I'm convinced this house is cursed

So, the desktop computer went belly-up and I needed to reinstall Windows XP on it to make it work again. This of course means that all the other programs that used to be installed no longer have registry files associated with them so they all need to be reinstalled. I decided that was all too hard and it could wait a while, so I didn't bother setting up much more than FireFox on the desktop, thinking I could use my laptop which was all set up the way I liked it.

Perfect plan, right? Keep everything in the one place, don't have to worry about forgetting passwords or usernames.......Perfect plan right up until a Vista update coincides with the fingerprint security device magically disconnecting itself, requiring me to suddenly remember a password again (luckily I did, DH doesn't so he can't use the laptop anymore) and then last night the power supply in the laptop stopped working. Unlike all the other power supplies in the house that have stopped working (TV, DVR, desktop computer) there is an identifiable reason for the laptop to stop working and it is a glass of water which was "by accident!" knocked over next to the laptop - by the oldest child, who is nearly 10 years old.

So this morning was spent firstly on the phone to HP support, then trying to find their registered repairer after being given the wrong street address. This afternoon was spent on the desktop computer, reinstalling certain programs that are necessary and finding that I've completely forgotten my email password.

Luckily today is Friday which means wine o'clock comes earlier. Unluckily the kids want to go trick-or-treating so wine o'clock will have to be postponed until after we've finished that.

If anything else powered by electrickery stops working I may go completely insane. And if the laptop takes longer than a week to repair I will be furious.

Fish-killer

A few weeks back we went to a BBQ at a friend's house, where they had recently had fish that all died. Somehow I was rail-roaded into taking their fish tank and stuff home while their neighbour gave us 4 goldfish from their apparently abundant supply. It took 4 days for the first one to die, followed by the second last Friday and the third on Saturday. I don't know for sure what's killing them but it could be me. It could also be the fact that our house is just too damn hot for keeping even tropical fish alive, there is a thermometer inside the tank which sits consistently up around the top of the red zone (which I believe is the ideal temperature for this type of fish) and sometimes goes over the top, despite me trying to keep the house no warmer than around 29C. Or it could just be luck - I also can't keep plants alive. Maybe I'm lucky the kids have become somewhat self-sufficient and can feed themselves at need.

The jury is still out

Back when we first moved away from Sydney, my husband suggested I do "something" constructive with my time while we are living in Darwin for 2 years. He told me he didn't care much what I did as long as I wasn't bored and lonely while he was at sea. I kind of poked around a little and decided to enrol in some university studies externally, which is why this blog started, as a requirement of the first unit I was studying.

In order to keep both myself and my husband happy this meant that we needed another computer. We only had 3 ;) One of them is a very old laptop with about 40mb of internal memory, one of them is a fairly old desktop that won't run certain games that my husband likes to play (such as Star Wars: Empire at War), and one of them is the desktop that does play the games and was connected to the Internet. It sounds like a lot, but it's not enough - the old laptop crashed, the old desktop is used by three of the four children, and the other desktop didn't work as a time share arrangement. So we got a new laptop, one the kids aren't allowed to touch, has wireless internet (yay!) and can be used when we're travelling.

Which is a good thing, as it turns out. Two nights ago I turned the desktop computer off before I went to bed, wondering what was causing it to be so slow at opening up FireFox and if there was a virus or something I needed to scan for again. Yesterday morning I turned it on and found out what was wrong - BSOD! Apparently something went wrong with creating or saving a registry entry and now the computer needs to be fixed. Given that I am in the middle of a study period for uni that is delivered completely online and my husband is in the middle of a sea-going period that requires him to spend most of his time, funnily enough, at sea, the new laptop is a real life saver. If my desktop computer had crashed and we had no other computer capable of connecting to the internet I would have to withdraw from the uni unit which would be both a) bad for my study record and b) bad for the hip pocket as I think we've passed the census date for the study period so I wouldn't be able to withdraw without paying for the unit. It's also really lucky that part of the last unit taught me the value of Delicious so I have all my bookmarks.

So now I get to find out how good I really am at following instructions. I Googled the failure notice my BSOD gave me and found out what it is plus a way of fixing it. This fix is slightly risky in that I may lose all the data on that computer but hey, it probably needed a new install anyway. And at least I still have my laptop. The bad thing is that the current work I was doing for the study period was on the desktop which means I can't access it before it is due to be submitted on Monday, so I'm hoping to be granted the extension I requested.

And let that be a lesson to me - always keep your work on a second computer, online server or flash drive, just in case of Microsoft living up to it's reputation.

Full disclosure

In the interests of living up to the blog title, I leave you with this - my second son (known as Thud), the newly 8-year-old who was born with congenital heart defects, was recently diagnosed with scoliosis as well. Being my son he has decided that this is a much bigger thing than it actually is and that this explains why his handwriting is crap.


What is actually going on is that he really screwed up his body when he was building it in the first place. Not only did he get the Ikea instructions for his heart, he also got the Ikea instructions for his spine. His heart was missing a vital component (the tricuspid valve, causing tricuspid atresia), he got the two arteries leaving his heart the wrong way around (transposition of the great arteries), and when he was building his spine he forgot to put all of one piece in (hemivertebrae at L1 - NB despite that link my son is clearly not a bulldog). According to my research both of these problems occur at roughly the same point of foetal development, and neither of them are a) my fault or b) caused by my older son having measles at that point of my pregnancy. Sometimes, in my blue hours, I have my doubts about the second, but there's nothing I can do about it. See, mountain out of a molehill.

Also according to a few Internet friends this combination, together with his retractile testes (there is nothing that isn't on the Internet these days, I really am sorry Thud if you find this in the future!) are commonly found in people with genetic syndrome that hasn't yet been diagnosed. Great. Another thing to worry about. Although I have ruled out all the ones that include mental retardation because no-one could argue with me and his older brother the way he does if they had any kind of slow mental processes.

And the results are in...

...but I'm not supposed to say what they are unless you ask me. Go on, ask me!

What it means though is that this blog is going to m.orph into something different. I originally picked the blog name and URL for two purposes - it was meant to describe the process of learning and to describe my own slightly hystrionic self who can turn any small problem into a huge deal.

Sometime over the next month the learning process posts will be deleted (so the new crop of students can't easily access them, this is highly recommended by our tutor) and the more personal stuff will commence. There will probably be a lot of new learning stuff because I found the process of blogging much more useful than keeping my thoughts in my head, so don't say you weren't warned. That's if I don't manage to overcome my strong self-censor who deletes, re-reads, re-types and deletes again.

Oh, and at some point I need to go back and fix a minor issue that I don't like, the "Click for more" at the bottom of posts that don't need it. But that's something for another day. In other words, don't click for more no matter what it says beneath this.