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Today I have completed the addition of a PayPal page to the Gilscape site. Now site visitors can, of their own free accord, choose offer donations/contributions to help defray various fees associated with running a blog. Here are just a few to gently pull at your purse strings, um I meant to say heart strings:
Recently, I had a most unpleasant experience with not being able to connect to my wireless home network. Upon further investigation it was found that an optional Microsoft hardware update was the cause of my Net blackout. My Toshiba laptop, a Satellite A215-S5808, had just arrived from a repair depot due to some intermittent hardware issues with the optical drive. As usual I was bursting at the seams to get my applications and backups re-installed since they always, and I mean always, re-image the hard drive for the slightest repair :) When I finally had everything re-installed, all was fine and I was happily cruising around the Net. My last action before I was without connectivity was to run Microsoft Update. Again, all was well and after several reboots and further updates, everything was working fine. Finally I had received all of the updates available except for a couple of optional hardware driver updates that Microsoft claimed were designed for my specific hardware, by the hardware manufacturer. One word of caution that I would offer freely to anyone brave enough to try installing these “optional” updates is don’t. Go ahead if you are comfortable with rolling back device drivers and have time to do so. It also might help to stand on one foot while juggling three bowling balls and balancing a notebook PC on your head (this is a joke, please do not attempt, but if you do please send pictures). The maverick optional “update” that blindsided me was the following jewel. Once I rolled the driver back to the latest from my hardware manufacturer all was well again, fortunately.
I actually knew better, being that this is not the first time this “incident” has happened to be, albeit with other hardware devices. Shame on me. My tendency to forgive past technical trials and tinker like a mad gnome with technology got the best of me. The other optional updates I downloaded and installed seem to be working fine. Go figure. A safe rule to follow is to only download the latest device drivers from your hardware manufacturer’s website and not from Microsoft. While they (Microsoft) do not seek to willing cause any disruption in your equipment’s funtionalty, for some reason they have a knack for doing so. I guess maybe it just doesn’t get reported to the right people? Most all technology professionals I know, have ever worked with and talk to, all agree that it is much better, not to mention time saving, to get only the security updates from Microsoft and all device driver updates from their respective manufacturers. Cheers! In conjunction with the new online library, yet another new addition to the Gilscape site is the community page. This resource has been added to house all manner of public resources such as various event calendars, technology utilities and links to other sites/domains that I either own or I use in some way. A recent addition to Gilscape is the online library. Powered by Amazon.com, this resource houses many of personal selections and others that I hopefully will acquire soon. The library houses both non-fiction and fiction titles and is always expanding. Be sure to visit often for the latest offerings. After having experimented with a WordPress.com site that I had mapped my primary domain gilscape.com to, I recently decided it was time to move over to the complete and custom WordPress experience. By that I mean I am now utilizing the WordPress platform from WordPress.org. Well, in all actuality I am using the tools provided through my GoDaddy hosting account that enables me to utilize the “full” version of WordPress. For a rundown of the differences between the .com and .org version of WordPress, please visit the following link: |
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