And there was much rejoicing! Oh frabjous day, callou callay!
No this post isn’t from the new computer. I still have to get it configured and get the wireless set up on it, so that is going to take a bit of time, but otherwise it is a good day!
Whee!
Its in production, though, according to the Dell web site. The estimated ship date is still the first of August. I want my computer! Now!
If I hold my breath and stomp my feet, will it get here any sooner? Noooo. 
Oh well. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that it will be finished being put together and shipped sooner than their estimated date. It can’t hurt, at any rate.
just waiting for the new ‘puter. I broke down and ordered a new laptop. I need a machine of my own, and I ordered a Dell Vostro. Its through their small business division. I got XP pro with it, as opposed to Vista. I have no wish to get anything with Vista on it until after service pack 1, if not service pack 2. I’ll be burning a cd with a firewall and anti-crap stuff on it before I hook it up to teh intarwebs. You have a very, very short time before the bad guys know you are online and out there and they are trying to hijack your computer, so pre-loaded malware fighters are good things! I think the statistic is 12 minutes after connecting to the web that they are actively attempting to load schtuff on your machine. It may be even shorter. So keep those security programs up to date on your machine!
Please don’t rag on me too much for the Dell purchase. I’m going to see just how this machine is. If it is total junk, I’ll see if I can sell it on ebay and get something else.
Its dead, Jim.
And there are some interesting things that have come to light. With it not being under warranty, and the HP tech not able to do anything other than say send it in for more money, I had someone look at the guts of the machine to see if any of the cards had just wiggled loose. Nope, the RAM was firmly in its place. But wait, that’s a 256 M of RAM. How the hell was XP running on 256? I thought I had at least 512, if not a full gig of ram whenI purchased the laptop? I did know enough about the machine requirements of the software that I wouldn’t have purchased a laptop with that little RAM.
And the hard drive. When he pulled the drive out of he case, it said it was a 60 gig drive. I could have sworn we purchased an 80 gig hard drive, not a 60 gig drive. I knew that I was going to be using the laptop for my business stuff, with the website and pictures. I’ve got some major cognitive dissonance with my perception of my laptop and what was on it when we got into it. I’m going to be doing some digging to find out what I actually purchased. If what I actually purchased was not what was in it when it was returned from the service call, I’m not going to be a happy camper.
If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.
At least that’s the way it feels right now. I obviously have not been sacrificing properly to the computer gods. I got my laptop back from HP and had it for a week. Then it died again. I now have vertical green lines that run up and down in a square in the center of my laptop screen. It doesn’t boot at all. I don’t get either the HP screen or the logon screen. And Hp wants to have it sent off for service again, to the tune of another $400. That’s on top of the 325 that it cost for the previous trip.
WAAAH!
At this point, its probably time to look at a new laptop. Yes, the 325 is sunk, but to add another 400 on top of it to a 2.5 year old computer is probably not the wisest idea. I just didn’t want to get a computer with vista on it. I’ll have to blow away that and re install xp over it. At least I only lost a week’s worth of emails. Everything else is backed up.
My office computer has been shutting down at random times for no reason. Its as if the office took a quick power hit and the computer shuts down and then re-starts. It is maddening. After doing it last Monday for the second time in a week, it is now sitting on a UPS that is designed for a server, not a single PC. snicker. I just wish the UPS was a bit quieter.
We think that either the computer’s power supply is faulty, or the wall plug is messed up. If When it dies again, we’ll have enough information about it to either replace the power supply or get the wall plug fixed or replaced. The UPS will beep loudly and obnoxiously if it is the wall power supply. The computer will lose power and restart itself if it is the power supply.
The biggest hitch in this scheme is the randomness of it losing power. Prior to losing power 2 weeks ago, it was a month before that it happened. And yes, I am paranoid about the machine after the hard drive died in February. I’ve been documenting the time and circumstances of it losing power since the second time it lost power on me. I may be not the brightest bulb around, but I do learn from circumstances.
A warning heads up here. I’m on my political soapbox now.
It appears that the entertainment industry has gotten to the folks who make regulations about what broadcasters should pay. The Copyright Royalty Board has set the new royalty rates to levels that will bankrupt most if not all of the different internet broadcasters. They have set these rates to be retroactive to 2006. It increases the licenses fees and royalty rates astronomically from where they had been. The Copyright Royalty Board set these rates with no regard for the broadcasters, it simply set the rates as requested by SoundExchange, the mouthpiece for the RIAA. I listen to Radio Margaritaville and Pandora online. Both broadcasters provide music online for free. Pandora offers listening without ads for a small ($36/yr) fee. Radio Margaritaville is broadcast on Sirius Radio and on Dish Network. Both of these broadcasters would be hard put to make the requisite payments that the new ruling would require.
There is an Internet radio web site that has links to things that you can do to help keep the internet streaming music! The Live365 website has a page that gives contact information for the Copyright Royalty Board, the various US senators and representatives, and a few other places. This page lists the royalties as they stand and the increases and percentages that the current ruling sets. You can get your senators and representatives contact information online at Thomas. It is best to pick up the phone and call their offices or physically write a paper letter to them. They have a tendency to write off any email communication from their constituents.
This declaration is BS. And you can help influence it by talking to your elected representatives and advocating for small broadcasters. The retroactive $500.00 license fee per channel and the rates that increase at 20% to 40% per year are ridiculous.
Get the word out about this stupidity! The broadcasters pay license fees and royalties, SoundExchange and RIAA just want more. And it will affect the quality of what is available online. But they don’t care about the quality of the music available.
Its my hard drive at work. Yesterday it crashed and burned. Its less than a year old. And there’s no backup for it. I lost about a year’s worth of programming. And its my fault for not moving those scripts to the network drive with the backups.
ARRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
There’s problems with the file to send to the state of W2 information. The HR system that we have didn’t format the files like they should have. I had a good start on a fix, and its gone. It wasn’t a good day. It isn’t going to be a good week or next month.
I’m going to investigate some local data recovery options, but I’m not particularly hopeful. So I’m one stressed geekgirl tonight.
I’ve learned one very important lesson, though. I’ll be keeping all my code on the network drive from now on.
It was a weird weekend. DH ended up travelling overnight Saturday, even though he really didn’t want to do that. I was here with the cats. It wasn’t the same, Marcus kitty doesn’t snore nearly as loudly. My brother was able to help us out and get the zone alarm on DH’s computer straightened out. I couldn’t get it re-set up. There had been a True Vector problem. Some old files had gotten corrupted, and I couldn’t find them to get them cleaned up and re installed. Bleh. Some days I’m very ready to chunk the computers out the window as bricks.
DH is back and we went to a local Mexican Restaurant for dinner. Frozen margaritas are good things. That was a nice end to the weekend.
