Eric

I changed my mind. I don't feel comfortable recommending a video card. I believe it has a PCI Express 2.0 slot for a video card, but it's a slim line case, and so standard sized video cards are physically too tall to fit. There are special short cards that could fit, but I've never used one, and I'd be too afraid to recommend something that will end up not fitting in your computer case. Best (easiest?) bet is probably to go the USB adapter route. Just make sure that the other end of the adapter matches up with the port on your monitor.

If you give us the model of your dell, well might be able to suggest a video card that is compatible. And if you're feeling adventurous, you could probably install it yourself, but at the very least, you won't get fleeced by a local computer shop trying to sell you a high end gaming video card from two years ago.

The good news is that the computer still recognizes that the drive exists, so I think there's a good chance they'll be able to get some or most of the data off the drive.

Well it is a mystery. I'm not sure what they're doing differently to properly detect Java that this other website isn't doing. I'm tempted to go find a java applet, and embed it into a page to see if you can view it.

If you don't know what it is, it's safe to get rid of. You can disable safely disable any extension, and if you're not missing anything, then remove it.

I guess Java has its place, but I've never been particularly fond of it. For one, it's as bad as Adobe Flash and Acrobat in terms of how often security exploits are found, so it needs constant updating. From a user experience point of view, I don't like the idea of requiring that someone download a plugin in order to use a service. The web has progressed to the point where a rich application experience can be created without additional plugins, all with HTML 5, CSS 3, and Javascript. All of the application level processing should happen on the server. No plugins required. As for this specific issue, I think the easiest way to tell if it's a problem with the website, or a configuration/software issue on the PC is to go here: http://www.java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp That's Java's page that tests to see if you have Java installed properly. If anyone should be able to detect Java working on a particular browser/config it's Oracle. There are so many variables here, that it's hard to say what's going on for sure. Sometimes software does weird things for some people and not for others. Example: I've seen three different computers that refused to navigate to websites in IE11. Type a URL or a search term in the bar, hit enter, nothing happens. For me, it always worked fine. In every case resetting all Internet Explorer settings fixed the problem, and it never returned. I chalk it up to computer goblins because sometimes it's easier to fix than to understand.

First, it sounds like you may have some nasty thing installed that's injecting extra ads into pages. If you're seeing that stuff on this site, then that's definitely the case. It's hard to diagnose anything without actually seeing your screen, but it can't hurt to check what extensions you have installed. To see your extensions, click the "Hamburger" menu, which is the horizontal three line icon at the top-right of the Chrome browser. From the menu, choose Settings near the bottom. From the Settings page, click the Extensions link on the left side. You'll see a list of all extensions you have installed. You can uncheck the boxes to disable ones you think may be problematic, or hit the trash can icon to delete them. Unfortunately, if you do have some stubborn thing installed on your system, they can tend to re-install themselves into your browsers on their own. For blocking ads in Chrome, you can get an extension called AdBlock. (if you've got something else injecting ads into pages, though, it's not going to help with that) This link may or may not take you directly to AdBlock on the Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom If not, go to the Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/apps And then search for AdBlock. There are a few that look similar, but the one I use is called simply "AdBlock" and the Icon looks like a stop sign with a with a hand up, palm facing out. There's a blue button at the top-right that says something like "+ Free". Press that to install it. Browsing the web is like a whole new experience without ads.

I also swear by Google Chrome. Most people who develop websites prefer it because Google Chrome is the best at the thing we care most about: rendering web pages according to current standards. Of course we also realize that most people don't care about that as much as we do, and choose their favorite browser for other reasons. You IE users are forgiven as long as you keep updating. Also, unrelated, but I don't know if there are any good Ad Blocking plugins for IE or not, but if not, you should really try Firefox or Chrome with AdBlock. EDIT: Sorry for the hijack. Didn't notice there was a Page 2. AdBlock Plus is available for IE, in case anyone cares to give it a shot https://adblockplus.org/en/features

She didn't speak to me directly about it. I said everything I really can in >post 6, page 1 of this thread -- I don't know any more than that.

If my cats could speak english, this is exactly what they would sound like.

I didn't know there were people who couldn't trill rrrrrrs. As for the ear thing, I can wiggle mine, but perhaps I need to do it more to keep my hairline from retreating any further toward the back of my head.

Ditto. I never got the impression that she owned a fish. Vanilla bean is obviously the superior vanilla.

My appetite is gone. That was highly disturbing.

Anybody seen the PSA running in New Zealand about speeding?

She jabbed back quite often too, not that I have any problem with that. Apparently the only way for everyone to get along is to make sure that all of the outspoken people share the same worldview.

She didn't do anything bad. From what I understand, one of her posts was hidden, she didn't like being censored, and she asked that her account be removed from the forum. I'm sure it wasn't just that, but a lot of other things that made her feel unwelcome, so I respected her wishes and took care of the account removal.

If anyone is wondering why Taxed's posts have been turned into posts from Guest_Taxed_* it's because she made a request for her account to be deleted from the forum. She hadn't logged in since making the request yesterday, and so I went through with the deletion just a few minutes ago.

I really try to focus on the technical aspects of keeping the forum going. I hate dealing with the squabbling. Sometimes I feel like my 2 year olds can be more civil to each other. I think Gail put it well -- it's not easy to strike a balance between keeping the informal/conversational tone and keeping the threads on track. I don't want the mods to go full-on police state, but it might not be a bad idea for the mods to be slightly more aggressive about hiding posts that are obviously derailing a topic. As always, suggestions are welcome about how to determine when a post needs to be hidden. We'll do our best to sort it out.

Someone re-gifted some homemade moonshine to us for Christmas. It smelled exactly like acetone and I don't even dare to taste it.

On another serious note, it was really just the tequila. I don't have any moonshine.

Yes

We had a few days of -20 to -30 lows last week. The midwest can keep their polar vortex, it's raining here today.

We had our mini-split air to air heat pump installed in September this year. Definitely not a new house (built in the 1860s) They go for about $3000 installed, (and then a $600 rebate from Efficiency Maine, bringing it to $2400) and ours heats our entire downstairs until it gets down below -5 degrees or so outside and then we need to run the furnace (oil, forced hot air). It'll actually keep heating down to -15 degrees but it gets less efficient at those temperatures, and can't move enough heat to keep up in our old house. We spent about an extra $100 in electricity in the month of December and used almost no heating oil (about 1/16 of a tank since October) Compare that to last year which was a lot more mild, we went through about $300 in fuel oil in December. It won't be long before the thing pays for itself. As a bonus, it'll do air conditioning and dehumidifying in the summer, and a quite a bit more efficiently than a window or floor unit.

If it looks wrong on the screen and prints wrong in the same way, I think it's most likely a missing or corrupted font, especially if others can view the form just fine. When I worked at ATX (12 years ago) the disc had a number of utilities, one of which was specifically for installing fonts. Probably nothing like that now though. I hear the knowledge base isn't as well maintained as it used to be either, but that's the first place I'd check for information about fixing corrupted/missing fonts if you can't get through on the phone.

It'll come down after new years, and then the first evening we get that's not bitter cold, we'll set it on fire along with discarded cardboard boxes and wrapping paper.