The Gnagy method

(“NAGG-eee.”)
Yesterday morning (Wednesday, June 2, 2010) yrs trly sat down in front of this here ‘pyooter and fired it up.
As is customary, I had already written a blog. All I had to do was key it in.
I fired up the apps I always use, my iWorks Pages word processor, good old AppleWorks 6.0, and my FireFox web-browser.
I only use AppleWorks because I have stuff stored in it, e.g. HTML tags and link-tags, etc. —Stuff I copy/paste into my Pages document.
I no longer use AppleWorks as a word processor.
There was stuff I needed to verify, so I fired up my Google Basic Search bookmark.
I don’t use the Google search-window in the FireFox toolbar.
Instead, I have my own toolbar tab titled “search.”
It has a Google sub-folder with all the Google searches: images, maps and satellite views (including “earth”), Basic Search, Blog Search, etc.
I don’t know as doing this is advantageous, but I can go directly to the Google search-window I need.
I cranked my search into the Google Basic Search window, and got “Naughty-naughty! Your ‘pyooter is bombarding us with automated searches, which violates our Terms of Service.”
“WHA........?”
I tried again.
“Naughty-naughty! Your ‘pyooter is bombarding us with automated searches; try this here malware finder.”
My wife came in.
I drive a MAC — she a Windows-7 PC.
Supposedly most malware is written for PCs, but MACs are gaining prominence.
I don’t have virus protection; felt I didn’t need it.
Our Internet router has a firewall.
“Supposedly OS-X has malware protection in it,” my wife said.
“I can’t deal with it now,” I said. “It’s gonna have to sit.”
I went back to keying in my blog.
Tried the Google search about 20 minutes later.
Hits this time; no “Naughty-naughty!”
“Problem solved,” my wife declared.
“I didn’t solve no problem,” I said. “It just went away.”
“Which is the same as ‘problem solved.’”
That’s how it was at the mighty Mezz.
I’d call ‘Pyooter-Guru, one Dan Gnagy, with some mysterious ‘pyooter hairball.
It’s probably still him.
“Have you tried rebooting?” he’d sonorously intone.
“No, I hadn’t,” I’d say. “That didn’t seem a solution to my problem.”
“Try rebooting, and call me if ya have the same problem after that,” he’d say.
It worked, of course.
So now that I’m retired from the Messenger, and on-my-own, I drive my ‘pyooter pretty much according to the Gnagy method — although with OS-X I can “force-quit” hung applications instead of rebooting.
In five years of running OS-X, I’ve never had to reboot.
When I retired OS-X had just debuted. We were running Apple operating-system 8.6 at the newspaper.
Only a few had OS-X.
The Gnagy method, as I understand it, is quit asking questions, and -a) try anything until you get what you want, and/or -b) try again later.
Give the problem time to resolve itself.
Never try to make sense of anything. Results are what matters!

• My wife of 42+ years is “Linda.” Like me she’s retired, and she retired as a computer programmer.
• The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over four years ago. Best job I ever had. (“Canandaigua” [“cannon-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• “OS-X” is Apple Computer’s current computer operating system. I use the most recent version, “Snow Leopard.”