I’m talking about cell phones that is, not what you probably first thought.

The people I work with seem to always have their phones glued to their hands and whip ‘em out first chance they get. They text each other (even though they’re just a few feet away) text family and friends, surf the web, and so on. It’s kinda weird actually and I’m really surprised customers don’t say anything about coming in and seeing tellers playing on their phones.

It also makes me feel old-slash-odd for not being into the whole texting and cellphone playing thing.

I feel like such the oddball.

Just had to shell out $50 bucks at Best Buy to buy a USB external modem (Zoom) for my computer so that I could get back on the internet because the computer’s got fried apparently.

There was a storm a little while back and the power flickered off and on rapidly for about ten minutes before at last popping off and staying off for a few hours. Well, at the time, I was on the computer and the computer was plugged into the outlet. It would seem that there was an electrical surge that went through and messed with the computer’s modem.

The next day when I tried dialing on to the internet I kept getting “no dial tone” error messages but the landline was working just fine. Troubleshooting showed that the problem was with the computer’s modem, and here’s the kicker, my computer is a laptop. When I called around to computer repair shops I was informed that repairing or replacing a laptop’s modem is pretty much impossible. One guy helpfully recommended get a USB external modem though, which is what I did.

So for week or so I was going through internet withdraw as I waited to see how much money I had, waited on money to transfer and deposit into the my checking account, and automatic payments to clear. Occasionally I went to WiFi hot spots around town to get some stuff done, but for the most part I was stuck twiddling my thumbs until, at last, I got to go buy it today.

And naturally it was raining and I mean raining heavily on the way up to town. But I just could not go another day without internet at home!

Best Buy had the cheapest external modem at $49.99, but it was still a set back for me. Especially since I really should have gone to McCoy’s instead and purchased a new door knob and bolt (probably would have gotten Baldwin hardware since there was a sale) for the kitchen door. But, I figure, the door knob that is there that’s wonky will last for a few months more at least. And it’s on the wooden door, which means the iron screen door is there to act as first line of defense anyway. And since a lot of my income is tied into the internet right now….well the getting back online at home was the priority. Right? Right.

That’s what it seems like to me at any rate. I just got back a little while ago from visiting a lady who was selling a color printer I was interested in buying. I returned printer-less and with a few gray hairs on my head (probably) from the stress.

The ad sounded good, a used printer that was still in good condition although some of the programing features didn’t seem to work properly anymore. It was a xerox phaser 8560 printer though (which sells for several hundred new) and the asking price was posted as $50. All in all, not a bad deal, right? WRONG!

So I drove up to ‘Cruces at the arranged time to pay for the printer and bring it home. And since Denali is acting like my shadow I let the little kitty tag along for the ride. Turns out the printer in question wasn’t a Phaser 8560 or even a Xerox period. It was an HP. But it was still a decent one, she demonstrated that it did indeed work well still, let me which functions that weren’t working. And hey, it was fax stuff and a timer. Features I could live without just fine. So despite it not being the brand I thought it was I was willing to buy it anyway.

Really, I should have realized that if she lied about the brand she was lying about other things as well. Somehow though, when I took out the $50 to pay her I was still surprised when she claimed that she had changed her mind about the price and wasn’t selling it for less than $400 dollars now. At first I seriously thought she was joking. $400 for a used-printer missing features, really? I mean, shit, that’s the price I’d expect to pay for an awesome one at Staples of Office Depot or something. But nope, she was dead serious. I tried to haggle the price but she was not budging so eventually I just said to hell with it. We had an agreed price for a specific kind of printer, she lied about the brand and I was still willing to deal. Then she tries to cheat me on the price. Uh, no, I ain’t that nice.

So as I’m turning to leave she had the gall to call me a liar and a thief and accuse me of trying to cheat her. Then she tries to threaten to call the police on me if I don’t hold to my bargain. I was just like, yeah lady, call the cops, they’ll just laugh at ya for your stupidity.

Eventually I got out of there without any trouble (sans a whole lot of being screamed at) but it was still a horrible experience I do not wish to repeat.

So I am still without a printer, but considering the fact that I’ve been debating on whether or not to buy memory for my laptop that may be a good thing. Well, maybe not. I really did have my heart set on finally getting a new printer. Especially a color one that was just so friggin’ awesome to boot.

I guess that’s what I get from trying to buy from the classifieds. I’d heard bad things about some people’s experiences with Craigslist but never with regular old classifieds before.

Well, as I mentioned previously, I attended the Investools Seminar by Wealth Magazine today. It was the first day of a two-day workshop/seminar that my Mother actually dragged me to. While I will admit to being interested by the presentation at the Get Motivated Business Seminar, I just really didn’t think it was for me.

After today though, I have to admit that I am glad that my Mother signed me up as her guest and dragged me down to El Paso for the seminar. It was very enlightening, not to mention, there was just a lot of information to take in. Enough to make one’s brain explode, to be honest. I am eager to set up an account of my own and do a little trading. What really got me interested was not buying a few shares in stocks and fiddling with them. No, what I’m interested in doing is getting a monthly income via covered calls and doing some option calls.

The down side to both of those wonderful options is sadly that one needs to have at least 100 shares of a stock in order to do covered calls on them. And when it comes to options, you have to buy them sets of 100. Granted, you can buy options at a much cheaper price then shares. Let’s say, a possible $340 versus $34,000 or something. Right now though I just don’t have the capital to invest into it. So while the seminar is motivating and exciting, it’s also kind of depressing. But we’ll see, I am going to try and purchase at least a few shares and see where things go from there. You have to start somehow after all.

As I mentioned, there was a lot of information to take in. And if you’re new to all of this, knowing only bare basics, it’s really a lot to take in. At one point my eyes were watering and stinging badly as a result of trying to read the slides. The white text and font they chose just always looked blurry on the edges of the words and forced my eyes to strain. I ended up having to get up and leave for a bit just to walk around and really give my eyes a rest. For the heck of it, since there were these humongous mirrors in the hallway of the Marriott, I shot a picture of me:

Yeah, kinda grumpy looking right? That was around 3pm or so. Totally worn out and my eyes were just totally bugging me. I think it may seriously be time to get a new eye exam. Seriously, they were bugging me that much viewing the slides for the presentation and I just could not read most of the graphs they had or see the finer details of the website either. No matter how much I squinted.

After the seminar Mom insisted we go out to eat. I went ahead and humored her, because to be honest, I didn’t think she should be spending money on dinning out given that she never lets me pay. She was insistent, so off we to…wait for it…Famous Dave’s!

I swear, their food is so awesome, the servings are humongous, and every time I eat their food I feel stuffed and in need of the world’s best weight loss pills. Seriously, I always feel like I just gained ten pounds. But it’s ten pounds I don’t mind because the food is just sooo good.

Mom got their beef brisket sandwich with a side of their famous fries. I settled for their Dave’s Sampler Platter which includes spareribs, fried chicken tenders, catfish fingers, onion strings and your choice of Buffalo or BBQ chicken wings Of course, as you know, I can’t eat fish anymore so I asked the waiter if it was possible to substitute something else for the catfish and explained I was allergic to fish. To be honest I expected them to say no, or that I could substitute it for something like a cornbread muffin (which are yummy) or a corn on the cob or something. Instead the waiter happily informed me that I could remove the catfish so I chose the chopped pork link in place of the catfish.

Yeah, it was as good as it looks. No, it was better. I couldn’t finish it though and had to get a takeout box for it. But, oh my gosh, heaven I tell you.

Then of course, when I walked in the door I got attacked by not one but two starving kitties. Did I forget to feed them? No, in face, they still had food in their dish. Apparently the takeout box smelled that good. Denali and Isis were begging me to give them some, but alas, Joana does not share her Famous Dave’s leftovers. Sorry kitties.

Over all, a fun and enjoyable first day, if a little exhausting. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and what we’ll learn next.

It turns out I was right, the program “Internet Security 2010″ from Kaspersky was what crashed my computer.

According to the guys at PC Fix, that program has actually been a bane to a number of people and resulted in the same thing that happened to me. A complete re-install of Windows. The software downloads itself, screws with Windows, and you can’t do anything on your computer or with it unless you choose to play by the software’s rules and pay to activate the software.

Be advised, the anti-virus programs like AVG, Norton, McAfee, and Avira have trouble blocking it and the software itself, if installed, can hamper and disable virus protection.

The way I got it was through a popup that loaded on a file sharing site (Rapidfire I believe). When the popup loaded it said it was scanning my computer for problems. I tried to close the popup and received an alert button that gave me the option to continue the scan and stay on the page by clicking “cancel” or purchasing the software by hitting “buy”. Obviously Neither of those were what I wanted to do so I ultimately had to alt +ctrl + delete it and close out Firefox entirely. The program still managed to download itself though and screwed up everything though.

PC Fix was able to recover some of my data for me, and now I’m stuck re-installing Windows updates (like the service packs) and the programs I just can’t live without (Photoshop!). My humongous music collection is gone though, I was more concerned that the files under my Documents and Pictures folders be recovered as that had my layouts, projects in progress, and business documentation, and other important things and this was a lot of data to recover as well.

And what did it cost? Including labor, tax, and data recovery (which included a backed up copy on a dvd) the total came out to…. $63 dollars. Not bad really, but when you don’t have money to spend it still hurts. Still though, PC Fix was awesome. Took it it Monday morning and it was ready for pick-up late Monday evening, and there were a lot of people ahead of me to boot. So you know they were slaving away to maintain their “ready in one business day” motto that they aim for. No need for anti wrinkle treatments with these guys, they take the stress away and keep you from fretting over a ridiculous sized bill to boot. Love ‘em!

And my music library, all 20gb is gone and I just can’t be bothered to re-install it all on the laptop either. I’ve installed some tunes, but not much. It’s not even 1gb! Mostly it’s just anime and movie soundtracks right now.

So yeah, beware of Internet Security 2010 software from Kaspersky. Whatever you do, avoid sites that support it and advertise it as there might be popups or other ads there that try to download it onto your computer.

I’ve been scouring the job searches and postings looking for employment for what seems like forever now. I’ve had horrid luck in that department too and I couldn’t fathom why I would possibly be turned down with comments like “you don’t possess the qualities we’re looking for” and similar given to me. Well, at long last, the answer was revealed. I mistakenly left a woman who has bad relations with my mother as a reference and she’s been happily bad mouthing me. Joy. I caught that though (finally!) and fixed my resume, I’ve been earning a little more money on side jobs and small design gigs too so I thought things were looking up for me.

Then, last night, while I was doing updates on the laptop and commenting on blogs my computer got attacked by multiple viruses all at once. Seriously, Avira was blocking attacks back to back, think there was like eight. I thought they got blocked but something clearly went through because, alas, the blue screen of death appeared a few minutes later and then the computer shut down. When I brought it back up it said that the RUN.dll wasn’t working. I did a restore to a previous backup point, and that fixed that problem, but then Windows itself said it wasn’t working. And then there was a new program installed on my computer that I never downloaded let alone installed.

The program that installed itself was called something like 2010 Internet Security, it downloaded and installed itself. It said I had 20+ viruses, worms, and trojans on my computer and wanted me to pay $49.99 to get the paid version and remove the threats. Poor Avira Antivirus was going crazy trying to block the fucker as it did it’s “scan” too. I tried to go to the control panel and uninstall the 2010 Internet Security thing from the programs list, well guess what, it wasn’t even there.

I suspect the thing downloaded and installed itself when a popup loaded earlier that day. I was on someone’s site, can’t remember who, and got bombarded with popups. One of which said something along the lines of “your computer may be infected, do a scan with…” and when I tried to close that window an alert message came up asking me if I was sure I wanted to close the window, but instead of having an “ok” and “cancel” button it just had the “cancel” button. In other words, you couldn’t close the popup. I ended up having to ctrl + alt + delete and close out Firefox entirely.

That event, coupled with the Weather Channel plugin that would never uninstall no matter how many times you “uninstalled” it, clued me in that something was going on somewhere. So I started checking to make sure Spybot, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Adaware, and Avira Antivirus were all up to date and was about to do scans, when BAM!, blue screen of death and the laptop shut down. Then of course, when I brought it back up, there was the RUN.dll error, then the restore, and then the “Windows has encountered an error and shut down” and from there nothing works. And in the mean time, that stupid program that downloaded itself was running in the background doing scans and telling me I have some worm that could potentially steal my information.

Uh, yeah, you’re the worm you sorry sack of monkey-spunk! And of course this all happens when I’ve got a ton of work to do too. I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night and now I’ve got dark circles under my eyes. I must look something awful since the cashier at Staples was looking at me like I might reach over the counter and attack her. Honestly, I was in a fair mood too sense I was able to catch an 8gb Sandisk flash drive on sale for $14.99. It was a sale that I couldn’t pass up, even with the impending computer repair expense.

My laptop crashed before and I took it to PC Fix and was really impressed with how fast they got it fixed, how cheap it was, and that they were able to do data recovery and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg for that as well. I’ll be taking my laptop to them this time too. Alas, they’re closed on the weekends so the earliest I can take it in to them is Monday, assuming they’re not closed in observance of President’s Day. They are a small locally owned business after all and they are in Las Cruces, the town that seems to shut down on every holiday. Hopefully they can get it up and running that same day like they did last time.

In the mean time, I’m gonna be MIA for a bit. As it is, I had to borrow the computer at my Mom’s office to make this post. So yeah, I’ll be slow answering emails and returning comments for the next few days as I get this straightened out and then play catch up.

My cellphone just rang a moment ago letting me know that I had a new voice mail. Here’s the thing, it’s been sitting next to me on my desk all day long and it never rang once. So how did I get a new voice mail when no one even called to talk to me? It just doesn’t make sense.

I flipped open the phone, and sure enough, no missed calls. However, my phone is telling me I have one new voice mail. So I decide to humor it and check my voice mail.

Only to find out I have 23 Unheard Messages.

The first message on the phone is from Moira on the 3rd of January that she apparently left me when she was down in NM visiting over the holidays. Woah shit! That’s followed up with messages from my mom, a couple of messages from some friends and family wishing me belated New Year’s greetings, a couple of messages are even important ones from Discover card and Verizon. Hell, I even got some solicitations for things from weight loss products to some event or other at the Abraham Chavez theater in El Paso. I have no idea how they even got my phone number for stuff like that! The last voice mail received was at 7:08pm yesterday night. Apparently when my cellphone rang just now to tell me about the “new voice mail” it was that one that registered as the new one.

Now this is very disturbing because my cellphone has been on for the most part and even if I had it turned off, when it gets turned back on it’s still supposed to notify me of voice mail messages. Not to mention I clearly missed all of these calls but they sure as hell aren’t on my Missed Call Log either. So what the hell is going on here?

I really like my phone mind you, it’s a Samsung SCH-a950, and I even built a fanlisting for it. That’s how much I love it. After this though, I can’t help but wonder if maybe it is time to get a new cellphone after all. My phone seems to be working just fine, but if I’m missing calls and getting the messages way late, then maybe there is something wrong with it after all?

Of course, there is another reason why I’m not exactly happy with the thought of getting a new phone. Not only would that mean another expense I can’t afford, but it would also mean getting saddled with a two year contract again. Ugh. I’m contract free right now, tyvm, and I’d like to stay that way.

Heh, I meant to get this post up a few days ago and somehow I just never got around to it. Well, first of all, I hope everyone had a good Christmas themselves. Mine was okay, nothing really great about it sadly (as I spent the day alone for the most part) but really it wasn’t that bad.

I got a number of awesome gifts from friends and family. Some were very practical, others fed my addiction to all things anime, and others were just….out there. Some items of note were:

• an ipod mini (orange!)
• a tin piggy bank with Gaara and Naruto on it
• dvd boxset of Bleach
• a polar bear fleece throw and a leopard print one (from two different people!)
• tin of fudge
• elliptical (still need to assemble it)
• a care package filled with yummy treats
• and too many gift certificates and cards to name

Strangely enough, I think my favorite gift out of it all was boxset and the Naruto piggy bank.

Well I feel like a bit of an idiot now. I completely spazzed on the fact that the domain name for my cats’ blog was fixing to expire and didn’t renew it in time. In fact, if Angel hadn’t noticed that there was nothing there I might not have noticed for another day or so. Sad, isn’t it?

In my defense though I am used to renewing domains every couple of years versus every year, which for some odd reason, Namecheap forces me to do for kitty-kitty.net. I have no idea why, but when I purchased it I could only purchase it for a year and when I went to re-purchase/renew it, again, only the one-year option was available. What’s up with that? Here’s hoping we don’t have a repeat next year.

I’m just entirely grateful that no one decided to snap up kitty-kitty.net in the meantime. So now that I’ve got the kinks with the login pages for N-I and K-K fixed and the name servers have propagated the blogging can once again commence.

As you can see I’m up bright and early this morning. Got to get some cleaning done now and then shower and get ready to go. I’m heading out shopping today, specifically looking for plasma tvs too. Not for me though, my neighbor is looking to get one for her son and his wife for Christmas and apparently I would make the perfect one to help her pick one out.

Honestly, what would I know about plasma tvs? I don’t own one, heck, I don’t even watch tv much anymore. I’m seriously not going to be any help at all.

I’ve been spending a lot of time tinkering around in Adobe Photoshop here lately. I created a new layout for The Symposium at long last. Granted it kept the same structure as the old one, but the graphics and color scheme are definitely new. That layout let me experiment with some of the basics of photoshop. Brushes, layers, shadowing, overlays – very, very basics, not that I’m particularly gifted or an expert when it comes to graphics though. I have to say, I like it a whole lot.

Even though I’m using CS4 Extended on my laptop it runs so much smoother than CS3 Lite ever did. There’s no silly freezing, locking up, or slow-motion movements that use to occur fairly regularly if I had more than iTunes and photoshop open at the same time. It was bad enough that some people thought I might need new graphic or video cards installed on the laptop. It got better when the Vista Service Pack was installed but it never really went away. Now, with CS4, the problem is completely gone.

I haven’t done anything really advanced with photoshop, just mostly tinkering with photos for posts, the layout I mentioned, and coloring an image for some Halloween activities at one of the message boards I frequent. After having to use Gimp (because remember, PS was lost when my laptop crashed at one point) and switching back to PS it’s like heaven. I can do so much more now and the image quality is superb.

I’ve been putting aside some money so that I might invest in a more secure means of data storage, aside from DVDs, CDs, and thumbdrives. Specifically I’ve been looking at external hard drives as they seem like a good route to go when backing up data. Having my laptop crash on me and loosing a good chunk of files and data has shown me that, despite how careful I am, shit happens regardless.

Unfortunately these plans look like they may be put on hold for a while. Yesterday Denali was just fine and in perfect health. Late in the night though she seemed to have developed a cold of sorts as her voice became hoarse and she was very lethargic. My sleep schedule has gotten completely out of control so I was able to stay up and monitor her all night easily. She didn’t seem to worsen any and I sincerely believed she had developed a kitty-cold. However, since I woke up late afternoon, Denali has been sleeping very heavily. She lays sort of stretched out, does not curl up, and doesn’t even twitch unless you touch her. She does this for hours on end.

On top of this, if you attempt to pick her up you must do so carefully and avoid putting pressure on her chest area as that results in getting a strangled yelp from her. While laying down if you pet her stomach or chest she immediately jumps up and backs away. Her eyes seem a bit glazed at times and her hoarse voice is now a very low pitched squeak that she does not raise, when she speaks up that is. For those that don’t know, Denali has a very loud voice and she has no qualms telling you when she wants something. Denali also seems to have developed a rasping cough as over the past couple of hours.

Denali also doesn’t seem to be drinking much water, if any, but I can’t be too sure as she does have a habit of stealing water from the tap. So the fact that the water bowel isn’t moving doesn’t have much credence. She is eating however, wet food at least, she won’t eat the dry food. Isis refuses to be near Denali and has taken to hissing at her if she gets too close. As a result, Denali is now sleeping in the closet, something she only does when horribly spooked.

I honestly don’t know what is wrong with her but tomorrow I’m going to have to call Dr. Calista and see if I can’t get Denali in to see her. Denali has a wonderful immune system and the only times she’s ever seemed to have a kitty-cold it was cleared up within the day or the next day at the latest. This, this is just odd and scary. Isis is the kitty I have to watch for when it comes to sickness not Denali.

At some point on Tuesday my computer went haywire on me. It worked fine, if a bit slow, and I shut it down for a while. That evening when I came back I found the infamous Blue Screen of Death waiting for me. My computer crashed.

I hadn’t had a chance to back up a lot of stuff on the computer. Some of it not so important, like my 7GB+ worth of music or all of the anime episodes I’d downloaded. The thought of loosing it hurt, but I knew I could deal. Other stuff was way more important, the hundreds of fonts, my mileage log, expense log, client information, timesheets – you get the picture. What made things even worse is that I knew I couldn’t afford to get it fixed. I was estimating based on what I knew some places (like Staples and the Geek Squad) charge and I was seeing bills of $200 or more. Than I heard an interesting story.

One of the businesses that operate in the same office complex as my mother had some issues of their own. The Geek Squad came out, did a half-assed job, and then gave them a triple-figure bill. Not only were not all of the issues resolved, but the technicians left several of the computers, servers, and other devices not connected to the network and succeeded in locking them out of it too. The owners were understandably pissed off and demanded the Geek Squad return and do the job right. The Geek Squad was more than happy to comply – for a price. Rather than pay another outrageous fee they opted to contact a local business. They came out, and in one day, sorted out the mess the Geek Squad made and fixed the problem that the G.S. was supposed to have fixed to begin with. It only cost them $60 some odd dollars to do it too.

The last time I spoke to the Geek Squad I found out that their initial scan of your system, to determine the problem, costs $180. That’s three times what the other place charged to fix a major issue! The “other place” I’m talking about is PC Fix, located at 800 West Picacho in Las Cruces, NM. Computer repair starts at $29 and data recovery starts at $15. I had them recover the major items, as I really was strapped for cash and couldn’t afford to recover everything on the computer (I had several gigabytes worth of data in just the important stuff) and the guy even went through the extra trouble trouble to recover my music for me at no extra charge (even though he really should have ).

In the end I paid $62 and got my laptop back that same day. How awesome was that? Unfortunately the computer had to be restored and the hard drive reformated, hence why I lost quite a bit of stuff regardless. As such, I’ve spent the past couple of days recovering what was lost. Re-installing programs and devices, dowloading codecs, moving files where they need to be, and making backups to avoid a repeat. And don’t even get me started about installing all the required updates.

Thankfully downloading programs and installing devices and software is nowhere near as difficult [for me] as working the simplest of gps systems. Yeah, somehow I always screw those doohickeys up. There’s an unspoken rule now, if we’re lost and must navigate our way to our destination, hand the directs and a map to Joana. Give me the gps only if you actually want the little bugger to go belly-up.

Here lately, it would seem that every time I take one step forward I get knocked back two steps. Money has been a bit tight, but hey, I got the car fixed now. I can really get cracking once again so what can possibly go wrong?

I forgot, if you ask the world to throw you a curve ball it will. I’m not asking for Westgate reservations or anything, all I ask is that my computer operate and function correctly. Is that really too much to ask? Apparently it is. It seemed to be working fine earlier today, it got sluggish towards the end, but then it had been on and running for over twelve hours and I had a lot of applications up and running throughout the course. I honestly suspected nothing. So after watching the memorial service for Michael Jackson I did a few more things online then shut down the laptop and went to bed.

After a nice nap, I did some chores, grabbed a bite to eat and did some reading. I grabbed my laptop and turned it on, it started about normal (if a little slow) then after I entered my password it gave me The Blue Screen of Death. It warned that there was a problem and it was shutting down and restarting to protect from loss of data, then it flashed off and the computer rebooted. I spent hours trying to get past the login screen, nothing doing. Safe mode, normal windows, safe mode with command prompt, safe mode with networking – nothing. I eventually handed the laptop over to my mom. Unfortunately, she’s more comfortable with the older OS’ and not Vista. Using what she knew she couldn’t find the problem and solve it either.

So tomorrow my laptop is going to a specialist to get checked over. I sincerely hope they can fix it without having to restore it. I’ll loose a shitload of files that didn’t get backed up if they do that.

The desktop was having a lot of problems here lately, mostly difficulty in shutting down and randomly shutting down on it’s own. I complained about this to my mother and she decided to take it apart and clean it. I am so glad she knows how to take apart a computer and clean it! Just taking out all of the dirt and dust bunnies that were in it made a huge difference.

And I’m not even going to get started on just how dirty it was. It was crazy-dirty. I really should have taken some pictures, but it would have been so embarrassing to post them. She won’t take my laptop apart though. Since it’s under warranty she would rather I take it to the store and have them clean it properly. Since I’m working in El Paso now (squeals) it’s not like it’s out of my way anymore.

I thought about learning how to do maintenance on my computer myself, but after reading a few chapters in one of her old textbooks, I decided to leave it to the professionals. Considering the fact that, until I read some of the book, I thought tape drives was just an odd way of saying “cassette player” and didn’t realize that it is actually computer hardware, it might be the smartest thing I’ve done. Leaving the taking-apart of computers to those who know how, that is.

Hey, remember when I mentioned the keyboard going out on me? Well, we had a spare lying around the house that we replaced it with, specifically it was the old one from the old computer. Which means this sucker is several years old – as in roughly a decade old. I was surprised it worked, to be honest. So we’re kind of wondering if it’s going to go kaput as well, and if so, how long it’ll last. Especially since that means that if it does, there is no spare now.

Well, when I was checking out the Weekly Deals at Buy.com I noticed there was a sale on a keyboard and I couldn’t help but seriously consider it.

The keyboard in question is the Logitech EX110 Cordless Desktop. It looks like it comes with a mouse as well, and although the one I’m currently using is working fine, it wouldn’t hurt to have another on hand. I am notoriously rough on mouses. I get frustrated with something on the computer and tend to “bang” the mouse on the table. This usually occurs when I’m growling at the slow loading pages or because something froze up.

But seriously, thus far I’ve had no problems with any of the Logitech products I’ve used so I feel that I could definately trust the brand. Buy.com has it listed at $28.29, and readily admit that other retailers sell it for $24.62. However, after rebates the price comes down to $18.29. That seems reasonable, does it not?

Ah, if it wasn’t for the fact that my laptop is barely going to be a year old in November, I would be all over this deal. As it is, I know there are quite a few of my readers who would like a laptop, so I thought I should pass this information on to you.

So what exactly is it that I’m blabbering on about here? Why, the Charter Laptop-a-Day Giveaway, that’s what! Right now Charter Communications is running a special promotion and all you got to do to enter is order any Charter Communications service online. Once you order you’re automatically entered to win one of thirty HP Compaq Presario C770US laptops. That’s over a six hundred dollar value! Not to mention, all online orders also receive a Shell gas card for up to $100 dollars.

The first laptop will be given away on September 1st, 2008. For the rest of September there will be another laptop given away daily. So if you’re going to be ordering a communications service why not pick Charter? Good prices and good service. Not to mention, you’ll get some money to help out with the gas expenses and you have the chance to win a free laptop. You can’t beat that with a stick. Here are the laptop specs:

• HP Compaq Presario C770US Notebook
• Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor
• 15.4″ WXGA Screen
• 2GB RAM -160GB hard drive
• DVD Burner
• Built in Wi-Fi and Ethernet

Also included is a NEOtec Laptop backpack. If you have kids in school, no matter the age, this is the perfect opportunity to get them a laptop for school. Take it from someone who actually used one for her college classes during her last semester, it really does help. If you’re a college student yourself, then this is a good opportunity to really get some bang for your buck. Great back to school deal here folks, or hey, Christmas is only a couple of months away too.

Perhaps I just spent too many years toting a backpack around, but despite the fact that I love my laptop to pieces and take it everywhere I go, I don’t really care for my laptop bag. I have a fairly decent shoulder bag for my laptop that I use, but it irks me as I’ve always preferred backpacks.

I do have a small leather backpack that has a soft velvet-like interior that I sometimes use to carry my laptop, but it was clearly never meant for such a thing. It doesn’t have much room and once I put my laptop in the main section and a few things, such as my earphones and thumb drives, in the front zipper, it feels like it’s going to burst. That and the backpack really isn’t that sturdy feeling either. Oh sure, I have my old backpack that I could use, except it would definately scratch my laptop up to hell and back.

At first I didn’t spy anything at Buy.com’s weekly sale that really caught my eye, but then I happened to take notice of this awesome looking Samsonite Laptop Backpack. It comes in a beautiful color (black!) and fits up to 17 inch screens with ease. Buy.com has it on sale for $31.99 (a savings of $18) which is a pretty fair price. I mean come on, this is a Samsonite backpack. Samsonite is one of the few brands that I trust whole heartedly, no matter what, and will always pick their products if the option is available. They’re durable, long-lasting, and well worth the price. All of my luggage is Samsonite, so I would definately trust my laptop to them.

And hey, I could always write it off as a business expense too. I mean, I would be using it to transport my laptop and I do primarily use my laptop for business purposes when it’s being lugged about.

When I first bought my laptop I vowed that only the necessities would be put on it. This meant no music, and I would keep my anime files to the bare minimum by immediately burning files to disc. Oh, and I would not, under any circumstances have a ton of music on the computer either.

I later revised this plan of attack and decided that have a few songs wouldn’t be bad. Twenty turned into two hundred which then multiplied like horny bunnies and the end result is over eight hundred songs and counting. Not to mention I’ve got entire anime series on my hard drive right now, plus my graphics, documents -it’s crazy! So I spent a good two hours this morning just going through all of the folders that contain photos imported from my digital camera. Then I went and started deleted anime episodes that I had already transferred to disc. I’m pleased to note that I cleared up over 20GBs of space on the hard drive. Impressive, yes?

Even better, I found a bunch of images that I thought were share-worthy but ended up forgetting about them. So they’ve sat there, for literally months, waiting to be shared. So here they are:

This was taken back in December of ’07 (according to the folder date anyway! ). By chance I happened to spy a crow sitting on the stump of a tree outside the kitchen door. For fear of startling it into flight, I shot the photo through the screen door. The screen actually seemed to give it some cool effects.

This was also taken back in December of ’07. I just really like the feel of this image. The clouds in the background behind the tree give it a kind of dream-like and surreal feel to it.

This photo wasn’t taken that long ago, a month or so max. I remember this day was annoying as all get out, something was going on at the army base because all day long jets were flying overhead as well as military helicopters. And I know they were all military since they were all flying low as all get out too. The jets, well you know they were as low as possibly allowed since no windows were busting, but the helicopters were definately way too low. It was actually very unnerving trying to figure out what could be going on to warrant such heavy, and reckless, traffic. Anyway, as the sun was setting I noticed a few lingering vapor trails (jet streams) and clouds from the aerial traffic and loved how the light was playing with them.

I’m really beginning to wonder what happened. I used to, sometimes, change the desktop of my computer every some odd amount of months. But really, once I found a desktop I liked you could expect it to stay there for a good long time. In a sense, that’s still true. The home computer’s desktop rarely gets changed. In fact, it’s been the same one for quite some time now. Although, given the fact that I’m not the only one to use it and certain other people like to clutter up the desktop with shortcuts and files, it’s not surprising that I’m not really concerned with the wallpaper It’s kind of hard to see it with the clutter and all.

But that’s not the case with my laptop though. I’ve got a folder in my documents that is exclusively for wallpapers, and currently, there are over three hundred images in there and going strong. Subjects range from gorgeous scenery, fantasy landscapes, anime, movies, and even photography. Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if I had a wallpaper that a picturesque scene of Greece in there that could be used to advertise some Mykonos villa rentals.

The point is, there are a lot, and I switch them as fast as I switch moods it seems. So, where did this come from? How did I suddenly develop this annoying habit now, that only affects my laptop, when I’ve never been prone to suck fickleness? To me it really doesn’t make much sense.

Have you ever developed an unexplainable habit that is opposite of how you’ve done something for x-amount of time?

Oh wow, have you seen the sale going on at Buy.com? Their weekly deals page is positively bursting with a ton of savings when it comes to storage devices. Thumbdrives, micro SD’s, and even a nicely priced external hard drive. My mother has multiple external hard drives and is always on the look out for one that offers a good amount of space and ability for a good price.

I won’t lie, despite keeping an eye for them for her, I’m not too familiar with them. However, from what I’ve seen her spend on them I’m fairly certain that the Fantom Titanium-II 1TB USB 2.0 7200RPM External Hard Drive that Buy.com has on sale for only $129.99 (after rebate) is a very good deal. It’s a new unit with a factory recertified drive and comes with a one year warranty. The warranty sounds good, the other part has me a bit confused though, I must admit, so I’m emailing her the link so she can see it for herself. Hopefully the external hard drive is to her liking and can be used.

You see, some of clients have large accounts that require a lot of storage space. While a server would be beneficial, there are some who still like to be able to check over everything or have a soft copy of their own. That’s where the external hard drives make things easier. Especially when they use different programs to maintain their books. For example, one client refuses to upgrade the program they use to manage their books and are still using Quickbooks 2006. Since most of her clients use 2008, that’s the one she has on the computer. While it will open 2006 and she can edit and save changes, her clients won’t be able to open the files later on their computer which is running 2006. So it’s easier to keep 2006 on the drive that is used for those books.

Troublesome? Very much so. Which is why I try to keep an eye out for them for her.