What a Crazy Week!

The thing at Charleston that I posted about earlier this week totally had me pulling my hair out. Yesterday afternoon, the techs from the phone company were there, hopefully, Monday morning will start out a normal week for them.
It did make me decided something, I am going to start classes this summer on Networking. I pretty well have the basic computer stuff down and can find the problems in most programs when they arise. What I am not grasping is the modems and routers and we have a lot of them in our agency. If I would have decided this a couple weeks earlier, I probably could have gotten into a class now but it is probably best to wait until summer anyway.
I start teaching computer classes again on the 17th of March. This is one of my absolute favorite parts of my job. When I first started working for ERBA, I worked with the clients, now most of the clients I work with is just a few minutes on the phone. This gives me an opportunity to connect with them, and the thing is, every one of them are making an initiative to better their lives--and I get to help and witness it. I can't wait!

Been one of those days.....Heading to lunch, hope it's better when I get back!

Back to Normal--kind of

I have to admit, Sunday I wasn't ready to go back to work. Yesterday morning though, I was up and around a little after 4 right on schedule. So, I dropped Robert at school and was on my way. I had cheated most of my vacation and kept an eye on my work e-mail as well as my link to my LIHEAP work so I knew what I was facing. Yesterday was pretty smooth all day long. Today, however was a different story.

Did anyone happen to watch Knight Rider? I know it's cheesy and I haven't honestly watched the whole episode but I have a 16 year old grease monkey in the house so anything with 4 wheels gets watched, over and over and over. Anyway, in this episode, there was a computer virus, a virus that at one time had teeth showing on monitors and was sending bolts of electricity out of the system. Today, I swore I came face to face with the same virus in the Charleston office.

W have 7 computers all together in that office, 6 hooked to the internet through a gateway from the 7th, meaning the 7th one is really the 1st one and the only one that is hooked straight to the internet. This computer has been acting up, badly. On top of everything else, it can't stay on our online program that it needs to be on. Funny thing...all the computers that are hooked TO it are fine. We had the guy from MASS computers there all afternoon Friday, he left scratching his head but thought he had it semi-fixed, well this morning, our girl calls, stuck again. So, in my spare time at work I am the IT person so away I go to Charleston. One of the other "weird" complaints was parts were missing from her system like not being able to get to her internet tools. There are some obvious places to look to fix this, none of them panned out. So, I took her one of the laptops I use for classes and was going to, if everything else failed, just hook up the laptop and bring her tower home so I could clean it out and start over. When we hooked my perfectly good laptop up to her internet connection, all of the sudden it had the same problems. Okay, never, never, never heard of a virus that could live in a modem but now I am beginning to wonder. To top it off, I brought the tower home, hooked it up in my office and it is FINE!! Strange days indeed. I have a partner in crime in this particular office, I called him before I left work and let him chew on all this info too. Tomorrow, he will start working on changing out modems but this has been a really odd one, I think it is funny that MASS didn't even find it (no offense, I love these guys, but it makes me feel good that I'm not the only one that gets stumped!) I always come home thinking I will be glad if tomorrow is calmer, but truth is, I think I like the puzzling days the best. Sure keeps my job interesting!

It's Done! It's Done! It's Done!

I would have taken a picture of both of them with it but Robert hot footed it in the house to get cleaned up to go to the girlfriend's. They did it! Andrew and I took it for a test drive. You don't realize you are up any higher until you realize that you can even see that a pickup truck has a sunroof. Okay, I have no idea why he wants it this tall but apparently, it's a JEEP thing!

Per Sarah's Request

Here is Robert wearing the scarf I made.

Work in Progress

Well, the days have come...the guys started "lifting" the jeep. To say this makes me nervous is an understatement. This was supposed to be done last weekend so if it didn't get finished by Tuesday, Andrew could take the van to work. Now, I have to go to work which means it HAS to be done by Tuesday, when he goes back to work AND nothing, I mean NOTHING can go wrong!


They are "half" done...kinda. They had talked to a buddy who was going to weld the gear shifter for them. When we called his house this morning, his dad is in the hospital and I didn't want to even bother him with it, so we called another friend, he is out hunting and is supposed to call us when he gets back in. Without the extension welded on, the shifter can't move out of neutral, a little bit of a problem.... The pictures shows the "half" part, as you can see, one side is higher than the other. What I found out today is the stepside up into it will stay in the same spot (Thank goodness!) You can see the difference in how far it is from the stepside to the passenger door. The drivers side hasn't been done yet. I didn't know a three inch lift kit would be that big of a deal, but it is definately going to be taller! Just pray everything continues to go well!!!

UPDATE Jack made it home from hunting and has welded the piece, they now "think" they are home free- hope they are!!

Happy 2009!!!

This is the day I have been headed for lately. Although nothing singularly bad happened to us in 2008, it seems there are lots of things I want to put behind us.

Thanks Keckie for the terrific party last night, Andrew normally has to work (as he did last night) and I normally sit at home, it was nice to be with friends.

Every year since we have been married, we had "family meetings"- a big one at New Years and then once a month. Last year, my guys turned their noses up at it so we didn't. I pursueded them this year to go back to planning our lives a little better. We, as a family, didn't accomplish much last year. I feel much better knowing we all have a plan and we are all on the same page and look forward to a more fruitful year. I know the whole idea sounds funny, but I am an organizational freak and if I can plan, it just makes me feel so much better. So, we have specific goals for January and I have no doubt but what they will all get done--I think they know this too. I am ahead of the game, one of my goals for January was to crochet Robert an orange and blue scarf. Would you believe, Robert WORE the scarf to the party last night!?! I wanted to get back to crocheting, it's something I used to love to do, along with sewing, which I haven't done forever but am getting ready to start.

I don't believe I have ever been this excited about a new year, I hope your 2009 is great! Happy new Year!!! (and I'm still enjoying my vacation!!! so far....)