Freelancer's Office: Blog

My desktop computer is malfunctioning again.  This is really annoying me, since I was just starting to get things reorganized on it.  But on Thursday it just suddenly decided to turn itself off for no reason.  I tried rebooting it and it complained for a while.  I finally reset to last known good settings and it worked for a little bit, then I turned it off so I could go to Anchorage with my dad and sister.  Got home late in the evening and turned the desktop computer on and the screen was seriously wigging out.  It shut itself down and I tried restarting it, went through that a couple of times and told it to report the trouble to HP when it asked if I wanted to.  It came up with some kind of driver error report that HP knows about and is working on a fix for.

WTF? Another built in HP flaw?  I’m really starting to think HP’s are not put together right.  Gateway is looking better and better at the moment.  So, anyway, I was sitting here earlier tonight talking to a friend of mine and getting work done and the computer shut down *again*  No warning just POOF.  I tried a few times to turn it on, but only ever got as far as the Blue Screen of Death.  I gave up, finished talking to friend using lappy and worked on a holiday quilt for a while.

Tried the desktop again a few minutes ago to see if it was going to let me work and it won’t even make the monitor power up with a signal.  I don’t know what’s going on, but I think I’ll be asking Santa if he has anything left over for a new desktop computer from the rent-a-center.  Although I might aim for a $200 Wal Mart  special instead.  Less headaches I’m betting.  Anyway, I’m getting some work done on the Lappy, then getting some sleep.

Still ain’t had a chance to catch up on the writing course I am enrolled in.  ::::sigh::::

I’ve been slacking off a lot on updating my websites this past week because I am trying to avoid having to pay another $15 to my ISP for another 2GB of bandwidth.  I have an allowed 10GB of bandwidth with my current account, and I usually only use an average of 3.5 GB per month, however, this month my bandwidth use is up to 9.65 GB so far.  I figured out what happened, but it does not do me any good.

I had unlocked my wireless router for my sister to use while she was here a lot of the time back in September, and then never got around to relocking it because she was coming by off and on.  Apparently this month the neighbors somewhere nearby, or a kid on the back road, saw an open wireless connection and tapped into it.  I have my wireless security locked once again, but it was a nasty surprise to find out halfway through the month that I only had a half a gigabyte to get through the rest of the month when I usually average a bit over a gigabyte in that time frame.  I think I’ll make it, but I can’t watch YouTube or upload pictures to my blogs or all the other things I am so used to being able to get done in the month.  Shoot, even when I watch movies online and a few TV shows online I never went over 5 GB in a month.  This is just downright annoying.

I have been working on installing a fireplace in the living room, so my work on other things is more than a little behind at the moment.  This is in particular going to have an effect on NaNoWriMo.  I have no idea why I dedicated myself to doing that this year when I know that I will have to work on installing a fireplace and that Thanksgiving is this month and it is National Family Caregiver Month and and and… Am I a glutton for punishment?

I got my desktop computer back the other day and after some confusion on the HP tech dudes not having completed the setup, something a nice lady at the HP support center helped me finish over the phone, I have got the computer back up and running and have been spending my time getting it reorganized so that I can work on it again.

I have about half the programs reloaded, but am hitting the annoying block of the new version of AIM won’t work with the comptuer.  I got an older version to work on it, so I will try agian to get the new one to work and if that fails I am just going to load the older version up and forget their new one.  They usually mess up their new versions anyway.  Last time they updated it I lost the ability to directly connect with my writing buddies, removing the ability to pass our novel-length writing back and fort, which made AIM all but useless to us.

Other than AIM I have my writing program back on the computer, still need to move the novel from the laptop back to the desktop though, and I have to get my image program (GIMP) back up and working on here.  I know there are more programs I need to get up and going, but I’ll be happy with them between now and the weekend - oh, and iTunes and Audacity, I need to catch up on the writing podcasts I have missed.

I have been considering rather or not I want to take out a subscription to the local newspaper.  I can’t really decide rather I want to or not.  It seems like a good idea, but then I look at the cost and wonder if I would really get that much value out of reading the paper or not.