And please, no advice to get a Mac. It’s not helpful, and some of my clients require that I have a Windows machine.

I don’t seem to be able to update. When I look through my update history, in fact, I can see a large number of failed updates, going back a year or two. There are no instructions as to what to do about this at the Windows update site. Also, I’m getting a message that I have ActiveX disabled, so that the Windows Update site can’t “display” properly. How did I do this, and how do I undo it? Or should I? Is that causing my problems?

[Update a few minutes later]

I should note that in my IE Security Options, the only thing disabled for ActiveX is downloading unsigned objects. Surely that can’t be the problem on a Microsoft website? I should also add that the specific thing that it’s trying and failing to install (at least for now) is Microsoft Installer 3.1 (something that another web site told me that I had to uninstall in order to avoid a different error message).

[Update about 6 PM EST]

FWIW, I just downloaded and ran Microsoft’s beta version of their new anti-spyware software, and it found no problems…

[Saturday morning update]

Oops, spoke too soon. Overnight it did discover MyDoom and Netsky on the machine. I’ve removed them, but I still can’t do the update.

[Saturday afternoon update]

Well, I never really figured out why it won’t do updates, but I spent a couple hours doing manual updates for about a year’s worth of security upgrades, and all seemed to go well, except for one, called “.NET Framework 1.1” for which it wants to install a service pack. Unfortunately, it’s a catch-22ish sort of thing, because whenever I try to install the thing, it tells me that I have to have .NET Framework 1.1 installed. When I try to install that, it bombs out.

So I don’t know if this is a problem or not, but it’s the only thing that Microsoft wants to upgrade that can’t be now.

I can’t get to Space Transport News using the http://www.spacetransportnews.com URL (the one I use in the blogroll), but I can get to it through Hobby Space.

Is anyone else having this problem or is it just me?

[Update]

If anyone is having the same problem, please note your ISP as well, so we can eliminate that as the issue.

Can anyone tell me why I can have video drivers, or a mouse that works, but not both?

Before I left for CA, I started having mouse problems, and machine lockups. I tried changing video cards, but whenever I would install the drivers for it, the mouse would stop working. I just installed a brand-new 128M NVidia card, and the mouse worked fine, until I installed the drivers. Now, it boots and the mouse won’t budge the cursor.

Any ideas?

[Update for more info]

It’s a PS-2 mouse, running on W2K. I repeat. It works fine if video drivers aren’t installed.

[Late afternoon update]

After several reboots, it’s finally working. The ways of Windows passeth understanding.

I was busy all day yesterday finishing up a job in CA, and flew back on a red eye last night. The day will be spent sleeping, getting caught up on mail and other things here, and fixing my Windows machine, for which I bought a new graphics card, but can’t finish the installation because I broke the CD drive before I left…

Perhaps more substantive posting later.

I’m flying back to Florida Monday night. And guess what’s scheduled to be happening there and then?

I’m currently numero tres when it comes to musings on Google.

Thanks to Sam for picking up some of the slack here (good post).

I’m working like all get out (where in the world did that expression come from?) to get a deliverable out to our favorite friendly neighborhood space agency, and probably won’t come up for air until Tuesday, though I may be able to blog a little on the weekend. Then again, there is the game.

I just got to the airport, and discovered that my driver’s license isn’t in my wallet.

I had to use a company badge for ID, and got a thorough screening in security, and have no idea how I’ll rent a car in LA. Unless Patricia can find it at home and overnight it to me, I may be without a car there. I’ve no idea where it is, though it may be on my nightstand, taken out of my pocket after my last trip.

What a way to start a trip.

[Update in the evening in LA]

Yup. I had taken it out of my shirt pocket, where it resided during my trip home the last time, and put it on my nightstand (where Patricia found it upon getting home from work), and then neglected to put it back in my wallet the next day. She’s Fedexing it to me, so I’ll have a car by Thursday. One useful definition of hell is being in LA sans auto.

The only reason that it was in my shirt pocket, instead of in my wallet, is that under the new idiotic security regime, one never knows when there will be a demand for papers, and it’s more convenient to pull the license out of a shirt pocket than to have to pull the wallet out and dig for it there.

And I don’t currently have a passport because it mysteriously disappeared on a trip shortly after September 11, when I got pulled out of line for a severe screening (for no obvious reason–I’d like to think that it’s because I look sort of swarthy and semitic, but that theory is blown out of the water by the fact that one of my co-screenees was a young blonde woman). I had the passport before the screening–when I got off the plane at the other end, it was gone.

Thanks a lot, Homeland Security!

Heading back to California for another ten days or so. No posting until this evening, if then.

Is there a WPA expert in the house?

I can’t get my (new) Hawking PCI network adaptor to work with it. I’m using WPA-PSK, and I want to use a robust pass phrase, and I do in my D-Link DI-524 router (34 characters), but when I enter it into the client, it lops off everything after the first eight characters. And even when I shorten the phrase to eight characters on the router to get it to match, it still doesn’t work. The options that I have on the PCI adaptor are WPA2 and “Any WPA,” and I have the same problem with both of them. I’d really like to get a wireless network going here, but I don’t trust WEP. (Note, it works fine unencrypted.)

Does anyone have any thoughts?