Call me Mr. I.T. Department! I
managed to mend my laptop, albeit most probably temporarily, after a day of
frustration. Even after a system restore, a disk clean, and a defragmentation
(I call it a Fraggle Rock because I am hilarious) it was still annoying me to
the point of wanting to throw the fucking thing out of the window. As a
precaution I moved a load of things onto USB sticks and removed a handful of
programmes that I don’t use, but things were still coughing along at a snail
pace. It was like using an old fashioned dial-up connection; dial up might have
been slow but it wasn’t a huge problem with 1990s Internet, basically just a
jumped up version of Ceefax, but today’s Internet needs to move faster than
this. The all too familiar ‘send error report’ box came up a few times when
pages bore that dreaded not responding news, not that I anyone has ever
contacted me to follow up on my sending of an error report.
Twitter was a whole other
problem. I couldn’t tweet because the button in the ‘compose new tweet’ box
wasn’t working properly, I couldn’t retweet and I couldn’t delete tweets (I
delete tweets and keep the strongest ones to maintain a high quality timeline).
None of this mattered because I couldn’t sign in as although the curser
appeared in the password box I was unable to type it in. the only way I could
sign in was by going to my blog and using the share button, deleting all the
blog stuff and writing in my new tweet. Worst of all, I somehow ended up with
the horrific new profile layout, otherwise known as the we-haven’t-learned-from-the-death-of-Myspace-and-Facebook
layout. I know nobody actually looks at a person’s page, staying instead on
their own home page (which makes the ‘pinned tweet’ idea a bit of a
none-starter), but that isn’t the point.
The public view of my blog, as
you’re looking at it now, had an ugly banner flashing adverts for iphones and
other such bollocks, and the body of the blog itself, (and several newspaper
articles I tried to read) had almost every word turned into a hyperlink.
Determined to get to the bottom of this I clicked on one of the adverts so I could
find out what dodgy snake oil salesman had set out his stall on my computer. Somehow
I had managed to install something called Digi-Coupon, an intrusive little
programme that liked to be seen as helpful. The confusing thing was that I
couldn’t find Digi-Coupon when I accessed the option to remove programmes. Finally
I went into my Google Chrome settings, (I fucking hate Google Chrome with every
shred of hatred I can muster, but unfortunately Internet Explorer doesn’t work
on my laptop) and found that Digi-Coupon and another similar programme was in
there and all I had to do was untick a box to remove it. For good measure I
once again carried out a disc clean and Fraggle Rock before closing down the
laptop and starting it off again (not restarting). Once it had been turned back
on all was well again; no more banner adverts, no hyperlinks, and Twitter was
in full working order again. I tweeted to that effect, and then deleted it
along with several others, so nobody need ever know that I had a problem.
===
My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle
for 99p a month (link)
If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider
showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above
this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are
currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a
video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty
more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.
Listen to The Sunday Alternative
here.
