Friday, January 27, 2006

Candle Time Again

Candle for Chuck

Well, it's Iraq2 and Afghanistan1 this time. Yes, my brother Chuck left this morning and will be over there for about 45 days this time and be going to Afghanistan as well as Iraq.

He's not in the military (he's former military) but it's still dangerous no matter why you are there. I wish he wasn't but
he has a job to do and it must be important or he wouldn't be going.

I will be praying for your safe return Chuck. I love you.

Sis

Monday, January 23, 2006

Equipment Karma!

First of all, my HP Pavillion that crashed last week had a bad motherboard. Seems at least 10 of the capacitors had burned! My tech told me it was due to the impure aluminum used, probably to save a penny per piece. Nice. The pc was barely 3 years old.

I had to work on my laptop Thursday and Friday and my new tower arrived FedEx Friday afternoon. My tech was here Friday night and worked until 11pm and returned Sunday. It took hours to get my documents off the old hard drive because we could only boot it up in safe mode, so no bells and whistles to speed up copying the data to the new hard drive.

He was able to recover all my documents and my email address book, but none of my old email folders and messages. I lost many of the pictures my girls have emailed me over the years. We also had a horrible time reinstalling my Officejet because the CD was bad. Thankfully, I found a second CD in a folder and it must have been the one I used to install it the first time. I had no idea they had put 2 CDs in the packaging and I had the stupendous luck of grabbing the bad one. Time=$$ and all this wasted time was costly.

Sooooooo, today I am finally working on my new pc and I tried to make a phone call around noon and no dial tone. Tried my home line, business line and fax line. No dial tone on any phone in the house. Of course, living in Hooterville (not to mention living miles outside of Hooterville), I do not get a cell signal at my home. Never have.

In order to report my phone lines, I had to get in my car and drive towards town until I got a signal, pull over and call the phone company. I got the automated repair line that takes you through all the different questions and actually wants you to go to your phone box with a screw driver and test some box outside your home. What's next? Asking you to climb a telephone poll and test the lines up there? Of course, I declined. Besides, I wasn't home. I was sitting in my MB on the side of a dirt road (watching the county grader grade the road, BTW) looking like some sort of peeping tom I suppose.

Ok. I reported my phone lines and then had a thought. Phone lines out suddenly. Pipeline construction between my place and town. What are the odds? I drove down to the construction area and got out of the car to speak with the flagman and asked him if the crew had hit a phone cable. He gave me one of those looks like I was talking in a foreign language and pointed towards one of the men in a hard hat and said the word 'boss'.

I walked towards the boss, avoiding all the big equipment digging the trench for the pipeline, and asked him if they hit a phone cable. Yep. He confirmed it just happened within the hour. I asked him if he had an ETA for the repair because I work from home and have no phone or fax line now. All he could tell me is that the phone company was on its way. He did tell me if I would come back when the lines were up and give him my downtime the company would compensate me. I was impressed! I told him I wasn't looking for compensation but if he had any way of moving the repair along faster I would really appreciate it.

And I would also appreciate any and all "good equipment karma" my gentle readers might send my way.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

PC Hell

My PC crashed. Last night my monitor went out~~or so I thought. Turns out it was my PC. I had to do a hard shutdown and reboot and the monitor came back up.

This morning it did the same thing. Over and over. I even drug out my old CRT monitor just to rule the monitor out. It did the same thing.

I think it's the power supply and I can't replace it with anything but the HP part. So, I bit the bullet and bought a new tower that will be here tomorrow.

I did order a new power supply for the old PC so I'll have it as a backup if needed.

In the meantime I'm working on my laptop which has none of my files or email addresses for business. Not a fun day.

I love my clients though, they have been wonderful!!

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Lukas & Adeline

Proud brother Lukas with baby Adeline 1-15-06

More Pictures

Adie is born 12:30pm 1/12/06











Cowpa, Adie and Luke (above)

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Adeline Is Here!!

"Adie in Daddy's arms"


Adeline arrived at 12:30pm on the dot today! She weighed 9 lbs 3 ounces, 22 inches, dark curly hair and dark blue eyes.

Mommy couldn't wait for her doctor who came 4 minutes after Adeline arrived. He was in surgery. Grandma lost her car keys (Cowpa found them) and Luke's first words when he saw his little sister were "She's beautiful".

I am going to take a deep breath and make a few phone calls. Pictures later when I get home.