I made a New Years’ resolution not to bother you guys so much with "technical questions.” But let me violate it just this one last time


It drives me to distraction that after my No. 1 Son, a highly-paid and immensely competent Info Tech, went to so much trouble to install a red button on my PC front panel for the purpose, Bill Gates has subsequently made some changes in his software to thwart us. It used to be that after a jolly day at the keyboard I could exit and shut down by a single push of that button. I could press it once and leave the room, whereupon it would shut down all active programs then turn off my PC


But in the meantime Bill has made some changes requiring me to first manually shut down (1) anything in Windows Outlook, (but only on Friday through Tuesday in months containing a C or a J) ; and (2) anything in Word containing more than 3.0473 megabyte; as well as (3) any program containing a page including a window requiring attention, such as a misspelled word containing an initial capital letter between D and K or the sequential letters J,M, and V


I suspect there are thousands of additional conditions under which Bill will refuse to let me shut down but I just haven’t yet encountered most. But I know his elves are working on an algorithm (last time I’ll use the word; promise) intended to make shutdown so tedious that we simply can’t do it. He wants us to just leave our PC’s on 24/7, because he has an agreement with power companies worldwide


Used to be I could write a macro to perform such complex tasks but I’m getting too old and have only about 15 years remaining on Earth. I would ask my PC-savvy Son but he has come to ignore me


Am I expecting too much in Bill’s convoluted world


Or is it that he hates us all


Sometimes it seems like I spend a half hour shutting down open programs before I can push the button and go about my daily chores. DOS booted in 15 seconds and shut down instantly. Why is Windows so much better

Last edited by dalehileman; 01/25/06 01:12 AM.
dalehileman