A Few Sheep Shy of a Farm

Guess where I am?

I’m sitting in the living room! Our computer has always been out in the office . . . . but today I got a laptop! We now have it up and running and the wireless thingy works so I can go pretty much anywhere in the house and still be online!

I’m thinking tomorrow morning its going to be coffee and blogs in bed!!!! Doesn’t that sound decedant?

The desktop is also closer to fixed. We got the Comcast stuff reinstalled and got DH’s email to work again. He didn’t actually loose everything. Most of it, but the stuff that was in the new account is still in there so the most recent stuff, which is a good portion of the stuff he was worried about, is actually still there. . . . phew!



Few more files to restore and a few more programs to install and we will be in tiptop computer shape around here!

Off to do a bit of knitting . . . .

I’m in LOVE!

with McAfee’s Internet Security Suite 6.0!!!! It is truely incredible! Granted I have to do a few things like turn off the add blocker to be able to read tagboard messages . . . . but I can also read my yahoo email without all those annoying ads they flash at the top of the screen . . . .

No more popups, it asked my permission before every cookie, and it won’t let anything install without checking with me first, even the things I’m installing.

I love, love, love this program. I don’t know how my computer and I ever had a relationship without it!

The rest of the update:

The computer is almost back to “normal” though I did accidentially wipe out DH’s email and address book and there are still a few things which will need to be reinstalled . . . but overall we are at about 75% put back together. Only we’ve left out all the artifical preservatives, colors and fillers this time! Which means we have a lot more empty hard drive space than we’ve had ever!

Non-computer update:

So I have another thing that I’m totally happy about. Promise not to laugh. Really, I mean it, don’t laugh.

I love these new bathroom wipes from the Scrubbing Bubbles folks. I bought some last trip to the store and they make it so quick and easy to keep the bathroom wiped up. In general I tried to avoid all this flushable, disposable, promises to make you life so much better crap that is out there. I’d rather use a dish cloth/towels than sponges and papertowels. Rather wash dishes than toss paper plates, untensils and cups etc . . . but in this case I’m making an exception. This stuff will now be on my list of things to stock regularly.

Fiber Content:

I finished another pair of socks this morning. I’d take a picture to show you, but at the moment I don’t have photo editting software installed so you wouldn’t get to see it anyway!

Oops, my brother just arrived, gotta run!

and after 11 hours of working on it . . .

it kinda works! My original attempt to reinstall Windows didn’t go very well at all. The computer ended up in a loop where it asked to reboot in safe mode or last known good etc. and no matter which option was selected it would attempt to reboot and go back to that screen.

After two and a half hours on the phone with a very nice man named “Albert” (who I’m pretty sure was at a call center somewhere, probably india) we managed to get the hard drive reformatted, windows reinstalled and some of the drivers back in place.

I worked on some more of it on my own for a while, then had a call with the folks who make our wireless router . . . the first guy wasn’t a whole lot of help, didn’t want to stay on the phone while I ran the stuff (estimated to take 30 minutes) so I tried it, got the router to work but not the wireless part and called back. The second guy was much more helpful. Stayed on the line walking me through every possible explanation fo rwhat was happening and even tipped me off to a great program for removing spyware!!!! Its called Spysweeper from webroot. The darn thing caught spyware that had been installed while my computer had been reconnected to the web for less than an hour! Man alive they work fast!!!!

Office, the camera and a few other basics have been reinstalled and so, after more than 11 hours of working on this thing today, I’m going to call it a night! Tomorrow I can try to reinstall the rest of the software we normally use and see how that goes! Wish me luck!!!

PS. I’m about 4 inches away from finished with a sock that I cast on yesterday, thanks to all this time being spent waiting for things to download, reload, reboot and generally get there act together!

Okay, that’s it!

I’ve so totally had it with this computer right now that if money were not such an issue at the moment (since I’m not working), I would just buy another, transfer the needed files and toss this one out! Probably out a window. It now takes a good 5 minutes just for windows to load since it is so bogged down with all the crap that other people have secretly loaded into it . . .

I really, truely believe that all this adware and other crap that gets loaded into our computers should be illegal. If I don’t specifically, knowingly intend to load it into my machine, it just shouldn’t be there. And I don’t mean that junk they put in the very fine print on user agreements either. This is just bull $#!?

So dispite the fact that working on this thing is the last thing I want to spend today doing . . . I’m going to start the process of finding and saving all the important files on the machine. This could take a couple of days since everything is so scattered around, but I want to make sure I don’t loose anything important. Once that is done and I’m certain that nothing has been left behind, this machine is being reset back to square 1 and then I’m locking it down so tight that we’ll be lucky if we can even look at most of the web, but at least we won’t have as much of this crap.

So if you don’t hear from me for a day or two, or 10 it will mean things are proceeding rather slowly with this project. I expect it may take a couple of days to reload the stuff that needs to be in there so I may not be able to go on line for a short while.

I will be back as soon as I’m able, with updates and perhaps an announcement . . . . stay tuned!

And the saga continues . . . .

Yesterday I found two possible fixes for at least one step of the computer problems listed on MS website. I tried both and neither seems to have worked. I’m coming to the conclusion that I’m going to have to back everything up and redo the computer. This is not going to be fun! Not fun at all!

The good news is I’m getting a laptop in the very near future so I’ll be able to move all my stuff to that and be done with it . . . Perhaps I can hold off on redoing this one until after the laptop arrives . . . Perhaps.

DH just called with his schedule for the week. He’s already on a double today, they put him on one for tomorrow and a double on the patio (no breaks, more running) for Tuesday! He does have Wed & Thurs. off but he will likely be totally exhausted by then! Then he goes back for a double on Friday, works Saturday night and has Sunday off . . . Its going to be a long week around here!

My brother and SIL are coming over for a visit this afternoon and will be staying for dinner so I’d better go tidy up and do some grocery shopping! Enjoy the rest of your weekend!