Round Two

*sniffle*.....cough......ahhh-CHOO! Arggh. Andy and I have colds AGAIN. I only felt well for a couple of days, and here we go again! At least Tom escaped it this time. I have had too much to do without being sick again.

I have been trying to finish getting my new computer set up, and also trying to work on my blog site which I intend to convert to a different site sometime in the near future, something that gives me a little more versatility. If I had known that my computer was going to start acting feeble, I would not have gotten my monster mixer and would have gotten a new computer instead. If you remember from a previous post, the computer that I had wasn't that old, but because the one I had previous to that fried it's motherboard, I suddenly lost access to EVERYTHING. My work files, pictures, EVERYTHING. In order to get everything back, I had to open the new computer and put my old hard drive into it to retrieve all my stuff. The hard drive from the old computer still worked; it was just that the motherboard of the computer was toast and the computer wouldn't work. My intent was to put the old hard drive in long enough to transfer all my stuff to the new hard drive in the new computer and then be on my way. Well, in the process of rearranging the innards of the computer to read my old drive, I accidentally bent (and broke) a pin off the back of the new hard drive before I even had a chance to hook it back up. While this could probably be fixed, it would be a difficult process and I didn't have time to fool with it so I just left my old hard drive in and have been using that since then. About two weeks ago I turned on my computer one morning and it sounded like a 747 was gearing up in the living room. I didn't know whether to turn the computer off or run for cover (or both). Eventually the noise died down, but it started happening more often and then started making a grinding kind of noise. Then my programs began acting up and I knew time was short for that ol' hard drive. I didn't want to be caught in the bind I was before, so I decided that this time I'd better get a new one before that one went completely, so that's what I did. I had made a backup disk before so it was relatively easy putting my stuff on the new computer, but there were still a few things that needed to be tweaked to run correctly. I put the new computer in Andy's room on his desk (he currently has his downstairs in Tom's room because they play World of Warcraft and go on quests together and it's easier with both of them having their computers together in the same room). I left mine set up where it was. I used Andy's room internet connection and used our home network to transfer my stuff from one computer to the other. One of these days we'll go wireless, but I'm too stubborn to spend the money on that when our ancient network wiring gets the job done. I did the wiring for the network myself, so there's kind of a crisscrossing of wires across the basement ceiling and it's NOT pretty! It's obvious I don't do this for a living! Anyway, I finally felt comfortable that I had everything transferred correctly and switched the two computers around. I have kept the old one on Andy's desk in case I come across something this week in the course of doing my work that I may have missed. The only problem is that one of the hospitals I do work for is still using a DOS-format WordPerfect and it's very difficult these days to run a DOS program and requires quite a bit of tweaking. Anyway, all's well that ends well, right? Hopefully this will all end well!

I haven't had time to list anything on eBay lately, but I did buy a Kombucha culture! If you don't know what Kombucha is, you can read about it here. I made one batch of it already but it was YUCKY! I only drank a little of it, couldn't stand the taste, and then for the next 12 hours I think my gut believed I had gone to Mexico and drank the water. Needless to say, THAT batch went down the drain. I have another one brewing now that should be ready by Sunday. I used a slightly different variation in making it and so far this batch looks better and doesn't have the sour smell that the last one developed early on. Practice makes perfect, I guess.