent by SMF Team Members in answering our mundane repetitive cryptic undecipherable longwinded or inannely brief, often all in caps or a color bad on the eyesight or without punctuation, and non-US language spellling of questions/comments

[Rudolf]

School time for everyone.

Not for me!!!!
Today I had an interview for a job at a company and they offered me a place. From what they said, it sounds the perfect place to work. So I'm about to change, it will be messy for a few days because I am/was the only tech-guy here, and I'll leave my place empty for a while. But this is life.

[Xarcell]

News batteries can be expensive. Even the charger's themselves sometimes.

[codenaught]

Just a little update on my laptop, it was sent back to me repaired. My entire hard drive was wiped, but that shouldn't be much of a problem. I made backups of my files if I even feel I need anything from before.

Didn't take them very long so I am happy. Now I just need to get through the school week. It is amazingly boring this year.

[karlbenson]

I'm gonna wipe mine soon. Changing anti-virus, can't deal with the hassle of conflicting software.

[Coldfx]

I'm gonna wipe mine soon. Changing anti-virus, can't deal with the hassle of conflicting software.

Uninstall --> Install doesn't work?  I remember having some problems on my old laptop when I tried to uninstall norton to switch to an alternate piece of software, but other than that..

[karlbenson]

LOL Norton.  I used Norton every year until last 3-4 years when the software just got slower and slower and has just gone crap to the point where it uses 99% of your system resources on 1gb ram laptop.  I even went so far to try Symantec Corporate anti-virus from work (which is exactly the same definitions, except its lite because it removes the gui for an oldstyle design).  Even then, even that got unbearable.  And now you find that the old heavyweights like McAfee and Norton are really crap these days on detection compared to the rest. Norton is renouned from having uninstall issues, even if your installing a new version of Norton.

At the moment I'm using Bitdefender which is generally ranked no.2, with my subscription running out, I'm going to try Kasperky. 

Its not just my anti-virus. I've had tonnes of software on my laptop that just won't remove 100%.  Its always best to wipe it and start again after a year or so.

I've had over 150 pieces of software installed. (alot related to my brother who would sometimes use my laptop when he came home [hes doing a computer programming degree]
- AutoDesk 3d Studio Max 9
- Visual Basic 6 and many other programming packages
- Dreamweaver (why oh why did I uninstall that crap, its not like I even needed it since I write in Notepad++)
- Adobe Photoshop CS2 (I might try the new beta cs3, but its anything like the 30 second loading speeds of cs2, it will be a no)

And finally when my ISP (BritishTelecom) sent me a new Home hub, they didnt mention their software install yahoo toolbar spyware crap which you couldn't opt out of on instakk. Even though I've uninstalled it, ran registry cleaners etc its still got bits all over.

[Coldfx]

Autodesk 3D - I remember using that in a few shop classes I've taken my past 2 years.

vB6 - for shame Unless you're designing some form of MS-Word/Excel object.

Dreamweaver-  don't you mean install?

PS - GIMP is a bit lighter, espically on laptops;

Suggestion for Yahoo toolbar: Run the installer and it may find the bits and have the option to "Repair" or "Remove".

~~~~~~~~~~

Norton has become bloated, I still use the corporate (My dad works for the Government and they give out free copies for all workers to use at home, and distribute to direct family).

For me, I just use Zonealarm Free Firewall w/AVG; I may consider Kaspersky, though I've heard NOD32 is good aswell.  Ah, I still don't know