Another Revolting Development

The world of computers can be SO complicated and confusing sometimes.  Why is it that some people just go thru their life never having to give their computer, or what they do on it, a second thought and yet it seems that I am always in a jam, of sorts?

A month ago, I was delighted to be changing over from DSL with my phone company to WildBlue Satellite Internet service.  It was a package deal with DirectTV and the end result is that we are saving $50 a month.  The part about replacing Dish Network with Direct has been awesome.  The thing with WildBlue??  Not so much. 

Now, trust me when I say, I research the living crap out of things before I make any changes or decisions or buy much of ANYthing.  So......yes, I read that WildBlue has limited bandwidth usage {due to fed regs regarding satellite usage..blah, blah} but I was getting the Pro Plan, which has the highest speeds and usage, so surely little ol me wasn't gonna come close to the limits and certainly not exceed them,  right??  Wrong!  Oh, I was so very wrong.  I hit my download limit in a week!  They gave me a one time courtesy reset back to 40%.  I watched my usage like a hawk and it mysteriously creeps back up daily.  As we speak, I am at 99% which means that before the day is over, I will be on "dial-up speed" until my usage drops. *Sigh*  A lot "should" drop off today, or tonight, or whenever.  It's on a 30 day roll over thingy.  At the end of your 1st 30 days, they take an average of your usage for the last 30 days and adjust your totals accordingly....every day.  So, 30 days ago today I downloaded {in my ignorant wisdom} 2,997,738 KB which is 2,927.47 MBs.  My limit for MB downloading is 17,000 MB {which I NOW know is freaking unbelievable!}so at some point, in the next 24 hours, my level will drop and free up some space. 

Most of that 3 GBs was from downloading a trial of PhotoShop Elements 9.  I was, at that time, totally ignorant of the 'rules'.  I download programs all the time.  No big deal, right?  Order a disc for 'just in case' and go on about my business.  Won't be doing that much anymore!  I love the new version of PS 9, tho' and can't wait until I have enough bandwidth so I can watch the tutorial videos....ahem.

The 1st thing I found that I can no longer use, is my beloved Carbonite for online backup.  I love Carbonite and it has been a God send on 3 or 4 occasions!  But, my last back up was 41 GBs.  SO....even tho my daily backups of whatever pictures and documents I might have would still be doable, there's no way I would ever be able to restore my backup!  Had to go buy an external hard drive for backing up everything and I don't trust those.  I had a defective one once and lost everything, which is when I switched to Carbonite.  And of course, I just paid my annual membership a couple months ago :(.

So I am now suffering from BSD {Bandwidth Stress Disorder}.  Not reading emails, not reading blogs (there are 233 unread blogs in my Google Reader....eeeep), not looking things up at random, not doing much of ANY thing!  I'm afraid that every little thing is going to put me over the edge! 

I guess I can't even watch the TV shows on my computer that I have recorded on our new DVR from Direct!  But I'm not SURE because I don't wanna waste the usage to research it!!  I know I could call, but I feel really stupid asking.  Not sure why.  I am thinking that since it is all tied together via my router, that it wouldn't actually be 'downloading'  and therefore not using any bandwidth, but if it counts as 'file sharing', then it will.  AGHHHHHHHHH. 

So, Chuck saves $50 a month and is pleased as hell with his TV and I am totally screwed with my computer!  And, no, I haven't told him about all this yet.  I'm pretty sure his head would explode if I tried to explain it and the explosion would be followed by a reprimand for not checking it out more carefully.  {Like I haven't beat myself up enough over it!}

Oh, yes.....one more thing.  Please DO beware of contracting BSD {Bandwidth Stress Disorder}.  It seems that it causes an unnatural craving for Skittles, which leads to a serious addiction.  It's BAD, people.  Very, very bad!!

DOUBLE DAMN THE GEEK SQUAD

The continuing saga with my PC is not pretty. I took it back in to the Geek Squad on Tuesday. They plugged it in, got one of their techs to come out and look at it. He fiddled around for a few seconds and it was up and running! So, I loaded it up and brought it home, got it all set up and turned it on. Of course I was expecting to have to reinstall all of my software and restore my backed up stuff, but strangely enough, it was all there! I was confused. How could they have gotten rid of my Corrupted OS without doing a complete system restore?! I proceeded to tend to the things that had been changed, and got online and so forth. I was rolling merrily along when after about 2 hours.....it froze. I waited. and waited. and waited. After about 1/2 an hour it took off again only to freeze up about 15 minutes later. Needless to say, I was not happy....AT all!

Wednesday I was back on the phone to the Ol' Geeks to find out WTF was up. This time I was told that, yes my paperwork said that my OS was corrupted and that they had called me and I had given the approval to do a system restore. It did not indicate that it was actually done, however. BUT....if I brought it right back in, they would put me at the front of the line and it would get taken care of right away. I was NOT at all pleased at the thought of once again unhooking everything and lugging this big old thing in a 3rd time! So I stewed on it for the rest of the day and decided that I would just go ahead and do the damn restore myself! And I did and I'm still working on getting things reinstalled and all that jazz, but it's coming along nicely. I sure as hell didn't need them to do that! I've done it a few times through the years and it's easy enough to do.....just a lot of work afterward, but hey! I got nothing but time.

I do believe I will be writing a letter to the Head Geek, however, and letting them know how much I appreciate their great service. (insert severe sarcastic tone)

We did get a nice little storm, starting our with a base coat of freezing rain, covered shortly thereafter with 4-5 inches of snow. Schools and many, many businesses closed yesterday and today, but I'm sure all will be back to quasi normal tomorrow.

My sweet Susie had her 21st birthday yesterday. Extra carrots and oats for everyone!! She's one amazing horse for her age :)

And that's all for tonight. Bitching one last time about the Geeks has tired me all out so I'm gonna drag my sorry butt to bed. TTFN

GEEK SQUAD, BE DAMNED

So, I went to Best Buy Saturday afternoon to pick up my PC. I was all excited to get it and start reinstalling stuff and ready to Rock n Roll!! That wasn't to be the case, however. Got it home, lugged it in the house, got it all hooked up, turned it on and got zilch. I mean, it went thru some of the gibberish that flashes on the screen before it finally takes off and opens Windows, but then it stopped. On a foreign black screen that said "Starting Windows" at the bottom of the screen. But it wasn't starting Windows. It really wasn't doing anything. It just sat there. I was patient for awhile. At least for ME, I was patient. I typically reserve what little patience I possess for my Grandbabies and the elderly, but I mustered up some for my beloved PC. I seriously waited about 30 minutes and then I was on the phone. The Geek Gal had me shut it down and restart it. Same thing. She then pulled all my paperwork and checked it out, telling me that it 'should be working fine'. I asked her if they even reinstalled the OS and she said they 'should have'. She then told me I needed to bring it back in. sigh..... I decided I'd take it back the next day..Sunday...yesterday, but yesterday I wasn't feeling too good and it didn't happen. Today, I don't have my 'Ho, so it won't happen until tomorrow. UGH! Someone better look at it while I'm there and it better be a quick 'fix' cuz if I can't bring it back home with me, things might get ugly! Just sayin'.

My Tahoe is in the shop getting a spiffy new windshield today. Chuck drove it last Saturday when we had our little snow storm and while he was out and about, a stone hit the windshield and before he got home, it just went ahead and cracked all the way across. In Alaska, cracked windshields are a way of life, for various reasons, and they usually have to get pretty bad before anyone bothers replacing them. It doesn't take much to make me homesick, as most of you know, so the cracked windshield was guilty of invoking those feelings. Chuck's reaction to that was to get an appointment right away to get it replaced. LOL

So, here I am. Sitting home. No truck. No errands. Perfect day to be putzing around with my PC, but noOoOoOOO. Ah, well. Plenty of other stuff to do.

A Whole Week!

My, how time does fly! Can't believe it's been a week since my last post, and I was doing so good!

I have been quite busy and actually productive this week, however. I found a very user friendly bookkeeping program to use and have been setting that up and entering all the payroll data for 2010 in it so that I could have accurate reports to give the Accountant for the W-2s. And since Data Entry is my middle name, I enjoyed putting it all in and it went very quickly. You see, I do everything 'by hand', or have up until now. Payroll was no sweat when he just had one employee, but this year he had several, because some didn't work out and because he has needed more than one man to keep up with all the work he's had.

Luckily, he uses his checking account for EVERYthing and in the past I could just upload his bank statements to Quicken, go thru and categorize everything and be done with it. But what with my surgery and all, I fell off the wagon with that so I am now going thru the check registers and making lists. I don't mind. I'm just really excited that I have something in place for 2011 that I will enjoy doing, rather than dreading it {thereby grossly procrastinating!} As soon as I get my PC back, I'll get started importing our bank info and get that puppy rolling!

And speaking of my PC, the Geek Squad called yesterday. Told me that my problem was that my Operating System was corrupt. So, #1, my warranty doesn't cover it and #2 it'll be $130 to repair, but it's like a $1200 unit that I've only had 1 1/2 years, so that's worth it. So....most likely a virus got thru somehow, and I'm pretty sure it was one that was in a message that I opened in FaceBook. Even the best anti-virus program can't catch everything. In fact this happened to me about 9 or 10 years ago and apparently that virus was sophisticated enough to turn off my anti-virus and let itself right in! Anyway, it's ready and I'll get that back tomorrow. One good thing about taking it in is that at least it got a good cleaning and a thorough diagnostic check on everything. Of course I DO still have the daunting task of spending hours re-installing software and restoring all my backed up data. hours and days..........groan.....

My most recent "Murphy Report" is not a good one. I sat right here and watched as the crazy critter tried to leap over top of a 4' tall plant stand, which is home to 4 African Violets, in an attempt to get to the upper window sill right behind it! 2 replacement pots and 4 repottings later, she is still on my shitlist! For all of her crazy antics, she really hasn't done much damage...yet....and although my Violets are not looking very chipper, I'm sure they'll survive.

I guess that's all the excitement I have to report for today. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Original title, eh?  LOL  I do hope you all have a wonderful 2011.  I had fully intended to get one more post in for last year, but as my luck would have it my PC is having issues.  Even tho' I have my trusty laptop, I have been spending countless hours installing, uninstalling, researching, chatting with tech support and generally trying not to pull my lovely purple hair out over it all! 

Hopefully TODAY I can get finished with it.  I'm pretty sure that a virus or something got past my Best of the Best that Norton has to offer software.  At least that's what it acts like.  Norton did detect some serious stuff and fixed it, but even after that and multiple full system scans, the PC is still 'freezing' up and acting FUNky!  I actually decided to just forget the fact that I had only a month ago, spent about $100 renewing my Norton subscriptions for the 100dth time (as I've used Norton for years) and uninstalled it all and am trying Kaspersky on my PC and AVG on my laptop.  So far the laptop is finding AVG agreeable, but since I'm still working on the PC I can't really say about Kaspersky yet except that it did find some stuff that Norton apparently missed.  But, as we speak I am running Kaspersky's Virus Removal Tool and am anxious to see if that does the trick!!  Wish me luck. 

Man, I had all sorts of things I was gonna write about and I'll probably forget half of it.  Let's see.......

Oh yes!  Murphy is a water kitty.  I did post pictures of her playing in the trickle of water at the kitchen sink, but it has gotten worse than that!  We have to be sure to keep the toilet seat lid down and that's all I'm gonna say about that!  But now she will actually get IN the shower with us to drink and play in the water and has NO problem getting all soaking wet!  Up until a week ago, she would just get in and play in the water after one of us would get out, but now.......she just gets in with us!  Funniest damn cat I ever had!  Puss Puss wouldn't even walk on the porch after it rained.  If she got one little paw wet, she had a little kitty panic attack!  Hahaha.  That was pretty damn cute, too!

AND.........Murphy is an awesome mouser!  She loves to go out into the garage and into the crawl space under the house (which is accessed from the garage) and every time she does, she brings us a prize.  GOOD kitty!! :)

OMG!!!!!!  I am forgetting that I haven't posted since X-Mas and have not gotten to show off my gift from Chuck!  He finally got me something that I have been wanting since about 1984!  Just guessing....it's been a long ass time I've been wanting a RUBY RING!!!!!!!!!

It is SOOOO beautious! Rubys and Diamonds......yum! So, I have myself a new wedding ring and will be having my original one resized to wear on my middle finger next to the Ruby. My friend, Debbie, was instrumental in orchestrating the whole thing and I owe her my eternal gratitude. Hee hee.