Weblog 197
November 15, 2009~ 12:00am
Tough week last week. Started with my sleeping in on Monday-- followed by a blown capacitor on my computer at work-- trailed by 4 days of a 'stop/start/regroup/tweak' repetitions on another, older computer (which I had running better than it has in a YEAR)- but then I got a new one on Friday, and everything loaded fine....except the program we USE at work.
LOL!!! God! I had to go into the office all day Saturday to try and make up for lost time (as well as grab a 'working computer'- since everyone else in my department was at home and not using theirs.) Can you imagine??? A brand new Hewlett-Packard -with mega rams of power, unable to simply connect to a Java-based billing program? Something is haywire...permissions or incompatibility...something....but it won't let me log in. And the 'experts' are useless. On the phone long-distance with the software people for an hour, while they 'took over' my computer 'zombie-style', yet could not solve the problem. The installer....(forget it.) He was young and quiet, cowed, and by the end, he looked like he was ready to shit his pants when the billing program would not let me in and I was breathing fire like a dragon. LOL!!!
The damn thing simply bars the door. I've stared at more hourglasses this past week than Dorothy and Toto, captured by the Wicked Witch of the West. I'm simply exhausted- and the IT people can't figure it out. Not at the hardware end, OR the software. It's a mystery.
As a stress reliever, I visited our neighborhood St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store. (I LOVE those places!) I'd seen a fascinating-looking piece of furniture in the window that looked like a 60's Mod-style HIGH HEEL SHOE. Black and white zebra stripes. I stopped in to look, but it was 'pricey'- at 79.00. That's way too much for a thrift store (object d'art or not.) So I went looking on the net-- and it seems those things are the rage.
There are whole sites for these 'shoes' in a variety of coverings and colors, and I love them! (Looks like 175.00 to 325.00 is the going price. Wow.)
That led to other sites, but I have to say I found one that's my absolute favorite! It has every type of whimsical, wonderful...modern and colorful... imaginative furniture and oh, just the best 'stuff' you can possibly think of! CLICK ON THE PURPLE CHAISE LOUNGE below!
Yep. Dumb name, 'Sexy Furnishings'- but I have to say, they are! LOL! What a great collection of things! Makes me feel happy just to look at 'em.
And honestly- after a week like this, any old thing that lightens my mood or brightens my day is a great find. Have fun looking around. And I ask you...doesn't all that stuff look like something out of 'Barbarella'? The only thing missing is a young, sylph-like Jane Fonda, all 'gotten up' in hot pink, vinyl and Go-Go boots. (Ah.......nostalgia.)
November 15, 2009~ 9:45pm
I ate with mum this evening, at the famous ROUNDTABLE NUMBER 6 . LOL!! There we were... mum, me, Henrietta, Catherine-- a pleasant woman with large nostrils, whose name I never remember-- and today I sat beside a 99 year old sweetie, thin as a stick, who nevertheless ate her Sloppy Joe, her beef-barley soup and had a helping of strawberry ice cream. (I believe her name was Dorothy, but I couldn't swear to it. I'm hopeless at names. Faces, I remember forever, but names go in one ear and out the other.)
The conversation fell to CHIME CHOIR. I was encouraging my mother to join- which got me several punches in the arm. LOL!! The woman with the large nostrils plays F, and Henrietta plays D. From what I understand, they simply assemble, and follow the director who points to them when their note is due, and they chime it. What could be simpler? Sounds like fun....but mum only shot me a look that said, Not on your LIFE!
They also have drum circle. I again encouraged mum to participate (since she loves pounding on something- or someone so much)-- but that garnered more dirty looks. Heck, their chime choir was voted one of the best in the country in the 'seniors' division....why not? Why not pound away on drum heads, feeling rhythm and community? Heck, I'd do it in a snap.
There was also a large blond woman who took the microphone to announce she was giving massages twice a week, and to sign up. I nudged mum and she nudged back (rather aggressively) and shook her head again, even though Henrietta said they're "MARVELOUS!".
Catherine was sighing and looking at her full plate. "You're not hungry?" inquired Henrietta. Catherine looked around the table, grinned and said, "I had a BANANA SPLIT at three o'clock!"-- and said it like she was telling us she's just had Paul Newman behind the barn-- smug and pleased she was.
After dinner, I inquired of the 99 year old to my left, if she'd enjoyed her dinner. "Not particularly," she told me. I howled! After she was wheeled away from the table, the ladies told me she'd been taking her meals in her room... but the food must have gotten really boring, so now she comes to the dining room like everyone else. "Picky eater", said Henrietta.
When dinner was nearly served, the 'men's table', TABLE 7, right next to ours, had only one gentleman seated until a very tall, very hale fellow with a full head of silver hair walked in. "God's gift to women," Henrietta pronounced. I howled again. I like these ladies. Very much.
November 16, 2009~ 8:30pm
THANK GOD! They sent the senior IT man, and he FIXED my computer at work! What a relief. HE'S THE BEST!
DEAN! None better. The damn problem even had him frustrated and royally stumped. He finally decided it was a quality control problem at the factory-- and here's why: all new Hewlett-Packards now come with the fresh out of the gates 'Windows 7', but because this new Windows version is incompatible as yet with our billing program, we need to stick with XP for our operating system.
So fresh out of the box it should have had Windows 7 (which would then have been wiped clean by our IT people, and our licensed version of XP loaded onto it.) What thefirst guy didn't notice is that XP was already on there... so he thought, "Great. It's already there..." (but honestly, this should have set off alarms. Sheesh!)- because, not only was it there, it had bits and pieces of the McAfee antivirus program filtered through it, and was butting heads with our Trend Antivirus, and that, ladies and gentlemen... was the culprit.
I HATE McAFEE! ...I also hate NORTON. In fact (listen up)- any PC from the factory that has all kinds of 'goodies' like "free virus protection loaded right in!" is a marketing tool, pure and simple. (When your months of 'free scanning' is nearly up, you will be bombarded with emails and warnings about how your system is soon to be unprotected!- and how you must BUY BUY BUY their very own paid version.) What bullshit!
Anyway... Dean wiped the hard drive clean, started from scratch, and reinstalled everything- works like a charm now. As Wayne emailed me today while I was busy being overjoyed, "DEAN RUNS A LEAN MACHINE..he's really keen, a sight to be seen, he keeps it clean, he has good genes, that Dean!!!" LOL!! Indeed. Indeed he does. LOL!!!
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
Tough week last week. Started with my sleeping in on Monday-- followed by a blown capacitor on my computer at work-- trailed by 4 days of a 'stop/start/regroup/tweak' repetitions on another, older computer (which I had running better than it has in a YEAR)- but then I got a new one on Friday, and everything loaded fine....except the program we USE at work.
LOL!!! God! I had to go into the office all day Saturday to try and make up for lost time (as well as grab a 'working computer'- since everyone else in my department was at home and not using theirs.) Can you imagine??? A brand new Hewlett-Packard -with mega rams of power, unable to simply connect to a Java-based billing program? Something is haywire...permissions or incompatibility...something....but it won't let me log in. And the 'experts' are useless. On the phone long-distance with the software people for an hour, while they 'took over' my computer 'zombie-style', yet could not solve the problem. The installer....(forget it.) He was young and quiet, cowed, and by the end, he looked like he was ready to shit his pants when the billing program would not let me in and I was breathing fire like a dragon. LOL!!!
The damn thing simply bars the door. I've stared at more hourglasses this past week than Dorothy and Toto, captured by the Wicked Witch of the West. I'm simply exhausted- and the IT people can't figure it out. Not at the hardware end, OR the software. It's a mystery.
As a stress reliever, I visited our neighborhood St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store. (I LOVE those places!) I'd seen a fascinating-looking piece of furniture in the window that looked like a 60's Mod-style HIGH HEEL SHOE. Black and white zebra stripes. I stopped in to look, but it was 'pricey'- at 79.00. That's way too much for a thrift store (object d'art or not.) So I went looking on the net-- and it seems those things are the rage.
There are whole sites for these 'shoes' in a variety of coverings and colors, and I love them! (Looks like 175.00 to 325.00 is the going price. Wow.)
That led to other sites, but I have to say I found one that's my absolute favorite! It has every type of whimsical, wonderful...modern and colorful... imaginative furniture and oh, just the best 'stuff' you can possibly think of! CLICK ON THE PURPLE CHAISE LOUNGE below!
Yep. Dumb name, 'Sexy Furnishings'- but I have to say, they are! LOL! What a great collection of things! Makes me feel happy just to look at 'em.
And honestly- after a week like this, any old thing that lightens my mood or brightens my day is a great find. Have fun looking around. And I ask you...doesn't all that stuff look like something out of 'Barbarella'? The only thing missing is a young, sylph-like Jane Fonda, all 'gotten up' in hot pink, vinyl and Go-Go boots. (Ah.......nostalgia.)
November 15, 2009~ 9:45pm
I ate with mum this evening, at the famous ROUNDTABLE NUMBER 6 . LOL!! There we were... mum, me, Henrietta, Catherine-- a pleasant woman with large nostrils, whose name I never remember-- and today I sat beside a 99 year old sweetie, thin as a stick, who nevertheless ate her Sloppy Joe, her beef-barley soup and had a helping of strawberry ice cream. (I believe her name was Dorothy, but I couldn't swear to it. I'm hopeless at names. Faces, I remember forever, but names go in one ear and out the other.)
The conversation fell to CHIME CHOIR. I was encouraging my mother to join- which got me several punches in the arm. LOL!! The woman with the large nostrils plays F, and Henrietta plays D. From what I understand, they simply assemble, and follow the director who points to them when their note is due, and they chime it. What could be simpler? Sounds like fun....but mum only shot me a look that said, Not on your LIFE!
They also have drum circle. I again encouraged mum to participate (since she loves pounding on something- or someone so much)-- but that garnered more dirty looks. Heck, their chime choir was voted one of the best in the country in the 'seniors' division....why not? Why not pound away on drum heads, feeling rhythm and community? Heck, I'd do it in a snap.
There was also a large blond woman who took the microphone to announce she was giving massages twice a week, and to sign up. I nudged mum and she nudged back (rather aggressively) and shook her head again, even though Henrietta said they're "MARVELOUS!".
Catherine was sighing and looking at her full plate. "You're not hungry?" inquired Henrietta. Catherine looked around the table, grinned and said, "I had a BANANA SPLIT at three o'clock!"-- and said it like she was telling us she's just had Paul Newman behind the barn-- smug and pleased she was.
After dinner, I inquired of the 99 year old to my left, if she'd enjoyed her dinner. "Not particularly," she told me. I howled! After she was wheeled away from the table, the ladies told me she'd been taking her meals in her room... but the food must have gotten really boring, so now she comes to the dining room like everyone else. "Picky eater", said Henrietta.
When dinner was nearly served, the 'men's table', TABLE 7, right next to ours, had only one gentleman seated until a very tall, very hale fellow with a full head of silver hair walked in. "God's gift to women," Henrietta pronounced. I howled again. I like these ladies. Very much.
November 16, 2009~ 8:30pm
THANK GOD! They sent the senior IT man, and he FIXED my computer at work! What a relief. HE'S THE BEST!
DEAN! None better. The damn problem even had him frustrated and royally stumped. He finally decided it was a quality control problem at the factory-- and here's why: all new Hewlett-Packards now come with the fresh out of the gates 'Windows 7', but because this new Windows version is incompatible as yet with our billing program, we need to stick with XP for our operating system.
So fresh out of the box it should have had Windows 7 (which would then have been wiped clean by our IT people, and our licensed version of XP loaded onto it.) What thefirst guy didn't notice is that XP was already on there... so he thought, "Great. It's already there..." (but honestly, this should have set off alarms. Sheesh!)- because, not only was it there, it had bits and pieces of the McAfee antivirus program filtered through it, and was butting heads with our Trend Antivirus, and that, ladies and gentlemen... was the culprit.
I HATE McAFEE! ...I also hate NORTON. In fact (listen up)- any PC from the factory that has all kinds of 'goodies' like "free virus protection loaded right in!" is a marketing tool, pure and simple. (When your months of 'free scanning' is nearly up, you will be bombarded with emails and warnings about how your system is soon to be unprotected!- and how you must BUY BUY BUY their very own paid version.) What bullshit!
Anyway... Dean wiped the hard drive clean, started from scratch, and reinstalled everything- works like a charm now. As Wayne emailed me today while I was busy being overjoyed, "DEAN RUNS A LEAN MACHINE..he's really keen, a sight to be seen, he keeps it clean, he has good genes, that Dean!!!" LOL!! Indeed. Indeed he does. LOL!!!
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