Trying to catch up...

I asked my husband if I should do the most recent classwork first or attempt to catch up chronologically. He said I should attempt to catch up chronologically, so that I will fully understand the covered material. so I started with module 1. since I missed the first class. I defined the definitions, i took notes of the PowerPoint. I was good and studious. I made it to module 2. I looked over all that material. I read chapter 4 of the textbook. I downloaded the data for the "active learning exercise."

I had bought the textbook with the 60 day trial on Monday. On Tuesday during my dinner break between work and the school board meeting, i installed it. I wasn't around when it finished installing, but i assumed it did OK because it seems to be installed. Today I dug the envelope it was in out of the trash to find the registration code. (oops). typed it in. was conveniently able to register with what appeared to be no problems.

and then I go to open ArcCatalog and I get this message. "ArcGIS Desktop has encountered a serious application error and is unable to continue."

It asks me if I would like to send an error report. And it doesn't open.

I have never installed any GIS software on this particular computer before. This is my husband's old computer.

Kigali angst

Finally figured out how to get the X,Y points into my map, great. Now I just have this small problem that Kigali, Rwanda shows up in Tanzania. I tell the points layer that it needs to be the same coordinate system as the rest of the map. Kigali, Rwanda is still in Tanzania. Also, Bequia is floating out in the middle of the Caribbean.

Oh well, good thing I have Labor Day off work, right. I've been having this sort of thing happen to me all summer, so I guess what else is new, right? If it happens with CAD layers and contour lines, naturally it'll happen with LEAF International villages. I guess I'll sleep on it and try to figure it out in the morning.

Contour Line Angst

Doing a map of a property in Gaston County, NC. Found a place where I could download contour lines. They're DLG files. And Hypsography translates as contour lines in English, all things we learned in class last semester, but I had to review to re-remember. Lately I've been coming across a lot of data that I download and then it tells me it doesn't have spatial reference information. For instance, this happened with the orthophoto. But I was able to download a grid kind of guide thing and the orthophoto fit in perfectly. The hypsography comes with coordinate boundaries, and on the website, for example, it says Left: -81 degrees 30' 00 ". But this doesn't translate over when I drop it into arc map and I'm left with my contour lines floating out in the middle of nowhere at an extent which says something like Left: -81.250015 ??.

I was thinking I'd be able to just type in the coordinates into somewhere, but this extent with a question mark isn't a changeable field. I search Arc GIS desktop Help for "Extent" but it only wants to tell me about extent rectangles, something I already muddled my way through a few months ago.
of course my contour lines don't contain a damn thing that is georeferenceable. But I'm sure if I knew what to do with the coordinates -- and if I knew how to do the homework from the first day of class that I missed, then I would also know how to use coordinates to map something.

It's got to be the most simple, basic function in arcmap; somewhere you type in coordinates and suddenly it knows where to put your stuff. Did we learn how to do this? And why don't I remember? And why can't I figure out what to search for in Help or where to look in one of my textbooks to figure this out?