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Chatterbox 4th Quarter

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Posted by locomutt on Monday, October 7, 2013 9:16 PM

Well, there's an "Old Saying" about people that live in the Ohio River Valley; if you don't like the weather, wait about 10 minutes and it will change.

Albeit, it was raining yesterday, but the temps. were in the 60s & 70s. Today the temps. were only in the 50s. Yesterday I had on shorts, and a short sleeved t-shirt. Today, sweat pants, long sleeved shirt & socks!

(had to service the furnace and turn it on)

After several years of me trying to understand how to use a cell phone, the one that I had decided to "bite the dust"! So, I now have a new one, hopefully it won't take me that many years to figure out how to use it.

I believe the instructions said: "So simple a 5 year old can use it". I need to find that 5 year old and have he or she explain it to me......

Being Crazy,keeps you from going "INSANE" !! "The light at the end of the tunnel,has been turned off due to budget cuts" NOT AFRAID A Vet., and PROUD OF IT!!

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Posted by Norm48327 on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 6:30 AM

I need a young kid to help me decipher the ins and outs of Windows 7 which I recently installed on my computer.Confused

Norm


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Posted by tree68 on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 7:55 AM

Norm48327

I need a young kid to help me decipher the ins and outs of Windows 7 which I recently installed on my computer.Confused

I usually find that when they put out an "upgrade" they must have researched the features I used the most, because they almost always take them out of the new version...

LarryWhistling
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Posted by Mookie on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 8:20 AM

It is so nice to read fellow maybe-not-so-enlightened on phones and puters posters!!  It is such a love/hate relationship with my cell, IPad, puter and Confused.  

Remember when an "app"lication applied to medicine or a job? At least I think that is what those little squares are named?  

 

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Posted by Deggesty on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 11:38 AM

You should (NOT) try Windows 8. I had to buy (the abridged version) of Windows 8 for Dummies, and even then I have run into things that the new system does that (in my opinion) it does not need to do. I was talking with daughter Ginny, and she showed me one or two things that make it easier to use.

Ricki's first word processor was WordPerfect, and I use that (the version I bought several years ago)--and consider Microsoft's word processor to be "Imperfect Word." A few days ago, in response to Jackie's request for some information, I started up the Word that is now on my computer--and the initial screen had all sorts of garbage (in my estimation) that I had to ignore and find my way to where I could create a document. Of course, if I send a document to almost anybody else, it has to be in Word, since Microsoft has sucked so many people into using its imperfect product.

As to a cell telephone, since I am not even half-way married to one as all too many people are, mine is quite simple--yet it has stuff on it that I have no use for--and I buy time at least once a year, paying thirty dollars for more time than I really need. It does come in handy for me when I am traveling, since I can make calls without having to look for a phone booth (does anybody remember those?). It was really handy when I was leaving Florence, S.C., last month. When I got out of Luanne Ussery's car at the ACL station (though Amtrak has built a much smaller building than the one I spent the night in in 1968), I failed to take my small, "overnight," bag out and did not realize my error until I was inside the station and saw that it was not sitting on top of my suitcase. Hoping that she did have her cell phone with her and had it on, I called her--and she was able to turn around and bring it to me before she got home.

Johnny

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Posted by blownout cylinder on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 2:58 PM

No way am I going anywhere near windoze 8. ..uhuh.

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...

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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 4:14 PM

I bought a new Dell laptop about 3 months ago and it came with Windows 8.

While not having the start button there initially caused some challenges, its really not that hard to use.

With version 8.1 coming out soon, hopefully a lot of the Windows 8 drama can be put to rest.

 

 

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Posted by JoeKoh on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 5:16 PM

evening

ns was parking an autorack train in the siding when I left. Matt's homework has been checked. Time to get cleaned up. Walt I can send Matt down to help out.

stay safe

Joe

Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").

 

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Posted by locomutt on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 7:23 PM

Johnny, Thanks for the input on Windows 8 O.S. that's what my new cell phone came with. Guess now I will have to spend extra bucks and get that book.

When we first got our computer back in 2003 I actually forget what O.S. it came with, but we did have "Word Perfect". Very shortly after purchase, we downloaded Windows XP office edition with "Word". That's what on it now.

"Word" is okay, but I wouldn't give you a dime for "Word Perfect"

Now, as to the cell phone; I think I have gotten it down to where I can actually make a call. [I hope I don't have to call 9-1-1 in a hurry!]

Joe, you can send Matt down if you want, just hope he can put up with an older gent that doesn't know that much about things like that.

Mookie, I'm with you on the APPlication thing, but it seems in this day and age, certain things just don't apply.....

Being Crazy,keeps you from going "INSANE" !! "The light at the end of the tunnel,has been turned off due to budget cuts" NOT AFRAID A Vet., and PROUD OF IT!!

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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 7:38 PM

Norm48327

I need a young kid to help me decipher the ins and outs of Windows 7 which I recently installed on my computer.Confused

Norm...  Windows 7 is fairly easy to master...I have  Win 7 on my two desktop computers here at home.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 8:12 PM

     We have 3 sons, age 22, 18, and 15, therefore, I have a built-in support tech team that can help me with the computer and cell phone problems.  I still get the surly attitude from tech support people who think I'm a dummy, but at least the voices are familiar and understandable.Laugh

     This spring, we were at a family reunion in a campground.  As we were walking through a big open area, one of the kids found a cell phone someone had dropped.  It was a flip phone, on AT&T, and there were no phone numbers keyed into the contacts.  I figured it must belong to my 80 year old uncle Corky.  I was right.

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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Posted by tree68 on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 8:29 PM

I'm still running Vista on the home PC and the laptop.  The phone and tablet are Android.

It seems like we go through the same routine over and over.  Everybody gets used to a given operating system, and voila!, it's time for a new one.  I suspect that once they get all the bugs worked out of a given OS, they have time to build a new one.

And like I say, if there's a feature I really like, I can count on it disappearing in the next version...

I still do work in DOS and Basic...

Just got started on my railroad project for the winter - revising our daily "Rule of the Day" sheets.  Lots to do - researching the rules on each sheet to ensure they are correct, and digging out new rules to replace any that might be obsolete.  It'll take all winter.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 8:36 PM

Murphy Siding

 I still get the surly attitude from tech support people who think I'm a dummy, but at least the voices are familiar and understandable.Laugh

"Dad!  What did you do to this thing?????"

 

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Posted by blue streak 1 on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 9:05 PM

regarding computers & softwear.  My step son informs me that all microsoft support for XP & office 2003 will be terminated in April 2014.  Nuts.  Guess what I've got on one of my computers ? ?

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Posted by blownout cylinder on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 9:07 PM

I'm mucking around with an old Atari for 8 bit music making, lol.

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 Mookie on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 9:09 PM

Tree - I am on Vista, too.  Windows 95 was still my favorite.

Driver had some lab work today.  We had a tornado hit about 15 miles south of Lincoln and the lab tech told him that she lives there and was home when it happened (no damage, but close).  She told the Driver that she went back to New York for a conference and told a gentleman at the conference that she lived about 15 miles outside Lincoln but worked in Lincoln.  He wanted to know if she took the subway to work.  

She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw

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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 9:18 PM

blue streak 1

regarding computers & softwear.  My step son informs me that all microsoft support for XP & office 2003 will be terminated in April 2014.  Nuts.  Guess what I've got on one of my computers ? ?

Its still possible to find computers with Windows 7 on it..........

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Posted by tree68 on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 9:40 PM

Murray
Its still possible to find computers with Windows 7 on it..........

That's how it was when W7 first came out - local computer shops would sell you a machine with Vista...

Heck, I've still got Office 2000 running...  Who cares about tech support?  It's working just fine for me!  If there's a problem it's that the newest versions won't recognize files from the old versions.

Ms Mook - re:  Subway.  That's why, when asked, I say I'm from northern New York.  Especially for folks who live a fair distance from the Big Apple.  They just seem to assume that if someone is from New York, they're from the city.  I live far from the city.  In fact, I can be in Toronto or Ottawa (Canada) faster than I can get to NYC. 

Subway, pshaw.  I did eat there tonight, though...

LarryWhistling
Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) 
Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you
My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date
Come ride the rails with me!
There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Wednesday, October 9, 2013 12:05 AM

blue streak 1

regarding computers & softwear.  My step son informs me that all microsoft support for XP & office 2003 will be terminated in April 2014.  Nuts.  Guess what I've got on one of my computers ? ?

 
Just because MS will cease to support a product does not mean it will suddenly cease to operate the way it always has.  XP and Office 2003 may still work just fine for you.  It depends on how you are using them as to whether you should be concerned.
 
If you only create your own Office files and never receive files from others, then there will be no problem.  If they work now, they will work in the next decade too.
 
If you never get a file from someone else then you have no reason to worry about getting malware via an Office file, even if there is some security hole in your no longer supported OS or Office versions.
 
You might receive an Office file from someone else using a newer version of Office and you will not be able to open it using your copy of Office.  This is already a problem because MS does not provide updates to older Office versions to open the files from newer versions.  But in new versions of Office they have traditionally offered a method of saving a file in an older format just so it can be shared to computers running older versions of Office.  It is something that the originator of the file has to deliberately select when saving the file.  (You have to contact the originator of the file and ask them to resave the file in the older format for you... Hopefully they are someone that you know and can plead your case to.)
 
 
If you access the Internet with the computer then you will have a risk of malware causing you problems.  If some fool finds a security hole in XP or Office 2003 and you happen upon the fool's product then you will have whatever problem the fool designed his product to do.
 
How do you happen upon the fool's product?  Downloading a program of unknown provenance is the primary way, either by deliberately clicking on a "download" button to get some program that you think you want or by clicking on a link in an e-mail that is a trick to download a program that you didn't know would come.  But you will get pronouncements that you are about to download a program just like you do now, so it would take a couple of deliberate steps for you to actually get the program into your computer.
 
Another way would be via web-surfing to a malware infected web-site.
 
Either way, if you keep your Anti-malware software up-to-date then malware should be detected and stopped, even if the operating system or Office has the security problem.  You do have the risk of being one of the 1st to stumble across some malware before the anti-malware companies get a chance to know about it and update their databases to detect it (known as a "Day Zero Attack")... but you and everybody else, regardless of the operating system or its update status, has that risk now.
 
 
Eventually, as software evolves, you might surf to a web site that requires you to have some feature in the browser, but you may not be able to install a browser with that feature because it cannot work in your operating system, so you will be effectively locked out of ever accessing that site and/or using that feature.
 
 

Semper Vaporo

Pkgs.

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Posted by locomutt on Wednesday, October 9, 2013 10:05 AM

Hmmm. must have not looked at the calendar correctly yesterday.

Belated Anniversary wishes to Joe and Stacey, and to Cannonball and Shirl!!!

And for today, Happy BirthdayCake to "Mudhen", (Pat) Mudchickens wife! Hope she has a Great one!

Being Crazy,keeps you from going "INSANE" !! "The light at the end of the tunnel,has been turned off due to budget cuts" NOT AFRAID A Vet., and PROUD OF IT!!

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Posted by Mookie on Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:56 AM

Pile of blankets/fans/sweats/shorts/boots/sandals/space heater/window open/windows closed/

Getting hard to walk around up here.  41 to 80 to 50 to..... degrees.  Too windy to fish - properly.  Might try improperly.  

Got a great gadget from UPS today.  (Had to tussle with neighbors, since they order constantly and they were just sure it was for them!)  Anyway - a telescoping pole that is about 3 feet long.  Extends to about 17 feet for cleaning those pesky windows and fans in your cathedral ceilings that I don't have.  Blah.

Driver will use it - to push carp back into water off the rocks.  Carp have soft mouths and keep dropping off the hook before he can bank them.  The rocks below, while not all that far, are not for senior fishermen to be climbing around on.  So he can sit in his chair (that I adapted for him to have everything at his fingertips - except what he forgot at home - and use his extension with a soft pad on the end to push the fish back in the water.  Another Ranger Rick helpful hint!

She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw

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Posted by JoeKoh on Thursday, October 10, 2013 3:52 PM

evening

busy day at work.Ns was switching cars uptown. helped Matt finish up his book report. tomorrow is Friday. need a trainwatching fix this weekend.

stay safe

Joe

Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").

 

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Posted by tree68 on Thursday, October 10, 2013 7:11 PM

There - 476 chicken halves seasoned so they'll be ready for barbequeing on Sunday.  Tomorrow it's bacon, macaroni, and eggs (hardboiled).

Tomorrow is also our fire prevention program at the elementary school.  Better make sure my uniform is up to snuff...   And my presentations (I do both the 4th and 5th grade programs).

Ever onward!

LarryWhistling
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Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you
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Come ride the rails with me!
There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...

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Posted by zardoz on Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:00 PM

Mookie

Another Ranger Rick helpful hint!

Are you sure it's not a hint from Red Green?
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Posted by Anonymous on Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:13 PM

Mmmmmm.........Chicken Halves.

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Posted by mudchicken on Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:33 PM

Not today bubba.

 

Just came over da hill - Kinda weird with heavy snow, yellow aspen and red scrub oak....it's coming east!

Mudchicken Nothing is worth taking the risk of losing a life over. Come home tonight in the same condition that you left home this morning in. Safety begins with ME.... cinscocom-west
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Posted by Mookie on Thursday, October 10, 2013 9:02 PM

Murray - my first thought exactly!  And hard-boiled eggs in a crowd?  tee-hee

Zardoz - That's a Wisconsin thing.  We were Ranger Rick here.  We can't say "eh", eh?  We say "Warsh the Car!"  And Norfork when it is spelled Norfolk.  And the BNSF has a Juniata (starts out June...) and Waunita (starts out Wan ) on the same line.  And we have Bee-at-tris (Beatrice, not Bee-a-tris), Carney (Kearney) not Kerney.

Aw, Chicken found my snow trap.  See that big line of thunderstorms out in North Platte area.  Never make it this far.  And what are you doing out in the woods, where bears go....literally....?

She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw

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Posted by mudchicken on Friday, October 11, 2013 10:12 AM

 

 

 

Aw, Chicken found my snow trap.  See that big line of thunderstorms out in North Platte area.  Never make it this far.  And what are you doing out in the woods, where bears go....literally....?

 

A couple of them "rubber tired" civil engineers ran into chicken with ruffled feathers -   might just feed them to the bears as a light snack.

Mudchicken Nothing is worth taking the risk of losing a life over. Come home tonight in the same condition that you left home this morning in. Safety begins with ME.... cinscocom-west
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Posted by Mookie on Friday, October 11, 2013 3:27 PM

Sir Chicken needs a vacation.  Few days off...  snicker...

Had early appt, so then had breakfast out and track-side.  Very busy day.  Lots of coal, some freight and refurbishing the area around the diamond.  Vacuuming area!  Boy they are neat!  Just heard what sounded like a Loram coming in the Hastings/Amtrak line heading to what sounded like the area that they were working.  Lot of "staff" around the work site.  Must be a very large project.  

We would have gone down into the area and peeked at them, but I didn't want to have a problem with Sir C's rubber-tired engineers.  

Also saw an MT ballast train- as long as a normal coal train - headed east - probably for a refill.  Two SD70's on point.  Saw a lot of SD70's today paired with a lot of 9's.  Must be clean the closet out week.  

Party that sits there frequently said he saw 3 Boeing trains this week.  Usually one a week if we are lucky.  

Nice day - 78 but with 23-27 mph south winds, it kind of "blows the sun around".  

 

She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw

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Posted by JoeKoh on Friday, October 11, 2013 3:34 PM

evening

nice night out tonight.better day tomorrow.going to be out trainwatching somewhere.

stay safe

joe

Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").

 

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