Slowly but surely…

03. January 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

…it took till nearly midnight to convince my laptop that YES I wanted the hard drive formatted! It isn’t as easy as you might think, and I don’t have the wherewithal to go into it here, so I won’t!

I’ll just refer you here, which is one of the many geeky sites I had to refer to to figure this out.

As of this writing, I’ve installed Windows XP (circa 2002, meaning once you get it going, it has to download a billion updates), plus the Service Pack 2 from a CD I have. Then I configured the machine back onto our home wireless network so I can start downloading the anti-virus software — the culprit that got me in trouble in the first place!

So it’s downloading…we’ll see from there.

IN THE MEANTIME —

I got to bed about 12:30am last night after I got the laptop to start formatting the hard drive. I’ve done worse when faced with rebuilding our computers, so I was pleased with that.

2:09am: Jake comes to my room to tell me he got sick. All those cinnamon rolls. Why did I let him have 3??? At least his barf smelled like cinnamon — really, it did.

2:12am: I’m hauling my Bissel Green Machine upstairs to clean up the mess. I’ll give Jake credit: he leaned over and made his mess on the floor, his bed was fine! There’s a couple spots on the SIDE of the bed, which I’m dealing with today, but things were good enough that he could go back to sleep right away.

2:32am: By the time I’m done with all this, Jake had gone back to sleep. Phew!

2:36am: Back in bed. Hard to sleep with computer problems and a sick son on my mind.

6:50am: Timmy’s poking my face to tell me he’s awake.

Jake mainly has an upset stomach, with no other symptoms of illness. He’s staying home from preschool today, tomorrow’s pajama day, so he don’t want to miss that!

Wiped Clean!

03. January 2008 · Comments Off on Wiped Clean! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,


As I’m writing this on my upstairs desktop, that kitchen laptop so proudly pictured here is in the middle of a re-format/re-installation.

Sniff sniff…like I have time for this. Of course, here I am blogging to all of you.

FRUS-TRAY-SHUN!

02. January 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

I came downstairs this morning to my kitchen laptop having all these red icons in the lower right corner. You know, down there with the clock. There’s this Windows Security Alert that’s red, McAfee antivirus in red, an AOL Active Security Monitor that’s blinking red…
…so I guess there’s a problem, huh?

Upon further investigation, I see that my anti-virus was attempting to run and was having some problems. I spent WAY too much time trying to figure this out before throwing in the towel and uninstalling my entire McAfee Computer Security Empire software suite (provided free by AOL — see? I knew keeping AOL all these years was good for something!)

In fact, I’m writing to you from an unprotected computer!

That sounds bad.

I’m in the middle of downloading a new version of the McAfee Antivirus suite…we’ll see how this goes. Don’t worry, I won’t let the computer sit unprotected for more than an hour or so. Too bad the computer has to be unprotected while I’m downloading the new software — what’s up with that???

So don’t send me any viruses, okay?

Is this thing on?

01. January 2008 · Comments Off on Is this thing on? · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

So…after all this time of enjoying other peoples’ blogs, Dave (my Weather Warrior husband) convinced me that setting up my own blog might be long overdue. After all, I’ve suggested other people start blogs, I’ve incessantly called Dave over to look at other people’s blogs, my sister has a really cool one (a plug for my sister: Living in the Material World!), etc.

Actually Dave put it this way: “You’re always sitting at that thing [the computer], I’m sure you have lots of things to put in a blog!”.

He’s right…I spend a LOT of time at the computer, and the efforts I’ve put into the wireless networking and file sharing in the house were all just so that I can continue to e-mail friends and surf the web while still being a decent mother. This meant not spending all my time in the computer room, instead putting our very old (circa 2000) laptop in the kitchen.

See on the counter on the left side of the picture? That’s the laptop, taking up valuable food preparation space.

Sometimes it’s good — many of the other neighborhood Moms will send out “Let’s go to the park” e-mails which I can receive quickly, sometimes it’s bad — letting the pasta overcook because I’m IMing a friend!

My point is: I did it — I set up a real blog, and my next task is to somehow link my Picasa albums so that I don’t have to duplicate efforts.

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