Ginger's Diary - an occasional tale from a laptop

[strang steel]

Hi Ginger, Rupert again.

I have been used very regularly recently, so I am knackered. My Daddy has bought a posh database program and intends to add all his trainspotting details to it, starting from the early 1960s. I feel like shutting down every five minutes just thinking about the pounding my circuits are going to take with all that lot. He seems to have tried to intimidate me by bringing a pile of notebooks down from the spare room.

Presumably, these contain the records that I will have to manipulate.

So, I decided to get my own back by shutting down my dvd drive. I thought that would really upset him, but he just shrugged his shoulders and bought a cheap external one on Ebay for under £20.

I don't know what else to do, so wondered if you have any advice? I dont want to refuse to work completely, because I saw what happened to my predecessor, and it was not a pretty sight even before the non-sensitive bits went to the tip.

All that is now left is the hard drive, and I have heard whispers of that having an appointment with a sledge hammer - whatever one of those may be. Maybe they will have to wait for it to snow?

[Blink Bonny]

Hello, Rupert!

Yes, I saw what my Daddy did to some that were "beyond repair" last year. He had "recovered components" from them - that was a sinister thing and not half. When he has a hammer in his hand, my Dad can do some serious damage!

Hmm. I try to be nice to my Daddy - that way he does not hit me or say Naughty Words. Have to say, I never tried that DVD drive thing! Mind you, Daddy would say more Naughty Words to me then! So I'll try to keep mine working.

Playing with a database, eh? That's easier than some of the things my Daddy asks me to do. He sends me onto something called "YouTube" to watch train videos. This is hard work. But I don't get any diseases from them. Then he sends me onto a Game site which is also hard work. Then he makes me scan myself! Oh, how I wish I could play with databases!

How do I get Daddy to do that?

He doesn't even write letters on me these days. He says summat about "no bloody printer driver." What's a printer driver? Does it help me to print?

[Danby Wiske]

Hello Ginger and Rupert!

It's nice to have somewhere we laptops can meet up and chat.

Sometimes my daddy gets cross with me as well - sometimes for no reason at all! The man next door drives a van that says "I.T. Recycling" on the side, and when my daddy is particularly cross he leaves me by the window so that I have to look at it. How mean is that!

Still, it's not all bad news. My uncle says that this weekend he's going to take me phishing. I'm not sure what it involves, but it sounds like it might be fun. He's told me not to tell my daddy, though. And I'm not sure he's really my uncle...

Bye for now!

Percy

[strang steel]

Hi Percy and Ginger,

Printers? Now there is a subject I try not to think about much these days.

I used to have a soulmate called Epson who was with me every hour of the day. We had a small coupling ceremony during which I was given a brand new dvd to explore and find my favorite way of talking to Epson. I was so excited at finding a friend who had the same interests as me, and finally after some fumblings in the bottom of a very large cardboard box, we were joined in matrimony by a cable which fitted my slot perfectly.

Of course Epson was a little shy at first which is understandable after so many months on the shelf, but she soon came round to the routines of marriage (basically she just obeyed my instructions).

Everything was idyllic, and we intercoursed with each other every day, especially when she was presented with some glossy high quality paper and I had a dvd of old 1970s scanned railway transparencies to show her. She knew exactly what to do, and a first rate job she made of them as well. In fact, so good that an amazing project of selling them on an auction site to the highest bidder was dreamed up. We had the perfect marriage and the prospect of endless money coming into our little love-nest.

And then what happened? The sheets began to become less pristine and her bodily fluids started to fail. She said that it wasn't her fault, she was only doing as she thought she had been told. Then the moaning started from my Daddy who was using words I had never heard before - "£15 for each replacement cartridge?", and "I need to replace all 5 colour ones?" he was shouting, plus something sexual about "a game of soldiers"; whatever that might mean.

Epson was turned off, and although we kept our intercourse linkage in place, it was hardly ever used. Finally Epson became so isolated that she began refusing to be turned on, and has now been banished to the spare bedroom where we can't talk at all because apparently she needs blue teeth or something; because Daddy is not prepared to trudge up and down the stairs just to connect us physically and restart our relationship. He says that is one of the perils of getting too friendly with a high maintenance partner.

Rupert.

[Blink Bonny]

I have not been well.

So sooner has Daddy been shooting his big mouth off about me being safe from viruses than I start coughing and sneezing. I had got a virus which told me to calculate the square root of 2 or something. This, in case you don't know, is a number which never works out and never recurs so the numbers got very big indeed, so big I could not do anything else! Daddy said a lot of pinkbunnies type words and then went a very dark shade of purple! I though, "Oh, poop! Hammer time." But then Daddy said it wasn't my fault and reloaded all my programs.

This is hard work and it makes Daddy say a lot of naughty words and growl a lot but I am now fit and healthy once again.

I am sorry to hear of the rift between you and Epson, Rupert. Daddy says that he uses "compatible" cartridges (whatever they are) and my soulmate, who is also called Epson, loves these. So does Daddy's Wallet - it does not attack him as often which is a shame. Entertainment is hard to come by these days....

[Danby Wiske]

Dear Rupert and Ginger,

I think my mummy has a lot in common with your friend "Epson". Daddy says that she is high maintenance (although he's careful not to say it when she's listening).

Mummy's ink cartridges say things like Chanel and Dior on them, and when Daddy suggests that she should try compatible cartridges, she refuses to talk to him too!

Bye for now,

Percy

[strang steel]

Hello Percy,

Epson was like that, too.

Any attempt at adding cheap replacement cartridges and her lights would flash repeatedly, then she refused to do anything until the right buttons had been pressed. Even then, she would insist that the ink had already run out on a brand new generic cartridge which she had only been given minutes earlier. Daddy's face seemed to display all the cartridge colours at one time, although blue was the general shade of the words coming out of his mouth.

It was fun at first, but then the violence began and Epson was damaged. Apparently, there is a secret manual which I have never seen, that insists on the surest method to get Epson working properly is to give her a good kicking. I do not know who was responsible for that manual but in my experience it seems to have the exact opposite effect.

Anyway, all I know is that the signs are not good. A letter to an elderly aunt was recently written with his hand holding some ink generating stick and took ages, but this seems to have replaced my keyboard. I fear the worst, because even when ink generating stick decided to malfunction, it was unceremoniously thrown across the room in the general direction of the bin and an exact replacement was removed from a box in a drawer without any rude words whatsoever. I caught a sneaky look into the box and it was full of exact replacements.

My time may be up.

[Blink Bonny]

Ay up!

Daddy has bought a new camera. Nikon is much bigger than Pentax and makes bigger pictures. I thought rather vulgar and brash at 1st. His big pictures gave me tummy ache and he was always going on about how good he was. Now I like Pentax - he is a little chap and makes small pictures which I can play with easily. Nikon makes big pictures and they are harder than Pentax's.

Anyway, on Sunday, he took some pictures of the cats. They make him smile and he likes them - their hairs can do a lot of damage to a little laptop though so I'm not too keen on them - and he likes taking pictures of them. After he'd taken a lot, he then opened the bottom of the camera to retrieve the little card. It was not there! He muttered a lot then had a dig in Nikon's box and produced a lead which he plugged into Nikon and my USB port. I was not too happy about this. I remembered the tummy ache I'd had from the card so all this brashness? I shuddered, braced myself and thought of England!

But how wrong can a laptop be? When we started chatting, Nikon turned out to be a very polite chap. He was sorry his pictures had given me tummy ache and had merely put on a show for Daddy. I don't think he was aware that Daddy had bought him rather than simply trying him out. Anyway, I put him right on that score - after all, Daddy did use me to check out prices and specs.

He's happy with Nikon - he's wanted one for a while. So he has a Nikon, (small) Pentax, Canon and Praktica now. The last two are something called "film cameras."

Film - what is this? And is a film camera like a digital camera? I don't understand.

Anyway, gotta go - Daddy wants me to update myself again.

Ginger

[Postman Prat]

Hi Ginger

Your Daddy is not the only one to use nasty words when things go wrong - things which are his own fault.

My Daddy went out on Saturday and drove 25 miles to take photographs of a couple of ships. When he put the lens on the camera he noticed a little door flapping where the little card goes. Daddy checked 3 times that the camera, and lens, were in the bag before we left, because he'd downloaded some photos and he wanted to make sure he'd picked it up. The words Daddy used, so Canon the camera told me, were enough to make him go red and then almost melt !! I think Daddy learned a lot of those words at the Royal Navy gunnery school and lots started with 'b' and 'f'.

When he got home he then came to me and started swearing again, blaming me for leaving the card in the port on my front. That was unfair - he left it there, after all !!! It didn't seem to help when Mummy asked what the problem was. When Daddy told her she said he was a 'silly B.....' which started him off again!!! Mummy's picture

Still he might take the little card out of my front, and put it back in the camera, as soon as he's finished with it in future. On the other hand Mummy says his memory is rubbish and is getting worse the older he gets.

That's what happens in my house.

Bye, bye. Love from Peter the PC

[Blink Bonny]

Hello, my friends!

Well, here's a turn up for the books!

Ginger 1 Daddy 0!

You remember me telling you I had a virus and Daddy had to reload all my programs? Microsoft told me I had to register my copy of Windows. It then told me I couldn't and asked Daddy to check it was genuine. He did this and Microsoft said it was and tried to register my programs. Then refused again.

This made Daddy go ever deeper shades of purple and use a lot of very naughty words. As far as I know, my Daddy has never been in the Navy, Peter, but his language sounds like your Daddy's! He scorched the surround of my screen!

After several attempts and 3 re-loads, he found a recovery program on me and said - "OK, Smart Ass. YOU bloody well sort it out!"

And I did.

I am now running beautifully and keeping Daddy happy. The moral of the story? When you know nothing about computers, don't try to teach your laptop how to read CDs!

Gotta go, Daddy's coming.

Ginger!

[strang steel]

Hello friendly laptops,

I too, have found that CDs can actually be nice. In the past, I only had experience of noisy ones with names such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple but Mrs Daddy (who doesn't seem to be able to press my buttons) has now got iPod and things have changed.

iPod is very nice, but does not seem to be able to do much. However, Mrs Daddy wanted CDs put onto iPod and I thought "oh no, not more damage to my output ports". The pain problems only get worse when Daddy has poured lots of a strange amber liquid into his mouth, where normally only bad language comes out. After half a dozen large containers of the liquid Daddy will put all my output modes up to 11 and play noisy CDs which really hurt. Sometimes, much later, his head falls onto my keyboard and stays there for hours.

However, Mrs Daddy's CDs were not like that at all. They had names like Elton John, Phil Collins and Texas, and were tuneful and lovely. But it was only a fleeting affair, as iPod took them all and was then unattached. Now I am alone again, nervously waiting for the next insertion of Yes Live At Wembley.

I thought that Epson was the only one for me, but now I want to be with iPod all of the time and listen to her wonderful music forever. Daddy calls it three-chord-crap, whatever that means; but I know it must be good because it doesn't hurt my circuits.

Rupert.

[ten ten]

Hello, I am Pippin, cos I was made by Apple.
Daddy sometimes says I am rotten to the core, and will go in the cider crusher when I misbehave. I try to tell him it’s not my fault ,its the improved fibre optic broadband modem he got at Christmas. Its lights go different colours all the time, just like fairy lights, and I stop working to watch. Daddys face goes different colours, and I am learning lots of new words about the parentage of BT. It was fun when the modem did it during updating Photoshop, and it then stopped working telling Daddy to reload. Daddy broke my pet mouse in his tantrum. He is very angry with me cos I refuse to let him open lots of files with engine plans on them, cos now I haven’t got some application components. His voice went to treble when I told him. I think somebody has cut his components off. He is now throwing things out of a drawer trying to find the Photoshop CD and its box, saying its “expletive deleted…. … in ere, somewhere.” He is getting violent so I hope it wont hurt when he pushes the CD into my orifice when he finds it. Luv to all Pippin

[Blink Bonny]

Hello all!

Oh, Daddy HAS given a big job. I had hoped he would not find the video editing software that came with his new camera. It's been nearly 3 weeks now so I was hoping I'd escaped.

No chance.

He found it this morning. Now he's got me "processing" the videos he took of his model railway last week. It's hard work, being a laptop. This IS giving me tummy ache. I've tried making awful smells and the cat gets the blame. I've tried going on strike but he he just un-blocks any blockage I put in the way. I though he was a technophe! Turns out, he's bloody streetwise!

Any ideas for how I can live the quiet life? Please? They never told me I'd be PROCESSING videos at Laptop School. Only playing them.

Ginger

[Danby Wiske]

Never mind, Ginger.

Your daddy certainly does seem to know what he's talking about when it comes to technology. I've seen one of his posts elsewhere on this forum, and it's all about 'bits' and 'chips'...

Toodle pip!

Percy

[Blink Bonny]

Hello, my friends!

My kid sister is back from the computer hospital, a sadder and a wiser little laptop!

Cyd had decided that Daddy made her work too hard so protested by wrecking her CD drive and doing damage to her hard drive. I tried to tell her it was a bad idea but did she listen? Did she heck! Anyway, she went back to the Agency for surgery. She got bounced around in her box again there and back and now Daddy is installing all the things he had to take off when returning her. Silly little girl!

Daddy seems to have some money! He bought some small tools today. What can I do to get him to spend some on me? Hang on - bad idea. Look what happened to Cyd!

Gotta go, Friends.
Ginger