Can anyone tell me a possible reason why my computer spontaneously shuts itself off and restarts? It's happened three times in the last thirty minutes.

I have no advice, but my computer does this as well. I always thought it was a Windows thing, but I wonder now about the overheating possibility. (But since my shiny new Mac should be here on Monday or Tuesday, I've filed it under "thing I will soon not have to worry about anymore 'cause I'm replacing the damn thing anyway.")

Can anyone tell me a possible reason why my computer spontaneously shuts itself off and restarts? It's happened three times in the last thirty minutes.

This sounds like overheating or a failing powersupply. Pop the case on the computer and see if the vents are clogged with dust or pethair. Also pop the case right after it shuts down and touch the powersupply and see if it is hot to the touch. If it is then it could be just overheating, or it could be dying.

If you get an Instant Message that says, "check out my pictures" from someone who's not likely to be showing off her pictures, and the file is a PIF, which you don't recognize, for the love of God, don't be a fucking moron and actually open the file.

From what I can tell, the bitch either only propagates, or I closed AIM before it got around to doing anything at all to my system.

OK, other question: I'm thinking of buying a digital camera for my trip. I totally should've decided this earlier, but I got sucked into looking at them on the internet and...well, you know how it goes. My question is, how much of a memory card do I need to get to go along with it? Never having had a digital camera before, I have no idea how many pictures fit in how much space (I know it depends on how nice a resolution you're using, but I have no idea if a 64MB is sufficient or if I need to spring for the crazy expensive 1gig or what?)

if a 64MB is sufficient

Probably not. My Olympus is a couple years old and only 2.1megapixels, and I carry two 128Mb cards with it.

I've only actually needed that much memory when I was on a week-long trip without my laptop, but I was glad I had it.

Heh--well, I'll be on a 2 1/2 week long trip without my laptop, so...yeah. Huh, I suppose (silly me) I hadn't thought about the possibility of buying MULTIPLE cards. Riiiiiight. Options.

I'd say get at least a 512 MB and a 128 or 256 as a second card, on the off chance you fill the 512 before you can offload pics you have a backup card to toss in the camera.

It's probably cheaper to buy one large card than multiple smaller ones. 128Mb was the largest available when I bought my camera. I took lots of pictures and discarded most of them.

Having lots of memory to play with means you can save the pictures in higher quality formats, which really pays off later when you crop and edit.

I like having a second card just as a safety. I tend to shoot a huge quantity of pictures with my camera and have filled my 256 a couple of times (And mine is only a 2 Megapixel). It also means that I can be offloading pictures with one card while still shooting.

When I hit control click, and hit "download linked file as..." it downloaded the page, not the file.

Then I think downloading Firefox is the best bet. That's what I usually do when I run into some Javascript on a web page that doesn't work with Safari.