Not that the subject line makes any real sense, but I thought it was funny.

So I get the new video card in and my computer is finally stable, and the ISP goes out…

I had to give up video capture capability – couldn't justify a $300 video card as a replacement on a computer that's nearing 4 years old, and the separate capture card (that was cheaper) turned out to need internal connection to the audio, rather than external, like my former card had. The old one had an audio out jack that plugged into the line-in port, which made things easier. Some time back I had tried to install a new Audigy Platinum 2 (really nice audio card) but I could never get it to work properly. I ended up leaving it in and just disabling it. A waste, I know, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. The VAIO has onboard sound, but they put it behind the power supply! There is no way I can reach back there to plug in that new capture card audio connection, so I had to send it back. Bummer.

Anyway, we've been having trouble with our cable internet connection for a couple of months now, and it was noticeably worse on weekends than during the week. Sometimes the connection was so slow, we'd have been better off using dialup. We were *this* close to calling another provider, but on Sunday it went out completely. Per the usual, I started with cycling the power on the modem and router. The old modem had gotten to the point we had to do this monthly, and they ended up replacing it for us. Didn't work this time, so I checked the cable TV – we have had instances of utility vehicles knocking the lines down before. Nope – TV was coming in fine, so I called around noonish and told the lady everything, including the fact that we'd had a guy out to look at the system about a month prior and he'd verified that the problem was not in our house. He had said he was going to call maintenance to look at the box on the pole across the street, but I never heard anything more about that. She had me cycle the power again (fine, okay, still won't work) and scheduled someone to come out the next day. The really weird part? Around 11:30 pm, the connection was back. I figured, hey, I'll call in the morning and tell them it's back. Monday morning 7 am, Mom noticed the connection getting sluggish. By the time I tried it myself a few hours later, it was down completely again. We were starting to suspect hacking, because the slowdowns always coincided with those timeframes. Around noonish, the tech came by and checked the same stuff the first guy had – still not the internal connections at fault. (duh;) He blamed the unusual on/off timeframe on weather, but that doesn't really make sense to us – there's not a lot of difference in weather at 7 am and 11:30 pm here. He told me he called maintenance, but he made a point of telling me they should be by within an hour, and if they weren't to call again. The maintenence guy was about an hour before he came, and it was all afternoon before he came to my door, but by then he'd already had it working and I was happy with it;) So now I just have to catch up on everything!

As long as I'm talking computers, does anyone know why my WordXP installation is suddenly damaging my Norton Systemworks? Both were installed for a good long while before it started having problems. Now, every time I open Word, it tells me it's getting ready to install, then informs me that Norton AntiVirus 2005 doesn't support repair and to uninstall and reinstall it. Twice, it tells me this, every time. Also tells me on reboot (again, twice). I already tried uninstall and reinstall of Norton, which worked fine, up until I opened something in Word (and finally figured out what had caused NSW to suddenly go wonky). I haven't tried uninstall/reinstall of OfficeXP yet, because it is *such* a nuisance (*&%$#$#%&* MS “Activation” nonsense) but if that's what I have to do…

Also wondering if anyone knows a solution to my Adobe Premiere 6.5 problem (hopefully without forcing an upgrade). I have never been able to get it to output anything recorded off of TV (I'll get sound but no picture) and it won't even open anything in DivX or XVid. I can output stuff I recorded with my Canon XL1s without too much trouble, but if I didn't capture it with Adobe, it doesn't work. I'd like to be able to edit out commercials when they haven't been pre-edited, and it might be nice to play with fanvidding. (as if I needed something else to do…) I DLed the codecs so I could play DivX and XVid in MediaPlayer, but I'd like to be able to open them in Premiere. Any ideas?