First the cell, then the laptop

Well, today was national electronic break-down-day at my house. I guess I must have been under some kind of jinx. First, my mom stuck her laptop in the outlet and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. Zip, zilch, nada. Dead as a doornail. Mind you, the laptop is only 10 months old, I had just installed Vista on it just three months ago, it has Trend 2007 on it, it is completely up-to-date, and it has had ALL of its Windows updates. That should answer all the questions that any geek or techie would ask. And, no, my mom does not chat, she does not download any software, she doesn't go on IRC, and she doesn't hack. She just goes on her dating site, and on yahoo to check her email, and that's it! Well, her computer refused to turn on, even after I plugged it into another outlet. I checked the power adapter and the plug, and I realized that the laptop still got power (the power light still comes on) but it refuses to turn ON). Hmmmm... Motherboard problem? Power supply gone bad? I knew this was going to be a bad day...

Anyway, to make the weekend even more interesting: I had plugged my Motorola Razr cell phone into the charger overnight so that it could charge the battery. Well, this morning, I noticed that the darn thing was still NOT charged. What good is a cell phone on a dead battery? It's worthless! So, I thought that this was really, really weird, so I told mom that I was going to stop by the mall where she worked so that I could visit the T-Mobile place, so I could take care of the cell phone mess. I hate cell phones, and I just have mine so that mom can get a hold of me when I'm on the road or when I'm not at home. For me, the cell phone is there just so I can find out the answers to these basic questions: Where do I need to be? What time do I need to be there? What do I need to buy or bring? And, how much does it cost? Other than that, I'm NOT the type of guy who spends hours and hours talking on my cell phone! So, I go to the mall, I stroll over to T-Mobile, and they figure out that the power-plug on the side of my phone is broken. The damage: $107.00 for a new Razr phone, because my warranty on my old phone expired two weeks ago, on the anniversary of my purchase of my phone. Oohh I just love my "good luck". So, I had to fork out another $107.00 for a new cell phone. great...

My mother doesn't use her laptop much, and yet she always has problems with her laptop.

I don't use my cell phone much, yet I always have problems with cell phones.

Now you see why mom hates computers, and why I hate cell phones.

Well, I just spent 10 minutes setting up my new ringtone on my cell. At least I'll get to enjoy my new ringtone on my new cell phone, which is something I didn't have before...

Back to work and back to writing

Well, a slow, long weekend has come and gone, thank goodness. On Friday, I ran all the errands that I needed to take care of, so that I could free up my time on Saturday and on Sunday for fun stuff to do.

On Saturday, I did some work on the computer and I took a long nap in the afternoon, until Rob called me from Mississippi. he had asked if I wanted to ride with Celina to Chipley so I could watch the AWF wrestling matches. I went with her and we watched the matches. We didn't get home till after 2AM in the morning on Sunday morning!

On Sunday, I took mom to church, where we attended the morning service, which was great. We spent the afternoon at home where we just relaxed.

Monday was back at work again, and my day was cut short because I had to visit my neurologist. That is always a pain, because he's at the hospital, where you have to pay for parking and where you have to take time off from work. I always hate going over there, because I always tend to get lost in that big, confusing building. Anyways, the good news is that I got a clean bill of health, and I don't need to see the doctor for another year. Yay!

I went back to work today, and Kyle was absent again, for the fourth day in a row. I heard that his wife was in the hospital with back problems, on top of her cancer. Wow... Well, Kyle walked in the door around 2PM in the afternoon. I was surprised! Other than that, I didn't really say anything to him. I took my laptop with me, since it was rather slow at work, and I wrote three short stories for my "Josh" story in my writing.com portfolio on the web. I was a little bored and I was feeling out of it at work, so I was happy that I had my laptop with me, just to take my mind off of things.

Let's see what the rest of the week brings!

My first day off in six weeks

I decided to take a day off today... My first one in over 6 weeks. The last time I took even a minute off from work was around Independence Day, when I got my new computer. Well, after a week of working very, very hard on my FTE project, I decided to ask for a day off so I could relax.

I used the day to go to the bank, buy some plastic storage shelves in Wal-mart, and to visit mom in the mall. I took a short nap, and I chatted with some of my friends on the computer. In all, I totally enjoyed my day off from work.

In the meantime, I was chatting with Chad, my friend from Jamaica. Hurricane Dean is heading right for Jamaica in another 36 hours, and I asked him if he was ready. I was feeling very concerned for the guy, but he was confident that he was going to be OK. He lives in a brick and concrete house, not far from the coast, and he has enough food and water to ride out the hurricane. Whew. All I can do is pray for him that he makes it through the storm OK.

Things like this are scary but they make you grateful for what you have!

Anyway, I took care of my shopping, I went to Wal-mart, and I also took my mom to dinner at an Indian restaurant down the street. She liked the food, which is good, since she's a picky eater (and I'm not).

Well, now I'm chatting on Yahoo and MSN, after I had finally set up my new page on facebook.com for the first time. I already have pages on hi5 and myspace, so now I'm also on facebook. I also found other people from Curacao, who are on there! Interesting...

See what happens tomorrow....

worked like a dog today

Well, today was Ram's last day at work, before he would leave on his month-long trip to Malaysia, so I wanted to finish something off so I could show him a thing or two before he leaves. So, being that today was must-finish-code-day, I worked like a dog! I think I wrote over 500 lines of code today, and I slaved over this thing in order to get it finished so that I had something to show him before he left the office today. Well, around 2PM this afternoon, I was done and my ASP page was up and running. I ran up to his office, but he wasn't there, so I left a message for him to call me. After a few minutes, I got a hold of him, and he came down to my place to see what I had made, and he was very happy with my work. We talked for about thirty minutes, before we said our goodbyes, and I wished him a good trip and a fun vacation. Whew. Now, I can breathe a little easier at work. On the other hand, it's been a long time since I came home from work feeling so tired...

A new week

Well, I guess I skipped the weekend and totally forgot to blog on Monday as well. I got home late, feeling tired and hungry, and when mom got home, I had to devote all my time to listening to the latest Dillard's drama. Once that was done, I had forgotten about the blog altogether again.

Well, I've been up to my ears in work. I had some trouble working on FTE, but I created a new page which had to have all these parameters passed, and I actually got the darn thing to work today. Ram, our user, is going on a month-long vacation to Malaysia on Thursday, so he asked me how things were going today. I told him I hoped to have something to show him by October 1st. That still gives me 6 weeks to get this thing up and running.

Well, I saw on the web that there's a new tropical storm heading this way, which might turn into a hurricane that could affect us. yuck! Well, we'll have to wait and see what happens. I'll know in a few days if we're going to have trouble. We live 30 miles from the coast, but still... A hurricane is just plain nasty!

Oh well, see what happens...

Oh and by the way, my mouse at work was working again. I still brought my new mouse, that I bought at CompUSA, to work just in case.

The weekend

Finally, the weekend. I love Friday's. I got a lot of work done. Kyle came to work at 9 and took off at noon to go to his job interview without saying a word. I managed to get that out of him, since he came to work wearing a dress shirt and a tie. He never dresses up for work! So, it was very suspicious! He took off at noon and called Jackie around 3 to tell her that he had gone home because his sick wife- who is dying of cancer- wasn't feeling well. He uses that as an excuse for everything. We all know that his wife is dying, it's like him being home is going to heal her or something. Yeah, right. He can't handle the work and he's trying to get another job, to say it bluntly. I went to Jackie and to Jon, her boss, to let everyone know what is going on.

Mom came home with her Dillard's and BCBG stories. She has to fight for her sales goals again. So what else is new? Nothing, really. I'm getting my haircut tomorrow and I have to buy a new mouse for my computer at work because my old mouse at the office just died. Oh well. CompUSA is just down the street from the hair salon. Yay!

thunderstorm

Well the rain's coming and I can hear the thunder outside so I'll make this quick! Mom is coming home from Dillard's soon as well. She was upset because Katrina, one of her co-workers, got the BCBG rep job at the specialty shop. Katrina is 21, mom is 63. Big age difference. That explains why she got the job and mom didn't. Fashion business. Hmm....

I had a lot of work at DOE as usual. Thank God tomorrow's Friday! yay! I'm just sitting here, waiting for mom to get home so we can have dinner. I'm going off. Lots of rumbling in the sky.

eHarmony for mom

Well, it was another long and busy day at work. I had a lot to do, working on FTE. Kyle was sleepy and yawning all day, as usual. Jackie had more work for us, but she gave it all to Kyle, thank goodness. After I got home, mom made dinner. Then, I took a short nap. I was tired. After an hour, I got up, and she asked me to help her create a new account on eHarmony.com for her. It took over an hour. A ton of questions!

I'm surprised the site didn't ask any money. Yahoo personals had asked $24.95 per month from her. We'll see what kind of matches she will get from it. I'm not ready to try it out yet. I still want to work on a few short stories on my writing.com site before I start work on my novel.

Oh well. There goes another evening. See what happens tomorrow.

First Blog Post

Yay! Well I finally did it... My first blog. I stumbled upon some blogging site on writing.com, and this site wanted $12 per month from me right away... I figured no way! I don't want to pay for blogging right away! I want to try it out for free, first. I'm not even sure if I'll keep it up every day. So, here goes.