…why my network is so flaky? Sometimes the computers see each other from Windows, sometimes they don’t. They can all ping each other, but when I try to access files through Windows (loading a remote document into Word, or simply trying to view them with Windows Explorer) I sometimes, but not always, get “Network path not found.” My desktop hasn’t seen my laptop in weeks. After a reboot this morning, the desktop can no longer access my Redhat server running Samba, to which I saved a document from the desktop just last night.

What’s going on here?

[Update a few minutes later]

And no, I’ve shut down Zone Alarm, and it didn’t help, so don’t ask about that…

I’m looking at Scott Ott with envy at the (deserved) overnight success of his new book.

Does anyone think that if I stitched together a book out of the best of Transterrestrial Musings (focus on the satires and jabs at the press) with additional commentary, that it would sell?

We had a very nice trip (other than missing our flight Friday night, necessitating a later one that went through Dulles, and didn’t get us into Denver until late, instead of early evening). Weather in the Rockies was gorgeous on Saturday and Sunday, and we hiked in the park. I may post some pics later.

We’re flying out to Colorado this evening for a little vacation in the mountains (it was the trip that originally was supposed to happen on Labor Day, but was interrupted by Hurricane Frances…). I’ll probably not be blogging from there unless it ends up having an internet connection.

See you Tuesday.

I just switched ISPs, and for some reason, I’m not getting any posts from the sci.space.* hierarchy on the new provider’s (Bellsouth) news server. I’m using Agent as my news client. Does anyone know what the problem might be?

Sigh…

My wireless router has stopped talking to my desktop.

But here’s the weird thing. The wireless is fine–I can still access the internet and router through my laptop on that connection, but the desktop is plugged directly into the router via cable, and the router is refusing the connection. When I do an ipconfig, it shows no connection and no assigned IP address. When I unplug the cable, it knows it’s unplugged, and when I plug it back in, all is well again, except it won’t talk to the router.

I’ve tried rebooting the thing several times, with no luck. It just started happening, and I didn’t do anything unusual that might have caused it.

Next thing to try is rebooting the desktop, I guess, which I hate to do because I have a loot of browser windows open that I’ll lose.

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, that did it. The ways of Microsoft passeth understanding.

It was, as I suspected, a bad power supply (and it had probably been going bad for a long time, which is why I had the previous mobo problems).

All better now.

We had an intermittent power failure last night.

I woke up this morning and wandered into the kitchen, and saw that, in place of the time, the LED on the microwave was displaying a “PF.” Most of the clocks have battery backups, but the one in our antique (sixties era) electric stove was about an hour behind.

Computers had to be restarted, natch.

After doing so, I was using my desktop (my primary work machine) for about a half an hour (the one in which I’d recently replaced the motherboard), when it decided to reboot itself, seemingly spontaneously.

Then, after the reboot, right after login, and the desktop coming up, it did so again.

After repeating this two or three times, it bluescreened. This was similar to the symptoms before I replaced the mobo the last time. Except that this time, after finishing writing whatever cryptic diagnostics it was sending to that future, in which the technology might exist to revive it, it didn’t reboot–it just shut down.

And wouldn’t restart. Poking the power button was availless.

So, now I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with the thing now. I may have a power supply problem, but I may also just need to upgrade to a better board.

Anyway, I’ll be working on the laptop for the nonce.

[Late afternoon update]

Dang.

I was hoping that it was the power supply, but I just tried another one, with the same result. The power switch is fine, based on a test with an ohm-meter, and shorting the terminals on the motherboard doesn’t give any action, either.

I still need to verify that the supply I swapped is good, but it looks like there’s a problem with the mobo. I just bought it about a month ago, and it’s probably on warranty, but I only paid thirty-some bucks for it, so it may be best to simply upgrade and get a more modern one.

Oh, as for the suggestion in comments to unplug everything from the board except the video card? That’s already my configuration. Everything else (sound, ethernet, etc.) is built into the board.

I was hit by over four hundred of these nasty things last night, and for some reason MT Blacklist is deleting them, but not rebuilding the pages. I had to do it manually for about a hundred this past weekend, but I just don’t have the time, which means that I have to rebuild the entire site. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is?

Sort of. I’ve got the DSL back up, but I’ve got to drive up to the Cape tomorrow, so blogging will be light/nonexistent until Tuesday, other than a post or two from there.