October 10, 2009 Saturday Morning

Sounds like the sky is falling.

Wednesday I worked all day and when I came home I continued to work on the computer to get it back where I had it prior to the system restore last Saturday. Went to bed around 11 PM.

Thursday I was off work for a dental appointment. Got up to the roofers all in the back yard ready to start the new roof and tear off. It rained most the day but that did not stop them from working. They got the north side of the roof torn off and covered and then the rain started to come down too heavy to continue. They stopped about 3 PM in the afternoon. I went to my dental appointment in the morning to be told 'didn't they call you, Jill is sick today?'. No one called to tell me this. Made another appointment and went to Walgreen's to pick up a prescription. Spent the rest of the day working on the computer trying to get the ATI output to work to the TV and show a tool bar. Downloaded a bunch of patches from the ATI web sight and when I turned off the computer to go to bed everything was fine.

Friday morning I woke up to a computer that did not look like anything I had seen or wanted. Tried to do some system restores with no luck. I finally just figured it was time for a new computer so I headed to Best Buy to buy one. I should have just done this last week so that I hadn't wasted an entire week of restoring. Spent about an hour trying to pick one up with the limited supply they had due to Windows 7 coming out in two weeks. Ended up spending much more than I wanted to, $900. Bought a top of the line Gateway Computer that is suppose to have everything built in. Spent all day getting the computer set up with all my links and icons and restoring all my software I use daily for mixing or spreadsheets. Had to re install my mixing and music playing devices as well as Norton's again and enter all the address and password information all over again. Even got my Outlook address book to copy and paste to my new mail server through Microsoft. I did loose all prior emails, that does suck. The computer kept prompting me to make restore discs. In between working on the computer all day I kept trying, every time I was prompted to make the restore discs, but kept receiving error messages. I finally broke down and called Best Buy and talked to their Geek Squad. I have had problems with past computers. I remember a time when you bought a computer and it had restore discs much less an instruction manual. Not these days. After being told this is a common problem and to bring the computer back for a refund or exchange I nearly lost it. I had just spent all day on this computer and had just about everything set up. Damn it. Spoke to a manager. He then told me they had no more like this in stock but could order one from another store and get it in about a week. Are you kidding me? After telling him he better have security on hand when I return he put me on hold again the came back saying it was a known issue and there might be a patch to fix it if I brought the computer in to them. So when Tony got home from work we drove all the way back to Best Buy to have them try to fix it. Got a $25 credit for my troubles after bitching as much as I did again to the manager. Hell, this was the reason I bought a Gateway and spent so much money, so I wouldn't have these problems. Best Buy was able to install the patch and fix the problem so we brought the computer back home and I spent the night making the back up discs for this new computer. I have everything working except the main reason I bought it for - to watch movies I download on our big screen TV. The monitor I got is 23 inches. A 20 inch monitor came in the package but I talked to the manager about the limited amount of computers they had to sell and we split the difference on the 23 inch monitor. Our TV is a 62 inch. I guess the worst thing is we watch movies on a 23 inch monitor the few times we do watch downloaded movies. But once again, the reason I bought this computer was because it suppose to have built in video out capabilities. I think my tenant might be able to fix the problem since when the computer is starting up it shows the monitor on the TV until it logs on to Windows. So it must be a setting of some sort. As I write this post the roofers are back today. They are continuing the nightmare of the total tear off and new roof. If anyone has gone through this you know the noise. You know the banging. You know the hammering. Even the floor is shaking. So can you imagine what four dogs are doing as this is happening? Thank god we are on the first floor of a two story house. Still, the roofing around the first floor being removed is horrible. The dogs must think the sky is falling. We can not remove them with Stella in her recovery position. Letting them out to go to the bathroom is a nightmare. It will even be worse when they do the side of the house they actually go out to get to their area. So we have the TV up so loud I can hardly think as I type this post. Welcome to my world. They plan on working all day today and Sunday. Hopefully after Monday night this nightmare will be over.