R.I.P. . . .

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of . . . our laptop! We purchased the laptop in July of 2004, right before we got married. We bought it because it had a really large screen . . . and naturally that meant it was a big laptop, and it was HEAVY!!! When I was studying for my master's, I would have to take the laptop with us whenever we traveled in order to continue my online classes, and we lugged that heavy ol' thing through countless airports. What a pain! I always made Bill carry it -- that sucker was heavy!!

Well, naturally the extended warranty ran out this past July. We'd been having some problems with it for some time -- the lid wasn't staying up all the time, and the battery had like a 10 minute life, which meant it ALWAYS had to be plugged into an outlet. Not much of a "wireless" that way. Plus the touch pad mouse finish was worn off!!

Also, when we purchased our furniture two years ago, we bought a couch that has recliners on each end, and the cord kept getting caught in the mechanism when I'd sit up, eventually causing the cord to have a weak spot. Well, the weak spot finally broke through, and the laptop wouldn't charge anymore, because the electricity wasn't going through the wire. We tried to put the cord back together while it was still plugged into the laptop -- and it arc'd. Well, Bill tried to fix the cord with some solder, but it still wouldn't get any electricity. Last night, we took it in to Best Buy to purchase a new cord. Of course, it was the cord with a transformer on it, so it was going to cost around $80 for the silly thing! Fortunately, Bill was smart enough to bring the laptop with us, and so before we actually purchased the cord we had the service department try one of theirs to see if the laptop would even boot up. The service guy said that it was possible that the motherboard had fried when the cord arc'd. We looked at each other and thought, "uh oh."

Well, needless to say, it wouldn't boot up even with their cord. The geek squad guy said that his best guess was that the motherboard was fried, but we could find out for sure if we paid $40 to have it diagnosed, because the warranty had just run out a couple of months ago. Naturally. Plus there were so many other problems with the laptop, we figured it was better to just buy a new one. Ouch!! We hated to spend the money, but we really like having a laptop. We both use the computers a lot and we need two computers.

We purchased a Toshiba A215-S4747. It is amazing how far laptops have come in just three years. This one has 2 gig ram. TWO GIG!! I think our laptop had 512, and we thought THAT was a lot. Of course, this one has Windows Vista, and it needs a minimum of 1 gig RAM to work. The laptop actually only came with 1 gig, and so we upgraded to 2 gig to give the syhstem more to work with. And it has a 200 gig hard drive!!!! Wowzers! Our old laptop had 80 gig. It has a dual-core processor and it is absolutely lightening-fast. The best thing of all? It weighs about 6 lbs.!!! The other one is a boat anchor. We love the new one. Now we have to decide if we want to pay Best Buy to get our files off the old laptop. They charge $99. I have a lot of stuff on it. Windows Vista is taking some getting used to, but I like it so far. The screen on this laptop is crystal clear. It's 15.5 inches, which is significantly smaller than the 17" screen we had on the old one, but it is so much lighter.

This is a picture of it (from the Best Buy website):



Well, I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend. Today (Saturday) it is cold and rainy -- a winter-like day. We were out in the car earlier today, and the car said it was 61 degrees out! Brrrr!! We love it though. After all the hot weather, this is a real treat. Supposed to be back up into the mid-80s next week though. Oh well, we'll enjoy it while we can.

We've had a lazy weekend so far. We got up and lazed around, finally went out to have some lunch about noon. Had club sandwiches at Denny's and then went to a movie! Wow, two movies in one month! We saw "The Brave One" with Jodie Foster. GREAT movie. Wow! It was really intense, and very violent in parts, but it was a powerful movie. I highly recommend it. Jodie Foster is quite the actress. When the movie got out, we went to Raley's and bought a few groceries, then back home to dinner and just relaxing.

I had such a stressful week last week. I've got a lot of projects that are coming due all at the same time, and I really was having trouble handling everything. I had a follow up doctor's appt. on Thursday with my primary care doc about the migraine I had over labor day weekend. I had been having problems that day with stress, and I knew my blood pressure was through the roof, because I was feeling shaky inside, and my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. When I got to the dr.'s, it was 150/98!!! YIKES! After we decided in a course of treatment for my migraines (she prescribed MaxAlt to get away from the narcotic pain killers -- I sure as heck hope they work!!), then we discussed my high blood pressure. My bp has been high borderline for about a year now, and so she insisted that I start taking blood pressure meds. Bleah. I now have three maintenance meds. I am getting old!!!!! The BP med is a beta blocker called Topor, which she said would also help with my migraines. We'll see! This is the third day I've been on it, and so far no side effects.

At any rate, I need to get some work done on one of my projects tomorrow, because I am so far behind. I put the file on my flash drive and brought it home, so at least I can work on it at home. Things should calm down in a couple of weeks, when I get two of my bigger projects off my desk. And if someone would strangle S.E. for me that would be extremely helpful. Sometimes people on worker's comp can be such a huge pain in the a**. Even the adjuster is tired of that person. YIKES!

Hope everyone is doing well! Comment on here, write to me, anything -- I love hearing from you all. Bye for now.