Woohoo and Whoops!

This has been a Friday that has most definitely had its good and bad parts.

It was good in that it was the last day of five in a row at work and after putting in a little over 56 hours this week, I can now look forward to two glorious days off before I do it all over again next week. That's a 'woohoo'!

It was also good in that I found out that the zombie photo of Amanda that I had entered into the Halloween Costume Photo Contest on Facebook that the Rockport Inn & Suites was holding was the winner and we're now the proud awardees of a free night at a fantastic-sounding place!

I've looked at the Rockport Inn as a potential place to stay several times as it's not too far from Amanda's college plus it's in the Cape Ann section of Massachusetts where there are plenty of picture-taking opportunities. Can you say scenic seaside scenery? I can!  A very big thank you again to all those who voted and "liked" Amanda's picture. You've got to admit that she makes for one fantastic zombie and I bet the trip will make for one fantastic blog post!  Definitely a 'woohoo' on this one!

On the flip side, things got kind of bad when I got home from work and found I had a letter waiting for me from the Office of Child Support Enforcement in Tampa, Florida telling me that I owed past-due child support for Jamie.  Sigh ... not again!  I called the number they listed, waited on hold for close to half an hour, and finally got to talk with someone who told me that they hadn't received anything from the State of Connecticut invalidating their claim.  So ... I hung up, called the Office of Support Enforcement here in Norwich and got the same rude lady that I spoke to shortly after our court appearance when I had called to make sure that they knew there were no more past-due or future orders for support.  When I finally explained to her that I wasn't a dead-beat parent (I get the feeling she immediately adopts that tone when she finds out she's talking to the "guilty" party in a support enforcement case), she told me that a notice had been mailed to Florida on October 27th but they couldn't be responsible for the U.S. Postal Service.  Yea, toots, no kidding!   So, even though I thought this was finally all behind me it looks like I need to fax some forms and what-not next week to finally remove the last of the albatross that's been hanging around my neck.  This one gets a big 'whoops'.

And lastly just to balance out the bad with the good, I had to send Amanda's MacBook out for repair awhile back because one of her roommates accidentally knocked a small cup of water over while she was working on her computer on the dining room table and naturally it landed on her Mac rendering it quite dead.  Fortunately I'd had the foresight to purchase an additional warranty for the computer that covered accidental spills and drops (something the regular Apple warranty won't cover) so I contacted the company the warranty was through, sent the computer in for repairs, and received it back yesterday.  Well ... sort of ...

Due to my crazy work schedule I hadn't had a chance to open the box until this afternoon and I when I did what did I find inside but someone else's computer?  Not even a better MacBook, mind you, but a smaller model that had obviously seen  much better days.  WHAT??  With a sticker with someone else's name on it, too!  I immediately called my warranty provider who gave me the number to the repair facility so that I could talk to them directly.  The guy that answered the phone sounded like he'd been hitting a bong pretty hard and after making a futile attempt to try to explain the situation to him, he finally put me on the phone with his manager - oh thank goodness!

Turns out that somehow the shipping label with Amanda's computer and the other kid's computer got switched before shipping and Amanda's computer took a trip to Columbus, Mississippi while I had the other kid's computer sitting on my dining room table.  Bryan, the manager, was very apologetic and immediately emailed me a pre-paid UPS Next-Day-Air shipping label so that I could send the computer I had down to Mississippi while he got in touch with the people who had Amanda's computer and did the same for them.  Luckily her computer ended up at a college prep school called the Heritage Academy and the kid that it belonged to was on the Tech Team - whatever the heck that is! - so it was easy to track hers down.  I packed everything up, attached the shipping label, and dropped it off at the closest UPS shipping station at the local Staples so it should get to its proper owner soon.  In the meantime, Bryan emailed me the tracking number for Amanda's computer so hopefully it will be on its way north soon.  Absolutely a big 'whoops' on that one, too!

So - the good and the bad are all balanced out now and I sure hope that's it for the day - I've only got to squeak through a little over another four hours so I should be safe, right??

Clouds, Color, and Completion!!

I've taken a major liking to clouds lately but apparently am not smart enough, despite almost two years of blogging, to carry my camera with me at all times should I see some interesting ones. Thankfully my cellphone has a fairly decent camera, though, and I was able to capture the above shot yesterday morning. After a full day of nasty rain on Friday (my day off - typical!) the clouds were starting to clear out a bit before noon.

I took this picture from the sunroof of my car while on my way home from work and waiting in line with traffic. The formation reminds me a bit of the pictures I took of Lake Tahoe from the plane on my way out to California. Speaking of California, I'm glad I'm not out there now as it's apparently been hotter than Hades this past week. I'm all for warmer temperatures but not 100+ degrees in mid-May!

Meanwhile here at home, the azaleas out front have finally started blooming and the front of my house is awash in pink. That should make Amanda happy as she has taken a major liking to pink lately just as I've taken a major liking to clouds. And yes, that's the same Amanda that would only do black not that long ago!

I went a little crazy with the flowers on my front porch this year (I'm guessing I'm trying to make up for last year's total lack of flowers) and they're starting to look pretty good if I do say so myself! If you're in the neighborhood, stop on by and we'll sit on the porch amongst the flowers and sip some iced tea!

There's nothing like a few flowers to brighten up the place and make one smile! Did I say "a few" flowers? Hmm, remind me to show you more pictures later! I think I bought out half of the local greenhouse!

Oh, and speaking of smiling, I finally and at long last got that darned backup done on the PC even though it took me until 1:30 this afternoon to do it! So far the computer is running okay so I've got my fingers crossed that I don't have to do a System Recovery but the true test will be when Amanda gets home later and puts it through a teenager's paces. Keep your fingers crossed for me as - honestly - I don't want to spend another two days playing Geek Squad!

Alright then - back to work for me on this Sunday afternoon. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

This Backup is Getting My Back Up!

As a single woman, there are things that I have learned to do on my own or they just don't get done. When the washing machine started to act up, I took it apart and tried to figure it out; when the shower stopped working properly awhile back, I went to Home Depot and got the parts I needed to fix it; if the lawn needs mowing, I'm the one to go out and do it; should I need a hand in the bedroom ... with turning the mattress or moving the furniture around (get your minds out of the gutter, people!), then I'm the one to do that, too. Granted, there are times when I need to ask for help from one of the guys at work or from my son (I have to draw the line at a putting in a couple of the air conditioners as my bad back doesn't like it when I try to do it myself) but for the most part, I'm pretty self-reliant and manage to get most things done around the house without too much difficulty.

For the past two days, though, I have really wished for a guy with some hard drive knowledge (ahem, back in the gutter again?) as our desktop PC has been giving me some grief. If you'll remember, I did a post awhile back on the computer locking up in the middle of doing things and I wasn't sure what was causing the problem. It has gotten a lot worse lately and Amanda was really getting frustrated so I decided I needed to try a few things to get it running properly again before having to haul it into some over-priced computer repair shop.

I spent almost the entirety of yesterday afternoon running a registry cleaner as well as using Spybot to make sure that there were no viruses or spyware hidden somewhere. It took even longer than it should have because the darned thing kept locking up in the middle of things and I'd have to restart the computer and begin again. I finally got that done but it wasn't running any better so I sent a couple of texts to one of the paramedics I work with who also builds computers. After telling him what was going on he said it sounded like the hard drive was having issues and I'd need to take it in for repair. That was a pretty dismal prospect as that meant they'd have to extract all the files from the hard drive before replacing it and Lord knew what that was going to cost me.

After taking a short break to pick Amanda up from her band competition, I booted the computer back up and ran a hardware diagnostic which didn't indicate any problems with the hard drive, the network card, or the memory. Hmmm? Now what? Next step was to get in touch via on-line chat with someone from HP (the computer is a Compaq). I spoke to Sandey who I'm sure was in India somewhere and after using such great computer lingo as "it stutters" or "seems like it's thinking", she suggested I run a SFC Scan. Huh? No worries, she said, she'd tell me exactly what to do and that would tell me whether or not there were any problems with any of the Windows files. It was easy enough to run but took the better part of forever so while it was running, I ran Amanda over to Jason & Amy's so she could spend the weekend with Cate.

Back home, back to the computer, and back to the the scan which was finally finishing up with the pronouncement "Verification 100% complete. Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. Details are included in the CBS.Log windir\Logs\CBS\CBS Log." Say what?? That's not the message Sandey told me I should get so it was back to the HP Help page and on-line chat support where - lo and behold! - I got Sandey again. After giving her the details of the scan she came back with the not-so-good news that I needed to do a System Recovery and take the computer all the way back to the factory presets. Did I mention that I had a headache at this point?

Of course, before I could do that I needed to backup everything that was on the hard drive because I sure as shooting was going to lose it when I did the System Recovery. According to Windows Live One Care, which is a royal pain in the back end, I was going to need either 42 CDs, 6 DVDs, or an external hard drive - none of which I had on hand to backup the 26.6 GB of information that's on the hard drive. At this point it was 11:00 at night, I needed to go to work in the morning, and I had been sitting in front of the computer for way too long and starting to babble in code. It was definitely time to go to bed where I had strange computer dreams!

After work I stopped by Staples, picked up a 50-pack of DVDs, and sat down in front of the computer again ready to take on the backup task confident that I could get the computer fixed for sure. That was at 4:00 and it's now 11:45 and the backup is still not done! This has been the most frustrating, drawn-out process that I have ever had to put up with as it will get part way through only to tell me that either a) there's no disc in the drive when there is one or b) the disc is corrupt and I need to insert another one. From what I can tell from Live One Care Help, this whole program is very temperamental and sometimes just doesn't like the disc you put in. Duh? Ya think? I've had to restart the backup three times now and so far I've managed to get only about half of the files backed up. Let me just say that this is ridiculous!

In the meantime, while the backup was backing up, I contacted HP Help again and this time I got a hold of some guy claiming to be Seth. He referenced my chat session with Sandey from yesterday and then had me delete all of my temporary internet files and change my start-up options. I asked him what on earth that had to do with a corrupt Windows file and he said that the locking up and freezing could be from a myriad of other reasons. Now I'm not sure if he's really a Seth or not but wonder of wonders - the computer hasn't locked up since I made the changes he told me to! Of course, I've only been running the backup program and nothing else so I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not. I've got my fingers crossed that perhaps it was something as simple as that and I don't have to try doing a System Recovery and then reloading absolutely every program we have on there because somehow I just get the feeling that it isn't going to work like it's supposed to and then I'm really going to get frustrated and wish even more that I didn't have to be the competent single woman but had a man in my life to take care of stuff like this.

Of course, that's not to say that all men are computer geniuses but most of them like to think they are and I'm happy to let them do so plus maybe I could get the oil changed in the car and the rest of the air conditioners put in! Come to think of it, there are a few other things I could use a man for but this is a G-rated blog!

In the meantime, I think all of this frustration has earned me a small dish of ice cream while I wait to see if this new disc I just put in works or not! I will not be holding my breath that it does!

Mom! The Computer Locked Up Again!

For some unknown reason, my desktop computer has been having some issues lately and I have yet to be able to figure out why. Sometimes it runs great and doesn't lock up at all and then other times, you can barely do anything on it and you have to shut it down in order to unlock it. I have run several different programs to see if there is some sort of virus but so far it checks out clean. I'm not sure if it's because it has a Vista operating system or whether there is some other program that perhaps Amanda downloaded that causes it to lock up sometimes.

Whatever it is, I hope it's not serious as I sure can't afford to buy another computer and I don't think that computer rental is even an option because that can get really expensive, too.

Anyone else have any problems with a computer running Windows Vista slowing down or locking up? I am beginning to think that if I had the disks to Windows XP I'd take off the Vista and put that on instead but alas, I don't have them. Figures!

A Post from the Past

This being Monday it's my 16-hour shift at work which means I don't have time to really write a post so I thought I'd look back in my archives and see what it was I was doing a year ago today on February 4th, 2007 ...


Let's say that I had a list of things that I wanted to do before I died and let's say that "Sit pretentiously at a WiFi cafe with my new laptop and surf the Internet" was on that list ... and then let's say that if I had a list and something like that was on it that I don't have very high ambitions for my life! Ah, but if I did have such a list with such an item, I could now scratch it off and be one step closer to dying happy.

Are you as confused reading that as I was writing it? Good ... I don't want to be the only one totally lost here! Must be the air quality here at Borders or perhaps my Caramel Latte Tea has gone straight to my head OR it could just be that I am so not used to sitting in a public coffee spot and typing on a computer that I have completely forgotten how to write!

Normally this isn't something that I would do but I jokingly told MizCyn the other day that were I to actually get a laptop that I would then go sit at the local Starbucks or Seattle's Best and post an entry to my blog. She wasted no time in telling me in no uncertain terms what she thought of that idea and told me not to even think about it (and to think she calls herself a Californian - sheesh!). Her declaration, of course, made me all the more determined to do it so when Amanda asked me earlier today if we could go to Borders after I got home from work, I decided that it was the perfect time to provide my good friend the opportunity to once again roll her eyes to the East!

The only reason that I am able to do this at all is because I finally did get myself a laptop - a rather nice Dell Inspiron 1501 actually - which now gives me the means to go mobile should I choose to do so. I've already become rather enamored of this new technological toy of mine not only because I can now sit on the couch and post blog entries while watching the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy (or sip over-priced tea in a high-end coffee shop while blogging) but because it has 1 GB of memory and an 80 GB hard drive that moves at lightning speed - especially compared to the Compaq dinosaur that I've been used to fighting with.

The only drawback so far has been Amanda wanting to borrow the Dell all the time as the new PC that I ordered to replace the dinosaur has yet to arrive (it should be in sometime early this week and then the child will be totally happy). Other than that, I am a happy woman - pretentious right at the moment yet happy! And yes, Cyndi, I promise that today's visit to a WiFi cafe was a one-time thing ... perhaps ... maybe ... or then again maybe not!

Me at Borders with my new toy!

Just another manic ... Tuesday??

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Here it is, after 10:00 at night and I am finally getting around to posting something in my blog which will probably end up amounting to about 1,000 words of whining when I'm done! Sigh ... I need a longer day sometimes!

I got home from work at the usual time and found not one but two boxes from WalMart had been delivered via the big brown truck. When I had finally gotten around to ordering a new desktop PC and microwave oven (my mother had given me a gift card to get one at Christmas), I had decided to order off of WalMart.com for the simple reason that I have a bad back and it seemed so much easier to have large, heavy boxes delivered to my door rather than go through the process of lugging them around myself. Plus WalMart actually has what one would call decent prices for shipping and handling so it seemed like a marvelous idea.

I wasn't expecting both things to arrive on the same day (got to love that package tracking info that is oh-so-accurate!) but they did and that left me with my hands full for the evening. Before hauling Amanda off to NFA so that she could play in pep band at the basketball game tonight, I managed to get the kitchen rearranged and get the new microwave set up (I really had been meaning to clean those counters for quite some time!). That, as it turned out, was the easy part.

After I got home from a quick run through the grocery store (don't you hate it when you run out of milk and kitty litter at the same time?) I then tackled the big project - setting up the new computer. First things being first I had to dismantle the old desktop to make room for the new and then I unpacked the new one and got it all hooked up and ready to go so that Amanda could use it tomorrow while I'm at work for 16 glorious hours. The only thing left to do was get the new wireless software up and running so that she could have Internet access.

The new computer didn't come with a wireless card so I had decided to try using one of the new ones that, rather than hard wire into the computer, you can just plug into a USB port. It had seemed simple enough that even a not-so-technologically-adept person like myself could handle it so I got the thing out of the box, got my glasses on so I could figure out exactly what I was doing, and found out that I couldn't install the software because it wasn't compatible with Windows Vista. What the ...???

After staring at the package inserts for awhile, I decided to give NetGear tech support a call to see if there was some way around this little predicament and after listening to a good five minutes of recorded instructions, I ended up speaking to some woman whose name had to be Helga who vacationed in the fjords. After getting through the language barrier issues, she told me that they didn't make drivers for Vista yet and I would have to use an older Windows operating system. Uh ... Helga ... new computer with only Vista installed ... "vell den, vat choo need to do ist to take der card bach to der store und get chour money bach."

Spectacular! So now it's 8:15, I know I'm going to have to pick Amanda up from the game soon, but I figure if I drive like a fiend across town I can get to Staples before they close and see if there is a wireless card that IS compatible with Vista. Of course, before I can get halfway there my cell phone rings and it's Amanda who is ready to be picked up - but of course! I explain to her that I am just about at Staples trying to get a new wireless card and if she can hang tight for a few I'll be there as soon as I can. "No problem", she says.

I careen into the parking lot of Staples on two wheels, jump out of the car, and run up to the service desk only to find out that apparently no one has Vista-compatible wireless cards yet because it's such a new operating system. A few not-quite-foreign and yet colorful words escaped my lips as I realized that I was going to have to go the old-fashioned way and hook the new computer up to the modem - which wouldn't be so bad except that there are no phone jacks upstairs where the computer is which is the reason I went wireless to begin with. Great - more rearranging when I get home as I know there is no way that Amanda would survive the entirety of tomorrow without Internet access - how could she check her MySpace messages, how could she IM Dan and Nicole, how could she do anything??

After returning the useless-to-me wireless card, I zoomed over to NFA, grabbed the kid, and on the way home made a quick stop at the local gas station for if I didn't I was going to be pushing the car to work in the morning. Some idiot had let it get down below a quarter of a tank! (Yeah, yeah, that would be me!) Could this day get any more screwed-up? It was now after 9:00 at night, I hadn't eaten dinner, the computer still needed to be hooked up, I hadn't written anything in my blog, I needed to find a picture for Wordless Wednesday as I have to post it tonight or it doesn't get posted, and- worse yet - I had forgotten to set the DVR to record House!!

Finally getting home, Amanda and I got the new computer disassembled from upstairs and down to the dining room where I hooked it up temporarily until I can actually find the time and strength to lug the desk downstairs. Of course I had to move both the modem and router and find another ethernet cable in order to get everything hooked up but shortly before 10:00 I had everything up and running like it was supposed to and I could at last throw something in the new microwave to nuke for dinner. Whew!

I was finally able to sit down with my laptop a little bit ago to post something but I feel terrible that I haven't had a chance to make the rounds of the blogs that I usually read each day. Add on the fact that I won't be able to get to them tomorrow until after I get home at 11:00 at night and I am going to have some serious catching up to do!

It's times like this that I really hate being the only adult in the house - the one responsible to make sure that everything is up and running as it should be - the one who has to do all of the assembly on new things - the one who has to do all the driving and grocery shopping and fueling of the car - and the one who's going to have to move everything around again on my day off once I figure out how to lug the desk downstairs without blowing out a couple more disks in my back.

Sometimes I just don't want to be "I am woman hear me roar" anymore. I'd really rather be "honey, can you take care of that for me?" Oh well ... whatchagonnado?? At least Amanda has Internet AND the new computer for tomorrow and she's happy - that's gotta count for something.