Of This and Other Worlds

So in the last few days my DSL has just started fritzing out intermittently. No rhyme or reason, it's gone for a few minutes and then I click and it's back up again -- about fifty times a day. Rebooting the modem and router doesn't seem to make any difference. XP doesn't notify me when the connection is down, or admit that there's anything wrong with the network, but while it's on the blink, none of my internet-capable programs work (so it's not just a browser issue).

Does anybody have an idea what might be wrong here or where to start troubleshooting?

As you can see (unless you're reading this off the LJ syndicated feed), I've just spent quite a bit of time updating the template for this blog to match my nice new home pages. In Firefox, everything looks spiffy, colors all matching and images behaving as they should; and if only I had resisted the temptation to look at it in Internet Explorer 6 "just in case" I should have been blissfully ignorant that anyone else was seeing it differently.

However, for some reason IE6 (I don't know about IE7, so if anybody's running that maybe you can let me know how it looks to you?) has no clue how to handle transparent PNGs, so on the index page of my home site the section headers show up in sepia-toned boxes. It also, apparently, doesn't handle colour matching very well, so the header image doesn't blend into the background but appears as a darker shade. And it seems to interpret CSS a little differently too, since the navigation box on the right side of this blog is wider and longer than it ought to be.

Does anybody know how to work around/fix these problems so that the page looks decent in IE and not just Firefox? Me, I am ze stumped.

ETA: Fixed the PNG transparency problem by adding this nice little bit of code to the relevant pages. Still got the other problems, though -- and now I see that IE is turning up its nose at my margin specifications on my Biography page. Feh.

ETA2: Changed the PNG to a GIF using web-safe colours, changed the template colours to web-safe as well, and cleaned up the CSS using a validator. And now it looks good in IE too. Who da woman? I da woman. I always suspected.

Sad news on my (lack of) online status in rjanderson_blog (direct link here).

So I popped off all the keys and cleaned my keyboard thoroughly with rubbing alcohol, and then I gave it a few hours to dry. Tonight I decided to test it out by typing "the quick brown fox".

The result looked like this:

wx

No, I'm not kidding. It's really that bad. *weeps*

Right now I am typing on a cruddy old keyboard borrowed from my parents, but it also happens to be the only keyboard they have for their computer so I may have to return it at any moment. Meanwhile my beautiful Microsoft Natural Keyboard lies face-down over the register, in a last vain hope that all it needs is just a little... more... drying. I don't hold out much hope, though.

Anyway, all of that is to say, if I'm not around quite as much as usual the next couple of days, you'll know why.

Had a hard time getting to sleep tonight. Finally drifted off, only to be awakened by a shattering clap of thunder and the sudden, dread conviction that all fifteen newly edited chapters of my novel had been zapped out of existence. Worst. Feeling. Ever. Waited until the storm had mostly passed, and then leaped out of bed to check.

It's still there.

It's still okay.

*takes deep, calming breath*

I have now backed up the chapters to my secondary drive and saved them to diskette as well. Tomorrow I'll make a third backup copy just in case.

I can't believe I haven't been doing this all along. Did I learn nothing from the tragedy that befell Ben Aaronovitch? Or lizbee, for that matter.

So very grateful the book is still there. Now maybe I can sleep.

As of today, I can receive e-mail but not send it, so until my ISP figures out its SMTP problems (or I do, whichever comes first) I'll have to post anything important here. avarill, I got your e-mails -- all of them -- and have a nice reply composed, only I can't get the darn thing to send! Soon, though. :)

I already posted this on the blog, but I am desperate enough to put it up here as well in the hopes that somebody can tell me how to fix the problem...

My beloved Photoshop 5.0 LE isn't behaving any more. I can't use either the Type or Type Mask tools -- the fonts are all there and the options box for setting the type comes up just fine, but as soon as I go to apply the text to the image, all I get is a rectangular marquee (with Type Mask) or a solid box in the foreground colour (with Type). This happens regardless of what font or font size I choose. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software, but it didn't help. Nor could I turn up anything on a Google search to help me with this problem.

Does anybody out there have the foggiest notion of what I'm talking about or how to fix it?

I'm without e-mail or AIM access for the next couple of days, thanks to some bad sectors on my main hard drive and the necessity of having it checked out and reformatted (or possibly, if it's that bad, sent back to the manufacturer). I'll still be checking blog and LJ, though, so if you have anything extra-special to say (and it isn't dreadfully private), feel free to drop me a line in the Comments section of this post.

Just so you all know I haven't dropped off the face of the earth or anything.