I know it’s been forever since I’ve made an entry here. I’m quite busy and don’t have a lot to say here. But I’ve been having annoying issues with Adobe CS3 products and finally found a solution so thought I’d get it out there.

I have DW CS3 and thought I’d upgrade my Photoshop to CS3 to take advantage of some of the new tools in it. Well, what a mistake. I had nothing but trouble with that darn program - PS, that is. I kept having freezes and crashes. So, I thought I’d just uninstall it and put it on my XP machine instead of the Vista laptop I use 98% of the time.

First, be aware that when installing on Vista, you may run into issues with an error code 2738. The fix for this is:

Start - All Programs - Accessories

Right-click on Command prompt and choose Run as Administrator. This is important.

in the command prompt type:  regsvr32 vbscript.dll   and hit enter.

When the command has run you can close the cmd window. This will allow you to run the installer program for Adobe CS3.

So - when trying to uninstall PS CS3, I could not find any uninstall part to the program. I also looked in the Control Panel , Programs - to remove it, but it would not uninstall. I read somewhere I might need to use the installation disk to do a repair/reinstall, then I’ll be able to uninstall it. yeh- I know, a real pain. So this brought me back to the command prompt thing - I had to run that again in order to get to where I could uninstall the darn thing. It finally worked but ever since then I continue to get an Adobe Updater error whenever I start up Dreameaver CS3.

I figured it had to be related to this uninstall - a remnant of some kind. I didn’t want to get into registry business and really screw things up. So for weeks I hunted and hunted the forums and couldn’t find much - except a lot of angry folks going thru the same thing. I did find out where the culprit was - just not how to fix it. The culprit is the Adobe Updater 5 - and it was recommended to run the updater5.exe and change the preferences to manual instead of auto update. Well, the updater5.exe was broken!!!

The Updater5.exe is located in  Programs/Common Files/Adobe/Updater5

Fortunately, I have DW CS3 on my desktop, too - so I copied over the Updater5 directory (first I renamed the old one, just in case) and was able to run the updater program.  And guess what I found - it was trying to update PS CS3 - which I no longer had, but registry remnants must still be there (even after running a registry cleaner). I deleted those updates from the list, clicked on the Preference link and turned off the auto updater. I opened DW and the nasty updater error was gone!

Despite some of the glitches I’ve been having with 2.6, I’ve grown to like most of the new features. Every time I come across a glitch, I research over at the wp forum and usually find some answers or more questions that guide me to finding my own solutions. I take notes and might publish some of them soon on this blog.

I’ve been playing with doing sidebars at the bottom of the page, even an area that has two sidebars, so it’s like a two-column sidebar - only they’re widgetized, so the user can customize it. The possibilities for Wordpress are far-reaching,  proven by loads of WP enthusiasts out there. Darren Hoyt, Justin Tadlock, and others have proven that WP can be a handy little CMS, with magazine style themes.

But even on a simple level, being able to have multiple sidebars in different page placements makes it nice. I tried using Joomla last year and spent a month learning it from a user and designer approach. I kept wondering how many users would have the time or patience to learn it (remember most users are still novice when it comes to this stuff.)  With Wordpress, the functionality can be built into the theme while the user end remains fairly simple. I like that.

Summer in Maine is short and valuable. We make it thru the winter with the promise reward of spring and summer. Although Fall is my favorite, I can’t argue that seeing the lush greens is very inspiring. I like Fall because the air is drier and the bugs are gone.

But even though summer is here, I’m not out in it. My sciatica turned into a full blown disk episode that’s put me on my back for the past month. After the initial week of intense pain, some steroids finally took the inflammation down and allowed the ice packs and chiropractic treatments to take effect. But, I’m on orders to avoid sitting - too much pressure on the disk. Since I want to avoid surgery, I’ll do what I’m told. Some things I’ve re-learned and will share:

• TV is definitely a wasteland, with very few exceptions
• eating while lying down is an art: eat small portions and drink water
• a laptop/notebook computer is a sanity-saver. I found the lapdawg stand and it allows me to work while lying down.
• Pain meds don’t kill pain

Today in Maine and Massachusetts it is Patriot’s Day. For info about what it is, you can use Wikipedia or read an account over at PBS. Briefly, it recognizes the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord. Read the rest of this entry »

The record-breaking snow in northern Maine has produced some interesting drift formations. My friend Linda, shown at left, recently made contact with alien snow forms at Madawaska Lake, north of Caribou. Click on the photo to see an enlarged view.

Folks will be shoveling out there for quite awhile yet.