February was a rough month for us health wise. The girl who never gets sick is home sick again. Let's hope no one ever declares me terminal. I don't think the family will survive my whining..

Speaking of whining... I was reading an article about what you need to know to be considered computer literate. One of the things mentioned was the need to understand the address line vs. the search line. This is one of my whines. It makes me crazy when I ask/tell someone to go to a particular web site and they search for it instead. So here is a quick lesson concerning how to go somewhere vs. how to search for something. I will use Google as the search engine of choice, because, frankly, there is no other search engine of choice.

The address line is always at the top of the window and with rare exception, it will have an address in it. If you want to jump to a new location simply type in the address and hit . You know you have an address if it starts with www., http:// or https://. They frequently end with .com, .net, .gov but not always. So if you are calling me and requesting remote support, and I ask you to go to www.fastsupport.com I'm actually telling you to type a web address into the web address line.

On the other hand, if you are searching for information similar to "why is my toenail falling off?" or "what can I do about my dogs love affair with a skunk?" then you should use the search line. Simply type the important words into the search line and hit enter. Important words are normally nouns and action words. So in the first example I would search for toenail fall off. In the second example I would search for Dog Skunk. In either example, I get a list of thousands of sites that want to discuss the current predicament with me.

Other handy notes concerning search engines: If you are looking for a particular phrase, say "train robberies" then put the search term in quotation marks to force an exact match.

If you are looking for information concerning Portland but you getting information for Portland, Maine not Portland, Oregon, then use a minus sign to exclude any result that includes Maine. Example search would be: Portland -Maine.

Thanks for letting me vent. I am feeling better now. The picture to the left actually says something. Computer people can read it all day long. If you are having trouble reading it, start substituting letters for the numbers. To get you started: The fist line says: This Message

Stay Safe and Warm,

~Janet