However if I was looking at something online while watching a movie or something like that…I tend to have more than one thing going at once because it actually helps me stay focused. I believe that’s something to do with the multiplicity. If I’m trying to just work on this blog post for example, there’s lots of voices in the back of “my” head making commentary about this and that, but because the munchkin has a PBS show on they’re mostly distracted with that so I can actually maintain my focus and write. Though FrankenStan couldn’t handle that because his RAM was reduced in capacity, so if I was typing the TV show on the computer would start freezing and skipping or the sound would get ahead of the picture.

Speaking of TV we also recently upgraded our TV. I know that sounds horrible because we’ve had so many financial issues, but we didn’t actually buy the TV, Kore and our future room mate Z did. They were initially looking at a Samsung HDTV but then we went to Sam’s and they had such good deals we wound up with a Philips because it was 6 inches larger and had a higher resolution and was only $50 more. I’ve since seen the same TV at Wal-mart for $80 more than we paid for it; and when I looked at the specs for it online it was selling for $300 more than that. So, I maintain the Sam’s card more than paid for itself with that.

Last time we were there Mum picked up the Wii Fit with Plus for $40 cheaper than we could have gotten it elsewhere. We lucked out with that one too because she doesn’t have a Wii of her own so she’s left it with us. She comes by every other day to use it and in the mean time the rest of us can use it to work out. According to it I’ve lost 7lbs since last week; so that’s nifty.

I’m thinking, why couldn’t Toshiba just do that? But then that’s not their warranty.

Also we’ve been having some issues with my husband’s car which we thought was having electrical issues, or alternator issues or fuel pump issues, but it turns out to just be a bad battery. I’m hoping we can get a free replacement given we just bought the thing last September–but I don’t know where the receipt is and probably threw it out. There is a stamp on the battery though that dates it September of ’09.

In other news we’re preparing to have a party/cookout tomorrow for Ostara and Easter. That looks to be fun. I just have to finish cleaning up; but hubbie and Kore have been helping. They did dishes and helped with the bathrooms last night after I went to bed — by putting all the new things we got to replace the grody toilet seat, bath mat and shower curtain up.

Now, I’ve always been vary wary of recommending other laptop brands before because for example I’ve heard horrible things about Dell Laptops customer service being outsourced to India and parts on their computers being difficult because they’re non transferable so you absolutely have to get Dell parts as nothing else will fit.

Toshiba’s customer service is American based. I’ve received calls from Kentucky and the pacific coast when dealing with them. However they apparently need more reps. The first time I called them I was on hold for fifteen minutes before I had to hang up to deal with something. I called back while I was putting laundry away and left the phone on speaker so I could listen to the hold music. The phone eventually started chiming that the battery was dying. I’d been on hold 32 minutes.

So, I put the phone on to charge and called back later on while I was making lunch to find myself on hold for around 20 minutes; by which point I had tracked down the piece of paper that had the depotstatus information on and looked the status up online and sent them an email via the link on the status page explaining that I did not want to have them service the laptop and could they please mail it back to me so that I could find a more “cost effective way to fix it”. I also let them know about their ridiculous hold times. I haven’t had to wait that long since AOL.

Then I hung up.

A few minutes later I got an email back, saying that the message failed to send because the email address they had listed on their own website was invalid.

After several more minutes of searching I found that they had sent me an email when the laptop arrived at their depot and I copied the message I’d previously sent and sent it to that email address. A few moments later I got an email back, an automatically generated message saying my email was received and would be answered by the next business day.

About a half hour later I received a short email apparently from an actual person saying that they were forwarding the message to wherever my laptop was so that it could be put out for UPS pick-up.

An hour later I got the call from Kentucky I mentioned earlier. This was someone letting me know that it would cost me $325 for them to fix my laptop because the basic warranty from Toshiba didn’t cover the type of damage that it incurred but they could take payment over the phone.

I actually laughed at her because it was just so ridiculous at that point. I explained to her that I had sent an email an hour ago and received a response about the laptop and that I did not want it worked on because it was too expensive. She confirmed my address and said it would be being sent back, but that someone would have to be there to sign for delivery, which I do appreciate. I don’t want to think of the poor damaged laptop being left out on the street or in front of our house where it could be stolen or further damaged by the horrendous rain we get around here.

I’m just stunned by the experience. My previous experiences with computer customer service have been Compaq, whose rep got snarky with me when he discovered I had three days left on my warranty and they would have to fix my computer for free, and Gateway who while their shipping department apparently doesn’t understand the alphabet given the way they spelled my husband’s name even after it was spelled out to them letter by letter, at least answered after only a few minutes on hold any time I had to deal with them and got everything sorted out for me very promptly even when I had to file a claim against the warranty.

On the upside they weren’t rude, but waiting so long on hold, particularly when having to call on a cell phone, and having broken email addresses displayed is more than a little disconcerting especially as great as their product is. I know many people including my Mum who have Toshiba laptops.

Any time a client comes to me know with images that they want me to use on their website I use it, and on several occasions it has saved my butt. After a time when I used a fairy image to make a header for someone and then found out that it was a copyrighted image I made sure to double and triple check usually by asking friends if they’d seen it being used anywhere, as I have several friends who are pretty active in artistic circles.

Now I can check myself.

Today a client came to me with an image of a double rainbow arching over a tree. As soon as I saw it I knew that it was a stolen image, and I knew that she had probably innocently saved it from an email forward because it looked pretty with no idea that it was someone’s creation. I’ve seen the image all over the web and when I put it into tin-eye it popped up on many forums and many people’s websites lumped in long lists of images that were probably also stolen from other places.

I did however turn up the original creator of the image D. Bush from Missouri Skies who took the image in 2006 with a fish eye lens.

Sad to say this image is featured in so many places and many people don’t care who originally took the picture. The more I become assured in crafting designs and images the more cautious I become; because I begin to understand the amount of work which goes into making a design. There are many images that are so widely used that they tend towards public domain, but there are many more which are not. They are photographs taken by someone, or artwork drawn by someone which they’ve put in their portfolio and has been taken.

I remember a few months ago reading an article by a comic book artist on deviantART who was berated by a “fan” who came to him with pictures of his artwork which he had printed out from his home computer and flew into a rage when the artist wouldn’t sign them. Given he realized that the “fan” was then going to go home put the pictures on eBay and sell them for a profit because the value came from the artist’s autograph not from the few pence he spent on ink and paper, because that was a greater profit than if he purchased the prints that the artist was selling that day.

Times are tough, true, and everyone is looking to save a little money but we should try to respect that if we do use an image that someone else made we’re stealing from them.

We really hadn’t realized how much we rely on a group of online friends for support until we could not have access to them. It’s like having ipods and then losing all your music, in a way, maybe that’s a bad analogy. I mean, I know the friends are still there, but I can’t talk to them. We no longer have a phone that can call some of them given they’re in other countries, and others don’t have phones or we don’t know the phones and snail mail letters take so long to get to them. We have local friends and family, of course, but there are some things that just can’t be discussed with them the same way, because it would take too long to explain all the back history and the back story which the online ka-tet already know.

Anyway the end of the week has seen things coming together a lot better, which is good. We managed to finally get the taxes filed and had the pleasant surprise that rather than only getting $30 back we’re actually getting around $200. The paperwork has already been approved by the IRS and we should get our refund around our wedding anniversary which is nice. Then an online friend has offered to help me out with the computer issue, so I should only be without a computer for a couple of days which is just so wonderful; and right now I’m catching up on things before Kore takes her computer up to G’ville for a week given she’ll be on spring break as of Monday, and a friend is over working on our tile.

Mum and I got to have a nice lunch out yesterday. She wanted to go for sushi so I recommended Kiku Steakhouse where my FIL had taken us several days earlier for his birthday, and I must say we had the best gyoza I’ve ever had and the sushi, well the last time I’ve had sushi that good was when we went there the Monday before.

I’ve found out that our old desktop may yet get fixed, but I’m not holding my breath with it. It tends to give the illusion of working and then die again a few short days later, at least we may be able to get the rest of the information off it before it does. Fingers crossed. It’s just a matter of having the money to pay the guy who is trying to fix it ;_; if that’s the case. Given what little we had left this week has gone for grout and tile spacers and twelve 16-inch tile squares.

I know that I’ve complained before about support groups and their drama, and that’s not what I’m talking about needing here. I’m talking about friends on livejournal who understand not only the multiplicity aspect, but also the past lives aspect of things that we relate to and have interest in. For I can discuss things with them when Kore’s in school or busy with assignments and things.

On the upside knocking the computer down to essential use only is helping in other aspects, it’s forcing me to do the actual weaning away from Facebook games distraction and things like that I’ve been trying to do previously and failing miserably at, because whenever I’ve gotten stressed I’ve gone right back to it, and let’s face it day to day you deal with a lot of stress. Now I can’t because if I try it slows the computer down on it’s back-up process or it is too frustrating due to the way the screen reacts. The only thing I’ve allowed myself to do is periodically check one game known as “country story” to harvest the trees, but as they die off I have not planted any more.

I’ve been transferring a lot of the urgent email I might get to my gmail accounts so they can be checked from my phone. So the tarot business now has it’s own gmail account and I’m going to look and see if there are any groups I need to switch to that, but I doubt it. I weaned off a lot of the groups and only added one support forum back which I’ve been meaning to ditch again, but can’t get into the groups setting to do so.

As you might imagine the site re-design for here is only hold until further notice. I’m glad I managed to get A Joyful Path done before this started. However, the charity features I’ve been planning to do and the other things have to wait until the computer is working better.

I’m more than a little stressed out.
Here’s hoping things work out. Wish me luck!

I can get perhaps a sentence of typing done and then screen starts scrolling like a computer possessed, and I have to tap random keys on the actual laptop keyboard to get it to stop so that I can continue writing on the plug-in one. On the up side I found my old copy of Nero 7 which is really helping me back up and burn the contents of the hard drive even if it is slow. Slow is better than nothing and the interface is a lot easier than the generic windows one.

Then munchkin broke the laptop. Yes…the keyboard and mouse no longer work. Joy. Joy.
So, there was a frantic half an hour spent trying to fix things to no avail, and then trying to find the receipt and the warranty paperwork, because I thankfully purchased the warranty. However, neither of those could show up.

So, I called the place I bought it and they said to bring it in and see if they could fix it. They couldn’t. Yes, it’s a hardware issue, they say. The woman who I bought the computer from knows me well, because I’ve been in there a lot with the munchkin and usually check out with her at the register and she confirmed to the tech guy that she knows she sold me the warranty because we had a discussion about the munchkin and his propensity to break electronics. He’s broken a printer, several keyboards, at least one of our mice and one of Kore’s, a cell phone and a house phone. So, that and the fact that it’s a lot harder for me to fix a laptop than to fix a desktop I added the warranty.

However, I admitted I had not been able to find the receipt which I hoped was just because I was panicking. Our desktop computer is dead, not dead-dead, but it refuses to boot past the screen where it offers you to F10 or F2 to go into different boot scenarios, and will not recognize a keyboard so I cannot F10 or F2. I need to have a computer for work, given I work from home, online. So, my mind was full of panic-driven scenarios of us getting foreclosed on without the extra $2-400 of income per month.

Anyway, I was assured that I could get the receipt from corporate, given the store only keep receipts for 30 days after purchase, but corporate would still have it especially as I only bought it last November and that even if I haven’t activated the warranty, the warranty company could activate it then and there provided it was still valid. So, that’s something. So far I haven’t been able to find the receipt or warranty booklet, so I got in touch with corporate. I’m still hoping it will turn up here somewhere, but I figure if it doesn’t I get it from corporate, if it does I have a spare copy.

In the mean time I have some wonderful friends who are supplying me with a keyboard port keyboard so I can try to fix FrankenStan (the old desktop), and I’m backing up everything on the laptop that I’ve added since we got it so that if they have to do something drastic to it to get it to work we don’t lose any files. I’m making sure to back up the music files too, hubbie’s been very put out that previous back-ups I’ve either forgotten to back up the music or not been able to because I get the most urgent files first, things I need for work, family photos and then the computer died before I could get to the less necessary ones such as the music and the game saves.

Wish us luck.

I’ve already found a few things I don’t like; the main one is that it’s not storing my passwords. I’ve got the options checked so that it should prompt me to save my passwords and it’s not doing it. There are several fixes suggested on google’s website and I’ve tried all of them and still nothing. It’s sad to say but this is almost enough for me to switch back, except Firefox was freezing so often that I would probably smash the computer after a few more days of that issue.

It’s just that memory and passwords are a big issue for me given there are so many that I use and so many times where I just don’t recall which one is where, plus several of us have different passwords that we use also which can make it difficult. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve had to reset passwords for various employers and resume sites, and various email accounts, or suddenly discovered that I have an account somewhere because I’ve received an email from it and have no idea what the place is about or how to disable the account, as happened recently with HaloScan, or more recently with GE who holds the account that we got our water treatment system under.

I would say I’m hopeful that Google will fix the password issue, except that the comments on their FAQ about it date back to early 2009…so almost a year and it’s not been fixed, and apparently is getting worse given the “add-on/extension” I was directed to from comments in November of last year does not actually work the way that several people purport it to.

Ah, well…I suppose I can use Firefox for something when I need to log in and am not sure of the password and hopefully it won’t freeze and crash if I’m just opening one browser window…but you never know.