MERRY CHRISTMAS!

It's been about a million years since I posted here, which has been very weird after last month's post-a-day marathon. But there's been a lot of busy-ness that seems to all be panning out. My computer is pretty much fixed. (FINALLY!) I say pretty much because there's a random error message popping up, but the Indians are helping me out with all that.

Work has been INSANE. I mean really totally completely incomprehensibly insane. But I got a rave performance review on Friday so at least it is all paying off.

Then, of course, there is Christmas craziness. My sister and my mom are in the same town that my dad and my boyfriend live in, so I get to see not one, but two parents on Christmas day. This hasn't happened in several years now. Even though my parents separated 7 years ago and divorced a couple of years after that, I don't think I will EVER get used to the back and forth of holidays and dinners and birthdays and other events of that nature. It is hard and requires a lot of scheduling and particular attention to various party's feelings. But I have to say that this year is going much, MUCH more smoothly than I was thinking it would.

And as of right now I think that is the best Christmas present I could have this year.

Merry Christmas World.

My Patience is Wearing Thin

I own a computer, which does make things convenient when I want to do things like blog, or look up movie times, or take a little look-see into the realm of "amatuer" AKA "what yoga could do for you" (flexibility really is an amazing thing). However, when your computer starts behaving like a raving lunatic, you have to call the people who can help you. I ran out of ideas on my own. I made the call. And one month later, my computer STILL IS NOT FIXED.

Let's explore this further, shall we?

About a month ago I came home from a weekend with MHM and my computer was acting... funny. It started shutting down all on it's own. Hmmmm, looks like a virus, I thought, and ran my anti-virus software. It crashed. I tried to make copies of everything on my hard drive. It crashed. I walked out of the room to get a good stiff drink. It crashed. Do you see a theme here? Finally, the damn thing got to a point where I would restart it and get an error about disks blah file blah read. Had I made the set of recovery disks that I was supposed to make? Of course not. So I called the company, which has one of those customer service centers located in India, and they charged me about $20 to get a new set. I eagerly anticipated their arrival. When they arrived I stuck the first one in the computer, and low and behold got this error message: These system recovery disks do not support this PC model. Hmmmmm...

I called India again. They decided they had sent the wrong disks, and would send the right ones to me right away. So I waited for a few days. Then I checked my messages on my answering machine- the shipping address was wrong and they didn't get delivered. Anyway finally I got the disks (days later). Popped the first one in, and got the same error message. And then I took a closer look at the disks: it was the EXACT SAME SET that I already had.

This was getting serious. I called India again. The brilliant man in technical support decided to do a short self-test of the hard drive. It got about 7 seconds into the test and STOPPED. HEY! I think we might have an answer here! They sent me a new hard drive.

Last night I figured out how to pop in the new hard drive. I turned on the computer. I inserted the recovery disk. I restarted the computer: These system recovery disks do not support this PC model.

GAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

So last night was really the marathon customer service phone call. They had me rearrange the order of ports or something in the BIOS. I must have restarted my computer 50 times. They had me test the hard drive again. The had me do an extended self-test and call them back. The hard drive is fine. Maybe it's the CD-ROM? Who knows? All I know is that my tech services dude emailed the hard drive specialists and they were supposed to call me back within an hour.

Guess who did not get a phone call from India last night? That would be me. Guess who is going home today to talk to tech support AGAIN? That would be me.

The two most irritating things about this are: Number 1 I have to explain the whole entire problem up until now every single time I call. And Number 2 every person keeps trying to sell me an extended warranty for my computer. Which I tell them I'd love to get as soon as my computer gets FIXED. After that they confidently and firmly tell me that they WILL fix my computer. I don't know, one month later and still no sign of hope, I'm thinking that extended warranty sale is looking bleak.

I want a puppy!

So last night and tonight we've been watching the AKC Dog Show on the Discovery Channel, and I swear my poor MHM is going to lose his mind if I squeal at some adorable dog one more time. I love dogs. I want a puppy! But I know that I don't have the time and I'm not in one place long enough to have get one right now. I'm a firm believer in obedience training, and that takes so much time and determination. And dogs need attention that I can't give right now.

However, I don't want a terrier. They look sort of funny. I want a lab or something. Actually it is weird for me to pick what sort of dog I want because growing up they always seemed to come to our family one way or another. It was the same way with cats, they ended up at our house, we didn't go to the pet store or pound or whatever to pick one out.

One day my dog will come to me....

Happy December everybody! I agree with Mrs. Anonymous (the future one, that is)- I miss reading all the posts. So I'll at least try to be better about blogging now.