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My husband told me that I've been slacking on keeping up the blog.  I am having trouble finding as much time these days, but then again our computer has been giving us fits too.

We noticed that we sometimes had trouble restarting it, so we just left it on--it hibernated fine, just not the full shut down.  That's fine except that it shut down for automatic updates.  Over time it took us more and more days to get it restarted...yes, days.  We were contemplating buying a new computer.  The tax free weekend was coming up where we live, so we could at least save the tax cost.  Then I realized, we had bought this computer the week after tax free weekend last year...the computer was less than a year old.  Maybe it still had a warranty on what ever was malfunctioning!

The last time it was off for three days, so I got it working and then I called customer service.  They ran diagnostics on it.  The tech found nothing wrong in the 90 minutes of back and forth.  Then he shut it down remotely to see what happened.  It didn't turn back on.  Giving the motherboard beep code (I'd researched that before I called).  He offered to send me a box to send it back to them for repair.  In the four days we waited for the box to come and be sent off (due to a weekend), we never got it to turn back on.

I shipped it off on Tuesday of last week, and it is back in my hands already!  I hate that we had this problem, but I can say without any hesitation, that they did a great job in getting it right back to us (and not treating me like an imbecile while I was on the phone).  They didn't even ask if I was sure the thing was plugged in or charged up when I couldn't start it.  I had the ability to track it the whole way.  I could even see that they repaired and shipped it back the same day.  I'm also thankful for the little tablet and and netbook that we had to stay in touch with people in the mean time!

So, now if I can squeeze in some time and remember what I was actually going to write about, in those eked out moments, I will write a little more!

Computer

I can't get over how the price of computers have dropped. Our first laptop was over $750. As I've been scouting this week, I found them for $350! And of course they can run circles around the one we had before. Now to see if we can avoid purchasing a new one for 10 years!

We were late into the DVD scene because we knew if we waited we would be able to save quite a bit. Whats more, we could by those inexpensive VHS tapes that no one else wanted. Sometimes it pays to be late to the party!

In case your wondering, we got a Dell Inspiron, at recommendation from my mother.

Crash

Well, we had a computer crash. As in the stuff on the shelf above the computer fell and crashed into it. Yikes. I ended up with a few bruises and there's a nice little dent in the laptop now. The computer can't find the hard drive at the moment. We're hoping that the things on it will be recoverable. If not we will have lost a few pictures and a few the lab experiments I had typed up for Justin's lab manual that hadn't been backed up. So now we're using our old computer. I'm thankful that it works, even if it does overheat fairly frequently. It's wonderful to have something that works for now.

Internet Service

My parents were here for a nice visit this week. It was my dad’s birthday, so he got to spend it with his favorite granddaughters. Okay, they are his only granddaughters, but they’re still his favorites. For any one who knows my Daddy, he loves computers. When I was growing up, we were one of the first families I knew of to have one. He taught himself how to use and build them. Last year when he was here, he set us up on a wireless router, so he could pursue the web from his lap top, rather than having to sit at the desk to use ours.

While they were here, horror of horrors, our internet stopped working. No blogging for me or my mom, no checking the weather, no reading the random entry on Wikipedia for Justin. It was an utter disaster. Okay, so it wasn’t THAT bad. Especially since my parents were here. Otherwise, I would have been out of my daily adult interaction—you know reading about other random people’s lives on their blogs, emailing my two dearest friends who live far away, and looking to see if anyone changed their status on Facebook.

I’d been considering switching service providers for awhile. After some pretty major frustration with a young lady in tech support at the old company and her boss who didn’t know proper English (She kept saying, “The most available day for a service call is in two days.” I didn’t want the most I wanted the next.). She refused to move the date up. She didn’t offer to waive my charges for the days I would be without service. I was mad—I yelled—I hung up. I don’t do that! I talk sweetly, seethe on the inside, and complain to my family later. That’s how I handle those situations. I think that the new baby doesn’t like bad grammar. Maybe he or she will be an English major.

Now I have a new provider. We called tech support last night to get it up and running. They were great.

And guess what? We’re saving over $30 a month. Yippee! Competence at a fair price. Free market is a beautiful thing.