Recently I’d been getting a lot of pop-up chat messages on my facebook. I guess the messages were from people on my friend list who are there because of the games, cuz I certainly didn’t know their names.

Anyway, the chats were something like, “get a free iPhone, click here”. And if I didn’t already have an iPhone, I just might have clicked on that, even though I usually ignore that crap cuz it’s usually just crap. My overall thoughts were that it was spamming.

So after a bunch of these came, I was getting the message from one woman over and over again. I got pissed off and I messaged her and said, “stop messaging me you fucking turd!”.

A little while later I heard back from her with another chat message that said something to the effect of… ‘that was a virus I had and I posted it. Don’t talk to me like that, I will take you off my friend list. You’d better watch out, you don’t know who I am’. Not the exact words cuz I can’t remember them, but that was the overall message.

So I chatted back to her and said, “oooh, you’ll take me off your friend list – I don’t even know who the fuck you are you stupid moron”, and left it at that. Then I blocked her so that I’ll never hear from her again.

I guess what bugs me about the whole thing is the fact that this idiot is sending a virus around to people (inadvertently) but has the nerve to get mad at someone who tells her to fuck off because of it. Like I read her wall and found out she had a virus? I don’t normally read anything from these “friends” who are there for the gaming, most of the time I hide them so I don’t see a whole bunch of posts from strangers.

Anyway, the message is – watch out for chat messages in Facebook that mention a free iPhone. Apparently it’s a virus.

Tonight I decided not to work out. I had a craving for a meal. And when I say meal, I mean some meat and potatoes and vegetables. Since my dinners are usually so ridiculous, consisting of peanuts or a spoon of peanut butter, or some salad or other stupid thing, I had the craving for the real meal.

So my snookey and I went out to Wimpy’s (not exactly elegance but we knew we could get something similar to a home-cooked dinner there) and I ordered a hot hamburger open-faced sandwich, with gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans (I hate green beans).

I ate about half of that which was probably more than I should have eaten because I could barely breathe, and took the other half home with me. I don’t know about that fullness thing though, I think I need to see a doctor because by the end of the day – meal or no meal – my stomach is bloated out like I’m 9 months pregnant. Doesn’t quite seem normal to me. Plus it feels hard, like some pressure is pushing it out like that. I gotta go get a referral one of these days when I have some time.

Anyway, after that, we came home for a nice relaxing evening, even though I have a shitload of things to do that I haven’t gotten around to doing. So I decided that tonight I would finally replace that hard drive in my laptop. I got all prepared to do that, took a look at the back of my laptop and where the Dell guy had told me the hard drive was, and proceeded to pull out my battery. Hmmm, not it.

So I called them to ask which of the parts of the laptop held my hard drive. They told me to take out the screws at the bottom right and my hard drive was right inside there. No problem. Wait. Problem. I couldn’t get the fucking screws unscrewed – they’re in there so tight they must have been screwed hydraulically.

I tried with my little precision screwdrivers… no good, I’d end up stripping the screws. I tried with a little mini phillips screwdriver and still couldn’t get the screws out.

Once again I had to call Dell to tell them I can’t get the screws out. I was passed around to three different departments until the final hardware department let me know that I shouldn’t be talking to them cuz I’m in Canada. They confirmed a number for me to call. I called the number and it was voicemail. Great technical support there… leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you some day.

So, I’ll be waiting to hear from them about how to get my new hard drive installed. So much for my relaxing, and yet trying to be productive too, night.

I think I fixed a javascript file – and I don’t even know javascript!

If I visited my site, down on the bottom left I was seeing this error message – you know the one, done but with errors on the page. The errors were with the hover.js file and if I opened up the details it told me ‘line something, character something, expecting a ;’. This is a file that comes with my theme, Deep Blue.

So I played around with that and then it would give me another error message, line something, yada yada.

I tried a bunch of different configurations and finally got one that didn’t give me an error message. So I’m assuming I fixed it, but who knows whether or not something will stop working properly now.

Here’s what the new code is:
sfHover = function() { var sfEls = document.getElementById("menu").getElementsByTagName("li");
for (var i=0; i {
sfEls[i].onmouseover=function()
{
this.className+=" hover" };
sfEls[i].onmouseout=function()
{
this.className=this.className.replace(new RegExp(" hover\\b"), ""); }
}
}; if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload", sfHover);

And here's what the old code had:
sfHover = function()
{
var sfEls = document.getElementById("menu").getElementsByTagName("LI"); for (var i=0; i {
sfEls[i].onmouseover=function()
{ this.className+=" hover"; }
sfEls[i].onmouseout=function()
{
this.className=this.className.replace(new RegExp(" hover\\b"), ""); }
}}if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload", sfHover);

If anybody out there knows javascript and can see any errors that might impact me, please feel free to let me know and we can put a real fix in there. Oh, and if something doesn't work properly... let me know that too - not that I know how to fix it, but it would just be interesting to find out what could get screwed up by my little changes.

Remember my video card conked out? I’ve been waiting for that replacement, and I got it yesterday, so now I have both my monitors working again. I can’t tell you how weird it was to work with just one monitor again since I have the two at home and two at work. Now I’m back to normal *woohoo* [yes, yes, what I call normal, shut up].

Anyway, when he called me to say my card was in and to bring over my computer, he asked if I wanted Windows 7 put on at the same time. Since I had asked for this before but it was too expensive, when I asked this time and he said the price would be ‘installation fee’ only, how could I say no?

So, boys and girls, I now have Windows 7 on my computer. And I recently had my computer reformatted, so I had just started reinstalling things. Now I’ve gotta start reinstalling things all over again.

However, I will say that my computer is just zipping along – for programs and for the internet. I don’t know if it’s gonna get real slow once I’ve got everything reinstalled here, but I’ll find out and let you know.

And this version is a big change – even from Vista. I had hardly gotten to know the Vista, and it was a change from XP. But this one is a really big change that I’m going to have to study. I can’t even find out how to put a screensaver on my desktop right now, so you’ll understand when I say ‘big’ changes.

Anyway, I’ve got another 4 days to play with it (not today, I have a job to go help with). So far I’m liking it. So far I’d recommend it. Stay tuned for more.

You’ll remember I talked about my dealings with Dell here. Since then, I’ve had the hard drive sitting on my desk, and I’ve been waiting for the supposed ‘technician appointment’ for the guy to show up – to no avail. Not even a phone call where they told me someone would come and install it.

In the meantime I’ve received a phone call that the warranty was going to expire on the laptop I bought for my daughter (and would I like to renew it). I never got that phone call for my laptop, so expiry date came and went.

Anyway, for three days now I’ve been talking to Dell every night. They told me I could renew my warranty. They listed off a bunch of different warranties with a bunch of different prices. And depending on whom I was talking to and which night it was, I got different prices, different warranties, and different explanations of which warranty it is that I still have existing on my laptop til 2012.

I kept phoning back, being put on hold for who knows how long, but last night was the real kicker. After saying to the guy, “yes, I will take this warranty for $113, in order to have the technician also install all the software for me”, I was on hold while he processed it, and all of a sudden, the phone went dead.

I phoned back and what did I find? Office hours were now ended. The guy hung up on me cuz his shift was over… forget about that sale, time to go.

I called back again tonight and was told that there is no $113 warranty renewal – that was for the different laptop – the one I bought for my daughter. For my laptop the renewal would cost $900 for the highly trained technician to come and install software on my computer.

I asked “why would there be an $800 difference to install software on one laptop over another” and the answer was because the technicians who worked on my type of laptop were more highly trained. While I pointed out that installing software on any computer didn’t take any highly trained technician, he told me that I could install the hard drive myself and that phone support was included in my existing warranty… did I want him to transfer me so they could walk me through it.

Ok, reality is, boys and girls, that I can install a hard drive myself. I can certainly install software myself. I can do everything I wanted these guys to do…. myself. However, that was not my understanding of my warranty, and I was even willing to pay another $113 to have someone do it because I can’t be bothered with installing all this shit myself. But that’s not going to happen.

Obviously, I was totally wrong about my understanding of what those warranties were. Somehow I cannot understand english and so when they told me what they were at purchase time, I had english as a second language and thought they were completely different than they actually are.

I pointed out to my 6th or 7th Dell customer service rep that I would not be buying anything more from Dell. I could have bought these things from Yow up the street, but somehow thought that any potential troubles would be taken care of with these Dell warranties.

In future I will stick with my own computer people in my own neighbourhood. Fuck Dell. Not only have I had it with their different versions every time you call, but frankly, I’ve wasted a helluva lot of time on hold and being transferred from one department to another.

Unfuckingbelievable. If word had gotten out about this service level before people bought Dell, they certainly wouldn’t have been able to get as big as they’ve gotten now.

You’ll remember back in June 2008, I bought my laptop from Dell.ca.
Links here and
here.

Since cleaning up my place, buying more furniture and getting everything in order with the studio, I now keep my laptop on my desk, beside my desktop. Since I only ever use it if I’m going somewhere (which means it’s probably been used under 20 times), I turn it on every now and then to update the anti-virus and any microsoft updates.

So the other day I turned it on, did my usual stuff and all of a sudden got a pop-up message to do some diagnostics. I followed the instructions, ran the diagnostics and it gave me this error message which was a hard drive error message. The message also told me to write down the error number to tell the Dell technician.

I called Dell, talked to them a bit after being on hold and being transferred, and being on hold, and being transferred. Turns out they were going to send me a new hard drive – even though I have yet to see any trouble with the laptop. Ok, I’ll live with a new hard drive, maybe it works preventatively… they send you a new hard drive ‘before’ your whole computer crashes.

Anyway, while I’m talking to the guy he’s explaining how I’ll have to install the hard drive and send back the old hard drive. Whoa! He wanted me to install the hard drive in a laptop?

He said he was going to send out a technician but it’s only a hard drive replacement and his supervisor told him to cancel that. I asked about my service plan that I’d paid extra money for when I bought the laptop and he told me that I was no longer covered. The only coverage I had was for the extra, “if I spill a coffee on my computer they’ll fix it” type. And I wondered how come I got no notification of my warranty expiring. How come they, like so many other companies, didn’t email me to say, “HEY, wanna renew this for x amount of dollars?”

I told the guy I was no computer technician and wanted someone to come out and do it. He said he would do that even though it would only take a minute to install it, but the hard drive arrived and there was no promised phone call from the technician to arrange the date of installation. He also told me that after installing it I could call phone support for them to ‘walk me through’ installing the programs.

I know how to install programs. What I don’t know is which of their CDs go in first, where I start and where I finish. For that I guess I’m supposed to sit on hold for half an hour while they then transfer me to another department where I sit on hold and then talk to someone.

All of this is a pain in the ass to me, even though he told me that all I have to do is pull out the hard drive at the back and plug in the other one. That sounds really simple but I can’t help feeling WTF is going to go wrong.

All this says is that I’m not too impressed with Dell. While their service package sounded good when I bought (and I bought a shitload of things from them), I’m no longer impressed. I was feeling like a true believer and a probable future purchaser, but no longer.

I may attempt this tomorrow; I may not. I have to be in a mood for doing stuff like this and in the meantime I lost all the records for the society I sit on due to a computer crash and reformat of my desktop, so I’ve spent all day reinputting that information and I’m not done.

I’m beginning to feel that computers are no longer my friends. Maybe if the weather’s as nice as it was today, I’ll just go out wandering and take some pictures instead. Fuck I wish the holidays would hurry up and get here.

I took my computer in to Yow today. For some reason the CD player wasn’t working (which is actually a BluRay DVD player). Wouldn’t read or autostart any disks I put in there; I figured somehow the connection had come loose. Upon inspection, he told me he thought that the driver was missing… don’t know how that would happen.

Anyway, he did not have it ready for me to pick up tonight, so I’ve gotta use my laptop for my usual computer addiction. WoTF can sit at home without a computer all night?!?

Yesterday I had to take my little Fuji point and click back. For some reason it wasn’t turning on at all. I thought that the battery was dead, so I charged it but still nothing – that is until I got to the store to return it, there it turned on just fine. However, I wasn’t trusting the camera after that, so I traded it for another one.

I got the Canon SD100 IS (in pink to match my laptop and laptop mouse). Nothing looks better on your desk than a laptop and mouse that match, while your matching little camera is charging there.

This is the camera that has Avril Lavigne doing the commercials. I only got it cuz it was on sale for about $179 (instead of $220). It’s only 10mpx, but I figure I won’t see too much difference between a 10 and a 12 since I’m not printing out any gigantic posters. My DSLR is 14.2 megapixels. I’ll have to compare the quality now, won’t I?

So far I’m liking the little camera. It has a viewfinder, which I like for sunny days when you can’t really see the LCD screen on them too well. Also has live view, and not only live view for focusing, but the thing starts focusing itself when you point it towards something. Makes for a noisy camera, but so far I’m liking it.

If the weather would stay nice, I just might go out on the weekend and take some shots. God knows I’m sick of taking pictures around the house.

I spent the last three days trying to get my iPod working again.

The other day when I put my iTunes on, it said there was an update for the iPod and of course I said “ok”.

Well didn’t I get stupid error messages through the update and then my iPod wouldn’t work at all. So then I had to restore it back to factory default settings but after that, nothing would work, I kept getting error messages trying to load my songs on.

I followed the support steps, one of which was to create a new log in on your computer and try to do it that way.

That worked except my apps and videos weren’t in that log in. So after that, I logged in as me again and tried to download all my stuff. But, hey, there were those stupid error messages again and all of a sudden my iPod wouldn’t work again. So I restored it to factory default settings and once again couldn’t get my stuff on there.

I followed the other instructions which were to log it in on another computer, so I did that and everything worked, got all my songs on there again, but hey, I didn’t have my apps or videos there.

So after two days of restoring, reloading songs, getting error messages and restoring back to factory defaults, tonight I got in touch with Apple and did a walk through with technical support.

I ended up having to delete that last update file, restoring back to factory defaults yet again, unplugging anything and everything that was a USB connection, and plugging the iPod into a back USB port instead of the top one I use.

Then when it was factory defaulted and I had it all restored, it started downloading everything – apps first, which was a good sign since we’d not gotten to the apps on the other days.

After a couple of hours of restoring music, videos and apps, I’m happy to report that I once again have a working iPod. Not that I use it that much, but when I want to use it, I want to use it. And Christ knows I paid enough for this one with my name all engraved on it and everything.

Next thing I’ll be looking at is the iPhone. Only because Telus has sent a survey to see if there’s interest in it. I’m still on pay and talk because I don’t really need a plan and I have per-second billing cuz I’m such an old long-standing customer, but I recently switched things there too. I signed up for 5 favourites so that it cost nothing for calls to those five numbers. WTF, I only ever call about 3 people anyway.

Phew – just happy things are working now.

I get a call from the Bell technician at 6:30 on installation night.

Me: Hello
Him: Hi, is this J Ferguson? (sounded like he couldn’t make out the first name)
Me: Yes
Him: Well, your phone’s working, I understand that you wanted Bell internet?
Me: There was nothing wrong with my phone
Him: So you don’t want the internet
Me: Yes
Him: Ok, is it working?
Me: I’m waiting for someone to come and install it
Him: Ok, well I’ll be there soon
Me: Where are you?
Him: I should be there in about 5 minutes

Was that a sign of things to come? Is my internet working? How bout you install it first dipshit, and then ask me if it’s working.

That was an omen. They showed up and tried to install it but couldn’t.

The jack in the computer room is from a separate line I used to have, so it has been disconnected/unwired. We use a splitter for the fax to connect to the bedroom jack.

He couldn’t pick up a signal great enough from that line and so he said I’d have to install another jack – which would cost $100. I said I wasn’t going to pay for that and he told me that Bell should waive the cost; to get in touch with the business office the next day to see if they’d do that.

In the meantime, I figured I’d better ‘uncancel’ my Rogers account and while I was talking to them, I also ordered the rocket stick, which will keep your laptop with an internet connection wherever you go.

I called Bell anyway and was on hold for so long I hung up. I called them back later and talked to someone and they, in effect, were not going to waive anything, but then I talked to a bunch of different departments.

That night I called back again to make sure they weren’t going to be billing me for the service I didn’t have (as they did a few years ago), and it ended up that they agreed to install the jack for $100 but they would give me 2 months’ free service, which cost more than the jack so I decided to go for it.

When she put me through to the department that installs jacks, they couldn’t get a date quick enough. I’d have to cancel my Rogers again and, if I did that, it would be the end of the month (or have to pay for another month – not doing that at $166/month), so then I would have been without the net for a week or two. So again I cancelled and decided to stick with Rogers.

So now I’ll have my (what I consider) slow service with Rogers as well as the mobile internet for roughly the cost I was going to pay with Bell.

I don’t see why these huge companies can’t get their acts together. I appreciated the fact that they were going to waive some costs for me, but then waiting for a jack installation, and then waiting for another tech to come out and install after I’d already waited for my first appointment was a ridiculous concept.

Their customer service was great. It’s too bad they couldn’t follow through with the actual work.

You’ll notice (ok, maybe you won’t) that I’ve taken the Entrecard ad thingie off the sidebar. You’ll remember that I was having that giveaway that nobody wanted to get rid of all the points I had.

Instead I used them for advertising on really high priced sites, so it only took two ads to get rid of the points.

I just don’t feel like I have the time to go and ‘drop’ on everybody else’s cards, never mind the time in approving all those ads. Plus, I don’t even feel like I’m into doing it.

I don’t give a shit whether anybody new ever finds this site or not. It’s not like they come here and become regulars… they come here to drop their card and get some more points.

So, enough Entrecard. Buh bye.

Yes, back there around New Year’s time I think it was, I bought a crapload of games because they were on sale. I was getting some for $9.99 and $14.99 and whatever, so I figured I had to buy them because they were so cheap.

I haven’t even played all these games, but I can tell you what games a 52-year-old woman keeps in her Steam list.

Assassin’s Creed, Audiosurf, FEAR & FEAR 2, Half Life & Half Life 2 + Episodes 1 & 2, Hitman & Hitman 2, Left 4 Dead, Prince of Persia & Sands of Time, Stalker: Clear Sky, Unreal Tournament, Wolfenstein 3D (for the memories), Counter Strike, Deathmatch, Portal, Painkiller, Splinter Cell.

So I haven’t even played half these games. Who has time for games anyway?

Apparently I have lots of time for Bejewelled Twist. I also bought that game when offered up to me for a mere pittance. And now I can’t even remember how to play the regular Bejewelled game, but I think I’m obsessed with Bejewelled Twist.

I find myself thinking of making moves in the game at any time of the day. I can be at work. I can be watching a movie or TV. And in the back of my eye I realize that I’ve just made a move in Bejewelled Twist.

I dunno what there is about that game but when I go to relax after a hard day of, well, work, I come into the computer room and play a game of Bejewelled Twist.

Then I get pissed off because I didn’t get my name up since I’ve put the lowest score so high that it’s too tough to beat it, so I turn off the game and make some jewellery, or do some stuff on the net, or whatever else I need to do to relax.

Then after my pissed-off-ed-ness subsides, I may just play the game again – hoping that I’ll get the ‘fruit’, that it will make my score higher, that I won’t get blown away by that ticking thing that you can’t get rid of unless you have 5 of a kind or 4 of a kind in the same colour.

So boys and girls, see what you have to look forward to when you reach 52? This is it. This is what you’ll dream about all day – not getting laid, not a great retirement and income, but how to twist those things just right in order to get the fruit. I don’t even like fruit – does that make this ironic?

So I’ve been pretty busy with the new computer (which is absolutely fabulous). Turned out I had one problem, though. I bought the Pioneer Blu Ray burner to put into the computer but my monitors weren’t good enough to play Blu Ray movies.

So tonight I headed off to Best Buy and had to buy a TV to use as a monitor. And little did I know that when I told them I needed a 19″ HDMI TV, that they’d be giving me a widescreen. I hate widescreen.

I wanted 19″ so it would match up with the other monitor, but now I’ve got one 19″ and a little short 19″ widescreen monitor (that I can watch TV on if I so choose. Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll put a splitter on the cable and set it up so it’s also TV-able.

Who cares, really? Maybe I’ll just buy another 19″ widescreen so the two monitors will be equal height and width. Or maybe I’ll try to get used to these two different things.

Right now I’ve got I Am Legend playing in Blu Ray. We just watched it again the other night because I’d only ever seen it once.

The quality on this little TV is great and so clear. What’s the obsession with widescreen? Why is it so hard now to get a monitor or a TV that’s not widescreen?

Anyway, all I’ve been doing for days is installing some stuff, trying it out to see that it works, and fixing somebody at work’s jewellery. There’s one problem when people know your capabilities, they’re always looking for freebies. Good thing I’m not a surgeon.

Yesterday I had to install Microsoft Office suite only because one of the programs I was trying to install, asked me for the password and that was in my list of passwords that I couldn’t access because it was a Word document.

Things like that kept happening. My PSP X2… turns out it was an upgrade so I needed a previous version installed. However, the previous version was also an upgrade, and so was the one before that. So I had to go back a few to put on first and then install another.

Just the little things, picky, picky, picky. I suppose I should try to install some more stuff tonight and turn off this stupid movie. As if I needed this on my computer. I should try a regular DVD and see how that looks. How fucking often do I watch a movie on my computer? Never. Oh, but now I have this capability. Had to have it. Had to spend another $400 tonight, $200 for that HDMI TV and $142 on the stinking cable. Oh they’ll get you up the ass.

Ok. Work to do.

BTW, @mommyknows, I will post a picture of that necklace I made the other day… just as soon as I find some time to take a picture Thanks for the interest.

Has it really been three days since I last wrote something? Unbelievable the way time flies. And I have to say that I don’t find it as conducive to writing on my laptop as on my desktop; probably because my laptop sits over here to the side (on that air, fanny, docking thing) and I kinda have to type up instead of down like on my regular keyboard.

Anyway, I’m still waiting for my new computer. I went over to see Yow today and see how it was going. He thought he might be finished it tonight but then I told him I would also like one of those 19-in-1 media card readers put in and that he should just take his time, I’d pick it up Monday after work. I don’t want it rushed, I want it perfect.

While I was there he showed me how fast it was. He clicked on the browser. From the click to a page opened took 3 seconds. That was good. I can live with 3 seconds. I hope all the programs work like that as well.

He’s got the Windows Vista Ultimate loaded on as the only operating system and he was transferring all the data from my old computer over there. I assume I’ll have to redo things when I get the computer since he probably doesn’t know that I want music on one drive, websites and pictures on another drive, and all my downloaded programs on another drive.

I had him put in two hard drives… a 320 gig for my operating system and programs, but partitioned into 160 each so that spyware and virus scans don’t take too long. And then I got a 1 terrabyte drive for the other drive, partitioned into three 330 gig drives.

He’d already put in the blu-ray burner so I’ll be able to play and burn those. I’ll probably burn a couple of movies onto my hard drive – I hope the video card is a good one. And I’ll have 12 USB ports so I won’t have to unplug something in order to plug in a camera or GPS when I want to upload pics or download new directions.

So I’m feeling pretty psyched about getting the computer. He wanted $1000 up front but I had no problem with that. I guess that says you’re serious about getting the computer made. I’ll give him the other $1000 on Monday.

So other than that I haven’t been doing much. My son is moving in tonight, I don’t know for how long but he got kicked out of the place he was living and needed some place to crash.

On Wednesday I’m going to see a couple of group homes for my daughter to move to. One is around Yonge and Eglinton and the other is around St. George subway. The St. George one would probably be the best for her as far as getting to school quickly. I’m sure one of them’s got to be acceptable.

That’s my life in a nutshell. Soon I’m going to get a beer and put some music on, then we’ll go watch our movie for the night: Body of Lies. My daughter asked me who was in it and for some reason I called him “Lenardo” DiCaprio. Lenardo. Ok, my brain is getting a little wonky. Leonardo, yes I know. I’ll get it right.

I’ve installed IE8 again – I think I installed it quite a while ago when it was still in beta – now it’s in release 1 (with possible bugs).

What I was hoping for was that Microsoft would clue in to the fact that some of us like to keep our tabs open for every time we open our browser. Some of us meaning me (and maybe others, who cares).

I’m still looking at how to do this and will now have to google it. It’s one reason I used to use Avant browser – your tabs would always open. It helps remind me what it was I found interesting enough to go back to, or was too lazy the first time to look at.

That was another reason I added IE7Pro to my IE7, it would let me do that (sometimes) and it also had a shortcut menu so I could type, for example, “id” and it would take me to this site.

I’ll see what add-ons are available. I may just be removing IE8 again if they don’t have what I want.

I bought Windows Vista Ultimate the other day because I got a good deal on it.

So tonight I installed it. Now I didn’t upgrade my XP, I did a separate install on a separate partition, just so I could still use XP if I wanted to and have the ‘ultimate’ experience of trying Vista.

I’ve got Vista on my laptop, but it’s the Home Premium version that came with it, so I expected all kinds of bells and whistles with the Ultimate, but so far it looks to me to be just like my laptop.

Anyway, I’m using Vista now, and of course the first thing I did was to do the Microsoft updating of security packs and drivers and stuff. It just finished – I thought, but no, those 76 upgrades I had to do are now just installing, so I guess that’ll take a while.

When I’m finished I’ll probably have to reboot, so I may just boot into XP because when you do a new install of a separate operating system, it doesn’t see any of your programs or settings, yada yada.

So that’s what I’m up to… experimenting. I like the Vista (as much as I liked it on my laptop). Now I’ve gotta poke around and see what the settings are like, and maybe afterwards (but not tonight cuz American Idol’s coming on soon) I’ll see if I can find out if or how to get Vista reading my programs.

It won’t even read the sound card so I guess I won’t be listening to any music as I figure this out.

I was bored so I put on my Steam account and started to roam through Half Life 2 Lost Coast. I dunno WTF that was all about so I turned it off.

But, of course, the ‘what’s new’ screen popped up and I saw a game called Left 4 Dead. I watched a little trailer and I guess I was forced to buy it. It’s downloading as we speak.

Not only that, but I saw that there was a new version of Bejewelled called Bejewelled Twist. I also downloaded the demo for that.

So now I’m off to try my Bejewelled Twist. It’s a good time killer kinda game when you don’t have to think much. I’m good at not thinking much.

I had to go off to get my x-rays tonight after my doctor’s appointment last night, so I left work a little early and headed off to get that over with.

When I was leaving, I just had to stop at Canada Computers, cuz, after all, it was right there.

I didn’t really need anything except for a cooling tray for my laptop, so I bought one.

Which meant, of course, that I had to take out the laptop and try it. So now I have my laptop sitting beside me with the cooling tray fan blowing wildly while I do a scan of my entire laptop. Because I don’t use it too often, every time I turn it on I’ve got to do a virus check, and a spyware check and whatever other check there could possibly be.

Tonight, because the last few times I’ve used the laptop I didn’t plug it in, the battery finally died. I was trying to run it down to charge it up again and so I finally did it.

However, when I turned it on it said I had an hour of power left, and in half an hour it said that the power was done. Since the laptop has two hours worth of battery time, I wonder how long the two hours really is since the hour only lasted half an hour.

Anyway, that’s my big excitement tonight. I’m at 47% finished with my scan, and then I’ll probably just let it sit there and charge up (66 minutes to full charge, I’m told).

Then there’s Earl, The Office and 30 Rock to be watched. I’m feeling good already.

I don’t have a clue about this one, so if anybody out there knows the answer, please let me know.

I have google ad sense on this site. The thing is, the ad doesn’t show in IE7 (and maybe other versions of IE, I dunno). The ad shows up in Firefox and Google Chrome, just not in IE – it shows me some grey space that’s around it.

Does anyone know how to get this stupid thing working in IE? Does anyone even know why it doesn’t show up in IE?

I need some answers, people.

I took off all those widgets I had on and am trying to get things working properly again with code. While I liked the widgets, and they were nice and easy, unfortunately, you can’t have widgets and code mixed together – they’re like oil and sand, yes, oil and sand.

So my site is not validating either. You know why? I’m using one of those templates that has everything wrapped in an [li]. So, of course all the plugins that are created with [divs] aren’t allowed within [li]s.

I don’t have any more time to work on it tonight. I may have to revamp a bit, which pisses me off. I hate templates wrapped in lists.

But in the meantime, somebody tell me why ad sense ads won’t show up in IE.

So I downloaded the IE8 Beta tonight.  Don’t know why, I just saw a link and went for it.

What I was hoping was to have both 7 and 8 on my computer so I could compare the two but, no, it always has to replace a previous version. 

What I’ve found is that my website looks fucked up in 8.  The paragraphs all seem to go wonky with some sentences indented and some left aligned.  Don’t know WTF that’s all about.

So far I haven’t seen any reason for me to use this, I may just have to go back to 7.  And I tried to download 6 because when I look at the jewellery site at work in 6, it doesn’t show properly so I wanted IE6 to see if I could work on some of the CSS and have it show right in all browsers.

But, again, no.  It wouldn’t let me install 6 on my computer because I already had 7.  And now I already have 8 so 7 is no more.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel more like uninstalling and reinstalling but I don’t feel like it now.  Heroes is on tonight and so is Kitchen Nightmares (Gordon Ramsay – new season).

I’d read some reviews of google chrome (which is in beta right now) but I can’t really remember what they said about it.

However, not liking Firefox, and not being overly fond of IE, I decided to try it – especially since I never put Avant browser back on my computer after all the trouble and reformatting I did.

It looks to me to be a lot like Firefox – at least in the way it interprets code. I looked at one of my sites and it looks exactly like it does in Firefox, that is, a heading font in IE looks like a small font in Firefox.

I’m going to give it a try. I think I also read something about it being really fast, but that could be the other browser they were reviewing too (who remembers what that one was). It does, of course, have the tabs at the top. The option I liked in the set up was to have all the previous viewed tabs open the next time you open the browser. What it’s missing is shortcut keys so you can type in ‘id’ instead of idiot on a stick, etc. IE doesn’t have that either, but if you put IEPlus on, it will let you do that.

So I’ll be using this for a while, unless it starts crashing out on me or something. If you’re interested in trying it, you can find it here.

Oh, BTW, I’ve also put the commentluv plugin on here. WyTF not, Mom’s got it, Lyndon’s got it. I guess I should have it too. I’m such a follower.

I think everything’s back to normal now. That is, my provider emailed me and told me that everything is fixed now, so I’m hoping they’re right.

So far I’ve had fast loading times and no problems, I’ve even switched back to my old theme because I was gonna keep it on the WP default but then I saw that it was using widgets. Widgets, for crying out loud. I don’t want widgets, I want to put my own code and the stuff I feel like having there, not widgets. I even took off the caching plugin, so I’ll be interested to see how quick things seem.

Let me know if things don’t seem to be working for you since they’re working for me *fingers crossed*. I’m just on the phone – on hold – right now to talk to my provider and try to find out what the problem was. Because I think it was a server issue on their end.

And while I don’t mind the occasional problem, it would be better if the problem wasn’t two weeks long (or was it three?). But I won’t complain at the moment since I’ve been using this provider for years and years on all my sites and don’t usually have too many problems.

Let’s hope I haven’t jinxed myself now. We’ll see in days to come.

I’m here, still on my laptop. Good thing I bought this effing thing or where would I be without my computer? Yow didn’t call me yesterday and he finally called tonight to say that he’d copied all the files over from my old hard drive onto the new one, but that was at 6:15 and I know he closes at 6:00, so I said I’d pick it up tomorrow. Besides, who felt like getting back into clothes and chugging over there, only to bring it home and have to install it again (not mentioning all the progams).

So I’ve got to go watch Canadian Idol now. I’ve been making a necklace, torn it apart about 3 times and decided on something completely different but now I don’t have time to finish it tonight.

However, with that said, I did find something for IE 7 which seems to make it much like Avant browser. I haven’t put Avant on my laptop (even though it’s my favourite browser) because I don’t want to clog this up with too many programs. But I found IE7Pro which makes IE’s tabs stay open for the next time, and even has the little shortcuts like Avant, for example, in Avant I always just typed “id” and that would bring me to my site. Hey! I can do that with IE7Pro.

So I’m just trying it now. So far so good.

I know a lot of you use Firefox, which is Ok, but I don’t particularly like it, so I’m happy to have found the IE7Pro. Perhaps I’ll be a happier camper now that my tabs are all there to remind me WTF I was doing the last time.

Anyway, there’s singing to be heard. We’ll talk later.

Last night I tested the back-up system on that new external hard drive. It was the slowest fucking thing I’d ever seen.

It was doing a reimaging and I started it at 6:00 with an entire bunch of drives and directories, but when I saw the speed of that I cancelled.

So around 6:30, I reset the back-up to a few key directories and let ‘er rip. When I got home around 9:00, it was still going. When I checked a bit later it was still going. When I checked for the last time, the back-up had crashed.

Great. Just paid $240 or 50 whatever it was for this stupid thing and it doesn’t work. So I called Yow today and told him that I wanted to return it, get something else, and suggested something. Unfortunately, his supplier doesn’t carry what I wanted so I told him I’d just like my money back.

Then he told me there’d be a 20% restocking fee. 20%. 20% is about $50. That’s $50 for me to pay for nothing. Hey, I’m rich, let me just give you $50 to have nothing. He explained that he had to pay his restocking fees, the credit card fee (which I paid $7 for), his gas to go get the thing. However, I still found $50 for nothing a little exorbitant and we negotiated. I finally agreed to $30, even though I loathe the idea of wasting $30 – that’s a case of beer, doncha know.

I also told him that I wanted yet another reformat because my browsers keep crashing. All browsers… IE, Avant, Firefox. There’s something still not right with this computer and I want it fixed. He freaked a little at that because he thought I wanted it for free, but I said, no, not for free.

So instead he came up with a plan. The plan is, instead of reformatting, he’s going to take the 1 terrabyte new external hard drive and make it my new internal hard drive. This is all fine for me as long as it fits, and it’s compatible. And I figure if we do that, we can also probably remove the other hard drive I have since I think I only have about 500 gigs total right now, so we can partition the 1T into bigger partitions and use one of those partitions as a back-up drive.

Let’s hope this works. I’m bringing my computer in tomorrow along with the external. I’ve asked him not to install anything except windows and updates, and my keyboard and mouse – I’ll do the rest since I don’t know what programs may be causing all the conflicts and causing the crashes.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll be using my little pink laptop to amuse myself tomorrow. The only thing that bugs me is that a reformat would cost me $80. Using the external drive has cost me $240 and now I’m left with no external drive. I’m thinking that it’s not quite a deal for me.

Today I went to see Yow to get my new external hard drive. It’s 1 TERRABYTE in size. That’s like 1000 gigs of space.

I plan to use it to do backups – mostly I thought I’d reimage my system on a regular basis so I wouldn’t need to reformat so often, but Yow advises against reimaging since you don’t actually have a copy of all your data, you’ve just got an image of it.

So I just hooked it up and I’ve put it on to back up. I’ll have to time that and see how long it takes. I started about 6:00 p.m. and I’ve got the hourglass going on over there. Oh, I see a little progress. I see a loading bar and it’s about at the 1/100th of a whatever done. I told it to back up the whole E: drive which is mainly where I keep all my data.

Oooo, now I see it going directory by directory. As long as I can keep working while it’s doing that, I don’t care how long it takes – I suppose until it comes time to want to back up a C: drive where all my programs are. Why would I back those up?

Anyway, I’m meeting with the website people tonight. They want to register some more domains – only 2 come free with the hosting plan I got them, but then I didn’t know they’d want a zillion. The increase in costs to switch to the different plan may or may not be worth it if they have to pay $10 a pop for more domains. I’ll discuss that with them tonight. I’m meeting at 7:00.

My daughter has gone out today with a friend. Today she was supposed to finish cleaning her room – she had all day yesterday to do it and couldn’t manage, so she was supposed to do the rest today cuz she wants to paint. I bought the paint for her yesterday but she’s nowhere to be found when there might be some work involved.

Did I tell you she quit her new job? Yes, she did. She didn’t even officially quit, just stopped calling to find out her hours. Who knows how long they’ll just hold her pay cheque (most of which she owes to me for uniform, shoes, and lost metropass). I just was not like that when I was her age. I was happy to have a weekend job that paid me $20/weekend for bussing tables.

I just don’t get kids.

Anyway, I’m off to check my emails before my meeting. I hope it’s not a long one. I’m going to bring my new laptop with me so we can do all the stuff online that they need to do. Wow am I connected.

Got my computer back again tonight. Everything so far seems t be working ok. Yow put in a couple of extra USB ports so my entire system is not connected to a bunch of hubs. The only problem right now is that I put in one hub and it’s not reading it, so I just may not be able to use that.

The biggest problem I have so far is that I see he disconnected my other hard drive again, so I don’t have access to websites or my music. I’ll have to use my laptop for that since I copied a lot of that over.

I took my laptop to work with me today since I knew I had a two-hour meeting this afternoon. It was great, I didn’t end up with any tennis elbow pain from writing stuff, I typed it all into my laptop and then copied my notes onto a little jump drive to use on my work computer. Those in the meeting seemed to think the PINK computer was cute (or they thought it was really dippy and were too polite to say). I think it’s cute and I’m happy with it.

Who knows when my work laptop will arrive. They’re not exactly speedy getting things done there. I know for sure it’s not going to impress me as much as mine does, too bad they don’t order from Dell… they use HP for some strange reason.

Anyway, I guess I’ll go back to the laptop to see if I can upgrade that jewellery site to the newest WordPress version. Let’s hope it doesn’t fuck everything up so that I have to start all over. I’ve got a kajillion pictures up there, I wouldn’t want to have to start all over.

Ok, no time to write. I’m on my laptop trying to download the jewellery site files so that I can upgrade my WordPress, and I’m also trying to make a necklace at the same time, and Canadian Idol voting results are on, so I have to go watch that.

So I just stopped by to tell you that.

I still don’t have my computer working properly… got it back today and the USB ports are not working. That doesn’t help me much since my mouse and keyboard connect to those.

I’ll take it back tomorrow. In the meantime I’m just using my fabulous new laptop. It is truly fabulous – I’m very impressed. I’ll give you more details (and pictures) another time cuz, as I said, I’ve got no time.

I’ve just rebooted my computer again and so it’s connected again. I’m taking it in to Yow tomorrow and he’s going to see what he can make of it. Yes, he’s working on the holiday… not me though.

And I don’t care if he has my computer more than a day now because…. because…. yes, my new laptop arrived today. My new pink laptop with the matching mini pink mouse.

And you know what? I was playing with it all evening (while my computer conked out and wasn’t connecting) and I didn’t find anything slow about the Windows Vista.

As a matter of fact I kinda liked it – cool look, nice fade in effects. The only thing I didn’t like was that I had to search for some stuff, it wasn’t easy to find when you’re used to so many years of XP.

I’m supposed to have a 3-month wireless connection with Sympatico, but they haven’t sent the modem yet, so when I called them they said they’d rush it over and I should have it Wednesday or Thursday. In the meantime, I just plugged my laptop into my router and, voila, I was online even though my computer wasn’t.

So I’m a happy camper today. I loaded some songs onto the laptop. I loaded the Microsoft Office suite onto it. And I’ll probably load an older version of PSP in case I need to edit any graphics on there.

Time to celebrate! Where’s my beer?

Nothing but trouble since I got my computer back. Everything’s brand new, of course, it’s been reformatted, however, I keep losing my connection to the internet.

I may be online for half an hour and all of a sudden, I’ve got no connection. Sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it’s right away.

I took it over to Yow again yesterday and everything was connecting just fine there, but then we didn’t have it connected for half an hour or an hour to see if it timed out then.

Today I tried moving around the cables to the router to see if that did anything. Nope. I went over to Best Buy where I bought the router, and I bought a couple of new cables for the router – one to the modem and one to my computer.

That didn’t work either. I’ve been on the phone 3 times now to Linksys to try various troubleshooting methods. Now I’ll see how long I’m connected – whether that actually did anything.

If this continues, I guess I’m going to have to take the computer back and say “reformat again” to see if that solves anything. Or maybe I need a new ethernet card… $50 for new cables today just wasn’t enough to spend after the past 2 weeks of spending money on my computer.

I guess I’ll see tonight whether I conk out again after this latest round of attempted fixes.

And what’s with my brand new keyboard anyway? I can’t use ctrl-c or ctrl-v or ctrl-a. It’s probably only a couple of months old. Do I have to take that back too?

So, Yow never showed up to hook up my hard drives. What was I saying about customer service? Whatever it was, forget it.

However, as I was looking for a module online (something I was buying for those people whose website I will be developing), somehow I ended up with a virus/spyware on my computer. How, I’m wondering, since I have all kinds of protection on my computer, and I didn’t click on anything.

What it was was this Antivirus XP 2008. It downloaded itself onto my computer and then it makes like it’s running a virus scan on your computer – won’t stop – and it told me I had 3183 viruses on there.

The way you’re supposed to stop it is to click on the “buy’ button because that’s all it will let you do. So I searched the net for how to get rid of it and found this “spyhunter” program which I downloaded and then found out it was another of the spyware, scan for free but buy or it won’t remember anything.

All of this started at boot time. And something else was going on that it was using 100% of my CPU so I had no memory and couldn’t connect to the net.

I later found out, through an email warning from Rogers, that my computer was infected with something that was sending out a kajillion email messages – spamming other computers – and that’s most likely what was using all my system resources.

So once again, on Thursday morning, my snookey went to Yow to drop off my computer. This time it was not fixable, I had to go for the reformat, which is what I could have done in the first place and saved myself a helluva lot of money.

I was supposed to pick it up at 5:00 last night, but when I went over there, he was installing programs for me (thrown in for free for my $80 reformat fee), and he said things ‘had’ been fast, but when he installed something, it slowed the net right down and so he was going to start over. I told him I’d give him a call at noon today to see how it was going.

Right now I’m using my daughter’s computer which I spent a little time last night on fix ups and antivirus updates and crap like that. She stayed over at her friend’s place so I had some access.

This morning I’m heading off with my jewellery mentor to a place she’s going to show me that sells some wholesale beads and stuff. Apparently it’s not too far from where I live, but it’s all very secret so I need her to get me in. I hope it’s not all crap, since I could use a break on costs of making stuff.

Tomorrow’s the festival I’m doing in Stouffville. A rainstorm all day according to the weather station and a wind warning in effect. So I’m not expecting too much there, unfortunately. I’ve got to remember to buy tablecloths today since I bought the tables the other day. Gotta charge up my Interac machine and remember to take it ← the important thing. I’m expecting no business at all so I won’t actually get to see if anything sells and what sells the most.

If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all. The good thing? I got an email that my new laptop was shipped on June 25.

Well, today Yow told me that he happened to have a motherboard that was the exact same as the one in my computer. The good thing about that – as opposed to starting anew with a whole new system was, 1) the cost, 2) all my programs would still function.

He told me it would only be $60 for labour so I thought he was throwing the ‘used’ motherboard in for free.

I asked my snookey to pick it up at 5:00 since I would be over buying a foldy table on sale at Canadian Tire, and a card table on sale at Zellers. I am now $753 into my overdraft *woohoo*.

I got home, my computer was here. I hooked it up and my snookey gave me the receipt. How come that receipt said $203 I wondered. A $203 bill that I stuck my snookey with for being nice enough to go pick it up for me. I don’t have $203 right now to pay him back (luckily he can wait).

I phoned Yow to say, “I thought you said it was going to cost $60!”. to which he said, “the labour is $60, the motherboard is $120″. “For a used motherboard!?”, I said. And he said it was not used, it was just open box. Then he told me that he forgot to hook up my other hard drives – since I have more than one in here.

Great, I thought, now I have to unhook this fucking thing again, drag it over, then drag it back and hook it up again? So I said, “well, can you come over and hook it up?” and he said he didn’t have a car today. I said, “that’s ok, it doesn’t have to be today, I have a meeting at 7:00. How about tomorrow?” He said he could come tomorrow, but probably not til late, like 7:00 or 8:00 and I said that it was just fine with me.

So at least I feel like we’re going to get some customer service for the $353 we just spent with this guy in the past week.

My computer is working so far except he didn’t have the sound drivers to install and so he’s got it hooked up using the onboard sound. I tried to test the sound to see if it sounded as good as my sound card but of course I couldn’t test it, because all my music is on one of the other hard drives. So I’ll try it tomorrow and keep it going if I like it… otherwise I’ll install the drivers for the soundblaster (do they even make those any more?).

Now it’s 6:45 and I’ve got the appointment at 7:00 with the people who want their website done. I need time, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t seem to have enough of that lately. I feel like I’m holding down 3 jobs at the moment.

Yao, the computer guy, and I suppose I should be pronouncing that *YOW!@*, tells me that my hard drives seem fine. Of course my graphics card is fine. He says he thinks I need a new motherboard. He also said that my computer won’t be ready today.

So I’m here once again at my snookey’s computer blogging more often than I was blogging with my own damned computer sitting there. I have to take advantage of my snookey’s computer when he’s not here.

So if I need a new motherboard, I may as well just be building a new computer, cuz I’ll need new RAM too. I’ll have to have a PCI express graphics card since they’re no longer making AGP, and I’m assuming a replacement will be ok because he told me to just “try” this lower end one to see if I was happy with it.

The funny thing about it is that I had asked him how much to build me a new computer the other day and he said he’d get me a price. My hard drives are still reusable, or at least one is, and my CPU should be usable. What the guy doesn’t understand is… I HAVE NO MONEY!

I can just wait a week for my new laptop, however, that doesn’t get me my stuff that’s on my computer now, does it? Most importantly, it doesn’t get my my emails where I have all my receipts and licence keys for software I’ve bought, password list, etc. And my new laptop doesn’t have nearly the space as my computer does, and not all the programs. I am so fucked.

Not only that but I met with the woman I’m doing the show with on Saturday and she said I needed to bring my own tables. Huh? You’ve been doing this for how many years and you don’t have other tables? Now I’ve gotta go and buy some foldy tables – or card tables – or something.

And while I’m ranting, let me tell you about how I bought a box of Lune Moons last week. They were on sale and I thought, ‘geez, I haven’t had one of those in years’. I put them away and my snookey mentioned them in front of my daughter, but that was ok because she said she didn’t like Lune Moons *hurrah, we’d get to eat them!*.

So tonight when I was looking for my orange bra for tomorrow, and not finding it, I had a look in my daughter’s room. Not only did I find my orange bra – without the straps on it – but I also found an empty box of Lune Moons hidden behind her bed. I found one of my black, and a white bra in there, and I found one of my skirts which she’s taken time and time again and I’ve had to wash time and time again even though I’ve only worn the thing twice in my entire life. I found my tank tops in there.

I don’t know why I even live here. My clothes are not mine. My food is not mine. Most of the time I get to eat a spoon of peanut butter, when I look for something it’s not there, and I can’t tell you how much money we spend in groceries and never get to eat the fucking food.

I’m not a happy camper right now. I guess it’s time to go make some jewellery, WTF else can I do, nothing on the computer, that’s for sure. Have I said I hate life? Yes I have. I suppose I should narrow that down to my life. Other people certainly seem to have the good life.

When I got up this morning (at 7:00) and went to the computer room, my computer was at the log on screen. I clicked my mouse to type in my password, but nothing. Then I remembered that I had been getting the ‘battery low’ message and changed my batteries (this new ergo mouse is not rechargeable like my last one).

That didn’t do anything so I rebooted. When I rebooted my computer got to a certain point and then rebooted itself again – thank you for saving me that difficult step and doing it yourself.

When it rebooted again it gave me that message about ‘you didn’t start properly, do you want to start in safe mode, normal, naked mode’ and I had 30 seconds to pick one. I couldn’t pick any, my keyboard buttons wouldn’t move.

I rebooted again. This time I couldn’t get past the bios screen. I turned off the computer for a while to let it cool down, and tried again. Nope, no computer for me. Still stuck at the bios screen.

Y’know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that Mr. $150 for the new video card was wrong. I’m thinking that I may just have a different problem that he didn’t catch is his four hours of labour costs.

So now I’m fucked again. Nobody’s open on Sundays. Right now I’m on my snookey’s computer but that’s because everybody here is still in bed. Tomorrow I’ll have to take my computer back in.

While I had planned to organize my stuff for the show next weekend, I hadn’t planned on spending every waking moment doing that… perhaps a little Zuma in between, maybe a breakfast break later, check emails or surf off and on for a break.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I can wait for the laptop to arrive, that’s supposed to be the week after next if they’re right about it coming at the start of July. Let me hear you say, “ch-ching”. Give me a “ch”. Give me a “ching”.

So you may not see me around too much this week. I hate life.

Yes, I’m sitting here with no money – about $400 into my overdraft already and payday is next week. My credit card is maxed again and I haven’t paid any of the bills yet this month and the month is almost over.

So what happens when you have no money? Well, your computer breaks down, that’s what.

Off and on, first one monitor would go black and then everything would lock up. I’d reboot, things would start to work and then the other monitor would go black. This was going on for about a week, totally pissing me off, and then the other day I had to take it in because it was just happening way too often.

I took it to a different guy, not my usual guy. I took it to the guy where I had bought the computer for my daughter. We’ve never had a problem with that computer.

Anyway he spent hours running tests to make sure it wasn’t my hard drive. Better not be, I thought, since that hard drive is fairly new.

Turns out it was my video card. The high end video card that I paid big bucks for since I need a great ‘gaming’ card. And I don’t think it was that long ago that I bought that card. I was doing a search on the site to see when I bought it but I couldn’t find anything under ‘video cards’, so I don’t remember just when.

He replaced the video card with a $70 lower end video card and everything seems to be working fine. Of course the first thing I did was try a game. I tried a heavy duty game like Half Life 2 and all seemed well. There didn’t seem to be any difference with this card and my high end card, so I almost feel ripped for having spent so much money on the old card.

What is up with that any way? How come I’ve had to replace video cards so often? I can remember having a video cards for years and years. Now it seems like every year I have to replace one.

So after spending $70 for a card plus $80 for labour at a time when I have no money and I’m trying to get ready for another show next weekend, the guy tells me that they’re not really making those kinds of video cards any more (AGP), more PCI express now.

That means that I need a new computer, it’s not like you can switch from one format to another. So maybe that’s where my new laptop comes in. Maybe I’ll be using that one as my new computer now, if it ever arrives. We’ll have to see what it’s like – especially since it’s got Windows Vista installed on it and I’ve only ever heard bad things about Vista.

I also had to buy boxes for this show next weekend. It was just a fluke, I hadn’t planned to do another show til September. But my mentor, the woman who does this for a living, needed an extra body at the show she was doing and asked me. So of course I had to get the same set up as she has, especially considering the set up I had for the last show didn’t work.

I had to buy little jewellery boxes to display the necklaces, and little organza bags for everybody’s purchase. I had to sort through my stuff and put it into the boxes. I had to buy rubbermaid containers that will exactly fit the boxes so I’ll just have to lay them out when I get to the show.

I have a helluva lot more preparation to do before next Saturday and yet I’m busy today with things (including taking my daughter for her summer job interview) and then appointments Monday and Tuesday – one of those with the couple who wanted a website designed.

Once again with no money and very little time, I’m feeling a little under the gun. I just hope to do well at the next show because otherwise, why am I doing this. If nothing else I get to learn from the master, but I really could use the cold, hard cash – oh yes, there’s that other fee I’m paying for the interac machine rental.

How about everybody just comes up to Stouffville next weekend and buys all my stuff? Does that sound reasonable? Sure it does. You look like you need jewellery.

After spending that $400 for the new computer supplies, didn’t my computer get totally wonky the other day.

I don’t know what this had to do with the problem but I got an alert to upgrade my System Mechanic and so I did. Then I had to restart and so I did.

Well, boys and girls, when I restarted, my computer started making this strange honking noise, like ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. It wouldn’t stop. So I restarted again. And guess what? It was still doing it. I let it go. I figured at some point it was going to stop. It didn’t. ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.

I uninstalled System Mechanic and rebooted. That worked for something. The ba ba ba had stopped. But then I kept getting some error message and I could not connect to the internet.

I phoned my favourite computer guy, Eric of JM Computers, to see if he had a phone solution. He didn’t, so of course I had to bring my computer in.

I was expecting a reformat. I sent the disks off to him. Luckily for me he managed to fix something so that I can connect. He removed my UPS (battery) program and did some other things that he didn’t tell me about and it only cost me $40 (yes, another $40 on this stinking computer).

So now I’m up and running again. Life is grand. Life is so strange for me without a computer. I live on the computer. Even when I’m making jewellery, I’ll stop and get on the computer. That may be because I’m making the jewellery right here on my computer desk. I’m sure that’ll change once we get the jewellery area set up.

But I’m alive. And I have a trip to make today in the midst of this 30 cm of snow we’re supposed to get. Hopefully I’ll still be alive after that little trip.

I told you about the crashes. So how did I fix it?

On Friday I went to Tiger Direct. I purchased a new power supply – 750 as opposed to my old one which was 550. I bought a new fan. I bought a UPS (battery back-up) and, just for the hell of it, I bought a new 7-port USB hub.

I got everything hooked back up but then I noticed that there was no light on on the UPS. I read through the manual and there was supposed to be a light on. Hmmm.

I hooked up the new hub and only 3 of the 7 ports worked. Hmmm.

So yesterday I went dragging back to Tiger Direct and exchanged those things for others. While I was there I had them test each thing before I had to drag off home again and back in case they didn’t work. Everything worked.

Last night, after all the shopping we did all day, I hooked things up again. Well, doncha know, this UPS has lights on it that work. I’m all connected.

One benefit? My computer has not crashed once with all the new stuff. Two benefits? My computer is silent. I don’t even know the stupid thing is on, it’s so silent. It’s unbelievably silent. Spooky. Eerie. Is this thing on? It’s fabulous.

One drawback? I spent $400. Of course there was a $25 installation fee in there. Two drawbacks? Having to go back to Tiger Direct a second time. Why can’t they just sell products that work instead of me having to buy, go home, go back, go home. At least these ones are working.

I’m happy. I’m not crashing. Hmmm, what else could I install now?

For some strange reason, my computer keeps crashing. It’s not even like a crash… it’s like a whirl down to nothing and it restarts.

I thought maybe I’d uninstall some of the newest stuff, so I did. I’ve done a bunch of System Mechanic registry maintenance things and defrags and all kinds of crap to see if that helped it out, but it didn’t.

The only other thing I can think of is the latest Microsoft system updates that I did just before this crashing thing started.

Now where do I go to uninstall that stuff? I’m too lazy to google it at the moment. How do I take off the latest Microsoft update? Anybody know? This is starting to bug me. And my only other thoughts are a reformat, and we all know what a pain in the ass that is.

You know, if I never look at another piece of fucking jewellery, I’ll be fine. I made this three-strand freshwater pearl necklace tonight. Simple, kinda elegant, to go with the white shirt I will be wearing tomorrow.

Wouldn’t you know that once I get everything crimped up and closed and was putting final hooks on, one strand on the one side came off. How? I don’t know. But it was a helluva lot easier to cut that strand completely off than to try to undo it, recrimp it, yada yada. Now I’ve got a two-strand necklace and that’s not what I wanted.

Then I made some matching chain earrings. I cannot tell you how often I dropped the stinking earring as I was trying to close the chain. I told myself that if I dropped that just one more time… there would be no earrings. My ears would go naked.

I don’t know why you have to be a stinking rocket surgeon to be putting these things together. All kinds of people do it. Why not me?

So my white shirt tomorrow will be on course with me. My department gets to go on a conflict management course tomorrow and Friday – I’m on tomorrow. I didn’t want to dress up but I didn’t want to dress too down either. Christ knows that half the people who dress for ‘casual Fridays’ look like they should be trailing their sleeping bag and shopping cart behind them.

I don’t seem to get into a work headspace when I’m not ‘dressed for work’. If I look like a rubbie, work does not cross my mind – cleaning the kitchen floor might.

Anyway, I need a break from jewellery and jewellery websites, and doing any fucking work at all. I want to play a game. But I finished the Half Life 2: Episode Two game that I bought. It was way too short for my tastes. Or else I’ve gotten so good at guessing the next steps that I just whizzed through it.

Maybe I’ll go check my spam mail. I only do that about once a week or so, there just never seems to be any email that I want to read. So I end up saving some of it for a later date. And at some later date I end up clearing out my emails and just deleting everything there because it’s old and I figure if I didn’t read it back then, I don’t need to read it now.

BTW, if anybody is interested in giving me your feedback on the jewellery website, please let me know and I’ll email it to you. I have to keep it secret from here since it’s under my real name. So come on, you want to know a secret don’t you? And you can tell me if it looks right – because while I created it to work in IE 7 and Firefox, when I checked it at work in IE 6, it looked totally fucked up.

Go ahead. Talk to me. View my secret websites.

I remembered that my son was saying that he thought some Flash on his website would be cool, and I said, “that’s so 45 seconds ago”. Been there, done that.

However, tonight instead of doing a flash intro page for them, I thought, “hmmm, maybe I’ll just do a flash header”. So I created a flash header, you know… a flashy kinda thing with does some effects and slides and magically buttons appear. It was neat.

It was neat until I clicked on the link for another page. And then it started all over again. And clicking on another page? It started again. WTF was I thinking? I forgot that these layouts are not exactly in separate frames or anything, so of course the header loads again with every page.

I’m an idiot. So I quickly dickly (← I’m Ned Flanders now) took that off there. Perhaps I’ll do up an intro page in case they want it, but perhaps not.

In other news I was making another necklace tonight. I wanted a long, long necklace that could be worn long long or wrapped around the neck twice. Wouldn’t you know that I had just enough beads to make it long enough so that it wouldn’t fit over my big fat head the second time. So tomorrow I’ve got to get more of those same beads… if they have them.

Not going good today (← yoda now I am). At least that’ll give me a break. I need a break, I need a Kit Kat. I’m giving up those Kit Kats for a New Year’s resolution. Probably gonna cut back on the coffee too. So now I’m indulging, of course. I guess I’ll cut off the beer too since I also plan to do that South Beach diet again too. My, my, I’m quite the planner.

So that’s all for now. I’ve got to go splurge on some nice cold beverages. Copious amounts of beverages. Then bed. Or couch. We’ll see how those nice cold beverages hit me.

I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already and I haven’t written anything. Geez I’m lazy. Well, not quite. What I’ve been doing is working on a website. No, it wasn’t the jewellery website, although I’m far from finished with that.

I got a call from my son, whose band changed their name, and they wanted to put up a new website for it. So he had talked to me before about coming up with something and now I got the call.

And the call wasn’t to do up a website for them, it was to do up a TEST website for them. It would have to be approved by the band for its coolness, cuz we all know that an almost 51-year-old woman couldn’t possibly come up with something decent.

So I worked a bit on the design of that one. I was working out a logo since they don’t have one but my son says they’ve got an “artist” friend who’ll do the logo so I don’t have to worry about that. The problem with that is, how do you design a website without knowing WTF the logo is going to look like… or the colours?

He told me ‘earthy’ colours. WvTF that means. Earthy to me could be something totally different than what it is to him. But anyway, I came up with a template that I thought wasn’t too bad and I figured I’d do a couple more themes to switch and taste… see if there was anything they liked. I’m under scrutiny for all my hard work for free.

So that’s what I’ve been up to, and trying to get a music thing on their site so they could play a few sample tunes, as well as having a set up where we could add an integrated shopping cart so people could buy tunes and download them.

I’ve got way too much going on in my life to have anything more added to it. I’d like to finish my own stuff. I did make another necklace though and I liked it. The only problem was that I ran out of beads to make some matching earrings (or maybe even a bracelet). Let me know if you like it. And if you don’t, shut up. Ok, you can tell me if you don’t, but you wouldn’t want to get a reputation as being rude, now would you?

So I’ve got the facebook thing. So does my daughter, so does my son. Maybe they’re at an age where they find it useful for something. I do not.

I only go into it maybe once a week or so – when I even think of it. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to get out of it. Somebody added a funny youtube video. Somebody else is eating. And someone else added someone I don’t know as a friend.

WTF is this facebook thing for? I honestly don’t know why I bother with it except for the fact that everybody’s got it, so I had to have it too.

Oh, my friend poked me. I guess I’ll poke them back. Maybe I’ll leave a message or add some TV trivia points to my score.

I have never seen a bigger waste of time.

I don’t seem to have a lot to say lately. Mostly I’ve been working on the new jewellery website, and that’s a fuck of a lot of work.

First I tried using a shopping cart page but it looked too commercial, not like something personal. I played around with that one for weeks and even though I didn’t like the look of it that much – although I spent a lot of time with a design, in the end it just wouldn’t do all the things I wanted it to do.

So then I spent another couple of weeks designing the site in a wordpress format. I found a shopping cart plugin that worked perfectly.

Then? Then I checked the site in Firefox and it was totally screwed. Fucking Firefox.

So then I had to redesign all over again and look (at the beginning) to see whether the site worked in IE and Firefox. I finally came up with something but it’s not as nice as my first one so of course I don’t like it as much.

I’ve now started uploading some of the jewellery pictures. But of course any old pictures I had are no good because things need to be a certain size. So that means taking pictures all over again.

This has been a big pain in the ass. And I also downloaded some add-ons to that shopping cart plugin. I had to buy the add-ons but, guess what? They didn’t work. And when I contacted the guy, he wouldn’t get back to me except for the first time to say, oh you probably have a server issue. Ya right, server issue. Everything else works but all of a sudden when I’ve paid for something, there’s a server issue.

So right now I’m in the middle of a paypal dispute to try to get my money back.

That’s just some of the stuff I’m up to. I’ve put so much work into that website that I’m already sick of it. And yet if I ever want to sell anything, I’ve got to get a fuck of a lot more up there than 10 things.

Y’see, that’s why I’m not blogging that much. Now what’s your excuse?

On October 26th I topped up my daughter’s cell phone – $60 – in order to stop the rate from being 40¢ a minute and make it 25¢ a minute. I told her to carry over that money into the next month, and the next 10 years for Christ’s sake, since I’m usually only topping it up $10 a month. As far as I’m concerned the cell phone is only for emergency use, since she has her own phone number on a land line at home (that I also pay for).

Well, wouldn’t you know that, within two weeks, all of a sudden that $60 credit was gone. Her balance was down to $0. Zero fucking dollars in two weeks. And you know what from? It was the habbohotel.com.

What is the habbo hotel you ask? It’s basically a chat room with these little cartoon avatars. You can buy clothes and things for your avatars to wear and these clothes and things cost $3 each.

How do you buy them? Well you send a text message to your cellphone (or regular phone) and it takes the $3 off your cell phone balance. That $60 she had on her phone had $27 taken off from habbo hotel.

I had the discussion with her a long time ago about not buying things on habbo hotel. I trusted her not to do anything like that again because I knew she had run up hundreds of dollars at her dad’s place, and even over $60 here doing just that. I trusted her with $60 on her cell phone and this is what happened.

So tonight it seemed she even tried using my cell phone number to buy stuff. I got me a little ol’ text message telling me what to do to buy something. Not only one text message but 5 in total.

That prompted action on my part. I came home and blocked her internet access to habbo hotel. No more habbo hotel my daughter, you abused my trust in you. Then I called the cellphone provider and got text messages and the internet blocked from her cell phone. I know kids her age who don’t even have a stinking cell phone. Some don’t even have a home phone for crying out loud.

This habbo hotel is aimed at kids. It’s a chat room for kids. And there’s a disclaimer on the site that says, “don’t buy any of this without permission”. Oh what a safe guard for them, as if any of the kids are asking permission to do this crap.

And I have one more thing to say. If anything, a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g, even remotely like this “costing ze muzzer lotz und lotz of money” happens even once more, that girl will no longer have internet access either. Fuck that. I probably would have been killed for that shit. Or at least beaten.

When I got on the computer this morning, I saw that it had recovered from a serious error. I didn’t care much as I was gonna get ready for work.

When I got home from work tonight, my computer was shut down, so something else happened while I was away from the computer – perhaps some other serious error that made it shut right off.

When I opened my browser (Avant browser), nothing would open. I usually have about 10 or 12 tabs opened that I might want to look at or use as a reminder, but tonight none of them would open, so I uninstalled Avant and reinstalled it, and the same thing was going on. I was forced to use stinking Firefox.

So something wonky is going on and I don’t know what it is, that’s why I’m thinking that I’ll probably have to reformat again soon. It’s such a pain in the ass.

I’m not going to do it right away, I’ll wait until I absolutely have to because nothing works. What I’d prefer instead would be to buy a new computer, dual processor, as much ram as I could possibly fit, and transfer over my new video card and fairly new great big hard drives.

Can’t afford it, so a reformat it will probably have to be. That sounds like it could be the start of a pirate song, doesn’t it?

I wonder WTF is happening with my computer lately. My Spyware Doctor used to load on start-up and hold up everything else loading. Now everything else loads and my Spyware Doctor is ‘restarting its engine’ and doesn’t load til everything else has happened.

And tonight, I had 8 high-risk infections on my computer. Eight of them! WrTF did they come from… they weren’t there yesterday. Now Spyware Doctor did get rid of them, and to make sure, after it said that they were “fixed”, I rebooted and ran the scan again just to be sure. They were gone. But WrTF did they come from in the first place?

My daughter was on my computer the other day and I wondered how that happened. I had a password set on my computer and she managed to get on and set up a guest account and use it. So I turned the guest feature off, changed my password and left it at that.

I don’t want anyone else on my computer getting who knows what virus, installing some smiley face application with all kinds of spyware in it.

You use your computer, I’ll use mine. I didn’t buy her a computer for her to use mine. That’s how I feel about that. Perhaps I’ll have to set up the fingerprinting system so that my log in only works with my fingerprint. They have that y’know. I’ve thought of buying it before – that was before my daughter lived here. But I thought, “nah, why would I need something like that?”

I’m not saying she’s been on my computer again, I’m sure she hasn’t (because I have a secret camera set up and a key logger to check everything that goes on). I just don’t like anyone touching my stuff. As a great philosopher once said… No touchie!

I may be coming close to the reformat time again, although I don’t want that. I’m thinking I want a new computer (but I’ll take my brand new video card with the dual monitor ports). I also need a new sound card – something really expensive. Right. Well, that’s what I want, anyway.

I should buy a laptop. My laptop is so old it’s a joke to take it out – if I ever took it out. The thing weighs about 83 pounds, it’s as thick as a text book, and it’s white – I think it’s a Compaq, I can’t remember. It was good for when I used it (the last time I took a course and typed up all my notes during class), but I would be awfully embarrassed to be seen with it, so I’ll probably never use it again. I can’t even remember… was it a P2? P3?

In other news, our t-shirts came today. I ordered a t-shirt for me, my snookey and my daughter for Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th. You can view it here. I’m happy they got here on time, since I only ordered them on Monday. Great work this time, Zazzle.

Enough of that. I have The Office rerun to watch. Only two more weeks til the new season.

There we go, boys and girls, my cord finally arrived today and I’m all set up with my dual monitors.

Actually, the cord arrived yesterday, I had a notice from FedEx, they said they’d arrive the next day before 5:00. Well I’m not home before 5:00, I’m at work *duh*. So I signed the little piece of paper to say that they could leave it at my door – and they did.

So I had something to look forward to when I came home.

Meanwhile, at work yesterday something fucked up with my two monitors and I had to unhook one and set up just the other for a while. Then IT came to fix it. Yes, I know, I work in IT, but I’m not the ‘fix your problems’ section of IT.

That guy couldn’t get my monitors working so what he ended up doing was restoring my system to last Friday’s restore point and all of a sudden everything worked fine. Who knows what up with that, but now my two monitors at work and at home are working.

I’m thrilled. Although I do think I’m ready for a reformat very soon, things are slow (like me…. yes, you were thinking it, don’t deny it, I can tell when you’re lying).

Everything’s going well with my daughter, BTW. She’s enjoying her new school (after 3 whole days). She’s got a lot of friends there since she switched schools so often in her young life. So there are kids she knows from every school she attended now at the one high school. I wish I’d had that as a kid. I had no friends *sniff* and still don’t *sob, woe is me*.

I hope things continue to be enjoyable for her. She’s in her room doing her homework right now. I’m very proud of her responsibility level.

I found a new website that I like. I’m probably gonna blogroll it. Yes, I think I am gonna blogroll it.

Only one problem… this woman has written a book entitled, “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog”. How is that a problem? Well, what I had for lunch is about the only thing I have to write about. I love to tell people what I had for lunch, or dinner, or snack.

As a matter of fact, I just finished some pizza. Can I write about my meals if I stick some other little tidbits in there too – like telling you that it was ‘thin crust’ pizza?

I’d like to buy the book just to see what it says. Maybe I will one day. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like writing about my meals then. Maybe I’d stop saying, “ha ha” ← no, I didn’t mean it, it was just a thought.

Anyway, if you feel like it, go check out the site and see if you like it. No money was exchanged.

Remember how I ordered the plug for my Acer 1913 monitor off eBay? Well today I got an email saying that the guy had refunded my money because the option I chose had $9.95 shipping but that was only to the U.S.

Turns out that shipping to Canada was going to be $20.55 so I said forget it. I sent the guy a message saying to void that little change in contract and instead I called Acer Canada.

Well doncha know that Acer Canada connects to a U.S. support line and I had to order the product from the U.S. again. WyTF do they have a Canadian site hooked up with stuff you can only get in the U.S.?

It’s gonna cost me about the same amount of money but I’ll feel a little better knowing that it came from a ‘reputable’ source and they said it only takes 3-5 business days for shipping.

With my luck, you know it won’t be only 3 business days. And since it’s a holiday Monday in the U.S. too, that lets out the first part of the week. Maybe I’ll have it by next Friday.

In the meantime I had thought I might forget about it all and just go buy another monitor, so I headed off to Tiger Direct after work – they are just up the street from my work. They had a special with a 19″ monitor (not widescreen, I don’t want widescreen) for $149 counting a $20 rebate. But guess who had none left when we got to the store? So it was back to the cord for me.

Tonight’s Thursday and I’m really happy about it. I’ll watch Earl and The Office and 30 Rock and Scrubs ← maybe, and revel in my long, long weekend. Let’s just hope the weather is not as putridly hot as my computer room is, even though it was cold outside all day. They sucked me into wearing a tank top and a skirt to work today and left me thinking that I might sneak out at lunch to buy a sweater. I didn’t. I needed my money for my monitor cord.

So I guess you’re saying to yourself, where has that lazy bugger been? I’ve been here twice and there’s nothing new. WrTF is she?

Let me tell you what I’ve been up to.

On Wednesday I bought myself a new video card. Since I now have two monitors at work, I figured I’d set up the two monitors at home so things would be similar. Since my video card only had one output, I had to buy another one (a couple of hundred dollars because I needed a fairly good one so I could still play games). I got the eGeForce 7800GS which, I’m advised, will be much better than the $70 card they were originally offering me.

So I took it home, opened up my computer, took out my old card and put in the new one. I hooked everything back up and, voila, nothing worked. And as a matter of fact, my computer was now making this very unique squealing noise. Listen below.

Download audio file (squealingcomputer.mp3)

I do quite the good impression of a squealing computer, I must say.

So I thought to myself, “hey, that doesn’t seem right, I don’t remember my computer squealing before”, and, I, of course, was right. My computer is not supposed to squeal. So I couldn’t use the computer that night because I didn’t know WTF was going on and I wasn’t going to go through all that effort of pulling apart the computer, pulling out the card, putting back the old card, and plugging everything back in.

So the next day I took my computer over to Tiger Direct (where I bought the card and so many other things) and said, “hey, is it supposed to squeal like this?” [play dramatic, and oh so unique sound above].

They showed me these cables that came with the card and told me to hook them up like this [sorry, no videos], then plugged in my computer and all was well with the world again. Hmmmph, in the instructions it said something like, “if you need extra power, use those cables”. I didn’t know I needed extra power and therefore did not plug those in.

That night I took my computer home, hooked it up, got everything set up for the two monitor scenario, only to find that I had misplaced the cord for my old monitor.

So I now have two monitors hooked up to my computer, but I can only use one of them, and I’ll be damned if I was going out and buying another monitor since I already had two.

So I did a google on the brand name and found someone on eBay selling the power adapter for my monitor and I bought it. It’s coming from the States and it’s cost me $29.90 including shipping. I have no idea how long it’ll take to get here, but let’s hope it’s soon so I can revel in my dual life.

And that, boys and girls, is what I’ve been doing with my time. Right now I’m just waiting for my daughter and ex to show up so I can give my daughter her vacation money to take down to Newfoundland for a week, and lend my ex a suitcase for her clothes.

That’s that. I hope they have a good trip and that my daughter has a safe flight there and back. It should be a nice experience, an airplane flight. I was about her age too the first time I was on an airplane. That was way, way back before I became scared of any woosy thing you can think of.

I don’t know WTF is going on, but my screensaver won’t work. It just doesn’t kick in. It worked find before and the only thing I remember installing new are some games. I don’t see why games would cause it not to work.

I’ve been searching on the net and I see all kinds of things about the screensaver not working if you’re using a cordless mouse/keyboard. Well, isn’t that great? I haven’t even installed my cordless mouse/keyboard yet but I’ve been meaning to.

So I need to find someone to fix this for me. I’ll be damned if I’m uninstalling crap just to see if I can get it working again.

For now I’m just turning off my monitor. The bad thing though is that I had put a password on my computer so that my daughter would stop using it and use her own, and now no password jumps up at ya.

It’s always something. I hate computers.

My stinking monitor is going. I don’t know why, it’s not that old. I bought it at Costco, whenever, and now there are some lines running up and down through it, and some other lines that tend to disappear if I scroll and reappear in other places when I scroll back.

I don’t know WTF has happened with this but it pisses me off. All the trouble I’ve had with monitors. Remember when I bought this monitor was after my monitor from Staples conked out and it took me 6 weeks to get it fixed with that extended warranty.

I wouldn’t mind picking up a new 22″ monitor (this one is only 19″) if I had to buy a new one. Maybe I’d get one of those widescreen monitors which are good for watching movies on; like I ever watch movies on my computer. That would just put me in the hole again once payday hits – I think my paycheque will just take me out of my overdraft and, as long as I don’t spend anything for another two weeks after that, I’d have money in the bank. What are the chances?

Today we got our new phone system set up – supposedly. We’ve got three phone numbers here and the guy was supposed to call me back on all three lines so that I could see which was which since my phone number used to ring once, my honey’s rang twice, and the fax rang three times. So far the guy has only called back once, so I don’t know WTF is going on with that. I guess I’ll have to use my cell and try calling the numbers myself before I call back Primus to complain about the wrong wrings on the lines (oh, wrings, har har har, I am so clever).

I had to call Primus in the first place because I got the mail from them addressed to Ferguson Jafer instead of Jafer Ferguson. Don’t ask me how these assholes got my name backwards – it’s not like I told it to them that way.

So I’m off to do some calling. Hopefully we can get this fiasco straightened out tonight, or at least before the stupid DSL is supposed to be hooked up in a few days.

Well I don’t know WTF is going on with my computer but all the browsers are fucked up.

I opened my usual Avant and it kept crashing. Then I tried Firefox and while the little hourglass was showing, the browser wasn’t opening. Out of desperation I went to IE and that wouldn’t start either.

I rebooted and had the same thing with Avant. Luckily for me at least Firefox would start this time so I can at least update you on my screwed computer. Have I told you how much I hate computers?

We just got home from Costco. We went looking for the guy who signed us up for the new Win-Tel/Primus service. Alas, he was nowhere to be found. We had gone last night looking for him too, but he wasn’t there.

We called Win-Tel last night to find out when the hell our new high speed DSL internet/long distance Canada and U.S. phone service with 11 free add-ons, was supposed to start. We signed up for the service on March 8th and have yet to hear anything from anyone.

Win-Tel told us last night that they hadn’t received the paperwork. I asked if this was indicative of their service and they told me that their service was good, they just had to wait for the paperwork to come from Costco.

Well where is the guy who signed us up? How come there’s no sign of him? Where is our paper work? Where TF is our new service? Where oh where has my little dog gone, oh where, oh where can he be?

Of course that has nothing to do with whatever is wrong with my computer. I hope it’s not a virus but then who cares, something’s wrong with it ever since before I had that new power source put in so I’ve been expecting to reformat pretty soon (even though it’s the brand new hard drive).

When I can’t even get my games to play, it’s a pretty sorry day. I tried installing Bejewelled, pretty simple game, something you can put on the lowliest of computers, and that wouldn’t even work – said the file was corrupt.

Anyway, I’m gonna go watch me some television. Today I got taken out for my goodbye lunch even though I’m staying til May 4th. I guess they figured that they’d promised me a lunch every week that I was supposed to leave that they’d better take me out to lunch just for all the promising.

I picked up my computer tonight with the new 320 gig hard drive, yes, partitioned so I’m now a CDEFG girl.

I have installed absolutely nothing yet except my Avant Browser and it doesn’t look like I’ll get around to installing anything else this evening cuz Earl and The Office should be coming on in about 6 minutes.

We’ll chat later.

Here on my honey’s computer again. I took mine in tonight to the new guy who we bought my daughter’s computer from, just to find out pricing.

I didn’t know if I’d need yet another reformat but I didn’t give a shit about paying someone else to fix my computer cuz I was feeling like I got overcharged on the last bit of work I had done (even though I talked him down from what he was originally going to charge me).

I got pricing and it was about equivalent so I was all prepared for yet another reformat. However, when I told him what the problem was, he said that it sounded like I needed a new hard drive.

Well that was great, I thought, since I just bought that hard drive a few months ago. It would be covered by warranty. So I went back to the old guy only to find out that *supposedly* I bought that new hard drive on December 3rd, 2005.

What does that say, boys and girls? That says that exactly one year AND A MONTH after the warranty expired, the fucking hard drive went kaput.

So I left it with him, told him to install a new hard drive and I figured the price of the hard drive itself was pretty good – $136 for a 320 gig, 16 mg cache. That’s twice the size (and probably half the price) of the last 160 gig hard drive I bought.

I asked him to install it and the drivers and have it ready for me at 5:00 tomorrow, so, hopefully everything will be working properly. I’m having it partitioned just like my other D and E hard drive, so now I’ll have C, D, E, and F all as hard drives.

I certainly didn’t want one whole hard drive at 320 gigs. Ya know how long it takes to run your spyware or virus scan on a drive that huge? I’ll tell you it was pretty slow just on 160 which is what the partition will be again.

Once again I guess I’ll start reinstalling programs in a couple of days. At least I hadn’t spent all my time reinstalling programs. That’s about the only benefit.

And now, just because I’m a distrustful bitch, I’m going to look for the receipt of the last hard drive just to see the exact date of purchase on that. I can’t believe that it’s over a year ago. I don’t remember doing all that scanning of the huge hard drive for that long a period.

Oh, and BTW, before the crash I upgraded to WordPress 2.1 Ella. So I’m gonna be looking for the new and special features.

Yes, my lack of posting is because I have no computer again.

I don’t know if that power surge we had here in Ontario fried my computer or what, but I can’t get past a black screen coming up and asking me if I’d like to start in Safe Mode, Last Good Configuration, or Start Windows Normally.

It doesn’t matter which one I choose, all it does it put me back to that black screen and ask me which I’d like to do.

So… I guess I have to take my computer back in tonight to see what can be done with it. I’d say that my honey could bring it in today except that his new car isn’t starting – the battery is fried. He got a boost from CAA the other night and they told him his battery was at 25% capacity.

And he can’t use my old car because that’s not starting either – perhaps the battery is fried. My new battery in my car was returned the other night because when I left work my car wouldn’t start.

See what a little cold weather does over here? No cars starting. Except for everybody else’s. My car is starting fine right now though after the battery exchange. My honey is taking the bus to work, only because it’s too damned cold to walk (even though it’s only about 15 minutes away).

Anyway, I’ll have to see about getting my computer fixed AGAIN. I haven’t even loaded all my stuff on there from the reformat (lazy bugger). But the FEAR game did load and work, so I got to see what that game was like again (funny how you can forget how they go).

So I guess I won’t be posting as often, I’m only doing it now cuz my honey is still in bed and I’m using his computer.

I’ll see you later when I’ve got my own stuff working.

When someone says to you, “this is confidential”, don’t you get the feeling that it’s confidential? That perhaps you shouldn’t say anything about it? It’s hush hush? I do.

That’s why I can’t understand why, the other day at work, when the boss said to me, “this is confidential”, she needed to go on with, “talking about this to anyone would be a ‘fireable’ offence”, “not even the girls at lunch”, “this is top secret”, “your job could be 7 weeks shorter”.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I get it. One word describes the whole thing to me. Confidential. Ok. It’s not like I talk to anybody anyway about what I’m working on but I know for sure I won’t be talking about the ‘confidential’ stuff. So stop re-iterating, threatening, whatever. I GET IT!

In other news I’m using my honey’s computer cuz my computer’s still screwed. I took it in for a reformat yesterday and it was supposed to be ready last night but, of course, it wasn’t. So I’m supposed to go today after 12:00 to pick it up. Getting everything set up again will be a big treat.

So that’s what I’m up to, boys and girls. Weeks of adding back programs *yawn*. I did mention to him, though, that my two front usb ports have never worked and I’d like them to work, so perhaps that will be accomplished. Right now I’ve only got 4 usb ports at the back and one of them is for the external usb hub so that I can attach 4 more usb connections. I need the other two.

My computer is fucked. I got an update last night for my Logitech webcam and I updated. Today everything was crashing (blue screen memory dump crash).

When I uninstalled the webcam, all of a sudden my keyboard wouldn’t work. Now I’m using some “corded” keyboard from (probably) 10 years ago and I hate it.

When I go to click a program shut with the little X, it maximizes the windows. If I click minimize, it will do the same thing, toggling back and forth no matter which button I hit, from maximum to regular size.

My programs won’t launch. I can use the mouse to go into the program list but when I click on them, they won’t open – they’ll only open if I press enter after I’ve highlighted them.

And my quicklaunch bar does nothing at all. If I click on any of the programs from there, it does absolutely zilch.

So, guess who’s due for another reformat then? Fucking computer. Fucking updates. Now I have to go through the whole stinking thing again. Life sucks. Even more so now that I don’t have a cigarette to empathize with me. Stinking life. Stinking Logitech.

Is that all I ever do…. play games? Well, of course not. I also do important things. Very important things. The things I do are so important that I wouldn’t sound like the humble person that I am if I were to relay them to you. So, I’ll be my humble self and just talk about playing Painkiller.

C’mon, you gotta love a game that’s got all this freaky music to it. I wish I were a musician. I wish I played freaky music. That’s gotta be the job doesn’t it?

Download audio file (PrisonMusic.mp3)

I’m a little busy setting up my boss’s new website. She, of course, has no content for it yet, but I’m just getting it set up and worrying about content later.

So I’ve got to do what I can before Earl and The Office come on – which is in about 4 minutes. I’ve accomplished quite a bit so far, but I don’t have time to yak it up. We’ll talk on the weekend.

After 5 stinking days of not being able to see my site, I finally deactivated the gravatars2 plugin tonight, and all of a sudden I could see my site. It happened while I was on the phone to the Netfirms support guy – Mike – so both he and I were witness to my site loading when I deactivated and not loading when I turned it back on.

I’ll assume this was the problem the entire time and send out a public apology to Netfirms for thinking it was some stinking database problem when it was a plugin problem. Still, I’d like to think that their tech support would be able to troubleshoot any problems instead of figuring it out myself, but they weren’t to blame it looks like for the site not showing up.

And since it’s almost 11:00, I’m not gonna write any big post, but just say hi and bye. I’m back, I don’t expect too much action on the weekend since nobody usually writes anything (except me), so I’ll see you tomorrow. Or rather, I’ll see me.

My site is still not showing up and it’s been four days now. I’ve contacted Netfirms repeatedly and gotten nothing resolved.

Each time I call (and when I can get through to someone) they end up telling me they’ll escalate the issue to second level techs, and I end up asking why it’s been de-escalated since the site is not fixed.

I don’t know what the fuck is going on here but I’m not too fucking happy about it.

Send me an email or something since I can’t see any comments and you can’t write them. And you can’t even see this blog to find that out.

Assholes. How long does it take to get things fixed?

I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Netfirms, but I’ve been trying to access my site for 2 days now and not able to. I’ve been calling them for two days and not getting any answer on this.

At first the problem was just some really slow access and my site taking forever to load or time out, now I can’t get to it at all. I just seem to be able to get to the writing page – and then not – and then there.

I hope they get this fucking thing fixed soon. Christ knows that the one time I was able to get through to them today, “Lucy” put me on hold for an indefinite period until I hung up and then I couldn’t get through to them again.

I hope they’re not turning into another vistapages.com type of company with shitty customer service and problems all the time. I’ll wait and see.

They’re having some database trouble with my site – I don’t even know if this post will show up. So I’ll write when things are fixed – hopefully, soon.

Need an alarm clock? Spent all your money on internet access and now can’t afford to buy an alarm clock?

Well then, this is the clock for you. Visit the site, set your timer, and voila! You’ll be awakened bright and early and it didn’t cost you a cent.

BTW, don’t forget to leave your computer on all night.

In my email tonight there were 455 emails in the Spam category. However, that’s not all the spam – a few more sneak into the inbox.

I saw an interesting one. The subject was: Best Price for Impotence

Funny thing… I never realized that impotence was overpriced. And now “Maryann” is offering me a good deal on impotence.

Tell me, are any of you paying too much for impotence? If so, here’s what her email says:

Do you feel the pressure to perform and not rising to the occasion??

Try Viagra…..
your anxiety will be a thing of the past and you will
be back to your old self.

Hmm, I don’t see anything about where to get the best price on impotence.

Maybe I should contact Sherise Lizette who, although she seems to have some typing or spelling problems, because her subject line read: “iuvp SAVE 82%: VIAGR*, AMBIE*, CIALI*, XANA*, RIVOTRI*, LEVITR*, CIPRO, MERIDI*, CELEBRE*, VALIU* went” – she at least had a website for me to peruse.

Sherise tells me this:

http://www.geocities.com/pofof7992/
(Click this link to save 80%)

teacher glad garden across pretty opposite, husband trees necessary bread second? worthy besides fire quietly worthy length? explain find and or luck, friend as leader.
edge winter each mischievous teacher. Quality Meds Selling At Cheeap
We dont keep ur record (not even your name)
You just pay & we ship, No Question form to fill
We ship to all countries

Viagr*, Ambie*, Ciali*, Xana*, Rivotri*, Levitr*, Cipro, Meridi*, Celebre*, Valiu*, Zoloft & Many More Meds very

with C11ck Here for Huge Saving side

I’m thinking that Sherise perhaps suffers from more than typing or spelling woes because she goes on to say:

spoken come quickly teacher kept taste? immediate number person completely.
ridge window occasion stay meeting?
either advantage immediate did? need being similar blue leader? arm person captain disappoint ought summary,
bridge journey know necessary. saying miss prettier development?
corner friend shook lady money?
familiar wood rose trees? book husband mischievous?

Quite frankly, I’ve missed her point. I wonder if she has a good price on impotence.

Tonight I went to visit my mother at “the home” but there’s more to that story that I’ll tell you about another night.

After that I also went to get my hair cut since it’s been over 5 weeks and I usually need a haircut by 3-1/2 weeks. So I went to the cheap place that I’ve been going to ever since my previous unemployment and the woman was on vacation… two weeks’ vacation.

You’d think they could call their clients when they’re going away and say, “hey! need a haircut? I’m going away for weeks and you’re already due!” But, no, they don’t do that and so with two other haircut people working, I said, “ok, how long for a haircut?”

Well the woman I was talking to was busy doing someone else, and the other woman who was there said that she was going on break when she finished what she was doing.

So I thought, obviously, nobody needs the money and I said, “ok, forget it” and walked out. I’m not gonna beg for someone to give me a haircut and I’m not gonna wait for an hour for one either, so I left.

Right beside that though was EB Games who were having a 2 for $20 and 2 for $30 and 2 for $40 sale, so we walked in there.

Wouldn’t you know that none of the PC games were on sale. But what I did find was a new episode for Half Life 2. I would have found that out if I ever turned the game on anymore, but I don’t. I’m finished the game and I hardly ever turn it on now.

Remember when I was so obsessed with Half Life 2? What was that, two years ago when it first came out? I was playing it every stinking night. I didn’t look to see if something was on TV – who cared?

Apparently Steam is coming out with all these individual episodes for Half Life 2 (instead of paying $60 or $70 for the game, you’ll just pay $20 each time to own the episodes). That’ll probably cost a fortune – why else do it that way?

So now I’m off to install my new episode and half a lifetime of Half Life fun awaiting me. Or at least a week’s worth.

For those who didn’t see this comment (and I didn’t since it was stuck in the moderation queue, which I don’t usually check), I had some word back from vistapages.com. Comment as follows:

Just some facts here, before you go and make VistaPages look like a “horrible” company.

1. Your account was past the 30-day money back guarantee.
2. We do not provide refunds after the 30-day money back guarantee on pre-paid accounts, this is clearly mentioned in our TOS.
3. You were not registered for 2 years, but rather only 1 year.
4. Your domain name was not regsitered through us, or transferred to us and was held by NetFirms. The domain expired with NetFirms. Your web hosting account was active. If you had renewed your domain name with Netfirms, your web site would have popped back up with no problems.

If you have any questions, you can direct them directly to me, and I will be more than happy to look into it; but I did some research on your tickets before posting here.

Thank you for your time and best of luck with NetFirms.

My response to that is this:

1. I signed up with vistapages.com because they were located in Toronto and were offering what I was looking for with support… that being telephone support.
2. Within the first month of my signing up, they stopped offering telephone support – now the only way to ask questions or get support was by submitting a ticket or using their “live assistant” which sometimes didn’t even connect.
3. When you could connect to their live assistant, you had to wait in between responses for minutes at a time. Sometimes I didn’t know if I was still connected because it took so long for an answer, and other times I was cut off. A simple phone call would have lasted one-quarter of the time of typing, sitting, waiting for an answer.
4. When I asked them about my domain name renewal, not once did anyone tell me that I had to actually change registrars to them – I thought this was done when I changed providers and the dns settings, but my domain expiring could easily have been averted if anyone had answered my question.
5. I asked the question 5 days before my domain expired – I think it was 4 days after expiry that they got around to providing an answer.
6. The reason I said that I had signed up for two years was because that’s what their customer support told me. I didn’t remember signing up for two years, but it’s not unlike me, so I believed them when they told me that.
7. Even if I was only signed up for one year, regardless of their ‘terms of service’, I don’t believe that I should have to pay for shitty customer service and I took my business elsewhere.
8. They, of course, are not providing me with my money back. I guess they figure that once they suck you in past the 30-day mark, whatever happens after that is too bad – after all, it’s in their terms of service that you won’t get a refund.

All in all I’m not surprised that they are not providing a refund. Based on their quality of customer support, ripping people off would seem to fit in with their standards.

I do not recommend vistapages.com and would wholly recommend Netfirms Web Hosting to anyone searching for a provider. At the very least you can call them up, ask questions, and get answers and their prices are in line with the other providers. At least you can count on them.

I host 5 domains with Netfirms and have always been happy with their level of support.

ah-haa, there is nothing we can do, knowing me, knowing you, ah-haa (oops, sudden Abba attack for no apparent reason).

I was thinking about bloggers and their commenters and how even though none of us really know each other, based on the comments and the writing styles, we somehow feel like we know each other to some extent.

And I think it’s neat (yes, I’m a big dork who says, “neat” – as you know). I think it’s neat that when you get to know regular readers and writers you can pick up on their senses of humour, even when it’s dry, or sarcastic, and they, by their words, don’t sound like they’re joking.

I appreciate it all, and what I appreciate most about it is the fact that we’re all virtual strangers and yet have a connection.

And a funny thing is that in my time on the net, I have ended up meeting tons of people who live in my own city. I barely talk to people in my own city (cuz they’re all freaks *har har*) and yet I end up talking to people in my own city based on meeting on the net.

And that’s enough for now I guess. I have a movie to watch with my daughter and my snookey and, in general, just to sit around looking gorgeous (you know, like usual).

We’ll talk tomorrow. Oh, I guess we won’t since I’m the only blogger in history who tends to blog on weekends – and blog even more, then. I love you, man *sniff* – no I’m not drunk… yet.

Download audio file (Knowing Me Knowing You – Abba.mp3)

I’ve just been sitting here waiting for the computer guy to show up. Our network hasn’t been working since I bought the new hard drive, and now that my honey’s been reformatted and XP’d, his network access isn’t working either.

So Eric just showed up and is here to fix everything. I didn’t quite expect him this late – I’ve got voting to watch soon. But he was also supposed to check the computer in my son’s room and since that’s such a pigsty, my son wouldn’t let him in there.

And then I learned that my daughter’s computer is no longer hooked up in there… he’s hooked up his own computer because my daughter’s was running too slow. Thanks for telling me. Perhaps there’s something I could have fixed (or had the computer guy fix since he’s here).

Funny, I thought my son said he was gonna clean up that room over a week ago. So I’ve gotta wonder why there’s laundry all over the place (you’re lucky if you can find the bed or the computer in there) and enough dishes to start his own restaurant.

WTF is the big deal with cleaning? I wouldn’t want to live in a room like that. It’s just not healthy, man! Get your fucking head screwed on right. There’s no need to live like a pig.

It was a very busy day yesterday and I won’t go into all the details cuz, frankly, who cares? But I will tell you that my honey had a computer crash the other day and so he finally took in his computer to Eric to have it reformatted and stuff done.

I’ll explain that my honey has my old computer. When I buy new stuff, somebody always scores my old stuff. So when he got my old one he had it reformatted, and for some reason the CD and DVD would no longer work. So he’s been using a computer for years(?) without any way to use a disc.

This has made things very hard if he wants to add a program or anything. I know I’ve put some games on his computer but I’ve had to copy the whole CD onto my computer and then access them through the network. That didn’t work for everything, though.

He’s also got Windows XP on there now; now that it’s almost time to buy Vista. So I was busy doing some installing last night.

We did rent a movie, and it was a movie that got a bad review by critics – it was Fun with Dick and Jane. We liked it. It was amusing, and I could certainly relate to the being out of work stuff. I don’t know why it got such a bad review.

The funniest thing during the whole movie has to be at the beginning when they’re introducing the characters and the dog gets zapped with a little electrified collar. I have no idea how they got the dog to jump like it was getting electrocuted, but it was hilarious… we played that part back a couple of times when the movie was done (yes, we’re sick, but sick in a very laughable sort of way).

Let me know if you’ve seen the movie and what you thought of it.

I know some of you have commented and you don’t see it here. That’s because I redid the entire database at the new provider. Luckily I found a more recent backup of my database, so now I have posts from this year (as opposed to the previous one I found which ended at February 2005).

So now it’s just work, work, work, to try and get everything back to the way I like it. But I’m feeling better knowing that I didn’t lose much with the switch.

Stay with me, I’ll be back to the normal idiot soon.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Netfirms was having yet another database problem today and so I called and cancelled my account.

So if you don’t see my site for a couple of days, that’ll be because it’s in the midst of transfer to BlueHost. Let’s hope they’re better.

I’ll write again when everything is up and running.

Netfirms is really starting to piss me off. Wait, what am I saying… “really starting?”, I’ve been getting more and more pissed off whenever my site goes down MONTHLY. Are they PMSing? Seems like it. Why does this problem happen every month?

I don’t know what you can see or not see here, needless to say I can sometimes see the whole page, and then if I refresh, maybe I see two posts and a blank sidebar, or maybe I see 5 posts, no sidebar and no background.

I have always promoted Netfirms and I guess that’s mostly because I never had any problems with them before. For years I’ve hosted sites with them. And most of their customer service reps are great, friendly and helpful (notice I say ‘most’).

However, I just renewed my annual hosting here and moved around some domains and it’s pissing me off to no end that once again I’m putting up with the same shit.

RESOLVE THE ISSUE ALREADY YOU FUCKHEADS! DON’T MAKE ME HAVE TO CHANGE NEIGHBOURHOODS.

Update Feb. 25: So it’s two days later and this morning when I got on the computer, the same problem was still happening.

This is a screenshot taken from Avant browser where you see two posts showing on the left and no sidebar on the right.

It seems that for some reason the page starts to load, and this is how much it loads, and then the status bar shows that it’s finished. It just stops loading.

This is a screenshot taken from Firefox, where I actually end up with 4 posts on the left, but no sidebar and no background.

I called them again not only last night, but this morning (Saturday) and they were going to re-escalate the problem.

I don’t know what you guys are seeing, but I’m assuming it must be something similar.

For some reason, the other day my Avant Browser died on me and I can’t use it any more.

It didn’t crash or anything but what it did do was start opening every tab I’d ever opened in the tab windows.

You know the way Firefox lets you open tabs on the bottom (or on the top)? – well you could do that with Avant and you could set it to have your recently opened tabs open the next time you started the browser.

That was great for me because website I would have forgotten about in the meanwhile, would be right there in my face as soon as I went back on the computer. That could have been 5 tabs open or even 10 depending on what I was surfing.

However, for some reason it started reopening tabs. So if I had 5 tabs open the time before, this time I’d have the 5 and then the same 5. And sometimes it would be 50 tabs that I had opened at some time on some day. I don’t know WTF happened with it all of a sudden.

So now I’m forced to use Firefox. And I keep accidentally closing it. Which, of course, means that I’m starting brand new again with only my home page showing every time I open it.

And I have that big prejudice against Firefox anyway. I guess since I always hated Netscape, I don’t like the idea that I’m using Netscape now.

Alright, enough whining. Yesterday we went over to help my ex with his move to his new place. I didn’t offer to help move him, my son was helping with that.

I did offer to go over and arrange his furniture and put up pictures, move stuff to the appropriate rooms where things belonged… that kinda stuff.

What I did end up doing mostly was cleaning. God that guy lives like a pig (and that living includes my daughter who is the biggest perpetrator of throwing garbage all around the place). But everything he’d brought over needed cleaning and that’s what I did. We couldn’t even put up half the pictures because of the cement walls – we need to drill, plug and place for that and the toolbox was nowhere to be found.

The bad thing was that it was pouring rain yesterday and he didn’t bother renting a moving truck, instead he was using one of the pick-up trucks from his work. So he couldn’t take a lot of things over because there was no cover for the truck and things’d get soaking wet. Luckily he had moved some of the bigger items the night before.

By the time I got home (at 8:00 p.m.) I was stiffer than a big stiff thing. I guess sitting at home for 9 months has not exactly used whatever muscles I was using yesterday.

Thankfully, today I don’t feel too sore. I can get up and sit down without having something to brace myself on to push myself up.

So now I’ll just go relax and hope I’m all recuperated for Wednesday.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about Green Zap.

They’re the competition – to Pay Pal.

As a Green member, you earn $5 in WebCash for every Green and Gold member you directly refer to GreenZap. As your friendz and family open GreenZap accounts, you’ll see your available WebCash balance increase.

If you upgrade your account to Gold, you would earn $5 in WebCash for every Green member you directly refer to GreenZap and $20 (divided 80/20 Cash/WebCash) for every Gold member you directly refer to GreenZap.

Sign up now and get $50 of webcash for free. You can do it by clicking on their logo above (*duh, I get it*).

Oh, I also forgot to tell you about Ego Surf. I found it at my new tenant’s blog (just another reason for you to go check her out). My score is indicated in the picture below. Not bad for someone who has their site cloaked (but then again, maybe not good for someone whose site is hidden).

I had a fabulous job interview today, dahlings, simply fabulous.

My appointment was for 1:00 and I was 15 minutes early. Then they told me that they were running a little late, but they failed to tell me that it meant half an hour late.

So at 1:35, I told the woman that I could leave since this didn’t seem to be an opportune time. I was so damned polite about the whole thing, rather than saying what I thought, which was, “I won’t even wait for a doctor… he’d better be within 5 minutes or I’m leaving”.

At that point the woman went to the other woman, and I was seen right away. That interview lasted from 1:35 until 3:15. Almost two hours for crying out loud. I’ve never had a job interview so long.

But I think it went well. The only problem is that there’ll be second interviews, probably next week. While I feel that I aced it in the first interview, I don’t know how I can pull that out of a hat again with even more people.

When I got home my snookey called to tell me that there was a message on my computer from the woman for the interview tomorrow. I naturally thought, “uhoh, maybe it’s a cancellation”, like that other interview I had set up and they cancelled half an hour before I was going to leave for the interview. But luckily for me it was just a confirmation, so I’ll be heading off for my 9:30 appointment in Scarberia tomorrow.

I’m feeling good. I’ll be very surprised if I’m not chosen for the second interview, but then it’s not like stranger things haven’t happened.

And hopefully tonight, something new will start on TV so that we’ll have something to watch on Mondays. Life is good, except that I’ve got to go iron clothes in preparation for another interview. Gotta look cool and professional, not like the frumpy old lady that I am.

I know this is not the most interesting thing I could write about, but when has that ever stopped me before?

My computer wasn’t ready yesterday. After Eric upgraded the BIOS and did whatever he felt he needed to do (with my computer NOT crashing for him) he told me it was ready to take home.

So I tested one of my games while I was there, and whaddayaknow? it crashed, right there at the computer place. So I rebooted, tried the game again and, voila, it crashed again. So I had to leave it overnight since it was about closing time for them.

So today when I went to pick up the computer he’d figured out the problem (so he thinks) and said I needed a new power source – the one I had was too small. I bought the “best” one, 550W, and we hooked everything up, with no crashes there.

I’ve just hooked up everything here now and so far no crashes, but I’m still waiting to see. I’m still doubtful. How the fuck can a power source prevent me from getting into Windows, even in safe mode?

I’m just waiting for a crash, cuz I told Eric that if this didn’t work, $129 later, I’d be back in the shop faster than white on rice (??).

Now I’m going to try playing Painkiller, but not the last level where I am cuz it’s too farging hard for me, I’ll probably never get to end the game. Then I might surf a bit, and just keep my computer running to see if anything blows up real good.

Other than that, I just went driving around today, downtown where I have a job interview tomorrow, and out to Scarberia where I have a job interview on Tuesday.

Wish me mucho luck. That’s all for today, boys and girls.

Oh, BTW, we enjoyed Wedding Crashers, it was cute, but very, very long chick flick.

Fuck, computers piss me off. Over the last few days, my computer kept crashing and sometimes not restarting, and as of last night, not even restarting in Windows Safe Mode.

I don’t know WTF is going on with my computer (I’m on my honey’s computer right now), but since I just bought the new hard drive a month ago, I thought that maybe that was the problem.

So I took the computer over to Eric this morning to get the hard drive replaced. And you know that would be a pain in the ass since I’ve just about got all my programs loaded back on there.

Well Eric ran some tests, and he doesn’t think it’s the hard drive. And, of course, the computer worked just fine when I took it over to him. It always does that. In my home… crash and burn, at Eric’s… nothing’s wrong.

So I’ll go back in about an hour. He was going to update the BIOS and see if that does anything. Let’s hope so. I hate computers and anything that looks like them.

It was a busy day, getting up at 7:00 and getting ready for piano.

• Then I had to race off to Weight Watchers with only half an hour to get there from piano over to Centrepointe Mall.
• Then I had to go get my hair cut since I have two job interviews next week.
• Then I had to go pick up the picture I was having framed for my mother (who I just decided to talk to recently).
• Then go over to check on the computer.
• Then go pick up the video for tonight (Wedding Crashers).
• Then I’ll have to go back for the computer.
• Then I’ll bring the computer home and rehook it up and see if it works.

I hope tonight’s movie is good since I had a depressing time at WW with the gaining of 2 pounds since last week. What up with that? Wasn’t I feeling starved all farging week trying to stay within that 22 points? Wasn’t I drooling at Harvey’s commercials because of my lack of food?

I need beer to drown my sorrows. Oh, woe is me.

I got a renewal notice from Netfirms, saying that my domain was up for renewal in January and that it would be automatically renewed.

After the trouble with my site over the last few months, I decided that I’d search out other hosting firms with the thought of switching.

A friend of mine had recommended canaca.com, so I went to check out their features, which were similar to Netfirms’ and maybe a little better.

So I figured I’d phone them to ask about everything I wanted, just to make sure they had it all before I switched.

While I was phoning, I thought, “oh, I wonder what their technical support is like; maybe I’ll try that and see how they are”.

So I phoned technical support and a message came on saying that this technical support was only for domains that were down or having problems, and any other technical issues were to be sent by email to them.

I waited on hold from 9:31 to 9:40, in silence, until another message came on saying that there was an unusually high volume of calls, and to email them, and a response would be forthcoming within 1-to-12 hours, and then CLICK, the call ended.

Because of that, no technical support (unlike Netfirms where you can call day and night, hardly ever have to wait to speak to someone, and ask the most inane questions of them), I will not be switching to canaca.com.

I’ve had the providers before who offer everything but support, and I’m not interested.

So unless I find another Canadian provider who offers more than Netfirms AND provides good technical support, it looks like I’ll be staying with them.

Well, I forgot all about writing today and now it’s almost time for My Name is Earl, followed up by my favourite, of course… The Office.

I just finished installing Painkiller (and testing it) and I’ve got Half Life 2 back on here, so everything’s good so far. I have 3 games I can play now, if you count Zuma. Oh, make that 6, since I also put on Collapse, and 2 other games that came with that when I bought it.

I’m a gaming fool. Only three more big games to install: FEAR, Doom 3, and Splinter Cell, and then I’m gamed out.

I got a couple of calls for job interviews today. I’ve got one tomorrow morning and one on Thursday morning. Let’s hope I get something, and if I get something, let’s hope it’s the highest paying job.

Who am I kidding? Give me anything. Maybe we’ll be able to buy some Christmas presents. Otherwise, kids already know that there are no presents coming from this Santa, this year.

Anyway, I’m off to watch Earl. Wish me great luck for tomorrow (since that’s the one I’d really like), but Thursday’s job, if not.

I have no computer today (well, since yesterday at 2:00). I took my computer in to Eric for a reformat and installation of a new hard drive.

It’s hard to believe, but my C: drive was almost full. I’d get a warning about the limited space every time I ran a defrag, and my D: and E: were pulling up a close second.

Also, after installing the Doom 3, and getting quite far with it, every time I tried to play it again, it would crash on me. Makes me want to buy a new video card too, but I can’t afford it. I’m gonna have to charge this on a credit card, if I have any credit cards with any money left (hopefully, since Eric will want to get paid).

I’m buying a new hard drive to take the place of C: and I’m going to reformat and repartition my existing one into D: and E: – so I guess I’ll have quite a bit of work to do once I get that back. Each drive will probably be about 160 gigs.

In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure until I get back with more interesting things (ya, right), here’s the fighting cow video that I found at YouTube.

BTW, there’s this little game I found called Squares.

It’s a little addictive. The game looks like it’s gonna be simple, and the idea is. How you play it may be a little more difficult.

I’m gonna go play Doom 3 now since I’ve reinstalled it on my computer.

NOTE: 6068 squares is the highest I can get up to in the squares game.

I actually did well in that computer test yesterday. How do I know? Cuz they already started doing the reference checks, and today I got a phone call to tell me I was in the top something, and could I come in for the final, face-to-face interview.

So I do that on Friday at 2:00. Just watch, after passing the phone interview, and passing the computer testing, I’ll somehow fuck up the face-to-face interview and not get the job.

Regardless, it was nice to know that I’d done something right for a change, especially since this is a huge company I applied to, hence, the 60-zillion steps to trying to get a job.

Right now my computer is fucked up. I installed something the other day, I forget what it was, but it was making my computer go wonky, so I uninstalled it and it was still wonky. So I set the computer back to a day before’s restore point and then of course I couldn’t play my Painkiller game.

The sad thing about that is that I had finally gotten farther than I’d ever gotten in that game. I was up to the big wicked swamp thing and had gotten past levels I couldn’t get past before.

So I uninstalled and reinstalled and uninstalled and reinstalled Painkiller but it still wasn’t working.

I’ve uninstalled it again, and set it back to an even previous restore point and I’m going to try to reinstall it again.

What else is funny is that my Photoshop, and Photoshop Elements were also not working… telling me that I didn’t have the right identification or something, and they used to work.

Also, I can’t add or remove programs from the Control Panel – there’s no icon to remove them, just a link showing whether they’re frequently used or not. Oh, pardon me, I can remove some of them, but not most of them. So I’ve got to look this stuff up on the net and see if I can find a solution to this.

Otherwise, I may be looking at the dreaded reformat. It’s been months since I did that. And it’s a pain in the ass if I have to do it yet again.

Anyway, that’s my day. I never heard back from the guy from Monday’s interview who said he wanted somebody to start Wednesday or Thursday and would be contacting me. Thanks for the contact you big dickwad. I hope you hired someone useless.

I finally did it. I finally got past level 8-4 in Zuma. I got up to 8-7 for the very first time. I know, I know, that’s nothing to some of you (I didn’t even know it went up to 13) but it was quite the accomplishment for me.

I was at least hoping to get past it so I could see what level 9 was like, but, no. I lost 3 men in that last level. It looks like I’m destined to be an 8.

I’m number 8! I’m number 8!

As you can see, I’m still playing with the new Paint Shop Pro X (and the X is roman numeral 10, which I wasn’t sure about… whether it was the new “X” version or the new “10″ version).

I watched some of the videos included on the CD, where they discussed the one-step photo fix (the one I was dissatisfied with the other day) and the new smart photo fix, which gives you a little more manual adjustment features than the first option.

I used the smart photo fix on this picture with the flower and I have to say that it came out looking a little more realistic than even my original photo which was too saturated.

So I’m impressed. And, if you’re looking for a big desktop flower picture, you can download the picture for your desktop (over there on the sidebar under “download → wallpaper → tree.jpg”.

No, I don’t have a new obsession with my desktop.

But I did find these widget thingies that you can put all over your desktop at Konfabulator.com.

Apparently they were bought out by Yahoo, but there are some really neat things you can download to keep on your desktop.

For example, in the pic I have:

1. my horoscope
2. an analog clock
3. a Flickr uploader
4. a calendar that will synch with my Outlook calendar and show me today’s events
5. 3 little buttons that will play amusing recordings that I choose to put on them
6. the weather for today and the rest of the week
7. a tic tac toe game
8. an iTunes remote
9. a desktop Yahoo search bar
10. and a slideshow viewer that will show any folder I choose

That’s just what I have on there now. There are hundreds of other things you can put up there, some handy and some amusing.

I have the Yoda with the light sabre – and he says stuff. I have Darth Vader (who breathes and plays the Star Wars theme song), and there are some other amusing little things to get. Go ahead, if you’re an idiot like me, you’ll like this stuff.

On another note, I did not get the job from the other day. I did not get it so much that the guy didn’t even want me to come back for the second interview. The agency woman said he was in a hurry and she didn’t get any great detail from him, but WTF? What up with me that the guy didn’t even want to see me again?

I’m not depressed though. Fuck him. I’ll get a job one of these days. The sun’ll come out tomorrow, betcher bottom dollar that tomorrow, something something.

I did the laundry today. I haven’t done laundry for at least 3 weeks, so it cost me exactly $24.50 at the laundromat. Geez we’re blessed with having so many pairs of underwear.

So now I’m just waiting for my honey to show up with some Tim’s, then he’ll go out with his kids, and then I’ll watch the voting results for Canadian Idol and INXS.

Is your life half as exciting as mine?

Need a little something to remind you to visit?

You too can put your own message on a keyboard by clicking here.

And let us not forget that we could have a dancing name, that I found here.

Ha, ha… I did, you didn’t . Enough said about that.

Today I installed the Microsoft 2003 Office Professional suite. Wow is that huge. I’ve only got about 12 gigs left free on my C: drive.

I also installed Microsoft One Note. Never used it, never even heard of it til today. I wonder if it’s something similar to Lotus Notes, only Microsoft’s answer. Having never used Lotus Notes either, I wouldn’t know that answer.

After the install I tried my new version of Word only to get a message that I’d have to get rid of my Adobe Acrobat because version 5 isn’t supported with this version of Office. Apparently there were some security bugs in that one and so I uninstalled it and ordered version 7 – I should have it by tomorrow.

So I had a few installs. I feel all up-to-date now.

I also received an Air Miles card today too. See… life isn’t all bad. Today was almost like shopping with a whole bunch of new things arriving in my mailbox. The mailman even hand-delivered the stuff to my door since it was too big to fit in the mailbox.

I’ve never had an Air Miles card before. And I didn’t take it because I have plans to travel. I don’t. But I can get some points for free car washes and stuff like that when I buy my gas at Shell. It’s the only gas station where I didn’t have some kind of card, so I got it.

There’s a new show on Thursdays called The Law Firm (I think) and we’ve watched it for a couple of weeks now. It’s a reality show, something like The Apprentice, only with real lawyers having to try real cases for some famous lawyer – I forget his name. So that’s my plan for tonight.

After being so bored with my games, and listening to Minna showing off about level 9 on Zuma, I found my Painkiller CD and played that again this afternoon. Now I’m up to a really hard level on that again. Games… can they just be fun and something easy for me to win at?

So I’m just gearing down now and I’m gonna go watch me some TV. Life is good.

MSN Messenger now has a link to Rock Star: INXS (which we watch 3 times a week!). You can use it to vote for your favourite, and I did that last night – I voted. Unlike Canadian Idol where you can’t text vote any more, the INXS show has made it very easy for people to get involved.

The only reason I’m mentioning it is because they’re also offering free messenger pics (that wink, smile and look sad when you use the emoticons) from the Rockstar site.

You can configure these to look whatever way you want – hair colour, eyes, faces, clothes. So I made these images look as close as possible to the way we look and you see the result.

They’re so damned cute.

Now I’ve got to go watch the vote results from Canadian Idol. Ciao bella.

I didn’t tell you about yesterday. My friend, Emmett, had given me a copy of a program that I finally decided to install.

Unfortunately, the program key was invalid. I don’t know if that’s because I couldn’t read his writing, or if he copied it down wrong, regardless, it wouldn’t work.

So I messaged him and told him that it didn’t work and he told me to go to astalavista.com and search for the key.

I did that. Chose one of the servers and downloaded what I thought would be the key.

Well that download had 3 viruses in it. Luckily all my programs were up to date and they stopped the viruses, but needless to say it took a little work on my system just to make sure.

So I figured I’d try it again but use a different server. Note: I was picking servers that all had the word (clean) beside them.

I downloaded again, and this time I was graced with 9 viruses and spyware in the file. It took me a little longer to get rid of those, but I did; finally.

I now plan to buy the program with it’s own key from Soft4download. It’s cheaper because you buy the download only rather than the box and manual. I did purchase Photoshop from them before. I’ve given up on astalavista… I don’t want any more viruses.

Holy Shit! I had 865 emails (in one of them). I guess I’d better start checking my emails every day.

Pardon me all to hell for being a little busy.

I have done absolute dick all day. I woke up around 8:00 after going to bed about 1:30-ish. I’ve done nothing but crap on the computer… and not productive crap.

I reinstalled my Half Life 2 games and it’s working fine, even with the 128mg video card, and that surprised me. I was expecting some trouble, but it just prompted me to install newer drivers, so I did.

I played the game a bit trying to remember whether it was as hard as the stupid Painkiller game and, so far, it isn’t, but I know hardness is yet to come since I’m at the first levels.

I went out about 4 or 5 times to Tim’s for coffee.

I went to Home Depot to check out their wallpaper. I figured since I’m home, I could take down that hideous wallpaper in the bathroom and redo it. However, it seems like Home Depot must be getting out of the wallpaper business, they hardly had anything there.

I prevented myself from buying a silver and black toaster oven for only $38. Ours is white but we never use the damned thing anyway. What can you make in a toaster oven, or what that we eat can you make in a toaster oven.

I did decide to go into the Liquor Store to browse. While I was there I remembered that we used up the last bottle of white wine we had for the dinner on Saturday night. So I picked up 3 more bottles of white (I’ve still got 2 bottles of red left).

I almost bought my snookey a bottle of vodka since he used up the last bottle. But then I decided, nah, that’s $40. You see how good I’m getting at not shopping?

And that’s my whole fricking day. Although something funny is going on with my Windows. All of a sudden the system tray doesn’t show everything that’s loaded, and it doesn’t have the expand/collapse button that’s supposed to be there, even though I never changed the settings.

Something else funny with the Windows, when using the Windows Explorer, where you used to be able to choose view details, thumbnails, list, etc., it no longer gives me the option to view filmstrip.

So I don’t know what’s happened with my Windows. If somebody knows how to fix it, please tell me. Otherwise I’m not going to worry about it until something seriously screws up.

I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to get off the computer and go finish the book I’m still reading.

I guess it’s the book I’m not reading since I read a few pages the other day and couldn’t remember what the whole story was about. I should finish that off. Maybe this evening while my honey’s out with his kids.

Ok, no more rants and screams about my computer problem, I’m over it, and, once again, this site is child-friendly. What’s that? It was never child-friendly? Ok, forget that then, it’s not geared towards sailors today then.

I took my computer in to Eric and he worked on it today. When I went back this afternoon he suggested that we change the video card and put in a Radeon (as opposed to the nVidia card I had).

So far everything’s working fine – no black outs, no crashes, no problems. I guess we’ll see if that works cuz then I’ll assume the problem was my card. He told me to try it out for a week or so and I will.

The only problem I can see is that I never did get around to installing the games (Doom 3, Half Life 2, Painkiller). My old video card was a 256mg and this new one is only 128mgs. So I wonder how well it will work with those games, if I feel courageous enough to install them. Right now I feel like I should leave well enough alone.

So I didn’t tell you about yesterday where I took my daughter for her piano exam (I was a little preoccupied swearing). The exam lasted 15 minutes. If only all exams were like that. She’ll get her results in the mail, but I’m sure she must have passed, she’s very good at the music.

After that we went back to her dad’s house where I spent the whole day cleaning the house (and I didn’t even finish it all). That place was such a stinking pig sty, I couldn’t help but clean it because I was so bothered by the fact that my daughter was living like that.

I bought him 4 more dishtowels which I used when I cleaned all the dishes (which were hiding in stacks underneath the sink). I swept and washed the kitchen floor (and walls cuz apparently they can’t seem to hit the garbage can with their food remains).

I cleaned my daughter’s room and a partial living room cleaning. I did 3 loads of laundry. I used Fantastik to clean off the computer keyboard – I can’t tell you how much was caked onto that – after I turned it upside down and shook out all the crumbs.

There was lots left to be done. However, I didn’t have the time. Before I left I had to remove the spyware that was all over the computer and had to reactivate my daughter’s cell phone since I changed it to an easier number.

It was a busy day. Unlike today. However, I did apply for 3 jobs today… one for which I’m qualified (or it seems to me that I am) and two for store clerk jobs (or cashiers or whatever the hell jobs they have at those stores).

I’m assuming I won’t hear back from any of the jobs and, as much as I’d like to change what I do, I don’t know if I could live on the minimum wage stuff. My car loan by itself is $400 a month since I consolidated and my half of the rent and bills is $800. That means that the minimum wage job would have to let me clear over $1200 a month if we were also to afford groceries.

Enough about that, I’m not worrying. Not yet, it’s too soon.

Tonight we’ll watch American Idol, as usual (while we still have cable ). There aren’t too many people left, and I’m still rooting for Carrie. If not Carrie, I’ll settle for Bo. That’s it.

Tonight I have the same stupid fucking cocksucking shit going on with my monitor again.

My monitor goes black, says “no signal”, and that’s the whole reason I reformatted the last time.

It can’t be the monitor. I took it to the computer guy and we tested the computer and it was doing the same thing with his monitor. How can it be the monitor?!?!?

Fucking cocksucker.

So I changed the power bar. This only started today when I moved all the plugs into the other power bar yesterday so that when the cable needs a reboot, I don’t end up with my computer turning off.

So I thought – power surges… maybe that’s what’s happening. Well we have 2 brand new power bars that I changed to, and the same stinking thing happened.

I finally unhooked my NEW monitor and plugged in my daughter’s old monitor. So far no black-outs. And with the monitor blacking out, I can’t even tell if the whole computer is shutting down or if it’s just the monitor.

I reformatted for Christ’s sake. Now it can’t be the computer.

Now I’ve got to surf and compute with some stinking CRT monitor. I don’t even know if it’s 19 inches, 17? 15? I just know that it looks teeny to me and I’m not liking it.

I’m gonna have to find my receipt in case I have to take back my NEW monitor. I just gave my fixed 17″ flat monitor to my son when he was here.

WTF is going on with this shit?

I am so mad. Excuse all my french. Oh, who gives a fuck. I don’t know whether to hate the stupid computer or the NEW monitor.

I keep emphasizing NEW. Because it is a NEW monitor. Stupid fucking thing. I hate life.

What the fuck is with this? Fuck!

Fuck! I hate life.

Fuck!

Have I said, “fuck!”

UPDATE: The same problem started happening using my daughter’s monitor. It seems the only way I can boot is in Safe Mode.

Now I have to take this stupid jeezly stinking computer in again.

Remember that monitor I bought at Staples? The one I took in for repairs and after 4 weeks they told me it would take another 5-10 business days? Well, they can’t find it.

I called yesterday to ask if it was ready yet since we’re into the 7th week and they asked me if, “they didn’t happen to deliver it to you, did they?” I said no, and the guy told me that the warranty place showed that the case was closed and that the monitor had been shipped out.

I said, “that’s what they said the last time” and at least the guy knew that, he was the guy I had talked to the last time. So he said a manager would call me back last night.

A manager did not call me back last night. A manager did not call me back today. Nobody has talked to me about my monitor and I’m thinking that, if they lost the fucking thing, why are they not offering to replace it now. After all, it be the 7th stinking week without it.

Aside from that, I went to work out today but I just did the treadmill. You’re supposed to let your body rest for a day in between weights to repair the muscles. Good thing, cuz my muscles are a little sore today.

Other than that, on my way home I stopped at Tim’s only for my brakes to go out as I was pulling up to get my coffee. I’ve had a leak in the brake line but today I think the leak turned into a “replace me this moment” type repair.

So I called CAA and they just towed my car to the guy who’s gonna fix my brake line. He doesn’t know it yet, but we left him a note. It’s the place where my snookie always takes his car for fixing. Hopefully the guy can do it tomorrow. So I’ll be without a car. Luckily I did go to work out today since I probably won’t be able to tomorrow. I didn’t feel like it today and almost didn’t go.

Now we’re just going to go watch American Idol and have some beer. When you’re unemployed it’s a funny thing. You get bored and beer starts calling to you, saying, “hey, it’s not like you have to go anywhere… come and have a sip” at 10:00 in the morning. That would be a good habit to get into.

So how come nobody’s talked to me all week? Have I done something? Are you mad at me? Ok, tell me, don’t just say, “you know”.

I finally got my computer back tonight after taking it for another reformat after I reformatted the other day. For some reason as soon as I loaded my antivirus and firewall shit, oops, no connection. Even Eric the computer guy didn’t know WTF was going on, so he suggested another TOTAL reformat, not just my C drive.

That suited me fine since all the drives were screwed up. My D and E partitions ended up being H and I partitions because it never occurred to me when I reformatted that I should stop installing all my stuff until I had the computer set up the way I wanted.

But now everything’s as it should be – the world is good for the moment.

So I’m damned sick of something going wrong every stinking week for the last month or so. I did have a nice lunch today though with Emmett. We went to Young Thailland. I didn’t know they had a buffet there for lunch ($9.99) and so I got to eat all the spring rolls I wanted with that wonderful sauce they have for them.

On another note, I was just talking to my ex who informed me that my daughter had run up another $300 for the Habbo Hotel shit she’s always chatting on. It’s a good thing she only did that here once. That girl would not be able to look at a computer here if she had done it again after I warned her. She still has $10 to work off for payment of her $18 debt here.

So I am gonna drop by his place some time this weekend to restrict user access. He should have cut off her computer access the second time she ran up a bill over there. She was told not to do it again or she would not be able to use the computer.

I don’t get it, you know. Why, when you tell the kid not to do something, does she go ahead and do it anyway? Christ knows he can’t afford a fucking thing, he’s probably scraping by to be able to pay off the computer he bought and pay off the internet access. And yet she sits there oblivious to just how little money he has.

It really is disappointing that she treats her dad that way. And Christ knows I’d probably kill her if she did it here again. Ok, enough ranting about that topic.

So, anyway, I’ve got a shitload of programs to reinstall yet again. Isn’t that what weekends are for? Well hold on – I haven’t done laundry in about 4 weeks. I’m down to my ‘bad’ underwear. The ones that have shrunk up so much that I only wear them for emergencies (emergencies being when I’ve run out of the underwear I like).

So Sunday sounds spoken for. I am happy though to be back at my own desk, on my own computer which, of course, will be new and improved now that it’s all… new and improved.

Let’s all go get a beer.

Ok, so I don’t have any time to blog cuz I’m busy reinstalling crap on my computer.

I ended up having to take it into Eric cuz I didn’t have the drivers for the ethernet card, only to find out that the drivers I needed were on the motherboard CD, don’t ask me why.

It only cost me $20 thankfully, and that’s with me doing all the reformatting of my computer by myself. There’s always one little thing that you just can’t do yourself – since you don’t know WTF the problem is.

So tonight, even though I had been planning on getting laid, instead I’ve been reinstalling stuff.

I did get my Panda Antivirus thing back onto my new computer – but, guess what? If I put the firewall on, the internet won’t work… even though I’m allowing the connection.

I did the XP updates and the service pack 2 and installed the Windows firewall, but now I find my internet connection is sketchy. I’ll reboot and not connect, then I’ll reboot and get connected. Right now I’m not connected and I’m just blogging from my honey’s computer while I’m installing some stuff on my computer.

So I’ll let you go now. I just thought you might be interested in an update. Pray for me.

Yesterday I ended up with some toolbar slash parasites slash virus on my computer. Don’t ask me how. But it took me until 10:15 last night (in between getting Easter dinner ready and eating it) to get my computer cleared of everything, and I won’t tell you how many times I had to do everything.

One thing this virus thingy – whatever the hell was going on did, was that every time I’d run my fixer programs, it seemed to double the things, so that when I’d reboot there’d be twice as many, even though I had followed all instructions everywhere.

By the evening I had 300 and something parasites instead of the 30 or so I’d started off with in the morning.

Another thing that was going on was that it prevented all my parasite-virus-spy programs from loading at start-up. So none of them would run – I guess it stopped them in the first place which is how they got onto the system.

So right now that I got everything fixed and rebooted (I was afraid to do that in case they’d automatically appeared on the system again), I put the Ad Watch program back on – it was somehow corrupted.

Unfortunately for me, I blocked everything that popped up. So now none of my programs are loading. So I’ve got to see if I can get that off there, just so the programs will load.

The only reason I can get on the net is that it asked if I wanted to search the net for the appropriate program to load the links with and I said yes. Woohoo! I was at least able to get on the net.

So I guess I have more work to do. Work, work, work, it’s all I ever do. If that doesn’t work, guess who’ll be reformatting her damned computer again. What a waste that will be after spending so much time on getting the previously mentioned problems fixed.

I hate computers. Have I ever told you that?

Ok, I’m posting this link, only because of all these people around me who’ve jumped on the Firefox bandwagon. While I have Firefox, and I think it’s “okay“, I really only have it to check to see that my site works ok with it and with IE.

As I’ve mentioned before, I prefer Avant Browser myself, where I can keep the tabs open for the next time I open my browser and go back to something I may not have had time to look at when I found it. And Avant is always doing updates and upgrades – any time there may be a problem, so I like that too.

So the next time I hear some hype from some geeky teen, telling me about all the security flaws in IE and how great Firefox is, I’ll tell them to get with the program, and read up on their precious Firefox (who don’t get the publicity about all their security flaws the way IE does). http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1775806,00.asp

So, Eric today on the phone told me that there was a piece in the motherboard chipset that was fried, and that’s what he figures the problem is with my computer. He said he has to send it back to Asus to see if it’s covered by the warranty.

I said, “it better be covered by the warranty” since the computer was only about 3 months old and I didn’t give a flying farg what was wrong with it, that as far as I was concerned, I already paid for a working computer and I expected to have a working computer.

He said it was gonna take about 5 days for me to get my computer back – they’ll either repair the chipset or replace the board. But now I don’t trust the board. I feel that it’s defective if it caused the chipset to fry and I don’t think I’ll trust any “replacement parts”.

I said he should just replace the board right now and he could get the new motherboard back and sell it to someone else and then it wouldn’t take 5 STINKING DAYS for me to have a computer. Oh no, something about the serial number means that we couldn’t just put a new one in now.

He mentioned something about whether the hard drive was ok and I asked him if he had checked it with another motherboard. He had not. I asked him to check the hard drive tomorrow to see if everything was there and readable, cuz if it’s not, WTF am I waiting for a repaired motherboard for? Then it doesn’t matter what motherboard or hard drive is there.

Everything just pisses me off. He said only about 5% of these Asus motherboards have something happen to them. Well, tell me, why am I the 5%?

So tonight I’m sitting here on my daughter’s computer, typing away. My honey is in the computer room – the very bare looking computer room that only has one computer in it.

I should have some dinner. I’m sick of salad and sick of peanut butter. To tell you the truth I’m sick of the whole fucking Weight Watchers idea and I just want to eat greasy Kentucky Fried Chicken day in and day out. Have I said that before?

I’m sick of everything. Or mad about everything. There were some women on the subway this morning who were talking really loudly. They were sitting right behind me and I didn’t have my little mp3 player with me. But all I could think of was, “aren’t you sitting right the fuck beside each other? What the hell are you yelling about?” I wanted to turn around and smack them in the head with my book. More than once. But I didn’t. I kept control. Assholes.

Ok, I suppose I shouldn’t be blogging when I’m angry. Who wants to listen to me rant and rave. Minna, I guess it’ll be about 5 days or so before I implement the spam karma. Fuckhead spammers. They bug me too.

So the stupid fucking p$ker spammer struck today and left about 4 comments here. So I’ve decided once again to moderate all the comments. Fuck ‘em. When I have some time I may take it off and just implement a spam killer, but I don’t have time right now.

One reason I don’t have time right now is that I don’t have a stinking computer. Last night I was on my computer, and for some reason it decided to shut down. Shut down and not turn on again.

So at lunch time my snookie took my computer over to Eric to see if he could figure out what the hell happened. When we got over there after work he hadn’t figured anything out yet. I don’t know if he’d even looked at it yet – but he plugged it in while we were there and showed us how it still wasn’t working.

So tomorrow he’s gonna check the motherboard of my NEW, less than 6 months old, computer. So right now I’m just blogging from my honey’s computer. I don’t like it. I don’t like his keyboard. I don’t like sitting in his chair at his desk. This is not my stuff!

I am the only person in history that I know who spends so much money on computers and computer stuff. I am the only person I know who buys every farging thing that comes along and spends a fuck of a lot of money on it.

So whose computer crashes?

You know, next time I think I’ll buy a Dell computer. That’s what I have at work and I’ve never had a problem with it, ever. I’m sick of the homemade computers. And why the hell would my motherboard be fried for no reason within 6 months of purchase?

The blinds in the computer room are dirty and in need of cleaning.

The only good thing for today is that I was at Staples and I found the Collapse game. I like that game for some strange reason, and it’s not a hard game like the stinking Painkiller game where I get stuck for a year at one level.

Life sucks and then you marry one. Give me my computer! And give it to me now. I hate computers. It better not be the hard drive (warrantied for life). Even the motherboard is warrantied for 3 years. All my stuff better be there.

I just bought a stinking program last night before I crashed. Right now I’m just updating my daughter’s computer. I saw that she didn’t even have an antivirus on there since we had the thing reformatted. So guess what I’m doing tonight?

Where is my computer! And one of the fans was making a funny noise. WTF is up with that?