And so it continues.....

I am woman on the edge, I tell ya.....a woman on the edge. If there were any bridges close by, I think I would be jumping off one of them.

I wrote a HUGE email to a friend and just as I was ending it.....my computer shut down and re-booted itself, snickering and laughing under its breath. This is the memory problem I've been having and its slowly driving me crazy. I can't WAIT until my computer guy gets here with the extra memory.

So, then after a re-boot, I'm too tired to re-write the entire email again....so I figure I will do it the next day. Mind you.....I'm having to put up with this constant......chirp.....from the battery back-up. But its either that or no computer. I am not strong enough to move it and plug the outlets into something else or I sure would do it.

Late last night, before retiring, I decided to check the weather. I noticed that my keyboard was not working. All three lights were lit up....which I've never seen before.....but it was not working. I said to hell with it and went to bed. This morning I decide to pull the CPU out from the shelf alongside the computer desk and check the back to see if the keyboard had somehow gotten unplugged.....which I doubted since the lights were on. I pulled the CPU out and checked the fittings, then rebooted. YAY....the keyboard worked.....but the mouse didn't.

Now I'll tell you.....you can get by without a keyboard if necessary. You can use an on-screen keyboard and your mouse to type. Its slow and tedious, but it does work. I've had to do it before. But you cannot get by without a mouse. Well, I guess you CAN....but I don't know how. So for ME....I can't get by without a mouse. So I had to pull the CPU back out and check the fittings again and this time I got both the keyboard and the mouse to work. My self-confidence was beginning to rise. It fell through the basement shortly thereafter as I realized that now I have no sound. I'm done. I'm not touching another frickin' thing until my guy gets here......and if he doesn't get here soon, there will be a taped outline of my body on the living room floor.

It'll get ya.....

Lately its been ...."everything seems to be going wrong" around here. Hmmmm...that prompted me to wonder if Mercury is retrograde again. I checked and its not. Not that it would have made a difference one way or another....it just would have given me an excuse to use. "Oh yeah....Mercury is retrograde, you know....and that's when stuff goes wrong". But...no such luck.

I guess we can start with Blogger going haywire. I have been having problems with my Followers widget on Blogger for months and its never been fixed. I figure they must need some time to work on it.....and I'll be patient. In the meantime....if you don't see your avatar in my Followers widget or if you just plain don't see Followers at all....it isn't because I removed them. I guess they are still visible if you use Chrome. A lot of people have told me they can see them fine.....so yeah, it could be just me. I use Firefox.

Anyway, Blogger went goofy and some people lost a lot of stuff. I didn't lose too much, some comments and my update about my ......shudder.....eye. I guess we should all keep back-ups of what we post. What's that? You do? Oh well.....I don't and I guess I should.

Then came our usual weekly ritual.....me and my family's. We have supper and a movie....maybe two movies. We had Mexican that night and then settled in for a good movie. We put the disc in the VCR and........nothing. It wouldn't read the disc.....hell, it wouldn't even acknowledge that it was a VCR. At that point I think it may have thought it was a riding lawn mower. We fooled around with it and fooled around with it. More than an hour went by. My mood was getting dark. Now this poor little VCR, that is probably 8 years old, if not more.....has been a good one but it has been acting up here and there. Things like you having to rap sharply on top of it or the drawer won't open to accept the disc. Just small stuff like that. But it prompted me to buy another VCR around Christmas. I found one on sale and so, knowing that I would need it shortly, I purchased it. Notice I said Christmas! It has been sitting in the box, unopened, next to my TV in the living room ever since. Neither my daughter or I know anything about VCR's and everyone I asked to hook it up for me always said, "yeah, sure,.....I'll do that for you next weekend....tomorrow....next month....in my next life." Needless to say, it never got hooked up, let alone opened up.

So we decided, how hard can this be? Kids can do this for god's sake. You just take one cable off the old one and put it in the opening labeled the same in the new one. Piece of cake!

We pulled everything out from the shelf under the TV (Good Lord it gets dusty under there!). I did the brain wracking job of putting the batteries in the remote. Hey! I had to do my part too. Well....seems as though the cables I have hooked up to the old VCR have a pin in the fittings and the new cables have color coded plugs. Of COURSE the new VCR did not have any places for a fitting that had a pin. This truly puzzled us and we ended up putting everything back in the box. We replaced the old VCR right where it had been and stared at it for a while, our brains whirling. I must say that perseverance paid off in this respect because after fooling with it for only another hour or so, we did get it to acknowledge the disc and to actually play it without further incident. Of course we were afraid to even so much as sneeze during the movie in fear that the vibrations would make it revert to thinking it was, perhaps, a coffee pot and therefore refuse to play the disc.

We had a terrific thunder-storm later that night. I slept through most of it. In the morning my computer would not turn on. It was completely dead! Upon further investigation, I found that my Comcast modem was also dead. I tried to reset it and it laughed at me. Now, picture this....if you possibly can. Underneath my computer desk I have a conglomeration of wires that is beyond description. I am afraid to mess with any of them and leave it all to the guy who works on my computer. If it wasn't for the fact that most of my stuff had power and was working in that room, I would have thought I had blown a fuse. I was at a loss and so I called my computer guy. The first thing he did was tell me to check the surge protector power strips and that he'd be out on Sunday to take a look. Now....he didn't say he'd FIX it on Sunday....just that he'd take a look. That always makes me nervous.

Well, I did find that my computer and modem are plugged into a battery back-up system. I do that because power failures have fried two computers over the years. Somehow the battery back up had been turned off. When I turned it back on.....I had power to the computer and to the modem once again.....but now I have this irritating "chirp" that is going on. The back-up system doesn't seem to be recharging. I have a feeling that it is dead. He'll be here in an hour and will tell me.

Once I had the computer up and running I felt like I belonged in the world again. (sad, isn't it?) I have since noticed that my adding machine and my answering machine are not working. I'm hoping that its because they have become unplugged when I was messing in the jumble of wires under there. I went to recharge my cell phone and the battery is no longer taking a charge. I really can't complain....I've had the phone for over 10 years. Are you seeing a pattern here?

So.....while I had the system running, I went to my bill-paying sites and scheduled my payments through the end of this month......just in case. Yep, just in case he has to take my computer and I am without for a period of time. See? I'm trying desperately to head off Murphy at the pass.....but if there is possibly ONE tiny way something can go wrong......of course it will. But, you knew that, didn't you?

Update: My computer guy was here.(BLESS his heart) The new VCR is hooked up and the old one that is temperamental about working is now in the den. It will play VHS tapes and I have a bunch of those so I might as well keep it. The battery back-up, in all likely-hood took a 'hit' during the storm. He says those back-ups can only take one hit and then that's it. He's had his for 10 years and its still working. This is my second one in 5 years. Go figure. Anyway, he'll be back in a few days....I'm getting a memory upgrade.

Did you know.....

Did you know.....You can sure learn some off-the-wall stuff from the younger generation....some of it is quite helpful.

Did you know....there is a website you can go to where you can put in your cell phone number, then make up another number that you'd like to have shown as the caller I.D. read-out when you place a call to a third number that you key in. It will call that number from your cell phone and show the fake caller I.D. number you've chosen on the recipient's phone. This is just plain scary and I'm telling you so that you won't be fooled if someone calls you and says they are from a certain business and tries to get info from you. You check the caller I.D. and its their number and so you think the call is legit. Not always so. Use extra caution. Don't give out any personal info unless you call them.

Did you know that you can keep something for 10 years and never use it, but the very day you throw it away, you will find a use for it. I know this is one of Murphy's Laws....but its actually true.....believe it.

Did you know that even paper towels are not what they seem; the cardboard roll itself is bigger around, giving the impression that the roll is the same size as always, but, in reality, there aren't as many towels on the roll as there used to be. First it was toilet paper, now these. I think a lot of marketing people think we are a bunch of airheads that won't notice. We notice....but what can we do? I really hate the deceit part. Check the cereal boxes.....same height, just not as wide.

Did you know you're not supposed to keep an item with rechargeable batteries in it in the charger when not in use? I didn't. Cost of new batteries = $16.50

Did you know that a lot of our good old American foods that have been around for generations are being made in China or Mexico? Don't believe me? Start checking the labels....you'll be shocked.

If you change one burned out lightbulb in a two bulb fixture, the other one will burn out within two days. This happens even if you wait to change the burned out one, hoping the other one will go too and you can change them both at the same time. Even if you put brand new bulbs in a two bulb fixture, they will burn out at different times.....which just fascinates me for some reason. (it doesn't take much to amuse me).

Keep smilin'~