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GGRRRRR!!!!!

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GGRRRRR!!!!!
Posted by Dave-the-Train on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 1:55 PM

AngryBanged HeadAngry  Why do my posts keep wiping out and the text keep jumping around when I'm setting up posts here?  Does it on PC and laptop.  It's driving me nuts!  GrumpyGrumpyGrumpy  Doesn't happen on other sites Confused

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Posted by Texas Zepher on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 1:57 PM

Are you waiting for the "REPLY" or "POST" screen to get fully loaded before you begin typing?  I often get a screen, but my "loading" indicator is still on.   If I type before the "loading" goes off, it often starts over again and I get some of the symptoms you describe.

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Posted by Last Chance on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 2:12 PM

 Older computer perhaps?

Impatience perhaps?

 

On my machine it takes about .75 to 1.5 seconds for the forum reply stuff to load. That was one of the reasons I did not like the "New" present forums when it first came out. The old format would just present ready to type. But it is Kalmbach's property and we make do with what we get.

I use a variety of Mozilla Add ons and filters to cut down the junk and get to the box. Sometimes I right click advertisements and ad-block image or frame (Or both) in mozilla to clear space and speed up the forum load time.

Some days of the week with certain times of day, the server groans under a load and refuses to work right. I dont post that much anyhow these days so it's not a loss.

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Posted by MisterBeasley on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 2:28 PM

What browser are you using?

It does sometimes take a long time to re-draw everything after you hit "Reply."  Although it looks ready, it may not be.  From what I can tell, this is mostly related to how busy "The Internet" is.  I find that it's very busy at lunchtime here on the east coast.  I guess a lot of people eat and surf.

It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse. 

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Posted by Dave-the-Train on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 3:12 PM

Oops!  Probably should have said...

The laptop is 6 years old and works heroically (if a bit slow) with loads of photo editing.  The PC is new with 4 whatsits doing the work, 1 Kilobyte of memory built in and about 4 Gb of Ram... and the posts still dump - usually like about now... or the text jumps back into itself... so this last bit would read... "or th back into itsele text jumpsf" and so on.  Weird!  Any ideas anyone?

 Thanks  Thumbs UpBowTongue

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Posted by tstage on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 3:15 PM

On my machine it takes about .75 to 1.5 seconds for the forum reply stuff to load. That was one of the reasons I did not like the "New" present forums when it first came out. The old format would just present ready to type.

LC,

That's interesting.  I have dial-up and it takes about ~10-15 sec. for the Reply page to load up completely.  For me, load times been exactly the same - whether using the new forum format or the old format.

I wish mine only took 3/4 of a second to load up.  (Why does this sound like Monty Python? Laugh)

Tom

https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling

Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.

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Posted by tstage on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 3:17 PM

1 Kilobyte of memory built in...

Well there's your problem, Dave! Laugh

Tom

https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling

Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.

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Posted by Dave-the-Train on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 3:56 PM

tstage

1 Kilobyte of memory built in...

Well there's your problem, Dave! Laugh

Tom

Haven't even started to load that yet... everything off the laptop is in a Kbyte of external backed up in a second... and - get this - I've even backed most of it up onto discs!  I even defrag and do maintenance stuff "fairly" regularly.

So I'm being good and the system still plays games with me GrumpyGrumpyGrumpy

My connection rate is about 3.8 thingy wotsits a second/hour or however they measure it...  I'm told that, that's not bad around here... Confused

Thanks Smile

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Posted by MisterBeasley on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:46 PM

Dave-the-Train
... so this last bit would read... "or th back into itsele text jumpsf" and so on.  Weird!  Any ideas anyone?

Ooooh!   I know!  Pick me!  Pick me!

I had this same problem with my previous laptop from work.  Do you have one of those little "button mouse" things in the middle of the keyboard, like nestled between the G, H and B keys?  What happens is that your type around and you get past the normal mouse cursor in the window.  Then you accidentally bump that silly button, and it pops the cursor back to some earlier spot in the window.  If you're not looking, new characters will then start being typed there.

Every machine is different, but there should be a way to disable the dang thing.  Something in Control Panel - Mouse, I think, but you may have to talk to someone in Bangladesh to get the answer.  If he starts giving instructions on how to reload your operating system, he's not the guy you want.

It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse. 

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Posted by blownout cylinder on Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:08 AM

Dave-the-Train
or the text jumps back into itself... so this last bit would read... "or th back into itsele text jumpsf" and so on.  Weird!  Any ideas anyone?

I find that the way I type on a small laptop makes it even easier for the dang possttt to ddo onen of thesse types of thngs---add and rop leterrs---Confused If I try to type faster I will find that the sensitivity of the keyboard will play hobb with how the post looks. There might be a way of at least adjusting the keyboard such that the adding and dropping bit is not there----

--or the browser could dump the post---and I'm not even on IE8 or such----

The only other issue is with 'Spring' stepping on the keys--making it even easier to have the post go uhntfntny54y76yWhistling

Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry

I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...

http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/

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Posted by jeffrey-wimberly on Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:18 AM

 That's weird. The only time I had any such problems was when I was using IE. I've been using Firefox for years now and haven't had ANY posting problems. One thing you might try is pre-assembling your post in Notepad and copy and paste it into the reply box.

Running Bear, Sundown, Louisiana
          Joined June, 2004

Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running Bear
Space Mouse for president!
15 year veteran fire fighter
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Running Bear Enterprises
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beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam


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Posted by JSperan on Thursday, December 10, 2009 8:48 AM

MisterBeasley
Do you have one of those little "button mouse" things in the middle of the keyboard

BINGO!

The same thing used to happen to me on my old laptop with a touchpad & mouse buttons.  I was forever brushing the buttons or pad and moving the cursor around while typing...drove me INSANE!  That laptop did not have a way of disabling the pad so I ended up covering it over with cardstock, which helped.  The new laptop has a BIOS setting that didables the pad and buttons.

That could explain the text shifiting.  As for the other stuff, it sounds like what I typically see when I am at this forum.

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Posted by Last Chance on Thursday, December 10, 2009 9:43 AM

 I build computers as a hobby when old machines die. About once every ten years or so. I tend to build very powerful machines that dont take long at all to do anything (For a while anyway...) Train Sims rolling through the woods without stutter and loss of clickety clack is must have. All about hardware.

 

Connection is several megabit down and 800 kb up feeding two computers in my home off the router. The router has everything except Http and Https disallowed so that really cuts down on the random internet traffic noise.

 If I have to struggle with THIS forum, then I know it's best to turn off everything and do something else LOL.

The one thing I wont do is ping, traceroute or examine "Hops" between me and Kalmbach. I just like to post here and read up on others who post too. it's all fun. I dont stress over a slow day.

 

A few years ago I had dailup. Never again.

Also I had the experience of watching a Dell computer at our Cemetary cough and wheeze for about 8 minutes by my watch struggling to open a Microsoft Word Document of two pages containing our burial arrangements. And it was a fairly new machine but very cheaply bought and extremely minimum hardware to run anything at all beyond Notepad, wordpad or calculator.

 

 

There is one universal truth about computers. They did not make pencils and paper obselete in school. They can do alot with a little 30 year old floppy disk even today. Today's machines require bigger hardware, more capacity, more storage, internet connections always faster, more bigger bloat software.....

 

Always more.

Why hasnt someone said... this is good enough for all let's stop the bloat?

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Posted by blownout cylinder on Thursday, December 10, 2009 9:50 AM

Last Chance
Why hasnt someone said... this is good enough for all let's stop the bloat?

Supersize Everything!!!Laugh

Last Chance
Also I had the experience of watching a Dell computer at our Cemetary cough and wheeze for about 8 minutes by my watch struggling to open a Microsoft Word Document of two pages containing our burial arrangements. And it was a fairly new machine but very cheaply bought and extremely minimum hardware to run anything at all beyond Notepad, wordpad or calculator.

That last bit about cheap is a good one----one gets what they pay for in that case. My 4 Gb Dell has a 500 Gb hard drive---it don't be taking 7 minutes to load up a page of Word doc in this'uns case---more like 2 secondsWhistling

Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry

I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...

http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/

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Posted by Dave-the-Train on Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:07 AM

Thanks all!  Thumbs Up

First thing is that I now know that it isn't just me.  Smile

The laptop disabled its touchpad for itself a few years ago to my great relief.  I use a Logitech trackerball mouse on both machines. I love trackerball mice - most people seem to hate them... I even have a boring ordinary mouse to plug in when anyone else needs to use a machine.

I've checked and this forum usually loads in less than a second.  The "reply" window opens between 1 sec and 3 secs - I suspect that it depends on how busy the net is at the time.

I can see the issue of key problems.  The laptop seems to decide that a random key wants to play upfrom time to tie.  It's just gone from "F" to "M" being awkward.  Is this just age or can I clean the keyboard - without messing up the whole thing?

Thanks again  Bow

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Posted by dgwinup on Friday, December 11, 2009 1:37 AM

Sure, you can clean the keyboard.  Just fill up the bathtub, grab a big scrub brush and a bar of lye soap and have at it!  Be the cleanest dang keyboard this side of Hades.  Won't work at all after that, but at least it'll be CLEAN!  LOL

Seriously, dirty keyboards do cause problems similar to what you describe.  Dust and dirt build up under the keys causing them to stick or not register when pressed.  Spilled liquids intensity the problem, even water.  (Water + dirt = MUD!)

You might try a long, soft bristle brush to clean below the keys.  One of those tiny keyboard vacuums might help, too.

Or try typing slower as someone has suggested.  Better still, type in notepad or word, then copy and paste to your reply.  At least that way you won't lose a long reply to the computer gremlins!

Darrell, quiet...for now
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Posted by jeffrey-wimberly on Friday, December 11, 2009 4:35 AM

dgwinup
Better still, type in notepad or word, then copy and paste to your reply.  At least that way you won't lose a long reply to the computer gremlins!

If I had a dollar for each time I suggested that to people who have the vanishing post problem (haven't had it myself since I dropped IE like a hot potato) I'd be a rich man!

Running Bear, Sundown, Louisiana
          Joined June, 2004

Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running Bear
Space Mouse for president!
15 year veteran fire fighter
Collector of Apple //e's
Running Bear Enterprises
History Channel Club life member.
beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam


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Posted by tstage on Friday, December 11, 2009 5:15 AM

jeffrey-wimberly
dgwinup
Better still, type in notepad or word, then copy and paste to your reply.  At least that way you won't lose a long reply to the computer gremlins!
If I had a dollar for each time I suggested that to people who have the vanishing post problem (haven't had it myself since I dropped IE like a hot potato) I'd be a rich man!

The problem with copying and pasting from programs like MS Word is that you sometimes get innocuous but visible software code inserted at the beginning of your post that won't go away.  It's visible when your response is posted on the forum but disappears if you try and go back in to edit it using the Edit button.

The code is only accessible for deletion between the time you hit the Reply button and the time the Reply page loads up.  This is one of the few times where having dial-up has a distinct advantage over faster connections.

Since it usually takes ~10 seconds for a Reply page to load up on my computer, I have that amount of time to find the offending code, highlight it, and press the Delete button on my keyboard.  Sometimes the code is so long that it might take me 2, 3 or 4 times to eradicate it all.  (I've done this in my own posts or trying to clean up someone else's post when moderating.)  Needless to say, I do NOT copy and paste from Word.

My solution: If I've spent considerable time typing out a response or post that I don't want to lose (or have to retype over again), I've just gotten into the habit of highlighting and copying the text (using Ctrl+C) before hitting the Post button.  If the post goes through successfully - wonderful!  If something happens, all I need to do is:

1) Click the Reply button again

2) Paste (Ctrl+V) the message in the new Reply text box

3) Hit the Post button

Quick and easy backup insurance.  And I did it for this message, too.

Tom

https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling

Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.

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Posted by jeffrey-wimberly on Friday, December 11, 2009 7:51 AM

 I'll go through the steps. I'm typing this reply in Notepad. Now that I'm finished I'll highlight it (Ctrl-A), copy it (Ctrl-C) then I'll click the reply button then I'll paste (Ctrl-V) my reply into the reply box then click post.

Running Bear, Sundown, Louisiana
          Joined June, 2004

Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running Bear
Space Mouse for president!
15 year veteran fire fighter
Collector of Apple //e's
Running Bear Enterprises
History Channel Club life member.
beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam


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Posted by Seamonster on Friday, December 11, 2009 9:11 AM
I just thought I'd throw in my two cents worth on some of the comments in this thread. Aren't computers wonderful? NOT! I wouldn't take a keyboard into the shower and scrub it but I remember many years ago that practice was recommended for cleaning keyboards. I never had the nerve to try it, though. Never, ever, ever, open up a keyboard to clean out the insides. I tried that once. Had to buy a new keyboard. It never went back together properly. I would advise keeping a can of compressed air by the computer and blowing out the debris in the spaces between the keys periodically. I did that with my PC which has large gaps between the keys. I've got an iMac now and its white keyboard gets dirty very quickly. I could never get the keys completely clean using a spray cleaner on a rag wrapped around my finger. Then my eldest granddaughter told me this method. (If you want a computer solution, ask a youngster!) Use a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Wet it, wring it out as dry as possible, and wipe the key tops. Two quick wipes and the keyboard looked brand new again. I would never have thought of that one. As for the complaints about Safari not working with this forum, the only problem I have with Safari is that I have to use the "<>" codes for paragraph breaks, bold, etc. and I can't seem to insert smilies. Those issues are not big deals to me and Safari works just fine otherwise.

..... Bob

Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here. (Captain Kirk)

I reject your reality and substitute my own. (Adam Savage)

Resistance is not futile--it is voltage divided by current.

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Posted by Dave-the-Train on Saturday, December 12, 2009 2:12 AM

dgwinup

Sure, you can clean the keyboard.  Just fill up the bathtub, grab a big scrub brush and a bar of lye soap and have at it!  Be the cleanest dang keyboard this side of Hades.  Won't work at all after that, but at least it'll be CLEAN!  LOL

I tried that.  It shrank!  Shock  Now I have a notepad!  Sigh

Actually I found a way of cleaning under the keys but it was a bit delicate so I don't think I should recommemnd it.

Thanks for all the good ideas though... especially the ways of copying.

 Smile

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