My daughter and I went to the library so she could virus their computers and not ours, I mean check her email and go to the sites she likes to visit. I picked up the first season of Dr. Who dvds and also picked up some books on PHP, Apache and Website design. Planning on working on getting a server running on my computer again so I can attract evil people and have an anxiety breakdown or aka designing and running a virtual pet site.
My daughter ate all the stew we made for supper last night as her lunch and had two of the enchiladas I made for lunch today also. She likes my cooking. Hubby does too and is probably glad he likes hot spicy enchiladas and she doesn't so he will actually have left overs for later.
Also remembered to call to make an appointment to join a depression group. Had to make an intake meeting appointment and kept forgetting. Actually forgot to include this information in this blog post. Boy, do I need a better memory!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Redeeming the Clutz
Yesterday my daughter took a glass of water with her when she went to bed. Push come to Shove, it got spilled all over hubby's laptop and other items. Mom to the rescue, I tried to make sure the laptop was dry and let it sit most of the day and night before trying to turn it on. Dead, dead, very dead. No lights, no sound.
We found the adapter hoping the battery was just dead. Still nothing. Not even a shimmer of light. Later I did find that the cd player part of the laptop worked. It has a seperate area that allows it to be used as a cd player. Weird for a laptop. It is 10 years old at least though.
Hubby was angry and said to throw it out. Sooooooo, I asked if I could take it apart. I like to take things apart. Immediately I did ask if he actually wanted me to put it back together again. He said no, so I attacked it without remorse. Must have had about 30 screws lined up along the edge of my computer desk. It was like a crazy puzzle box. Trying to figure out how to gain access to the next level with a screw here and a clip there. Because the laptop was so old, I could not find a manual to help. Finally, after about 5 hours of dismanteling this poor laptop which included removing the screen, keyboard and many wire clips and connectors, I got inside to at least see the hard drive and a brief view of the underlying circuit boards. Nothing looked damaged by water or exploded. Always a good sign. Did find some corrosion on some connectors coming off the board that had the power switch on it. Cleaned them and put that board back in. Bravely, I tried to plug in and turn on the computer again. Please note, at this time the computer was quite disassembled.
Much to hubby's and my excitement, the lights glowed on the circuit board and it made two loud beeps. I assumed 2 loud beeps means it is either unhappy about not having a screen, keyboard or both when powering up.
As previously mentioned, it was stated that I would not have to put this computer back together or remember where ALL THOSE SCREWS, connectors and parts came from. Well, now that it seemed to want to be resurrected, it became obvious that I would have to put it back together again. Sigh!!
Got it back together for the most part. Had to take out and put back some parts as I forgot to reconnect some clips that were under those circuit boards (these boards had to be held in with no less than 3 screws each). Finally got the keyboard and screen reconnected and it loaded windows and seemed to work fine. finished putting in almost all the screws I had left. Three screws seemed to have no home when I was done.
I was very excited to have resurrected the computer from the dead. Yay me again!!
We found the adapter hoping the battery was just dead. Still nothing. Not even a shimmer of light. Later I did find that the cd player part of the laptop worked. It has a seperate area that allows it to be used as a cd player. Weird for a laptop. It is 10 years old at least though.
Hubby was angry and said to throw it out. Sooooooo, I asked if I could take it apart. I like to take things apart. Immediately I did ask if he actually wanted me to put it back together again. He said no, so I attacked it without remorse. Must have had about 30 screws lined up along the edge of my computer desk. It was like a crazy puzzle box. Trying to figure out how to gain access to the next level with a screw here and a clip there. Because the laptop was so old, I could not find a manual to help. Finally, after about 5 hours of dismanteling this poor laptop which included removing the screen, keyboard and many wire clips and connectors, I got inside to at least see the hard drive and a brief view of the underlying circuit boards. Nothing looked damaged by water or exploded. Always a good sign. Did find some corrosion on some connectors coming off the board that had the power switch on it. Cleaned them and put that board back in. Bravely, I tried to plug in and turn on the computer again. Please note, at this time the computer was quite disassembled.
Much to hubby's and my excitement, the lights glowed on the circuit board and it made two loud beeps. I assumed 2 loud beeps means it is either unhappy about not having a screen, keyboard or both when powering up.
As previously mentioned, it was stated that I would not have to put this computer back together or remember where ALL THOSE SCREWS, connectors and parts came from. Well, now that it seemed to want to be resurrected, it became obvious that I would have to put it back together again. Sigh!!
Got it back together for the most part. Had to take out and put back some parts as I forgot to reconnect some clips that were under those circuit boards (these boards had to be held in with no less than 3 screws each). Finally got the keyboard and screen reconnected and it loaded windows and seemed to work fine. finished putting in almost all the screws I had left. Three screws seemed to have no home when I was done.
I was very excited to have resurrected the computer from the dead. Yay me again!!
BarCamp Madison
Way too early in the morning!! Had to be on the bus by 730am to be there by 9am to register for events. YAWN!
I decided to present a talk on making paper fortune cookies and the mishaps of making the real ones. It was a jab at ehow.com as some of the instructional videos and text instructions don't take into consideration that you can get hurt. Which I did. :(
Any ways, I wasn't prepared and I tried to Google the web pages I was looking for saying, of course, that this is the best way to find them. I could not find them at all so I flipped off Google. Minutes later the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building. I apologized for flipping off Google. We were on the 9th floor. Next year, if I go, I will present on a lower floor. WAAAYY too many stairs down to the ground. Then there was another flight up stairs up to the exit door!!! Found out at the end of the day that Google was one of the sponsors of the event...Ooopsydoodles!!
Overall I had a good time. The food was great!! Probably ate my weight in salad. Had the obligatory geek food including Dorritos, Fritos and Cheetos...What is with the tos foods? Maybe it means Tolerable Offensive Stuff or something. My diet does not allow for tos foods. Ah well. I don't like chocolate either which makes me a bit of an outcast too. Freak..ya know?
Was glad I made my daughter and her boyfriend go too. Hubby and boyfriend talked, argued, debated and other talk type words about math, physics and other stuff almost the whole time. Yay for him and that it wasn't me!!
Enjoyed the talk on helping homeless people get into houses, building Arduinos and how to use Inkscape. Wish I would have known about Inkscape before remaking the MAST (Madison Area Science and Technology) logo.
Won a t-shirt at the end raffle. Yay me!! Feels good to win things occasionally.
I decided to present a talk on making paper fortune cookies and the mishaps of making the real ones. It was a jab at ehow.com as some of the instructional videos and text instructions don't take into consideration that you can get hurt. Which I did. :(
Any ways, I wasn't prepared and I tried to Google the web pages I was looking for saying, of course, that this is the best way to find them. I could not find them at all so I flipped off Google. Minutes later the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building. I apologized for flipping off Google. We were on the 9th floor. Next year, if I go, I will present on a lower floor. WAAAYY too many stairs down to the ground. Then there was another flight up stairs up to the exit door!!! Found out at the end of the day that Google was one of the sponsors of the event...Ooopsydoodles!!
Overall I had a good time. The food was great!! Probably ate my weight in salad. Had the obligatory geek food including Dorritos, Fritos and Cheetos...What is with the tos foods? Maybe it means Tolerable Offensive Stuff or something. My diet does not allow for tos foods. Ah well. I don't like chocolate either which makes me a bit of an outcast too. Freak..ya know?
Was glad I made my daughter and her boyfriend go too. Hubby and boyfriend talked, argued, debated and other talk type words about math, physics and other stuff almost the whole time. Yay for him and that it wasn't me!!
Enjoyed the talk on helping homeless people get into houses, building Arduinos and how to use Inkscape. Wish I would have known about Inkscape before remaking the MAST (Madison Area Science and Technology) logo.
Won a t-shirt at the end raffle. Yay me!! Feels good to win things occasionally.
Friday, August 27, 2010
In The Beginning...
...There Was Darkness. Still is for that matter. I hope to keep a record of my ups and downs while you hopefully remain entertained by my vast sea of ambitious moments. It is not enough to sit home and wallow in my depression and anxiety, now I am going to share. I do have many fleeting interests. This is as good of place as any to keep a record of those for POSTerity. More later...
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