lisaviolet's diary

Sunday, November 08, 2009

otherstuff
04:37 PM - 11/08/2009

The topic: All done!
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It went very smoothly, the worst part was all the dust and stuff inside of the case. I blew most of it out. It blew back in my face, that was pretty unpleasant, but there’s a lot less dust in there now. And it sounds quieter than it did.

I also switched out the monitor for my old one, but he really needs to get rid of some of those file things he’s got from when he used to work a lot and had a lot of paperwork. All he has now are tractor manuals and catalogs. I just counted, he’s got two columns with eleven each, one with twelve. And no paperwork. The cable from the monitor to the computer is so tight, there’s no give at all. So, he’s got a little work to do when he gets home.

And I’m so happy with the way it works, that I ordered additional RAM for the other two computers in here. This should be fun.

The only sucky thing was when I went to Trend Micro to get an additional license for the fourth computer, there was no discount. So, I did a little online search and found another website that has it for cheap and it covers three computers. Is it legal? I dunno. But I’ll be damned if I’ll pay forty bucks to cover one computer when I’ve been spending over seventy a year to cover three, you know? Just didn’t seem fair, especially since I’m the only person using three of the computers. One has three webcams, very little surfing on that one. And this one, the one I do everything from. And the new one will most likely be used for graphics and movies since it’s made for stuff like that.

Anyway, my back is stiff from bending over and doing this stuff, I’m sure my nose is packed with old computer fuzz. I should take a shower.

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catstuff
08:26 AM - 11/08/2009

The topic: On a less stinky note
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Earlier this year, I started adding a can of Friskies to the nightly can of California Naturals, thinking the extra canned food would be a welcome addition to the nightly meal.

I didn’t think too much of it until last month. I remember one of the petsitters remarking that Jackie’s poop was really nasty, because it was so runny.

But when I’d clean out litterboxes, there was a lot of loose stool. And in the yard, there was a lot of loose stool. And in the morning, the food bowls weren’t emptied so, adding the Friskies was obviously just a waste.

I quit adding Friskies when we got back from Disneyland last month. And I cut back on how much water I added. And I didn’t put as much dry into it as I had been.

And the bowls were empty in the morning. Every morning. And the stools got firmer. Instead of the stuff I’d been finding in the litterboxes, I found those nicely formed stools as we expect from a healthy cat. And I watched Jackie poop. Each time, it was a little less loose (it had been close to water). And he’s starting to fill out again. He’s looking better.

Friskies? I still have it. Kirby likes it, he gets a can a day. And we feed it to KittyMeeze, he doesn’t have problems with it.

But I’m not adding it to their dinner any longer. Because not every cat can handle it.

And I’ve found that the only food we’ve got on hand that doesn’t upset Miss Elizabeth’s functions, is Fancy Feast Tuna Feast. I buy it by the case at Wal-Mart. She likes it. She eats it. She doesn’t puke it up. And it doesn’t run out the other end.

I think we’ve found a balance. A healthy cat is a happy cat. Well, for the most part anyway.

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otherstuff
07:25 AM - 11/08/2009

The topic: Did I mention I got a new computer?
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Well, not exactly "new". I got it on the last Woot-off, a refurb HP machine. I had a coupon for ten bucks, so that brought the price down to $339.99 plus an additional $5.00 for shipping. Such a deal. In anticipation of this, I bought another KVM switchbox, this one a four port since my current one is only two port. And I’ll have three computers. A KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) allows you to share (what else?) a keyboard, video and mouse between machines.

Since I’ve got enought speakers set up, don’t need anymore of those, but I do need a way to share, I ordered two (even though I only needed one) of these. The male ends will attach to the speaker input on both computers and the one female end is where I’ll input the actual speaker.

I’ve been unhappy with my monitor for a while, it’s an LCD and it has lines across the top. They annoy me greatly. Not actually looking to buy a monitor, I did look at them. Brian caught me looking and saw the price, under $150 and said go for it. I did a little more research and came up with this little gem .And, as I always do, I searched for coupon codes for hitting the “order” button. Got ten percent off of the $112.99 price. And what’s really nice about Geeks.com, is they’re a local company. I had my stuff the next day. There was a small learning curve with this monitor, but I like it a lot.

Some people would never buy a refurbished machine. But as someone said on the Woot boards about the computer with new computers, there’s a human looking at random machines down the line. Most never get a once over by a human. But a refurb? You know a refurb has been looked at by a person.

I was a little anxious about the computer, since reading the comments from others who got theirs before mine arrived, some were really, really happy, machines looking brand new and others were very disappointed, because there were a lot of cosmetic problems with the computer case.

Mine was just beeeyoooteeful!

These computers also came with a free upgrade to Windows 7. I wish I’d been able to pay a nominal fee to upgrade to the pro version, but I’m not complaining about a free upgrade.

One of the things I plan on doing with this new computer with it’s 6GB of RAM, is graphics and movies. I read a caution to not install new programs to a Vista machine that you’ll be upgrading to Win 7. I found a new Corel Suite that does photo editing and movie making that runs on Vista and Win7 that I planned on getting in the future, once I had upgraded to the new system. But doing a search for coupons (I spend WAAAYYY too much time online), I found one for fifty percent off the price, that expires on the 23rd.

So, I bought it.

And I think that’s it for spending money on this.

I’ve got it up and running and on the internet. I have things to figure out on it, but it seems pretty good.

I’m happy.

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otherstuff
07:18 AM - 11/08/2009

The topic: Keep your fingers crossed
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because at some point today, I will be shutting down Brian’s computer, opening it up, removing the current RAM and installing two 1G each RAM cards, quadrupling his current RAM. And his system should run much more quickly.

I know it’s not a big deal to do this, I’ve played around on the insides of my other computers. But it’s not something I do often enough to be comfortable doing.

But I know he’ll sure like it when he starts up the next time. He’s not home today, just left for the property. It’s easier to do things I need to concentrate on when he’s not home.

I went to the Dell website to buy the memory and the next day got an email that they’d cancelled the sale. No reason why, just cancelled it. So, I spent an hour or so online looking for another place that sells memory. My order to Dell was for one gig. For an additional twenty dollars, I was able to double the amount (this is max for his machine) of RAM. The thing that kind of has me worried is their website came up with a different type of RAM than I found on the Dell website for that machine (which I’d registered and it shows what the machine came with and what I need to upgrade). I went with a comparable mem card to the one on the Dell site, not the one on the site where I ordered the memory. I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me on my backside.

I need about three more cups of coffee before I begin.

So, keep your fingers crossed it all goes smoothly.

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