Or why last night was the start of one of those days.

( Bad sound, bad smell )

( Preserved comment(s) )

Current Mood: stressed

Windows Explorer in XP, or whatever XP calls the file manager, is trying to be helpful. That means it is really being annoying. On the desktop is a shortcut for "Documents" that opens the file manager to a documents directory. This directory is, however, not the one I really want. I want C:\home\neubauer instead.

I figured I'd just change the shortcut and give it the properties I want. It almost worked. It will give me direct access to C:\home\neubauer\ BUT that's now seemingly a ghost of the real thing. I'm not really there in the directory tree where I can, if I want to, easily jump to another directory, like C:\usr\bin or some other that I want to get to fast from time to time.

Instead of doing what I want, the system is trying to guess what I need and getting it wrong. It wants to be helpful in the worst way. And it is that: helpful in the worst way. I don't want this incompetent help. I want it to get out of my way. The Win95 box's Windows Explorer comes up at C: and shows the whole directory tree. That is acceptable. At least I can navigate directly from there without having to go through the extra step of clicking a "Folders" button. Even Windows 2000 got it right. But XP just had to go improve things the Microsoft way. The result: it sucks.

I've put up with this silly XP behavior for a few weeks now and my patience is running out. Anyone know how, or even if, the XP file manager can be whacked into doing the right thing? I haven't looked into replacement file managers just yet, but it may come to that.

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SOLUTION (30 March):

It took a Google search for "Windows Explorer Annoyances" that lead to a page about Windows Explorer harf on Windows Me but, finally, I have what *I* want. The trick? Command-line switches that XP's help seems not to mention.

How about them apples? Windows XP is what you get when you infect the stability of Windows 2000 with the poor user interface choices of Windows Me.

Target: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe /n,/e,C:\home\neubauer\

Now I have what I want rather than what some imbecile in Redmond thinks I need.

Current Mood: annoyed

I've heard the odd high-voltage *snap* from my monitor at home for a while and it was getting more frequent. Last weekend or such I had had enough and pulled the case off, carefully made sure the high voltage was discharged, and cleaned it out. I had figured that it was just dust that built up providing a low(er) resistance path and cleaning it out would take care of things. No such luck.

Last night it got much worse. Instead of the odd occasional *snap* it became rather regular, and frequent. Shutting the monitor down to let it cool off didn't help. The image got huge, even after setting the controls to minimum. The brightness was dark. The power-on degauss seems to be gone. I shut down the system nearly blind, just to have it be a controlled shutdown. Curiously the on-screen settings were still nice and bright, showing that the tube isn't dead, and the monitor isn't completely gone... yet.

So tonight jmaynard and I will be going to Mankato to check out monitors. I don't know what I'll get. It could be another CRT, it might be an LCD if I see one that looks good and is reasonably priced.

Current Mood: annoyed