Tag: jinx

My Computer Finally Works

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer2 Comments

What a bad time I have had with my desktop lately.  I will give you a quick recap of my situation.

First my video card stopped working so I bought a new one but it wasn’t nvidia like I should have bought, it was Radeon.

It didn’t work right away and I should have returned it to get an nvidia but I was so thick headed that I said no screw that, I want Radeon.  It worked but only if I didn’t turn my computer off but then the PG&E turned it off to install a new pole.  When our power came back on I couldn’t turn the computer on at all.

I read message boards that told me that if nothing showed up on the screen then my problem is power supply and I looked in the Radeon website and found out that my new video card needed a specific power supply.  I had to wait a month to buy it when I had the money.

The power supply came and it still didn’t work so back to the boards for help I went.  I read that it was the motherboard so I had to wait to buy that.  Darrin loaned me the money this week and it came on Wednesday and my computer turned on but it wouldn’t load Windows from my hard drive.

I discovered that my hard drive is ATA-100 and the book says it will accept ATA-133 but someone told me that ATA-100 is backwards compatible so it should work but it didn’t.

So on Wednesday night I bought a new hard drive and it showed up at my house yesterday.  I installed it and ran the Windows CD and it copied the Windows setup files to the new drive and rebooted.  When it rebooted nothing happened and my heart sank.

When the Windows setup came on the screen with mouse support I was ear to ear smiles.  But I wasn’t going to celebrate just yet, not until I had the desktop up on the screen and was able to start installing drivers and programs.  That is why I haven’t blogged about it until now, I didn’t want to jinx myself lol.

So I FINALLY have my computer back after 2 months of waiting.  I am so beyond happy right now.

Let’s Bundle Up

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog2 Comments

We have had DSL with our phone company for the last 9 years and I’ve been very happy with it but it is just getting too expensive for me to have to keep paying for.  The phone services weren’t that bad but when they charge you $10 for making a couple 411 calls then it’s bad.

I was paying about $75 a month for phone and DSL and I am paying $117 a month for our cable.  The cable company has a bundle special which is $115 for all 3 services, although we’re not canceling all of our cable services so that price is just a bit higher.  Our new cable bill will be $150 a month which is about $40 less than I pay now for the cable and phone bill together.

The Bright House technician came to the house today and installed the phone and the internet.  Before he left everything was working but then Darrin went to make a phone call and the phone was buzzing.  No good!  I tried plugging the cable modem into the router and I didn’t have any wi-fi NO GOOD!

I went to walk the dog and there was a man standing on our lawn with a clipboard and he freaked me out at first until I realized he was from Bright House.  He was a supervisor checking up on the work the technician did and he said it wasn’t good.  He had the tech come back out and fix some things that weren’t right and got everything back to normal.

It took forever to get the wi-fi working, he refused to help me with it because he was afraid I would blame him if something went wrong with my router lol.  Ok I don’t blame him I guess but I mean, what good is getting cable internet if I can only go online with my desktop?

He had to put a new cable in from the pole to the house and that is what made the wi-fi work.  Although, I was having issues with my Chromebook losing connection at least 4 times tonight after that.  I had really high security settings so I had to bring it down a notch and then it was ok.  Another couple of issues and it’s fine (I hope I didn’t jinx it).

It’s supposed to be really fast.  Our DSL was only 4mbps but our cable internet is now 7mbps so that’s a bit faster than before.  It’s something I guess.

I don’t know if the upload speed is good though.  You tell me!  I don’t really upload too many things, I just tweet and blog that’s all lol.  The grade is C- and it says it’s slower than 59% of the rest of the united states which sucks hard but like I said, I was on 4mbps and it’s faster than before so bite me.  I’m very happy with what we have, I’m especially happy about our jump in speed.

My Weight Loss Journey

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, ExerciseLeave a comment

Ok, I know that I said that I wasn’t going to do any bragging because that always screws it up but I just can’t help it.

Ok, here is how it has been going down.  Last year in October I started riding my bike with the intention of eventually getting to the bike trail.  I was doing 1 mile a day and gradually I went to 3 miles then 5 and so on until eventually I was doing 10 miles a day on average.  Then I had my accident.  Ok so I started out at 244 and then I went down to 227.  That’s 17lbs.  Pretty good right?  Well then because of the accident I stopped riding until April.

From November 20th the date of the accident until April 14th when I finally started riding again I had gained 10lbs.  So I was now 237.  So I start riding again and now it’s June 12th, today was weigh in day and I weighed in at 221lbs.  Well, if you count starting in October at 244lbs then my weight loss is 23lbs total.

Or, you could think of it this way, I gained 10lbs and I lost it again so technically I lost more than 23lbs lol.  Ok yeah I didn’t think that would fly.  Or you might think well technically since April at 237 and now I’m 221 I’ve only lost 16lbs.  Well, whatever, I could from 244 to 221.

But, that was my weight this morning.  You are supposed to weigh yourself in the morning after you do your “duty” in the bathroom lol.  Who made up that rule?  Ok so that was 221 BUT… before dinner I weighed myself again and I was 220 WOOHOO lol.

My point is, I made it out of the 240’s, I made it out of the 230’s and now, I’m almost out of the 220’s and that is all that matters.  I cannot wait to get into the 210’s so that I can get into the 200’s and so on.

Ok, enough bragging for one day.  If I keep bragging then I will jinx myself and I don’t want to risk that lol.