Really - This was a Conversation

Me:  Some days I have more than brass balls.  I have LEAD ones.  (We were discussing reality, life and other manly pursuits and measuring success rates solely upon the formula all successful people use: testicles + shiny = I AM A MAN.  Size and weight of sack being proportional to difficulty in attaining goal.  Read the line on the sack!)  Humor deepens.

Friend:  I have some of those things.  I've been looking to have mine chromed.  Make 'em shiny, but having problems finding someone to do it.  (Lead!  Why Lead!?)

Me:  No problem!!  Let me pull up GOOGLE.  We shall Chrome you!!  (Bata-bing)  Call me anytime you have a problem.  Oh Yeah.  Google has the answer for your balls! 

Friend:  HAHHAHHAHAHH  (insert cool points)

Me:  HAHAHAHAHHAH (rack 'em)

(OH Snap I'm so fucking CLEVER)

HHAHAHAHHAHAHHAH

Lead balled bitch think tanking with numbnuts...... HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH!

Keeping On till Its Over

Setting all this down feels downright saintly.  Where were we?  Ahh yes..  trouble still abounded everywhere.  And then I met this guy.

Who probably helped with the demise of my desktop... or at least lent to it.  We are hanging out in my cave and he decides he's going to have a look see inside my tower.  Without asking, he pops the side and simultaneously a vein in my forehead exploded.

I never saw such a big guy move so quickly when I screamed:

WHATINTHE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING? YOU ARE NOT GROUNDED AND THE DAMN COMPUTER IS ON YOU IDIOT!

Word to the wise:

NEVER pop the hood on anyone's baby to see what's inside.  They might demasculate you on site.

Two days later:  my hard disks clattered and I hit the power button and prayed.

Backing up:  this guy, whom I still count as a friend... introduced me to:

PAID PROFESSIONAL.  and he said:

Did you know that your Vostro 1720 had Windows Ultimate?  [no]

I do believe your hard drive on your desktop was refurbished.  [what?]

No that hole should not be there.

It would be better if you just replaced the computer than tried to fix it.

I've never seen a laptop so screwed up like that Latitude.

The guy at Best Buy said smart phones don't get viruses? really?

You really take care of your computers, because your desktop just needs a new drive..so no, you are not stupid.. really...pat..pat..pat...

AND THEN

I watched him assemble my desktop, from parts we agreed on together.

Parts for my New Desktop

Hello Big Drive

Hi Graphics Card and Card Reader

OK, and I love Tiger Direct and my Professional that made this possible.

Continuance of Keeping On

Where was I?  Oh Yes.  I was wanting to hit a guy.  The whole time I am thinking to myself, you can't make this man mad at you.  Do you realize this?  What if he just makes his own door into your home and sacks the whole place.  The very idea was scary beyond all means.  We call AT&T for another home visit.  This time they send someone a little nicer.. more personable.  

And I stepped into the pile of poo of asking for help outside the box.  Golly Gee Whiz.  My Vostro gets a graphics card, some ram and more space.  Meanwhile, technology meets marriage and on some days there is still acid rain.

I decided to can AT&T.  Not because they were bad really.  It was more because the service didn't meet my growing needs.  I will say they are diligent and kind and willing to work with you, but after two home calls, I just wanted something else.  [the guy that updated my computer was such a jerk that he mailed me my laptop cord... MAILED]

Sooooo.  I start having different problems ... much of it keeping up with all these computers.  As well as frustration at not being educated enough to ask the correct questions.

Our router was giving us trouble needing constant resets.  I had to call Time Warner.  I had a man there accuse me of stealing wifi service and then lecture me on his job.  I interrupted him and told him I paid him to do his job, and if I wanted to go to school I'd take a class.  He sent me down the circular drainage phone system because of my supposed theft.  When I finally talked to someone with brains I asked how did I convince a Time Warner employee to drill holes in my wall and install cable boxes in my basement just so I could steal Internet?  Why did this guy say this?  After carefully adjusting my billing and agreeing with the impossibility of me masterminding theft of Internet service I had been overpaying for I was sent a new router.  I was joyous.  Who wouldn't be?

Time moves on.  Speed did not.  So I looked into finding someone to work on my network.  Yeah.  I had to admit I was a network now.

To the Internet.  Epiphany.

Why not talk to Dell?  I was trying to update my three stock laptops and debug them, plus figure out how to use a network drive and sort out bugs in my beloved desktop.

Dell took a week of my life.  You can read about it in past entries.  Needless to say, they gave me a full refund for the service they were supposed to provide to me.  That took three hours and a refusal to let them into my computer period.

I still had the same problems.  I tried one more company.  They at least got some bugs worked out and helped with backup.  The sad thing was:  I had been watching people in my computer so long I knew what they were doing.

to be continued some more.

Keeping on Keeping on

I'm finally here.  Fitfully resting my laurels on my blog.  Triage seems to be the best word I can come up with to explain the absence of words and my usual anecdotes of sarcasm.  Has anyone missed me?  Hell if I know.  Have I missed being here.  With the fierceness of a thousand burning suns.  I sit down in my man cave with such a sense of relief.  *SIGH*  My place is whole again.  I didn't understand just how much 350 square feet make a difference in my life.  I have felt like all the creativity I possess had been drained out of me.  What was left has felt extremely useless.  Volatile, angry, putrid and festering...but with no purpose or creative way to lob itself at the world in general.  I have much to report on.  Many loose ends to contemplate.  My biggest feeling of the moment is:  Hell YES.  I AM HERE.  DOING WHAT I DO.  WRITING.  

I have kept a journal since 1990.  Handwritten in crazy handwriting.  Tomes of feelings.  Then I moved into online and over time, I have migrated here.  I plan on moving this who kit and caboodle over to my own web address at some point.  I've been on a learning journey that isn't over yet.  The beauty of having this blog is the fact its still here.  For that, I am grateful.  I am getting to where I understand technology a little bit better, and I know that I have more to do.  I want to share my experience with fellow bloggers, because I believe I might make a few people feel a bit better about themselves.  Who knows?  Some of the companies I name off might want to pay attention.  Either way, I am going to set this down.  This shackle of technological tragedy that will probably read as being pretty funny.

I am writing the world from my very first custom built computer.  Yeah.  Up until now, every computer I've ever purchased myself was a Dell.  My defense for choosing Dell came from using other computers and from the only computer I've owned that I didn't pick out:  a Toshiba Satellite.  That thing came loaded with software that was impossible to uninstall and be rid of.  That said, I still own it, and it still works.  My first desktop came to be in 2008.  A Vostro 200.  Oh I loved my computer.  I did.  I still do.  My paid professional is going to help me convert it into a huge storage hub for my home.  I'm sad to say that after too many people, too many companies and too many idiots my Vostro clattered to its death December 8, 2013.

So what happened?  People throw things away all the time!  That Vostro is a Dinosaur you say!  True. Had it not been upgraded.  But I am getting ahead.  Let me finish setting things out.  My little Dell family grew.  My husband needed a laptop, as his Dimension has a case of dementia.  Enter the Latitude.  It took three Latititudes to get one to work.  That was a late night email to Michael Dell that got results.  Then with further ado enter the Vostro 1720 laptop and much later my Inspiron.  That is a bunch of laptops and computers.  How do you keep up with them all?  Somewhere in there, we decided to change cable companies.  Enter me.

Southern Bell was our phone company, and well paying separate for AT&T Internet stunk.  However, they had this great little program, where they put a toolbox on your computer and you could call them for anything.  You know, this was kind of cool and they were nice people I could understand.  However, when two optical drives one on a laptop and the other my coveted desktop decided they either didn't exist or that they simply didn't work.... AT&T could not fix it.  Soooo.  They sent somebody out to my house.

After much deliberation, representative said that iTunes ate my laptop optical drive.  WHAT!  Oh yeah, and your desktop optical drive never did what you said it was supposed to.  DEAR GOD.  I wanted to hit him.

to be continued....

The Tediousness of an Enormous Life

I have so many things that I need to be doing and I find myself at 4 am wishing to find some way to blot out the enormity of it all.  Sometimes I feel as if my life is strangling all the creativity and goodness out of me.  I would like to say that I am more the optimist and look at life as if the glass were half full, but lately I don't think that would be the direction my thoughts take.  What I mean to say is that I am more on the offense than I have ever been in my life.  I feel most anxiety bases itself around the assumption that for every good thing I accomplish, there is an epic failure waiting patiently to manifest itself directly in the path of my self proclaimed happiness.  I resent this.  I feel so much pressure of this enormous responsibility I willingly embrace as my day to day life.  I want to do so many good things.  I have miles of ideas that seem to be swallowed up by the dutifulness of responsibility.  I wish I could just tell the entire world to go fuck off for just a few days and turn itself without me.  Which means, why must I be responsible for everything and why do I give a damn about things that WILL NOT HAPPEN unless I do them?  Where is the happiness in that?  I don't know and I'm losing patience with myself because multitasking has redefined itself for me.  All it means is doing ten things half-assed until I get time to do it right and that is redundant and idiotic.  Something has got to give and I am feeling as if I should hold out a cup and stand on corners and shake it.  Alas pride and duty doesn't allow for such paltry sacrifices of dignity, but occasionally at 4 am, I wish I were that shameless.

So I will leave now because I must get back to answering emails, paying bills, sorting out my computer issues and praying I won't fold under pressure of dance tomorrow.  I've been asked to choose music that defines me and the disco ball that is me feels this task is impossible.  Ask for the moon instead.  I might be able to achieve that.  It feels more attainable than finding my alter ego.  I want to ask the dance teacher.... which one do you want?