Thing 47 -- Evaluation

Most interesting use: screencasting, because I think it could really work for people . . . especially if it was involved with a class assignment.

Least useful: Twitter. I don't want to subscribe to people's marketing, I get enough of that.

Most useful: Scrapblog, TripAdvisor

The most useful thing of all would be to teach people how to put up actual webpages. That knowledge is very helpful in explaining to people why the page they're tying to bring up isn't working, or why they keep accidentally printing out advertisements on frames-built pages.

Thing 46 -- WebJunction

I can see where the courses could be a great thing -- especially in places without easy access to library-paid training courses. They could be helpful, too, for people who can't quite keep up with the pace of county training! I notice that their beginning Word class, considered to be 5.5 hours self-paced, seems to cover less than the county's three hour Word Level 1.

Thing 44 -- The Economy

I got more online bank/investment accounts than I ever imagined while settling my mom's estate -- I needed access to hers. Plus I use my own.

I suspect that Michael Lewis' Vanity Fair article The End had more specific things to say about the crash than that four minute video, but I was unable to watch the video on my computer, so I can't compare them.

The Good Sheet's graphic timeline was interesting.

I already knew about Craigslist (and its many scandals! Murder! And other stuff!), but have never used it, and probably won't. :)

FrugalDad had some okay suggestions, but nothing earth-shattering. I'm from good German upper midwestern stock and both my parents grew up in the Depression; I'm already doing most of that stuff.

"Reuse bath towels. Sounds gross at first, but think about it – you are clean when you get out of the shower. Hang up towels after each use to thoroughly dry, and only add them to the dirty clothes pile after every three or four uses."

Until I was well into adulthood, I never knew there were people who DID wash towels every day.

Thing 42: Online TV/Movies

The annoying thing about websites that put up tv shows is that they seldom include the first episodes of a series. I wouldn't be buying dvds of a show if I haven't even seen the first episode. I do notice that Hulu put up the pilot of "Chuck," but Castle only has recent episodes, Eastwick has only clips (although ABC has episodes on its own website). Star Trek TOS has all of Seasons 2 & 3, using a link to CBS. I'm mystified; why not S1?

Penguins vs. Panthers: wonder what a "condensed game" to the tune of 20 minutes is? OTOH, it could be the entirety of the action these days!

If there's something I've missed on tv, I usually go to the network website. Mostly I don't, because the couch is more comfy than my computer desk chair. Maybe I'll do this when I learn how to hook up the laptop to watch Hulu programs on tv -- there's a reason I bought a 32" television, after all. And that's going to happen some time after I learn how to program the dvr to record the same show every week . . .

3. Create a login and set up a queue of items for viewing at a later date.

Yeah, right. I sure will if I ever feel the need for MORE tv.

3. What do you think the impact of free Internet video entertainment will be on broadcast or cable TV?

Almost none, unless netbooks become ubiquitous (likely) and wifi conections get good enough to watch streaming video in such huge files (not holding my breath). People want to see their favorite shows in order, as soon as possible. I do know people who dl their faves from itunes for money, and loads of people who dl tv from the internets.

Thing 41: Mashup Your Life

Um, no. Just no.

Since I refuse to use Twitter, Facebook, or read my Google Reader, this definitely does not work for me. I'm all for lessening my digital footprint, not making it bigger. There's only time for two hobbies, and while I use social media websites in the commission of both, Using Social Media is not one of those hobbies.

Although . . . I did get a good laugh out of Profilactic. Name choice: good or bad?

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

I was listening to Ken Auletta, author of Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It on NPR a couple weeks ago and he provided an extremely succinct definition of cloud computing. Any time I'm accessing the processing power of other people's servers, that's cloud computing. So whether I'm blogging, using email (cause all the action's taking place on somebody else's servers, even if I'm paying my own ISP instead of using Yahoo or Google), storing photos on Flickr or SmugMug, taking part in any internet-based game or using any software not stored on my CPU, that's cloud computing.

[As an aside, I was really intrigued to learn how Google ranks their hits.]

I had to laugh at the idea that cloud computing improves my productivity. Um, no, but it certainly is a fabulous social enhancement/time sink.

Also, calling it "cloud computing" obscures how basic the idea is. It's like renting space/production facilities in somebody else's warehouse. The Tame The Web blogger points out questions like, "How do you trust Google to keep your information secure?" or "What if you can’t get on the Web?" Those answers, I suspect, are much the same as when you're renting somebody else's warehouse. 1. Take away the keys, i.e. encrypt it 2. Tough bananas. If you can't get on the Web, you're probably not in a situation where you can access your own computer, either. If you can access your own computer, why isn't the stuff ON it? Don't you believe in backup?

My question is, what about when the warehouse burns down? The info isn't in a cloud, it's on somebody's machine. I guess that like the answer to 2, you can't do cloud computing without backing up -- put your materials in several places.

Thing 40: Mashup The Web

I live in a very safe area, but I also think our local authorities don't report to crimereports.com.

I liked the restaurant-finder, Lunchbox.

The video on how web mashups are developed was genuinely interesting -- although I must admit the idea of net-based ecosystems vs operating system based ecosystems made my head explode. :) I take it that adding photos to Google Earth is some kind of a mashup, or doesn't it count as a mashup if the application was created by Google for one of its own products in the first place?

Thing 38: Screencasting

"How Scholarly Search Engines Differ"

I'd have to watch this presentation several times to get all the information, as it went so fast -- except I don't want to. Watching the cursor move when it wasn't under my own control -- and therefore ignored, as such, except for the endpoint -- nauseated me. I knew I had problems with motion sickness, but this is ridiculous.

Most of the MoreThings links were broken or the articles/videos/screencasts used formats I can't access on my work computer. Yes, I have at various times asked IT to update my computer. Newer versions of Java, Flash, and who knows what else don't work for me. "A Quick Guide to Screencasting for Libraries" helped. The Smashing Magazine display in my IE6 (unless it's supposed to look like that) was amusing and annoying with its one-word-per-line on the left side of the screen.

I tried to watch examples on ScreenToaster, but maybe you have to be logged in to see any of them?

I can see how screencasting could be very useful if incorporated into the library's catalog, especially with the new and exciting AquaBrowser.

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

. . . because it sounds better than digital scrapbooking?

I thought that's what personal, not-selling-anything websites were all about. Now it's a lot easier, at least.

This could be great for library publicity people. And I have a very good idea of just how time consuming it is. :)

Thing 37: Photo Tales

I already posted a slideshow and made a thing with captions. Wasn't the cat thing in the last one roflbot? For photo editing, I've finally conquered layer masking in PSElements, and am teaching the Camera 101 people PhotoShop Express.

I pay SmugMug for photo hosting since they're the only ones who promise to print my photos to AdobeRGB spec without any modifications. Admittedly, making sure it happened was a challenge as they assume only professional photographers want that, and they hid the option in the photo sales pricing.

So far, I haven't needed any photos from outside sources. :)

Thing 42: Music 2.0

Music on the internets! Wow, that one's old news. My husband RAN out to buy an HD radio just for The Morning Show, so we don't use the internet for it.

If I listened to lots of music, I'd probably really like the Music Genome Project and the Hype Machine.

Nine sites for lyrics, and all of them came up when I clicked except lyrics.com! I am surprised. However, I'm more entertained by The Archive Of Misheard Lyrics.

"THE MISHEARD: Might as well face it, you're a d**k with a glove

Real Lyric: Might as well face it, you're addicted to love.

Artist Robert Palmer
Song Addicted To Love

The story:
I thought that it was a song about Michael Jackson and I asked a friend if he had heard this song. He had me recite the lyrics. He laughed at me for days."

Some of the misheard lyrics make more sense than the originals!

As for various audio players, a friend gave me a whole stack of MP3 audiobooks burned to cd, so my next project is to convert them to regular cd files -- my car doesn't have a jack for an MP3 player, and the radio tuner units
are pretty bad.

Actually the NetLibrary audiobooks require incredible ingenuity to explain and help people with, much more than any internet radio or music source. Internet radio broadcasts will become hugely popular whenever the internet is as reliable and available as radio waves.

Thing 36: Generators Of Stuff

So that was where the templates for the READ posters came from! Very cool; too bad the link doesn't work any more.

At first I couldn't figure out why anybody would want to convert a file to PDF, but then I realized that maybe you don't have to use .html and its ilk -- you can just throw up whatever you have and that's it. Now there's a concept that bears remembering, if one ever needs to create webpages. There must be some drawback, or all webpages would be .pdf . . .

Password generator, huh. If I wanted random letter/number passwords, I could make them up myself. Otoh, this mainly exists to sell password creation/protection/management software.




CITATION GENERATORS! THAT IS FREAKING GENIUS. Best way ever to get students to cite their darned sources.


The braille generator is interesting, but it won't be useful until you can get it to raise the dots in the printer . . .


I make my own lolcats, but I suppose the generator is much easier if you don't have a useful photo editor.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

Organize My Personal Library? Since I don't collect books, I have absolute zero interest in cataloging the few in my house. Talk about bringing work home with me.

I adore BookCrossing! If I had some books, I'd leave them in the wilds of North St. Paul.

I will never read a book on my phone. Even Kindle is only a marginal possibility. I read a camping article that said Kindles were great for camping! Woo hoo, bring along yet another thing that needs to be recharged while driving, along with the phones, the half dozen camera batteries, and the walkie-talkies instead of a plain old paper book. That seemed kind of silly.

Hmmm. Booklamp. Sounds good, but you get the opinion of whoever it is, let's call her Wossname, that thinks Stephen King writes like Anna Maxtead -- pacing, tense, persepctive, et al. You might as well look up lists of "writes like Dan Brown."

Overbooked, otoh, looks genuinely useful! Yay! Figures it's done by a librarian. Well . . . except that the links at the top don't work. That's not v. handy.

Reading Group Choices, always a good source.

I was surprised at the cost of booksfree.com -- $22.49 a month for the lowest level of books on cd. But I suppose it's way cheaper than buying them. It's unlimited rentals, you just have to return #1 before you get #2. Which leaves one without one's crack for a couple days. Plus, if you don't like it, which is always a hazard . . .

One Minute Critic!!! I wouldn't have believed anyone could summarize, much less critique, anything by Jasper Fforde in one minute. Okay, it took her another 20 seconds. :) This is a terrific way to browse books!

Thing 34 Online Answer Sites

It's another case of information that's fast enough and good enough. I see some of the answers to those things and of course you get the usual collection, anything from right on to waaay off. I noticed that when I was searching for the load capacity of my factory car-top rack, I couldn't actually search Yahoo Answers' zillion pages of discussion on RAV4s, although Google did bring up a couple things. (Yes, it was in my owner's manual, just v. well hidden.)

I do get the impression that people throw questions out there just hoping that somebody will pay attention, rather than that they're desperate for an answer to that question. How like libraries that is!

Of course they're our competition. Many people who come into the library are short enough on time and/or patience -- if we don't have an answer in a couple of minutes, they can't wait any longer.

I read some of the interviews about the future of librarians a while back, and unfortunately nothing stuck with me except a woman -- who of course is an academic librarian -- talking about how libraries are still back in the dark ages, teaching people how to get email accounts, when we should quit that crap because everybody already knows that. Talk about your ivory tower.

I was not impressed with Mr. King. He seriously expects us to take a phone call as a patron is walking up to the desk, or work on an email question when there is a patron standing in front of us? That's about the worst customer service imaginable. Alison Hunt's response about paying in travel time makes a lot more sense. Mr. King apparently does not work at a busy public reference desk for the majority of his librarian hours. His very job title tells all -- Digital Branch & Services Manager.

Digital Camera 101

The Digital 101 class went quite well. Actually doing the maybe ten things I outlined on the handouts took every bit of the time I thought it would, and that was with only three people, each of whom had a Canon camera. It took all four of us 20 minutes to figure out how to access the Modes feature on one of the cameras. Of course, with so few people I wasn't worried about hurrying them along, but with more than three participants, I suspect I'd have to push it a little.

There certainly wouldn't be enough time in one 1.5 hour class to have people start loading pictures from the camera onto the computer, as I'd hoped. And getting people onto Snapfish, well, that will have to go into a second session.

Thing 33

I'm a posting member of TripAdvisor and wouldn't go on a serious trip without consulting it for places to stay. People's reviews provide really useful info that you can't find in a guidebook or on a hotel website, like, "They're demolishing the east wing with jackhammers all night, the work is expected to last six weeks, and they wouldn't give us our money back."

Jim used to be a member of Virtual Tourist and had fun putting his pictures up, but he got bored with it a couple years ago.

We googled for info for our Yellowstone vacation a couple years ago and found something very important in a random blog -- one couple spent six days there and ended up eating convenience store sandwiches for every meal. I expected actual grocery stores in a park that big and that popular, a la Yosemite. No way. The silly storelets in the gift shops were worthless, and the restaurants at the big attractions, such as Old Faithful and the huge camping area of Grant Village, have limited hours. We had to drive two hours to West Yellowstone for a grocery store.

The other most useful thing was Google Earth, which has way-cool virtual topography maps with people's photos of touristic opportunities. We could tell what the roads were really like, where they started to climb into the mountains, and what cool stuff we shouldn't miss.


I looked at igougo to see what that was like, and I think it kind of broke my brain to see Haleakala National Park listed as a tourist attraction. The posted photos of Maui made me feel like a Serious Photographer.

Thing 32

I'm skipping the Google Maps thing for now because I can't listen to the v-tutorial upstairs and I can't watch it downstairs on my computer, no Flash 9 on that baby, and apparently I can't figure it out by guess and by gosh.

So it'll have to wait until I think about it downstairs and borrow somebody else's computer.

ETA: I did watch the tutorial for making my own Google tour map, and it looked pretty easy, but then I couldn't think of anything to map.

Thing 31

The link to Mashable's article 9 ways Twitter can help you in the real world is broken. Ironies!

I browsed the list of 100 authors on Twitter. I could see following some of those people. :) There's a news flash for me -- Mashable actually has interesting articles. "How to use Twitter for social bookmarking" wasn't one of them. Bookmarklet posts URLs to Twitter and concurrently saves them to browser favorites. How to save bookmarks and annoy people at the same time!

I was talking to The Love Bunny the other day about how most of the Hibbing library tweets had nothing to do with the library, and said that the only thing people really want to know is when new books come in. (Okay, what they really want is book reviews of new books, but we're short on staff.) I notice that the Tame The Web guy has automated tweets set up for when new books get checked out. I wonder if new book accession could become automated tweets. That would be a lot of tweets . . . but then again, he's allowing people to tweet catalog records.

Of course, that will only bore their followers, not the library's.

Thing 30

RSS & social bookmarking are two of the best things to happen on the Web.

Wow. There's a statement.

RSS feed filters, lol! Because even chosen feeds deliver Too Much Stuff. It's about time they developed feed forwards to email. Since my chosen email isn't the same brand as my RSS feed reader, I never see the feeds. I suppose a Personalized Home Page would solve that problem, but I don't consider it a problem. :)

RSSCalendar.com: handy for people who don't have a pda.

And, of course: don't just HAVE feeds, publish them for everyone to be edified.

RSS Awareness Day: whose genius legislation was that?

"Search Delicious from your browser address bar" makes no sense to me. It's easier just to do the same things on the Delicious page. Although -- something actually useful! I don't have an account, but I could see subscribing to tags. I do find it handy when people have their Delicious link on their blogs.

1. Slacker Manager needs a Slacker Editor, or possibly a copy of Turabian. Stop egregious misuse of apostrophes. It's its!

2. I looked through the Absolutely Delicious Tools Collection, and thought the Firefox extension would be useful if I ever decide I need a Delicious account, and that Bookmarks Insuggest would be great if I wanted to quit my job so I could spend all my time on the internet.

3. And -- oooh, shiny! Fresh Del.icio.us - A client-side application to keep clean (check broken urls) of your del.icio.us account bookmarks. Broken links, the bane of the casual Delicious user.

Thing 29

I signed up for Google Alerts. I haven't got any yet.

I was surprised to see GMail as part of a Thing. It's, like, ancient in internet years. I have considered having my Yahoo email forwarded to GMail just to use GChat, but I've never gotten around to it.

I liked the Google Sites. I wonder what the fine print is on content ownership. I thought it looked really easy. I have a set of line-by-line instructions for using Dreamweaver to post content on my webpage (don't update often enough to have it memorized) that's three handwritten pages long. There's a strange combination of Intarwebs and Luddite.

I can't live without the Google toolbar. The fact that it's not on my work computer downstairs, and I can't put it on, is really irritating.

Thing 28

I ws completely baffled by the whole concept of Customized Home Pages until I realized it was just another way to compile RSS feeds and all the various other minutiae of online babble.

I was disappointed that Flickr dropped their photo editing segment and farmed it out to picnik, so I wouldn't use them even if I didn't already pay another service to archive and print my photos. I despise Facebook and its one-liners, but I can see where it would be handy if you don't already have an online community that you belong to based on interests alone. (If I wanted to talk to my high school/college classmates, they'd still be my friends. Some of them are.) I don't read my RSS feeds.

The upshot is, I don't have much to compile.

I tried to use My Yahoo before, but I hate the way it's laid out.

I can see where iGoogle or Netvibes could be genuinely useful for the "2.0 textbook" information collection. If there were something or a bunch of things I genuinely wanted the newest information on every day or every week, it would be a great collected source. Valenza's pagecast is pretty awesome. The tabbed pages-layout is extremely cool.

Okay, enough about Twitter.

I got an account. I'm following the Hibbing Library and Jeffrey Donovan, who is a cute spy hero in a show with the always-entertaining Bruce Campbell. Most likely I will never look at it again, like my RSS feeds. Most of the people I know who use Twitter use it to follow celebrities. I read an article in the newspaper where some college prof is requiring students to use for class, and I was like, Whut? But Angie and I deduced it's because kids are busy texting; they don't need Twitter for anything.

I can see where it's different if I want to promote myself, my job, something I try to interest people in so they give me money. Fine. Although I'm not sure the info Tweeted by the Hibbing Library is going to raise huge amounts of interest. OTOH, if I'm looking at Twitter for my own interest rather than my own promotion . . . I get enough of being marketed at in every possible way. I don't need to JOIN SOMETHING ONLINE just so I can be marketed at some more.

Also? I hate it when people post compilations of their daily Tweets to their journals. If I wante to see what you're Twittering, I'd follow you on Twitter. :P

Twitter

I do not like that Twitter wants to mine my email to find my 'friends' using, hello, the password to my email, Sam I Am.

In fact, it kind of enrages me.

Thing 27 -- Twitter

So I clicked on something in the explanation of Twitter that, from Robin Good's Twitter page, landed me into discussions of how to protect one's online identity. They were of something that I never considered -- not about preserving my privacy and personal information, but keeping people from hijacking my brand. Very important for me personally, I feel. One of them mentioned the Twitter experience that was #Amazonfail. That made me feel all kewl since I know the woman who coined the term, though I don't actually have a Twitter account.

One can keep track of who does what by searching Twitter for terms, if one wants.

So anyway, there's one thing Twitter is good for -- exploding the internets.

During that, from the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books women, I learned the term Googlebomb -- where you get everybody to put a link in their blogs to a page that's been created specifically to promote a particular idea. For instance, they urged everyone to link to their page describing Amazonfail.

Once a certain number of people had linked, that page came up first on a google search of Amazonfail. It has a certain something that I'll probably never have a use for.

Thing 26

I did that last round, made some comments, uploaded photos, added the badge. I checked out the groups and the ones that were there still, at this point, don't have any either obviously useful or entertaining traffic. I'll admit I don't have any deep thoughts about it, and I haven't used it since then except to look at right now, and add a comment to someone's thread. It's hard to imagine it being valuable at work, honestly.

25.3

I already put up a couple slideshows. I have an account at Smugmug for my photos that took me an aggregate of about 15 hours, at various times, to find out how to do what I paid $149 FOR: have my photos printed by a lab using machines calibrated properly to Adobe RGB, with no changes or 'enhancements.'

The fact that it took me that long including help from The Love Bunny, and I only managed to resolve the question with email to the site owners, tells me they did a v. poor job with that bit.

I read the article on putting up polls, but didn't think putting one up just for Carol was worth the effort. Sorry, hon. :) I've read about a poll assigned by a teacher where the subject matter (have people choose their favorite color) was completely at odds with the data being sought (find the mode, median, and mean of the answers). People who responded pointed out that the mean was undoubtedly going to be some shade of brown, no matter what the answers were, and how do you find the mode of 4 pink, 6 blue and 25 yellow?

That did serve to highlight Darren Rowse's suggestion that the offered answers must be given careful thought.

Thing 25 Part deux

The videos on widgets are really interesting -- has more useful-application type things than I suspected. I really like the reading window that opens inside one's blog. Disqus sounds interesting. I did put up a sitemeter statistics gatherer so I can keep track of Carol, the person who reads my blog. :)

I wasn't interested in the photo manipulation because yeah, Photoshop Elements, but at the Science Museum class on digital cameras I learned two v. kewl things I never knew how to do! I knew you could put a head on somebody else's body by using the selection tools and layers, but I never knew you could clone a head in three seconds or less simply by selecting any target spot and waving the mouse around in a circle elsewhere until the entire object appears. Also, I never thought about writing on (or drawing on) a photo with the brush tool.

I can now put Santa hats on top of anyone's new and different head. :D

Also, I think that teaching the bare essentials of digital camera is possible for the library, but it may need two 1.5 hour sessions. Because even if you can use your camera, you still need to be able to do something with the pictures.

What Thing Is This?

24!

And also, 23 Things, thanks for fixing the visuals on your wiki.

I changed my template, my avatar, and added The Wall Street Journal.

The existence of third-party templates explains why the ones Blogger has are so boring. I figured there had to be creative and talented people out there who also use Blogger.

Even LiveJournal [which has been dying for years and much more quickly now the owners sold it to the Russian mob and the new owners fired all the software engineers] has a nice selection of attractive and creative user-designed templates.

I added Ramsey County Library System to my user info.

I haven't blogged much here since I finished, but I've been using my personal/hobby journal the usual amount. I love the internetz. Some of my best friends are women I met online. I've had a friend in Poland for nearly ten years, and I'll probably never meet her and her family. There are people I know in England, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Brazil, and all over the US and Canada, some of whom I've met and some I haven't.

I'm going to a convention in Boston at the end of the month because half my online buddies are going to be there, and I couldn't even get a ticket; they sold out 150 tickets in an hour. Jeez, it's like VividCon. I'm just staying in the hotel for the weekend. I'll be spending a couple days in Jersey City with Dana, and going to Marblehead for a few days with Janis, who wants me to see her home town.

So yeah, blogging's good with me.

More Things On Sticks

Yay! Got rid of the evol and offensive avatar! I never realized how obnoxious those kinds of stereotypically 20skinny&beautiful avatars are until I had to get one. Kudos to the 23 things people for linking to the South Park kids site.

OTOH, a big ol' raspberry to them for this:

"If others use your home computer, it is a good idea to discuss any changes you might make on that computer, too."

Who wrote this, and who was the intended audience? Do I look 12? Or is it just that he/she feels that adult library staff are incapable of interacting reasonably with their significant others? (If it's people's kids the writer is worried about, then that's a whole other story about the writer's mindset.)

Then there are these gems:

Buy a tabbed address book to record your usernames/passwords. Enter the tool name under the right letter, then add your personal info. This works well, but don’t lose it!

Keep your passwords in a Word document on a flashdrive—you can encrypt the drive, too. But don’t lose it either!

Somebody just told an entire audience of people whose job it is to organize information to write it down, file it alphabetically, and don't lose it.

Twice.

I'm not sure I need to add any commentary to this bit of fail.

Thing 25, or: I'll Take 'New Device Driver' for $65

Or; Wherein I Rock The Computer.

The dvd ripper/burner is working. To start with, I completely uninstalled its software incl registry, then reloaded it, which didn't do anything, so -- even though it was a shot in the dark, I'm learning a lot about how any given computer problem can be caused by anything, including an overabundance of cat hair in the case -- I decided to take the Blue Screen Of Death at its word and assume the IRQL driver was not less or equal because there was something WRONG with it.

[The next best option being to restore the system to some time back in, like, November. Which might have A: worked, B: not worked, C: wiped my computer completely. The Love Bunny says that's happened to him more than once at work, when restoring other people's computers. Both A and B options would have been available with Method 3: reimaging the whole damn thing. I mean, it all depended on whether there really WAS a driver problem, or it was something completely different.

Both of those things would be in lieu of taking the box to the Geek Squad, where they might or might not fix it AND it would cost a lot of money.

Reading up on "IRQL driver not less or equal" online offered up many fixes that supposedly worked -- everything from the aforementioned removal of cat hair to things so techno I couldn't possibly understand them. None of them actually did anything about the driver itself, as far as I could tell. Nobody suggested that.]

I bought driver update software and ran it. It said the Atapi-related driver was outdated [okay, DVD driver here] and strongly suggested one NOT MESS WITH IT. Several times it suggested this thing. Like, little windows popped up saying, "This is outdated. DO NOT FIX THIS or your computer will end up a flaming ball of wreckage. If it does, don't be looking at us, kthxbye."

I had TLB step in. Srsly, I have no idea what people do without the in-home sysadmin. The computer *itself* tried several times to prevent him from replacing this driver. In the end, he wasn't sure if he actually had because of the ubiquitous error messages. But whatever happened, the DVD ripper/burner now works just fine.

Go me!