Yes – I know it’s been forever since I’ve been here (thanks for wiping off the dust Bunny!). J We’ve been busy, sick, and busy some more!!! I expected to be busy during the holidays. We wanted to spend Christmas at home since it was Nadya’s first. She had a blast ripping open packages and trying to eat the paper. We headed North to visit Yasha’s dad the day after Christmas. Nadya and her Gigi really hit it off and she did AMAZINGLY well for her first road trip. I wasn’t sure how 10 hours in the car was going to go over, but she was an absolute angel. We had a great time visiting with family and friends during the Holiday. Unfortunately, Yasha started feeling bad New Year’s Eve and was in full-blown sick mode by the time we made it back home (a day early because my Grandparents were too sick for company). He is almost over it, but is still not 100%. He was very kind and handed off his cooties to me and the 8th – my throat is still a bit tender but I think I’m over the worst of it. Nadya only had 1 day where she acted like she didn’t feel good, so we were really blessed in that she didn’t get sick. And, on the way home, 2 of her bottom teeth came in! She’s in full chew mode right now, so I suspect we have more on the way. I can’t believe she’s almost 9 months old – where has the time gone!?!?! She isn’t crawling much yet, but LOVES her walker and will zip about all over the house in it.
Now, that sounds fairly benign right – well after we got home our Dell Desktop decided to die – yep, it would just turn itself off! Sometimes we could restart it immediately with the power button, but sometimes we had to wait awhile before it would come back on. So, when it was running, I ran memory and HD tests, which came back fine…Grrrrr….. So, I called Geek Squad ‘cause I thought they could help (based on their commercials and the Best Buy sales guys). Now, I’m going to vent for a minute – I thought these guys could troubleshoot…apparently not. They run their diagnostic tool and if that doesn’t help, they don’t know what to do. In our case, they were unable to even run their tool due to the computer turning itself off. So, they call and tell me the motherboard needs to be replaced. So, I called Dell – they don’t have it in stock, nor do they have any of the other ones that might work. The sales guy was COMPLETELY useless! So, we went to Google and finally found a motherboard and ordered it. It took almost 10 days to get here – come on people!!!! So, new motherboard is installed and with baited breath, we power up the Dell. Nope – won’t even boot completely – says we have an incompatible processor. Turns out this motherboard has an older BIOS version!!!! So, the next day I take it to one of the local ‘puter shops thinking we’d just swap out the motherboard with a new Intel one – nope! We have an XPS (translated hybridized ba$tardized glom) so it won’t take a standard board. I asked the guys if they had an older processor we could try out – you know get the thing to boot and then flash the BIOS to the newest version and then put my processor back in. 4 hours later (and lots of research and heart failure thinking we were going to have to just build a new one) it’s working. Whew – big sigh of relief! So, bring it home, clean off desk, set it up, prepare for resumption of normal internet activities! NOPE – 20 minutes in it turns off. So after all that – it’s the *&%$#&%% power supply. Guess what – Dell doesn’t have it either and it’s another specialty/proprietary component…so off to eBay we go! The new power supply arrived today and DH will install it tonight. In the meantime we have the side panel open to allow airflow. Thank goodness for my laptop or we would have been completely SOL. Did I mention the “puter is only 16 months old……
On to more exciting things….
Lynn’s Yahoo group received another 25% off coupon, which combined with her sale, means you could save 57% off her items at DSO. You don’t want to miss this!
Kristine’s new domain is up and running as is the Dork Dancing forum – so stop by and say Hi! Plus, if you haven’t already grabbed them, her Into the Mystic freebies will only be available until January 30 – so snag them NOW!
Bunny’s got some freebies on her blog, but better hurry, they’re headed to the store at the end of the month. Speaking of the store, have you seen her new Fancy Britches kit – it’s beautiful and there’s a bonus coupon included with the download and it’s still on sale!
Kim has a couple of new kits – Close Knit with lots of lovely green shades and Forgotten Not, a beautiful tribute kit. Check out her blog for samplers of both.
Kimberely aka Fishinmom has 3 new kits – 2 Valentine and one Country Bouquet. You can get 2 add-ons to Country Bouquet just for participating in her challenges over at DSO.
Heather has joined forces with the newly opened Purple Paper Flowers shop along with her own store. Be sure to stop by and say Hi!
Wow – this has turned into quite the post – so I’d better go for now. I’ll be back soon – I promise! J
Disney DVD