There was SOOO much snow...

Ladies (especially those of you not living where I am):

I let the cats out to play in it when there was 6 inches yesterday. When I suggested going out today, they just gave me sarcastic looks:

This is my birdhouse out back (it is under there, I promise):

We lost power for nearly 45 minutes last night, resulting in a scramble for the candles and nearly 15 degrees drop in temperature inside the house. At my house, we have about 2 feet total--you can kind of see it on the table in the courtyard behind the cats. My work had an early dismissal yesterday because they were worried about people getting home (like my boss, I elected to work from home at about 8 am anyways). My school closed early yesterday too (though I didn't have school that day). I was supposed to have class today, as the school was open, but my neighborhood roads haven't been plowed and it's still falling.

How much did everyone else get?

Alula

Gym Period Sucks.

Well, I am back from my first evening at the local Community Center, where I sweated to Lady in the Water while doing 15 on the elliptical and 20 cycling.

Apparently there's a kids swimming class letting out at the pool there right when I need to be changing in the locker room, so that was awkward. I crammed myself into a tiny bathroom stall to change because there are otherwise no changing rooms and I just wasn't cool undressing in a room of 5-year-olds. I will probably just change at work after today (much more spacious bathroom stalls).

School, Weight, and Sleeping Computers

I'm exhausted. And I have a hyper-involved group for one of my group projects. This is not a bad thing, but good god, my email and our group page is going to explode. I am taking a break.

And I have officially given up on dieting. I suck at it. I sit on my widening butt for 8 hours every day because of my job, and cutting calories has never given me more than 2 pounds of weight loss. So I am finally admitting defeat--I caved and spent the money for a 20-punch pass to the local rec center today. I'm going to try a 5-week experiment where I go for four 1-hour days every week.

I am effectively instituting a gym period in my life. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Today, one of my coworkers (an older-than-me woman who is also in my MLS program) called me from home to say she was really worried about her computer because it had crashed again. Now, she's not the most technically apt of people--the last few times she's called me regarding computer problems were because she was worried someone had "hacked" her when her computer started doing automatic updates, and once when her computer would not turn on (result of dead battery). This time, she informed me, she was sure she had done it in--she had accidentally hit "logout" instead off "power off" and the computer "seemed to be stuck--the lights are all on but the screen is blank and it's not turning on or off!"

Well, my goodness! I calmly explained the sleep and hibernate functions of laptops to her and told her to hold down the power button until the laptop shut down, and then to reboot it like normal.

And she was very grateful--she once paid a certain highway robbery group of technically oriented people dressed like a '90s stereotype and run by a large electronics store more than $150 to fix a problem like this.

It's nice to be appreciated. It's nice to help. It's also nice to look at people my parents' age and think how cute they are, and not mean that in a demeaning or derogatory way--computers are confusing to people who don't use them often, and sometimes I forget that.

Alula

Change of Plans Again

OK so to anyone who wants to be at Little Mans party I just found out that Mr man will be bringing us down on the 28Th next week and I'm thinking about having the party on Friday night the 30Th something simple. Well I just need to know what people think I need a best day Friday night or Sunday night? Too many choices my brain is going to explode.

Fall Re-Vamping

So my computer crashed a 2nd time (I believe I wrote about this, yes?). Well, I contacted Dell because my 1 year warranty on hardware runs out on November 10th. They diagnosed the problem (or they believe they did--I guess we'll see) and had a new, free hard drive on my door step 2 days later. Prospero lives; I guess we'll see if I crash again, in which case Dell will continue to replace parts, I guess. I hate the hassle but love that they are so responsive--truly phenomenal response time on a problem for one of their 2nd-hand computers.

Now that I have Prospero back, I am warning all of you that this site will be undergoing a remodel sometime in the near future--hopefully I won't lose any of our lists or gadgets this time. If anyone has an opinion, what are you feeling for the next few months (at least)?

Flowers? Dark? Light? Red? Green? Blue? Tell me your thoughts, i.e.:

"Maybe something a little lighter?"

"KITTIES!!!"

"Something that looks like a diary journal."

"Don't care--just get the butt ugly brown off of our site." (<--that would be paraphrased from Q when she bothered me about the current theme a few months ago, LOL)

...or any other ideas you might have

I'll see what I can do, but obviously I may not be able to please everyone--but I will keep you in line for future updates if anyone's idea gets completely pushed aside this time.

Alula

...Were back!

Hey Ladies,

I'm gonna try to get back in the blog spotlight. Tons of things have happened, tons of things are happening, and high school still sucks!

Mr. Q is working full time, and going to school full time. I see him in passing now.

I still am unemployed, and I think that makes me officially useless. Avon is not paying the bills yet but its something to do. I am still hopefully optimistic about getting a job before I have been unemployed for a year.

High school is still high school, the faces have changed but its till the same game. I'M HALF WAY DONE! Its something to celebrate for sure.

I got a washer and dryer a few days ago. They are wonderful! The dryer is acting up but I think its just being too smart for me. I might have to read the manual! Today my Uncle dropped off a fridge and a oven. The fridge is really old but its better than the back up in the garage. Of course the oven is too big for my kitchen so we are sill brain storming about how to get a working oven in the house. Mean while I may be cooking in the garage. (what will the neighbors think!)

Change of plans

OK so I got a surprise today and the one day summit meeting has turned into a two day summit and so I'm changing little mans b-day to the evening of Sunday Nov 1st for anyone who cares and I'm thinking a restaurant after letting him open presents. The meeting goes till 5 pm in down town and on a Sunday I'm thinking the traffic should be not to bad. well let me know what anyone thinks.

At least I was prepared this time

My laptop crashed again. Just wouldn't start on Sunday morning--same deal as before, black screen and a cursor.

And I'm thinking, oh no, this is not an OS issue.

We reloaded the OS. If it's crashed again, it's the hard drive. Or worse, because the hard drive is passing diagnostics, it might be the motherboard. Just in case, I contacted Dell to see if they had any tricks. My warranty on hardware defects is still good through November 10th, and my rep Amit says they will replace any defective parts to my satisfaction.

The good news is everything was backed up this time.

In other news, school this last weekend was a total waste of my time. My teacher announced to the whole class that she has a compressed disc in her back and is trying to lose weight using an appetite suppressant at the same time, so she's basically checked out of her regular mental faculties. She graded our first round of papers in this state, and did not do so fairly. She told us at the first class weekend that she found it appropriate to use the first person in our reflective papers (because they are, well, reflective). And then she marked us all down to a D average for using the first person, because "It is NEVER okay to use the first person in APA format!!!"

This paper was worth 15% of the final grade, which means some people are already so far down on points they will not be able to receive better than a B for the class (we go on academic probation for B- or less). Then she used literally 6 o=hours to discuss changes she was making to the syllabus. Then she spent another 2 describing how she wanted to change the final project from a paper to a presentation, but people kept asking questions about how she was changing various components and she was just making it up as she went, taking no notes. Then by the end she was so confused she just said "You know what, forget the last 2 hours--I'll think about it and send an email tomorrow." So, my time has been wasted. And, it's 2 days later--no email.

I hate it when professors do this. I do my homework and turn it in on time. The teacher's homework is to have a functional syllabus and a lesson plan--not to waste my time by making me watch her dick around with shit she should have done before the class even started in August. Out of a total 12 hours of class this weekend, we had 3 hours of structured learning.

Then she witched at us because several people had computer issues without backing up their work. She told everyone they needed to run out and buy an 8GB flash drive and use it to store their work. Mind you, not back up, but store. She apparently has everything from her entire college career to present on this one flash drive. And it only costs $20, so we all need to conform to that standard. Someone raised their hand and said she used an external hard drive for backup, so that was an option, and the teacher looked at this woman and said "those are way too pricey--I don't recommend them."

So I raised my hand and said all my school stuff is backed up on Zoho, which is free. And the teacher looked at me and said "Yeah, but I can take this flash drive with me in my pocket and I never have to log into anything!"

Well, from then on I fumed. (After speaking with classmates, I was not the only one--everyone hates this witch now). I like my backup copies passwords protected, like the originals, thank you very much. I also like them stored at a facility that makes additional backups. I like them accessible wherever, whether I'm on my own computer or not, and without having to remember to take a flash drive with me. I have also experienced the misfortune of having lost flash drives, or having them malfunction and erase my files. But alas, pocketability is apparently the most important thing when considering where to store your digital life.

So we get to class the next day and the class is even more pissed at the teacher because she failed to post that day's slides to the class blog the night before. Why? Well, we have to forgive her.

She left her flash drive in the classroom the night before.

I wanted to raise my hand and tell her that if it had been backed up to Zoho, this would not have been an issue, but I think she already had the idea, and wasn't happy about it. Karma's a witch, too.

Alula

Random Thought

OK I don't know if i told anyone this but has anyone noticed that a guy from the city or the suburbs is thought of as a city boy, but on the other hand a guy from the mountains is thought of as a mountain man. Boy/Man see the distinction? So girls here is the question do you have a city boy, mountain man, or something else? I have the mountain man who is sitting in a tree stand in Nebraska for the second weekend in a row determined to shoot a white tail buck with his bow of course apparently shooting an animal with a gun has no challenge according to him. I get to go hunting at the end of November with him for a land damage tag happy birthday to me. Don't forget we are having a B-day party for a little man on the 1st of November. He doesn't really need much but he absolutely loves Mickey Mouse Club House and Little Einsteins the Disney shows and the toys. Anything Musical and anything with buttons to push, including mine. I can always use clothes he is into 3t/4t sizes, and has his dads big head and hates anything around is neck so no turtle necks like cloths. And I guess if anyone can find his size goggles, he will be going snow mobile riding with his dad this year. Oh and if anyone wants to get him a preschool computer game for windows vista that's what we have and my mom keeps letting him play reader rabbit at her house I just haven't found one yet. Gifts for the party are not required and only get him something if you really want to you know he will be more interested in the box a present comes in than the actual present. I will be having a house warming for the new house next month sometime that will be interesting considering there is no parking around this house at all. Well something to think about next month. Smile all.

In which DoHP's wall of text crits you for over 9000!

So, this is going to be about three months, maybe more of thought dump.

Fist things first. Work. Uggg. Last year's flu season never really went away. July and August saw a little bit a reprieve, but it's been back in full force since school started. Apparently if you put kids around other kids, all of whom were healthy to begin with, you get a group of sick kids.

And since school started, that means that 1/3 of our staff now has school to deal with along with work and that makes scheduling a nightmare (not that I have to do it) and results in the flexible people working weird hours. I have two things I could do on Tuesday nights that would be fun and I would consider having a life outside of work. Both of them would start at 7. I have been scheduled 12-9 on Tuesdays for the foreseeable future. I do get weekends off though. That's good right?

I think that corporate managers need to come work in the pharmacy some days. Since the beginning of the month we've had a series of bad days that keep getting worse. Too many patients and phone calls, and not enough staff to handle it. Everybody wants their medications NOW, no matter when they got the prescription. My nightmares feature the phrases "How much and how long?" and "One pharmacy call. TWO! pharmacy calls!"

We have a little clinic-y thing in our store that is giving flu shots, and they ran out the other day. I lost track at about 30 each day on the number of calls we recieved asking, when we'd get flu shots in and other bits and pieces of information about the flu shots. Now the clinic can't answer their own calls, because there's only one person there and answering the phone would detract from them being able to see patients. Wouldn't the extra calls also detract from the pharmacy being able to serve patients too?

My chain has always been the wierd one around here and kept all the pseudoephedrine behind the front store counter with the cigarettes. That takes a tremendous load off the pharmacy. As of now, it's back in the pharmacy. I'm wondering when we'll get the time to move it, the space to put it (my pharmacy is tiny, we really have no space for anything else), and the time to sell it during the day.

I'm supossed to be the kinda-manager of the techs at my store. I already act as such. I pester people when stuff needs to get done, I do returns, I help out in sticky customer issues, I do the conference calls, etc. I've even done the class to make it official. Only thing is, it isn't yet. Because the trainer for my area hasn't gotten me in the computer as having taken the class yet. And she forgot to put some of the pre-req things in that I did, and I had to do them over again once I showed up on the "bad people who haven't done their required training" list. This made me rather mad. So, I'm still not offically the tech manager. I'm doing everything that the position requires, but I'm not getting paid properly for it.

Second, everything else. Better than work. At least a little.

I just had to put new front tires on my car. Did I mention my car? I don't remember if I did or not, but it's a long story, and if I didn't I'll tell it later. But it's not the mini-van anymore. The car runs, the radio works, it gets good gas mileage, I'm happy with it.

The last full week in September, my mom, my sister and I all went to my granny's house in VA for a week. This was the week of all the flooding in Atlanta. My community avoided most of the flooding and damage from that. Which I am thankful for.

But Virginia was fun. I saw my cousin's baby (who is HUGE. 9 weeks and 15lbs), spent time with my grandparents, and just was generally not at work. My grandparents are doing well. I don't really have much else to say about it.

My knitting keeps growing on me. Not like, "Oh I didn't this whatever before, but now it's kinda grown on me." But like my vest fit me before I washed it, now it fits my mom, who is several sizes larger than me. So, the lesson I learned here, knitted garments don't go in the washing machine even if the yarn band says they can. I was going through my yarn the other day, and realized I have a strange obsession with purple yarn. And the purple-green color combination. I think I'm going to start trying color work, which has scared me for the longest time.

I'm not going to bore you with WoW stuff. Except that some people think I have happy dungeon/questy fun time all wrong. I'm good at ignoring them. I have more to say if y'all want to hear, but I don't know if you do.

Now right before I went to VA, I was trying to update my iTunes so I could get it to work with my iPod (still dosen't, but eh.) and it was downloading and taking it's dear sweet time, so I turned off my monitor with the intention of going to bed and dealing with it in the morning. Then it starts making a noise. Like it's trying to yodel a cat. I turn the monitor back on and it's green. I force it to shut off, and try to turn it back on. The fans turn on, but it dosen't start up. I give up, and go to bed because it is late at this point. The next morning, I try again. Still the fans turn on, but nothing else. I try starting it with the vista cd in the drive, still nothing. This is my desktop that's being a booger, so there's no technical support to go with it. I look up the hours of the local computer repair shop and get ready to take it in. They can look at it while I'm out of town. I load the computer up in the car, and take it over there, and their website had the wrong hours and they were closed. I take it back home, and decided to deal with it when I got back. My laptop was working fine.

When I get back, my dad has also gotten back from a trip. And we decide to look at it some more, thinking it might be the video card that's gone bad, and of course we have at least one spare. We have a whole closet full of computer parts, old computers and other electronics, and the boxes that go with them. So I take it down to the basement (where the closet is), and we open the case and make sure everything is connected, but nothing seemed to be disconnected. So I plug it in, connect a monitor, and turn it on. It starts like a charm. It's that thing, where you take it to the computer guy and it works.

So, that's what's up with me.
~DoHP

...and you all would have killed me.

Well, something happened to me last week when I tried to do the helpful thing by selling off our guild bank. There I was, standing in the Auction House, and World of Warcraft promptly logged me off and I had to fill out that little form about what I was doing so they could fix the problem. The error was reported successfully, and then it happened:

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!!!!!

I didn't freak. Computers hiccup all the time. I very calmly tried to restart the machine. The machine very calmly told me that it couldn't restore the session, and I tried a regular reboot. The machine could not reboot, and brought me back to the same screen five times in a loop without ever successfully booting. So I started it in safe mode. And I got the same error, and then the helpful screens with directions went bye-bye and all I was getting when the machine turned on was a black screen with a cursor on it.

Then I freaked out.

Ladies, always back up your data. My dad got me a 320GB portable drive for my birthday; trouble is, I've been so busy lately I had not had a chance to back up any of my pictures or videos (all of my textual docs are backed up using Zoho, except for older writings, which are somewhere on flash or cd). So there I was, freaking like nobody's business, and my husband telling me to chill out. All the baby pictures of Count and Gretal. All my pictures (period) since buying the computer last November. All the graphics I had made for my in-progress Google site. Memories of snow storms. Every picture of my garden this year and last. And then it hit me: All the videos of the camping trip.

Oh....#^$&#!

Mr. B tried to do a straight copy of the drive, but it was unreadable. That's when the hysteria set in. We couldn't recover anything if the backup program couldn't see the drive. After trying a handful of things, something finally found my data, thank god, and we were able to recover *everything* (well, except for my desktop background--I spent an hour hunting it down again online). We have a running theory that the table of contents on the drive is probably what screwed up, and whatever recovered things was reading the shadow.

We formatted the disk and reloaded the OS, and now all of my settings and junk are wanky, but I'll learn. Google Chrome is pretty awesome for anyone that hasn't tried it yet.

So now I owe the powers that be for saving me from my own recklessness. I'm backing up everything later today.

Alula

New House!

Well whats new for me is that Mr Man bought a house an actual on firm ground house and little man will have his own room. we are in the very slow process of moving in, very slow. I am trying to get a food license to sell my jerky at a couple local craft festival events in my area. not easy to find I will be making a bunch of calls tomorrow. I am in town with little man, Mr man dropped us off and is in Nebraska sitting in a tree stand hunting for a white tail dear, if he gets a doe that will be the next round of jerky. Mr man borrowed my "fathers" Tahoe I told him that was daring but he did anyway. Today I'm dragging my family to a pumpkin patch I know early but I have an idea in my head and I have to see if it works. Later I'm thinking about taking my sister to a haunted house for some fun I haven't been to one in a long time, my mother will hopefully watch little man. Later this month we will be in town again on the 31 and 1 and I'm thinking that we should have an early b-day party for little man who be 2 on November 10Th, where does the time go. I have a meeting thing on the day of the 31st but the 1st early afternoon would be good i think let me know what people think. His b-day last year was a bust because of the accident and my concussion so i want this year to be bigger, and like he would care if we celebrated a little early.