How the devil do you do this?

Once again, I've managed to drive myself wild trying to do something I promised to do and can't seem to get off the ground. I promised Ray in the UK that I would send him a couple of recipes for ginger biscuits that he asked about but find it virtually impossible to do it. Each time I've retyped everything into a post, by the time that I reach the end of the post it's all timed out and when I attempt to re-login, everything is suddenly gone. If I have this happen once more, I'm just going to send the desired recipes one at a time - this is very frustrating. Can someone please help me out with instructions how to sign in again once the time out happens? The last time I got a message to "refresh the post and sign in again - right! How do I do that? Bloody hell!! Computers hate me and the feeling is so very mutual!!

Ian

Ian,
Why don't you type out the recipes in wordpad, then just copy and paste them in the window?

make sure that the little "remember me" box is checked, just under the log in area. . if you don't it will boot you after X amount of time, and well. . .not remember you.

Thanks, guys - I just knew that the solution had to be super simple and that any six-year-old (except me!) could probably have figured it out after less time than it took me to get aced out totally by this infernal idiot machine!

Ian

the "remember me" box may work - but given the vulgaries of connecting and software I make a point of composing messages - anything of any detail/length - in WordPad, then copy / paste. then I make sure it actually posted before I close WordPad . . . .

yes, there have been times when it didn't post . . .
annoying, frustrating - all that . . .

Again, many thanks to all concerned for the helpful suggestions and advice. I'd have to say that there's almost nothing anyone can say or suggest that will make me stop hating this stupid computer. The two of us are never going to be friends - it's that simple! Otherwise, everything worked dandy using the "remember me" button when I finally was able to post those recipes for Miniman. Thank goodness. Now me and my headache are going to bed. As Scarlet once said, "tomorrow's another day!"

Ian

For future reference.

I often type out my longer posts in MS Word, notepad or write and cut and paste. It also makes it easy to save recopies in a dedicated folder that I have on my PC.

Also in longer posts there is a maximum size for a post. I believe the default size is 10,000 characters, it is configurable. Doc may have another value.

Ian - I hope this will give you a chuckle. I spent a wonderful six months of my life writing assembly language code for mainframes and riding my motorcycle in the Arizona desert. One day, I was in class and the instructor was teaching a certain instruction that the processor would do. After class, I went up to him and presented my reasons for thinking that he was wrong in his explanation. His reply was short and educational. "Go assemble it into a program and argue with the computer." After fifty years in the business, I have learned, hardware does not argue back.

Andy

Thanx, Andy...and the professor was too correct. Not only does the hardware never argue back but it's arrogant and ALAYS right! This beast I have here gives me raspberries from time to time, just to express its total contempt for me! If I was on a sinking ship and only me or the computer could be saved.......this dang thing had better know how to swim............................

Ian

Ian M. said:

Again, many thanks to all concerned for the helpful suggestions and advice. I'd have to say that there's almost nothing anyone can say or suggest that will make me stop hating this stupid computer. The two of us are never going to be friends - it's that simple! Otherwise, everything worked dandy using the "remember me" button when I finally was able to post those recipes for Miniman. Thank goodness. Now me and my headache are going to bed. As Scarlet once said, "tomorrow's another day!"

Ian

Click to expand...

I am certainly not pointing a finger, but ahh . . .more times than not, it's operator error, the computer just does what it's told

Yep, that's certainly true and this operator, 9 times out of 10, hasn't a clue! But this particular computer is aged and has a disconcerting tendency to "do stuff" like suddenly crashing and taking everything you're doing with it or do crazy stuff like suddenly moving every icon around on your home screen or creating new home screens out of the air with no warning - all, I'm sure, the result of me zigging when I ought to zag but nevertheless, it's always easier to blame an inanimate object than to admit to gross stupidity on my part. What's more, this computer can't spell worth a hoodinky!

Ian

I feel your pain Ian, it probably does not help much, but I do believe the same has happened to every one of us ... probably more than once.

A couple other suggestions that might help out. When you have typed up a post of any length hit "control a" to highlight it all and "control c" to copy it to your clipboard. If it does not post correctly, you simply open a new post window and hit "control v" to paste the post into the new window. (Note: right clicking your mouse to copy and paste does the same thing as the control c and control v).

The FireFox browser had a kewl tool that will underline misspelled words in red. You then right click on the word and it will give you correct spellings for the words you might have intended to type. Very very handy. My spelling is atrocious. This tool has actually taught me how to spell some of my more common misspellings correctly. Very slick. Very handy and very useful.

Ah, the spell checker, I could not post anything without it. I us IE browser. Here is a spell checker for IE that runs in the back ground. Just right click what you want to check. You can even add words. CF
http://www.iespell.com/download.php

>>the computer just does what it's told

or, to quote DW: Why doesn't it do what I want instead of what I told it to?

Funny thing, that! My wife says the same thing - why don't you pay attention to what I mean rather than what I say? Right! Anyway, thanks for the help, everyone - I'm going to try the ie spellchecker, CF, and see if that'll work for me. Once upon a time, we had a computer that had an automatic spell checker which I actually understood but this monster doesn't appear to have that. If it does, I'm simply too computer illiterate to get it! I've a brother-in-law who's a computer geek and works for a Geek Squad at a Best Buy out in Ohio somewhere and I'm going to talk to him about whether the Geek Squad gives tutorials to ninnies on how computers work. Beyond that, maybe a night coarse at the local community college would help me some, too. Not to mention a new computer!
But Kieran comes first.....................

Ian

Sounds like a new computer would be a big help.