Dear Bill, I like your Windows. I really do. I've been using them in one version or another since 1993 and they're a big improvement over what used to be on my computer: an almost bare, black screen with a flashing cursor. Man, those were dark times. Oh sure, you could customize your desktop in those days. If you looked long and hard enough, you could even find a way to change the cursor from a flashing line to a flashing rectangle. Or even turn the flashing off. Whoopee! But look what we have now. Windows. Now you get lots of pretty icons and your choice of desktop themes. What a selection: Puffy White Clouds, Mountain Lions, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Babes or anything else that kindles your fire. Life, for the computer geek in us all, is good. If you would, however, make a few teensy changes to your system, I'd appreciate it. For instance: Remember a few years back? You were doing an interview and said that someday, we'd all be able to turn on our computers and go right to work. No warm up period. Well, someday is here, isn't it? In the time it takes to load Windows now, I could fix and eat a sandwich, take a leisurely stroll, leaf through a magazine, then return to hear my PC still going "RrrrrRrrrrRrrrr." (That's computerese for "go make another sandwich.") Sometimes you come out with new versions of things, like Explorer and Outlook Express. That's good. But can you please make sure that the new version works as fast as the old one? Case in point; try to print an e-mail from Outlook Express 6. First click Print, then wait. After a small eternity, the Print window pops up like a late party guest. "Hey, I'm sorry; traffic was murder." While I'm at it, why does it seem that new versions of anything are bigger, fatter and slower than the ones that preceded it? (Download Juno 5.0 today! More features! Better graphics! And a hell of a lot slower than Juno 4.0!) Oh, and about the Blue Screen of Death. I have to say this right now. It's not my fault. It's never my fault. So stop scolding me already! Yes, my machine freezes at least three times a day, making the mouse pointer disappear. The only remedy is to hit the reset button, which I do. And then I brace myself for Mr. Blue, yelling that I should have closed everything out first. Tell you what, eliminate the freezes and you can scold all you want. You have a feature in Explorer called Windows Update. What a nice idea. It's a link that takes me to the Microsoft website for updates. But then something happens that I'm not crazy about. Microsoft starts probing my hard drive to see what MS software I already have. You say you're not sending any information back to MS, and I believe you. But I think you ought to ask before you probe. (Aliens, take note.) Office workers like me love to play Freecell. But something about installing Explorer 6.0 makes it work badly, or not at all. We're at sea without it. Instead, we're reduced to talking to each other or taking healthy walks on our lunch hour. We want our Freecell back. Fix it, will ya? Once, I installed a piece of Windows '98 that I didn't need. Then I couldn't get rid of it. Couldn't delete it, or even drag the icon to the recycle bin. So here's what I did. I changed the icon and renamed the program "Gizmo," in honor of the fuzzy, adorable character from the movie Gremlins. Every day, I have Gizmo on my desktop to remind me of the useless program that Windows won't let me delete. Heigh ho, heigh ho.... Finally, and I would be forever in your debt if you would do this, please make the windows big. Sometimes when I open Explorer I get a small window. Other times I get a big one. I want the big window every time. The really irritating part is that there are lots of settings for how I want Explorer to work. I can check off murky instructions like "Always send URLs as UTF-8" or "Use PCT 1.0," even if I don't have a clue what they mean. But where is the setting called "Make Explorer Big Every Time I Open It"? Let me emphasize: I don't want puny, square, drink-coaster-sized windows. I want humongous, Texas-sized windows that fill my entire screen. I've asked the experts (well, the techie in my office) and there is no universal setting for this. Please let us Super Size our windows, once and for all! Well, that about wraps up my letter. Please think about what I've said and take action where appropriate. I may only be one of a gazillion Windows users, but think of me as Don Q. Public, the average guy who knows enough about computers to be mildly dangerous. Yes, that should do the trick. Regards, Me AUTHOR BIO: Don Kelley has been happily married for eight years and has two wonderful children, a boy and a girl. No pets at the moment, but the kids would love a dog. When not writing, he works for state government as a labor market analyst. He would like to write a nonfiction book someday. In the meantime, he's had one book review published in a newspaper, about which Don brags: Hey, it's a start! Some of his work can be found at: Thought Cafe.

What follows is a sordid tale. Innocent on the web...just a writer, with no skill, knowledge, or awareness of how things actually appear on sites...learns to upload her material to a now moribund venture called Themestream. Other Themestream writers know a lot about the technical side of web design. Why, they've had their very own web sites for years. They write informative articles on how to do more than type and send. One contributor takes pity on a clot of women who write interesting stories, and offers to 'upload' and create a web page on her very own domain for each of them. It is a kind gesture. The innocent one says, "Oh, wow. Sure. Then I can enter search engines and perhaps more people will read my work. That would be nifty. Cool. You bet. What do I need to do?" "Nothing. I can do it from here." Fast forward a year. Themestream RIP. The links lead no where, but the writer's name is attached and she is in the search engines. E-mails to the web master, letters to the woman who lived in Canada go ignored. "Please, please erase the site you made for me?" The writer (OK. It's me. You won't be fooled, will you?) is snarking up the learning curve like crazy and now knows how to create web sites of her own. She goes a little nuts with glee and creates an education site, a humor site for women over 40, a humor site for dog lovers, a site about ethics. Then, she of the addictive personality, creates two more--one on public health and another dedicated to Sam. It is the AllSamSite. Everything on it relates to Sam. Somehow. She is a little bit nutty. One day, she Googles herself. The first site that comes up on Google is that dead site. A serious writer does not want to thwart a reader by 404ing them. After all, she has a presence on the web. She takes pride in her work. A very nice woman from DMOZ e-mails her. "I notice that your links are not working. I am an editor and if you tell me you are not active, I will remove your listing." The writer explains the problem. The DMOZ lady writes back. "It's worse than I thought. Your first site, the one that ranks number one on Google under your name, is XXX (and a few more XXXs) Did you know?" Hardly. The DMOZ lady checks around and finds out that the domain name has been bought by Sin Empire. They don't care how people find them. And it seems there is no way to clear my good name. Or perhaps my name is no good anymore. Porno. It's everywhere. The purveyors first to realize the way money could be made on the Internet. Porno. That's where my name will lead you if you aren't careful. I dare say I feel quite Technocursed at the moment. [Ed. note: If anyone out there knows how to "re-order" the way one's name shows up in various web searches or knows how to disconnect one's own name from a web site that is no longer relevant, please send an e-mail and I will add any useful tips that come in.] AUTHOR BIO: Beverly Lucey writes from Georgia, and another elevated state as yet to be determined. Her Web sites are: Language Wrangler Poodle Press Woman of a Certain Age Page Ethical Oasis

Surf through this site and have a laugh, before your computer crashes.

ARTICLES

Sin Empire Snags Ignorant Writer by Beverly Carol Lucey When a writer's web identity somehow gets tangled up in porn, is there any hope of a return to innocence? Beverly C. Lucey wants--and needs--to know.

A Letter to Bill Gates by Don Kelley For a guy who does do Windows, B.G. still needs to be on top of de-glitching a system that made him the billionaire we've all come to know and love.  Read this tell-all letter to the Chairman.

What follows is a sordid tale. Innocent on the web...just a writer, with no skill, knowledge, or awareness of how things actually appear on sites...learns to upload her material to a now moribund venture called Themestream. Other Themestream writers know a lot about the technical side of web design. Why, they've had their very own web sites for years. They write informative articles on how to do more than type and send. One contributor takes pity on a clot of women who write interesting stories, and offers to 'upload' and create a web page on her very own domain for each of them. It is a kind gesture. The innocent one says, "Oh, wow. Sure. Then I can enter search engines and perhaps more people will read my work. That would be nifty. Cool. You bet. What do I need to do?" "Nothing. I can do it from here." Fast forward a year. Themestream RIP. The links lead no where, but the writer's name is attached and she is in the search engines. E-mails to the web master, letters to the woman who lived in Canada go ignored. "Please, please erase the site you made for me?" The writer (OK. It's me. You won't be fooled, will you?) is snarking up the learning curve like crazy and now knows how to create web sites of her own. She goes a little nuts with glee and creates an education site, a humor site for women over 40, a humor site for dog lovers, a site about ethics. Then, she of the addictive personality, creates two more--one on public health and another dedicated to Sam. It is the AllSamSite. Everything on it relates to Sam. Somehow. She is a little bit nutty. One day, she Googles herself. The first site that comes up on Google is that dead site. A serious writer does not want to thwart a reader by 404ing them. After all, she has a presence on the web. She takes pride in her work. A very nice woman from DMOZ e-mails her. "I notice that your links are not working. I am an editor and if you tell me you are not active, I will remove your listing." The writer explains the problem. The DMOZ lady writes back. "It's worse than I thought. Your first site, the one that ranks number one on Google under your name, is XXX (and a few more XXXs) Did you know?" Hardly. The DMOZ lady checks around and finds out that the domain name has been bought by Sin Empire. They don't care how people find them. And it seems there is no way to clear my good name. Or perhaps my name is no good anymore. Porno. It's everywhere. The purveyors first to realize the way money could be made on the Internet. Porno. That's where my name will lead you if you aren't careful. I dare say I feel quite Technocursed at the moment. [Ed. note: If anyone out there knows how to "re-order" the way one's name shows up in various web searches or knows how to disconnect one's own name from a web site that is no longer relevant, please send an e-mail and I will add any useful tips that come in.] AUTHOR BIO: Beverly Lucey writes from Georgia, and another elevated state as yet to be determined. Her Web sites are: Language Wrangler Poodle Press Woman of a Certain Age Page Ethical Oasis

Dear Bill, I like your Windows. I really do. I've been using them in one version or another since 1993 and they're a big improvement over what used to be on my computer: an almost bare, black screen with a flashing cursor. Man, those were dark times. Oh sure, you could customize your desktop in those days. If you looked long and hard enough, you could even find a way to change the cursor from a flashing line to a flashing rectangle. Or even turn the flashing off. Whoopee! But look what we have now. Windows. Now you get lots of pretty icons and your choice of desktop themes. What a selection: Puffy White Clouds, Mountain Lions, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Babes or anything else that kindles your fire. Life, for the computer geek in us all, is good. If you would, however, make a few teensy changes to your system, I'd appreciate it. For instance: Remember a few years back? You were doing an interview and said that someday, we'd all be able to turn on our computers and go right to work. No warm up period. Well, someday is here, isn't it? In the time it takes to load Windows now, I could fix and eat a sandwich, take a leisurely stroll, leaf through a magazine, then return to hear my PC still going "RrrrrRrrrrRrrrr." (That's computerese for "go make another sandwich.") Sometimes you come out with new versions of things, like Explorer and Outlook Express. That's good. But can you please make sure that the new version works as fast as the old one? Case in point; try to print an e-mail from Outlook Express 6. First click Print, then wait. After a small eternity, the Print window pops up like a late party guest. "Hey, I'm sorry; traffic was murder." While I'm at it, why does it seem that new versions of anything are bigger, fatter and slower than the ones that preceded it? (Download Juno 5.0 today! More features! Better graphics! And a hell of a lot slower than Juno 4.0!) Oh, and about the Blue Screen of Death. I have to say this right now. It's not my fault. It's never my fault. So stop scolding me already! Yes, my machine freezes at least three times a day, making the mouse pointer disappear. The only remedy is to hit the reset button, which I do. And then I brace myself for Mr. Blue, yelling that I should have closed everything out first. Tell you what, eliminate the freezes and you can scold all you want. You have a feature in Explorer called Windows Update. What a nice idea. It's a link that takes me to the Microsoft website for updates. But then something happens that I'm not crazy about. Microsoft starts probing my hard drive to see what MS software I already have. You say you're not sending any information back to MS, and I believe you. But I think you ought to ask before you probe. (Aliens, take note.) Office workers like me love to play Freecell. But something about installing Explorer 6.0 makes it work badly, or not at all. We're at sea without it. Instead, we're reduced to talking to each other or taking healthy walks on our lunch hour. We want our Freecell back. Fix it, will ya? Once, I installed a piece of Windows '98 that I didn't need. Then I couldn't get rid of it. Couldn't delete it, or even drag the icon to the recycle bin. So here's what I did. I changed the icon and renamed the program "Gizmo," in honor of the fuzzy, adorable character from the movie Gremlins. Every day, I have Gizmo on my desktop to remind me of the useless program that Windows won't let me delete. Heigh ho, heigh ho.... Finally, and I would be forever in your debt if you would do this, please make the windows big. Sometimes when I open Explorer I get a small window. Other times I get a big one. I want the big window every time. The really irritating part is that there are lots of settings for how I want Explorer to work. I can check off murky instructions like "Always send URLs as UTF-8" or "Use PCT 1.0," even if I don't have a clue what they mean. But where is the setting called "Make Explorer Big Every Time I Open It"? Let me emphasize: I don't want puny, square, drink-coaster-sized windows. I want humongous, Texas-sized windows that fill my entire screen. I've asked the experts (well, the techie in my office) and there is no universal setting for this. Please let us Super Size our windows, once and for all! Well, that about wraps up my letter. Please think about what I've said and take action where appropriate. I may only be one of a gazillion Windows users, but think of me as Don Q. Public, the average guy who knows enough about computers to be mildly dangerous. Yes, that should do the trick. Regards, Me AUTHOR BIO: Don Kelley has been happily married for eight years and has two wonderful children, a boy and a girl. No pets at the moment, but the kids would love a dog. When not writing, he works for state government as a labor market analyst. He would like to write a nonfiction book someday. In the meantime, he's had one book review published in a newspaper, about which Don brags: Hey, it's a start! Some of his work can be found at: Thought Cafe.

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