Computer Saga Continues

I was excited to finally get our new computer I ordered from Dell, after having to wait a day for me to authorize the purchase with my credit card company and then wait for Federal Express another day to deliver it to the local pickup place since I wasn’t home sign for it.  However, when I looked at the box, it saw windows 8.1—I ordered windows 7.  Thinking, maybe I could adjust to it or perhaps it really was windows 7 and just marked wrong on the box, I pulled it out and noticed the USB ports are on the back—none on the front!  I use these ports all the time when loading my pictures from my memory card.  What are they thinking?  My Dell at work has these USB ports on the front.

 

So I had already disconnected my old one and decided to hook it up again and use it for as long as I can since one of our Facebook friends informed me that my windows XP will still be fine as long as I use the Firefox browser instead of IE, which we’ve been doing anyway.  So, I reconnect everything and boom—the monitor says “no signal” and nothing else comes up.  I kept rechecking all my connections and it’s still not working.  I stayed up until 10 p.m. last night disconnecting it and reconnecting it several times (it worked just fine earlier before I left to bring home the new monitor).  I even tried going back to using our old surge protector battery instead of my new one.  I just don’t know what else to try.  Then I couldn’t get to sleep until 11:00 because I was so wound up about this.

 

I called to return the new computer and was told they would refund $100 for my inconvenience of the USB ports and getting Windows 8 instead of 7 if I would try it.  If I still want to return it (which I do), I have until May 3 to do so.  I am not satisfied with this.  I want my old one to work so that is the course of action I will pursue first.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Maybe I can get the new monitor work with it since I never liked my AOL monitor anyway, but I’m not getting my hopes up..  Somehow, I doubt if it will be compatible.

 

Spunky Doodle and Manny were the only ones happy with our new computer so far.  They got to play with a very long twisty that was wrapped around the computer cord.  I enjoyed watching them.  Cats are great stress relievers.  I even left one out for them after repacking the box.

 

I am so bummed, stressed out, frustrated and sad with this whole fiasco!  If it weren’t for my Lumosity subscription, I’d just go computer free for now.  Next step will be to contact the Geek Squad at Best Buy.  Times like this, I sure wish we had a computer geek in the family!

 

I am trying very hard not to let this fiasco steel my joy and this morning, I was encouraged when I watched a video I got from AWANA about a boy in Ecuador:  http://vzaar.com/videos/1568392.

 

(Posted at the library during my lunch hour.)

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Bummer--Time To Get a New Computer

Gerard is happy about this--he's been wanting a new one for probably three years now but the one we have works just fine.  It's an emachine with windows XP, the one I got for my dad back in July of 2006.  Yesterday I got a message that as of April 9, there will no longer be support for windows XP.  This means that not only will there be no technical support for it, but no automatic protection against viruses or updates.  I found some complicated instructions at  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20 for doing an upgrade to windows 7 but I do not want to bother with that since my computer is almost 8 years old.

I have lots of pictures that I will miss.  I backed up some on cds but to reload them all into a new computer would be a nightmare.  Some I tried putting on a SanDisk 4GB portable drive (I think that's what it's called).  This takes a long time to do this too since my pictures are organized into 17 different folders.  I could probably delete a few though but it's still lots of pictures because I even have some subfolders in them.  This is really stressing me out.

I have AVG virus and malware protection which works very well and I just renewed it!  Fortunately, there is a number I can call to let them remotely come in to my new computer and transfer it over but I have to delete it from my old one first.  Then, my Epson printer may not be compatible.  I tried checking  to see if it is compatible with windows 7 or 8 and I couldn't even find the picture of mine on there!  This is a big headache for me.  Times like this, I wish I were a computer geek, I feel so ignorant about the actual workings and set up stuff when it comes to computers.  I sure wish they gave me more notice.

I am not one bit excited about this but plan to start the hunt tonight, Best Buy here I come, guess.  Have you gone through this process of transferring to a new computer?   

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My Stressful Day Cost $580

After procrastinating for almost 14 years, we finally got a towel rack in our kitchen, but oh, what an afternoon!

Being handy challenged, we always rely on Handyman Connection for our home repairs. We had a leaky toilet that we decided to replace, the basement bathroom exhaust fan needed fixed, and needed a new toilet seat for the basement toilet plus some new parts for the upstairs toilet. I also threw in the backyard bench my dad had made for us that was cracked.

After a nice morning of blogging last Wednesday, getting my stitches removed and reading with my pets, I met the handyman at Home Depot so I could pick out what we needed and waited outside by the main door for 30 minutes. Finally, he came out and said he had been waiting inside for me for 30 minutes. We were both disgusted with wasting a half hour of our time, but moved on.

That was only the beginning; it seemed one thing after another was going wrong:

1) The bench couldn’t be fixed that day because the part that hold the table up was cracked too which we didn’t notice earlier. He said he would cut a new part at home and come this Saturday to fix it. He only charged $20 for the this.

2)

New Toilet

The new toilet had a bigger base and didn’t set level, the new bolts wouldn’t fit because the drain was too low, the connecting thing (pipe?) wasn’t long enough to reach the new tank because I picked a toilet that was higher to be easier on my knees in my old age. He had to go back to the hardware store and get a longer connecting thing for the toilet.  Do you know what that's called? At least it worked.

3) The exhaust fan for the basement was a different size but he made do. When he disconnected the old one and tried connecting the new one, there was no electricity. He didn’t know what happened. All I could think of was to try resetting our outlet button that sometimes shuts off and that worked! Yea for me! While they were working on that, I decided to take my van to the corner repair shop because I needed to get the brakes fixed. I told them I’d only be gone about 15 minutes and they said “okay.”

4)

As I was walking back home, I saw our dog running out of our driveway and across the street with the handyman running after her! I was SO upset! I’m calling, “Abby come!” “Abby Come!” but she just kept running. I was so glad we live on a side street that does not get much traffic and no car was coming. Fortunately, she stopped to pee and the handyman was able to catch up to her--so much for our dog training. She was out less than five minutes—whew, but I was frazzled and made sure our cats were still inside!

5) That evening, I heard the upstairs toilet he replaced parts in making a tinkling noise and wouldn’t stop! I called the next day and he came back that evening to fix it, but said he had to buy another part that was worn out so would be back the next day. On and on it goes.

I miss you, dad! Good thing I have a repair fund! What repair projects are needed at your house?

Oh No! The Blue Screen Of Death!

First thing I said to Gerard on Friday morning, April 15, was “Happy Friday.”  His response was, there’s nothing happy about it (because the Bruins lost their first playoff game at home). 

 

He was right though.  I turned my computer on as usual when I got up and couldn’t get it to boot up.  I got what is referred to as the “blue screen of death” with this message: 

 

STOP:  C0000218 {Registry File Failure}

The registry cannot load the hive (file):

or its log or alternate.  It is corrupt, absent or not writable.

Beginning dump of physical memory

Physical memory dump complete.

Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

 

This was not a good way to start my day, but after about 4 failed attempts, I gave up and joined Gerard and Abby on their morning walk, had a longer devotional time than usual, and played a little pool with Spunky to try to relax and get rid of my frustration.  It really didn’t work, but Spunky was cute and made me smile!

 

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Snowstorms Like This Make Me Really Wish I Could Retire!

Yesterday the snow came and came and came in Cleveland. When I talked to Gerard at lunch time, he said he would leave the car in the corner parking lot for me and would call me probably a little after 5:00 when he got there to let me know he made it okay. Well, I got my cell phone ready at the bus stop and waited for his call, praying for him to get home safely the whole time. At 5:40 he called to let me know he was STILL downtown, not even to the ramp yet to get on the interstate. Traffic was not moving.

Why is it on snowy days people don't want to stop for the red lights at major intersections? This is what causes the gridlocks when drivers continue going when there is no room to go so they get stuck blocking the intersection. One lady actually stood in the middle of the street trying to direct traffic and get the drivers to stop at the red light before blocking the intersection. She was very brave but it was a futile effort. She kept yelling for the drivers to stop but they wouldn't! I was hoping she wouldn't get hit! The streets were snow covered and slippery. Finally, a policeman took over and had a little more success than the lady did.

It snowed the whole day and Gerard had to drive home in white-out conditions. On days like this, I am thankful I take the bus. Although I had to wait 50 minutes for the bus to come, at least I was in a bus shelter, dressed warm enough that I wasn't cold at all and even was able to sit down to wait for it. Mostly, I was worried about Gerard because I was in good shape. When my bus came, I could sit back and read my book while praying for Gerard to make it home safely. It normally takes me an hour to get home, but yesterday it took me 2 1/2 hours.

I shoveled the front while Gerard walked Abby, then watched The Biggest Loser and didn't go near the computer. Gerard shoveled the drive in the back and watched the end of the Celtics game. We were both so glad to finally be home and get to relax!

Doesn't this make you want to move to Cleveland?  Gerard said this morning he wishes he were retired right now and living in Florida! 

(Pictures taken on my afternoon break.  It was 27 degrees and fortunately, not a strong wind.  Didn't take any pictures at the bus stop because I was focused on waiting for Gerard's call so held onto my cell phone.)

Right Where We Belong Is Our New Title (UPDATED 9:10 A.M.)

Thanks to the 40 readers of our blog who voted to help us pick a new title for our blog. As you can see, the winner is "Right Where We Belong." (The vote was 24-16.) I am not done with the header yet. It's a work in progress. If we are on your blog roll, could you please let me know if our new title is listed or not? I'm not sure how this works. It shows as "Zemeks" on My Funny Dad, Harry blog list and I'm trying to figure out how to fix it.

UPDATE:  I finally figured out how to do a collage on photobucket and made my own header with the pictures like I wanted tonight!  I feel so good about this and am very proud of myself.  Now, if I could only come up with some good posts!

We wish everyone a very Happy and safe Thanksgiving.  Try not to eat too much!

What Does Performance Alert Mean? (UPDATED 11/24)

I keep getting an annoying message from my Norton anti-virus whenever I use my Firefox browser lately (It comes up when I use IE too). It's a pop-up message in the lower right corner that says " performance alert--high CPU usage by Firefox" with a little graph. I have no idea what this is for, if I should be worried about it, or how to get it to stop. It's just annoying. I know Firefox uses a lot of memory. I really don't need Norton to keep telling me that.

Anyone know what this is all about and if there's anything I could to do get it to stop short of removing my Norton protection?  I ran the anti-malware last night like Kathy from the Junk Drawer suggested.  It took two hours and it did find a couple infected objects; however, this box still pops up so I guess that wasn't it.

P.S.  "Right Where We Belong" is going to be our new blog title. Now I need to find someone to do a new header for me. I'd love to include pictures of us and our pets in it.

What's Got Us Bummed Out?

I misread one of Mama Kat's Workshop prompts last week, thinking it said "Why are you bummed out?" but in fact it said "Why are you burned out?"  So, anyhow, in a sense this post was inspired by her.  I don't do much ranting on here so if you don't want to listen to my little annoying problems that are bumming me out, I understand.  You have been warned.

Here's the things that bummed me out:

My DVD Project: I took off three days from work last week to put together a couple DVDs from my video clips and home movies but didn't see two of my movie scenes. One was of my dad playing with me in my jail tent. He was the prisoner trying to escape and I was the sheriff. I see the tent but am missing that part. The other was a Christmas scene of us kids playing with our puppet stage and marionettes. I'm hoping these were on a reel that just wasn't marked properly so I didn't have iMemories go ahead with the transfer. Overall, I am very pleased and look forward to getting my DVDs for Christmas.  It's a lot of work though but kind of fun!

Back to Work--Overtime: I loved having that time off and so of course am a little bummed out that I have to go back to work today. Although, the good news is that it's a short work week AND I am getting out early today, Tuesday and Wednesday so I can walk Abby at her normal time because Gerard has to work overtime those days so he can have off Thanksgiving and Friday. Naturally, that's got him bummed out.

Football Sunday: Yesterday the Browns game was disappointing once again. With six turnovers, you would think they would win easily, but no. Our offense couldn't do anything. They lead into the 4th quarter but gave up a TD in the last few minutes and could not score after that. At least the Patriots beat the Colts in a close game!

Yahoo Mail:   My email was goofy for awhile last week but seems to be back to normal now.  I am so glad!  It wasn't filling in the TO: field automatically, the font was huge and it looked ugly and was annoying to me.  When I forwarded an email, it appeared in a tiny box I had to scroll down to see and the recipient's message was formatted all wrong. 

Now on a more positive note:

I am participating in the Blog Jog that started yesterday and the Fantastic Followers Giveaways hop with my other two blogs so I will be off my normal routine this week.

So, what's got you bummed out lately?  Anything?  Go ahead and share about your troubles in a comment.  I know these are all minor things and I will certainly not dwell on any of them.  

6 Things I Learned This Week #76

Christmas In July Giveaway

Paige at Some Days You Gotta Dance is giving away some Etsy shop items in her "Christmas In July" giveaway the week of July 12-16. If you have a shop and would like to add something to her giveaway, there is still time.

Human Year Equivalent For Cats

At About.com: Cats, I looked up the human age of our cats and learned that Manny is 36 and Spunky Doodle is 40 in human years. Find you your cat's human age using the Cats Age Conversion Chart.

Broken Lawn Mower

I thought our electric lawn mower just needed a new battery but apparently that was not the case.  Now what?  It just quit one day while Gerard was mowing.  I called Neuton's support number and they gave me the address of one of their repair facilities that are in our area so we'll be taking it there tomorrow, hoping they can fix it or at the very least tell us what is wrong and what replacement part we need to order.

Time To Vote!

Go to Sparkle's blog and vote for your three favorite shelter cat stories. There are 24 entries and it was a hard decision, but I finally picked just three.  As of today, Moe has a long way to catch up.  He only has 3 votes so far and the leader has 17!  There are so many wonderful rescue stories!

Oil Spill Clean Up

Our dog received an "Environmentalist Award" from Bartels Busack Pet Hospital Resort and Spa because they are donating her fur that came off her when she got groomed to Matter Of Trust to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Guess I should have saved all the fur I brushed off her during the week before. I had a whole bag full!

Dogs and Work

Next Friday is "Take Your Dog To Work Day." I wish I could take mine but that's not going to happen at a big law firm. Can you take yours to work with you?

Click here for more Friday Fragments.

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From A Bird's Perspective

Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? –Matthew 6:26

God Cares For You

As a creature of the Lord’s
God shows He loves me too.
And I am just a bird—
Much more he cares for you!

The Bible says God guides us,
He tells us where to feed.
Now if God cares for animals,
He’ll surely meet your need!

So don’t get scared and worry
About things of this earth.
God says He will protect you;
To Him, you have great worth.

And when a worry tempts you,
Quick, lay it at God’s feet.
Allow the Lord to show you
That trusting Him is sweet.

But you must take that first step;
Refuse to fret and fear.
Fill up your mind with Scripture,
And let Christ draw you near.

Reprinted here from A Closer Look At the Evidence by Richard & Tina Kleiss.


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Now What Did They Have To Go And Do That For?

UPDATED 3/27/10:

More good news! Tim at Everyday Living was able to explain to me a way around my Flip Software and still upload video from the Flip camera. It's a bit of a round about way but it worked. Once the Flip was connected to the computer, then I went into "My Computer" and opened the Flip like a flash drive, opened my windows movie maker and imported the video clip into that from the my computer area. Although the editing is harder to do from here, it worked. I picked a clip that didn't need editing. It's the one I was going to post on Valentine's day but posted on my "What Did You Compromise When You Married" post. The sound of the song is a bit wobbly because I think it's time to change the batteries. Thanks again, Tim!

UPDATED 8:20 P.M. ON 3/24/10:

Good news! I got the kibble trivia badge--my fault, there was the code on their site for the banner but I didn't see the instructions to click on the badge to get the code until I went back later after Atty Catty sent it in an email. I went to the library during my afternoon break to do it on both my blogs.

More good news--I finally got the Java plug-in working on my Firefox browser and can play games once again on pogo.com using Firefox. Whew! What a rigamarole!

I noticed my cute "Feed Cats & Dogs" Trivia banner disappeared and when I went to play this morning, I found they redid their site and changed the badge to this. I liked the other one better but that's not the worst of it. There was no banner code to copy it so I couldn't include it here for you to click on it to go to play.

Anyhow, the link: www.freekibblekat.com still works so I hope you will still play and not forget about it just because I don't have the banner anymore. Seems like there's always something do fuss with to distract me. Does that happen to you too?

It seems I'm starting a whole list of little irritations that are on my mind and have got me bugged. Fortunately, the key word here is "little." None are of great importance--thank God! Here's my list in case you care and maybe you can help me knock off one or two items:

(1) My Flip Camera software no longer opens so I am currently unable to load my videos to my computer.

(2) My slide and picture scanner software doesn't work either so I just use it through my windows "cameras and scanners" wizard. It's frustrating, but at least in can still scan things in. My slide software never did work and I have to push one slide at a time through with the plastic negative holder apparatus which really isn't the way it is supposed to work. Both are from Brookstone.

(3) Tim over at Everyday Living actually did a whole post about my problem with my Firefox Java plug-in not working with Pogo.com: Java Plug-In Not Working With Pogo-com. I tried following the steps but got frustrated and quit when it looks like I don't even have the updated Java plug-in. I tried downloading the updated one but the windows in the instructions that were supposed to open, didn't. ARRGGH--I HATE UPDATES!!!! If it works, please don't "fix" it. (Come to think of it, my flip software got screwed up after I updated that too!)

(4) I'm seriously considering consolidating my blogs. Keeping three going and promoting all three is more time-consuming than if I just had one and my book blog about my dad. Maybe I should even consolidate that too. When I comment, I rotate signing in with my three URLs. Any advice for me on this?

I find it interesting that all these frustrating things that make my life more complicated are computer related. Maybe it's time to just chuck the whole thing and go back to life without a home computer. I know I'd miss it though so I don't think I'll actually do that. I wonder if maybe I need a new computer with more memory--I hate to even think about moving all my stuff to a new one though.

Sorry for the rant here. I don't usually do this but I had nothing else to post about today and this trivia badge set me off this morning. I'm going through a little blogging slump right now in case you haven't noticed.

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11 Medical Madness Hassles

1) Having to wait an hour or more to see the doctor after rushing to make the appointment on time. I had time to finish out my tennis match after all!

2) Taking off work to take my dad for blood work as scheduled and finding the lab closed.

3) Going for blood work and having to wait an hour to be taken because both technicians are out to lunch.

4) After waiting for almost two hours, being notified that the doctor just called and can’t make it because her car broke down!

5) Going to see your doctor about your test results which the doctor hasn’t even seen because they didn’t get them yet so I called for the hospital to fax them to him.

6) Taking off work early to go for the last Hepatitis shot in a series only to be told they ran out of medicine.

7) Going for a follow-up Ultrasound only to find that I can’t get it done because they didn’t receive an order from the doctor and he’s gone for the day. Have to reschedule!

8) Getting a call from your doctor telling you he needs to see you right away. Now that’s scary!

9) Calling for test results only to find out they haven’t come back yet.

10) Being charged for something that should be covered by your insurance because the doctor’s office put down the wrong code.

11) When your prescription runs out when the doctor is on vacation.

What riles you about medical related experiences?