The one with no specific topic

I love spring time. It's my favorite time of the year. Unfortunately though, between school and work, I've had no time to enjoy it yet this year. And it's not looking good for me to have any face time with it in the near future either. Seriously, even my long hot baths (my one indulgence - once a week) aren't unmolested as I've been taking class reading material in with me - instead of my gossip magazines or pleasure reading materials. And it's getting to me. But I've been wanting to blog about a number of things (it's amazing how active the imagination is when you really don't have time for it) but I just haven't had time. But I'm going to make time today anyway...regardless of the consequences.

So, has anyone seen the show "What Would You Do?"? It's on ABC and what they do is they set up situations and document how people react to them. I've watched the show a couple of times and they've really done some interesting pieces. But, the one I'm going to blog about today has to do with something near and dear to my heart...online dating. :o)

Here's the set up...they had a man and a woman set up dates with people they'd met online. The woman was drop dead gorgeous, about 5'5" tall with a good body. The man was also drop dead gorgeous and about 5'11", with a good body.

Those people really existed and were a part of the set up. But when the people came to meet their dates, the woman they met was 6'1". She wasn't unattractive but she was definitely not who the guys were expecting. The man, on the other hand was only 5'3" - and balding.

So, here's how it played out...It was really enlightening.

They had the faux date waiting when the women showed up first. The first woman was very pleasant to him. He said that he'd fudged his height and she said it didn't matter. He asked if she'd go out with him again and she said yes. Then, when the producers told her what was going on, she said she wouldn't go out with him again and had lied to be polite so's not to hurt his feelings.

The second girl came out and was also polite to him but they had the real guy come and sit next to her. She did a double take and then continued to talk to the faux date. Faux date got up for a minute and she turned to the real date and gave him her name and number. When the producers interviewed her afterwards, she also didn't want to hurt his feelings but wasn't going to pass up an opportunity with the real date.

The last girl was very upset and got up and left. The producers brought her back to discuss with her and she was still upset at the situation - if she said why, I can't remember.

Then they did the guys, which was very interesting.

Guy number one had his face pixeled out as he was bleeped out, yelling at everyone. The producers were going after him and he went so far as shoving the cameraman, as he continued to be bleeped.

Guy number two also had his face pixeled out, even though he never came into the bar. Instead, they showed him looking through the window and then call his date - who was in the back, receiving the call. Faux date pretended to be on the phone so he knew she was who he was meeting. He asked if she was in the bar and she said yes. He left and sent a text that said "Family emergency came up. Won't be able to make it. Sorry." Classy, don't you think?

Anyway, on to guy number three. Him and faux date really seemed to hit it off. To the point that when they brought in the real date, he did a double take but was content to continue his conversation with the faux date. Then, when the producers told him what was going on and why did he continue to talk to his faux date, he said because they really seemed to have a lot in common. After the producers were done with him, him and faux date continued to talk. Now, that's the kind of guy I want to meet! But I digress.

There was one more date, which was actually kind of funny. Like date number three, he talked with the faux date and they got on fine. Faux date excused herself for a minute and the bartender (who was in on it) started talking to him about his online date. The guy was saying that the picture he'd seen online was "smoking" and that that wasn't who he'd met but that, that's what you had to expect with online dating. Not too shabby. But here comes the funny part...The real date came up and introduced herself. He seemed a little shocked but started talking to her. Then they sent faux date back in. She played it well, like she'd been busted. Grabbed her stuff and darted quickly out of the bar. When the producers told him what was going on, he was cool with it and they ended up sending him out - sans cameras - with his real date.

So, what I got from all of this is that men really are visual creatures - at least for the most part. I mean, I already knew it but this really brought it home - particularly with the online dating thing. But anyway...


In other news, have you heard about the new reality show that's coming on on TVLand? It's called Cougar and is about older women wanting to date younger men. It was created by the same people who put on The Bachelor and, from my understanding, is formatted the same way. I'm having some computer issues so I'm not sure what all can be seen but you can find out more about the show here (http://www.tvland.com/prime/shows/cougar/season1/). :) (okay, can't do link embedding either...darned computer!!!) Should be interesting. :o)

Well, I think there was more I was going to share but whatever it was has left me.

So, what's new with you guys?

Happy Turkey Day

For those that got an email from me with the pictures mysteriously missing - here they are. Happy Thanksgiving. ~L

Not that I'm disorganized or anything...

Tuesday evening my local chapter had their Christmas party. It was a lot of fun and I spent some time visiting with Alyssa Goodnight.

Well, since there were going to be a lot of authors there, I grabbed all my books (that hadn't previously been signed) by the chapter members and put them in my car. Only I couldn't find one author's book, which was pretty annoying since I'd ridden around with it in my car for months, hoping I'd see her, and I didn't remember taking it out. Anyway, I tore my house apart looking for that book. I even went out to my car and looked under the seats and everything. Couldn't find it to save my life. I mentioned this to Alyssa (whose book I had with me and she graciously autographed - thank you) at the party and she said "weren't you the one who blogged about finding a book on their nightstand". Um, well, yes but it was a cookbook. I don't keep books for reading on my nightstand. But thanks for bringing up the fact that I find things in weird places. ;-)

So, I come home and the next day I decided to blog about the party and tease Alyssa a bit. But when I posted the blog, weird things happened to my blog, so I took it (the post) down. Which didn't help. I shut off my computer a couple of times and it still was doing weird things so I shut it down one more time and went to bed. Yesterday morning everything seemed fine.

Yesterday afternoon was a different story though. Weird things started happening with the blog again and with my personal email so I was trying to get online tech support. It said I was next in line and that the wait would be approximately 7m and 58s. I foolishly thought it meant 7 minutes but apparently it meant months. I eventually disconnected and started messing with things on my own. Now, I've mentioned before that I'm technologically challenged so doing things on my own is never a good thing...just so you know.

I started deleting programs that I didn't recognize in the "add/remove" section of my computer. Let's just say, I don't recommend that unless you know what you're doing...which obviously I don't. My computer was even more off after that. I shut it down and rebooted a number of times and reinstalled Internet Explorer (not one I'd deleted but one I thought needed to be "repaired"). Still had problems. Again, shut it down for the night only this time I still had the problems in the morning.

Eventually I installed something that seemed to do the trick, so all was good. But after I did all that, I decided to play with my playlist (sorry you can't see it Maria...I don't know what I did to make it invisible...it certainly wasn't intentional and well, being technologically challenged, I don't know how to change it!). I was looking for a particular song but wasn't confident that I knew the name of it. I figured it would come to me if I saw it - but I was wrong.

I finally broke down and went to my car to pull my CD to get the name of the song. Guess what I found in the little cubby I keep my CDs in...my author friend's book!!!!!

After all, where else would it be? *sigh* LOL

Finally Pictures!

I finally have pictures of our Bosses' day celebration. I only have a few to post today but you get to see the transformation of the bosses. :-)

Here's the before (minus one player - who became Sonny later):

And here's the after:

From right to left we have: Marilyn Monroe (anyone recognize the boa she's wearing? got that at the RWAOL party in Dallas LOL), Jeff Bagwell, Sonny, Cher, Elvis (I was kind of disappointed we didn't have the big hair but oh well), Dean Martin, Bill Gates and Donald Trump. (The woman on the end was our MC, another staff support.) The video showing in the background was supposed to be played while the celebrities were getting dressed but because of the technical difficulties we had, we were behind on the videos. (Totally unrelated...see the guy leaning on the table? I've had some really "interesting" dreams about him. And I'll leave it at that, for now.)

And now, a couple of close-ups of the celebrities, in the "green room":

The man on the left (Donald Trump - his hair was not that yellow in person) is the VP of our organization. Elvis is our department head.

Sonny (who, for the record, is completely bald underneath that wig) is a team leader and Cher is my boss.

It was a lot of fun and they were all good sports. :-)

Technologically Challenged

I think I may have mentioned that I have a technological disability. If you've ever felt stupid when dealing with a computer or cell phone, this post may make you feel better about yourself.

Okay, so I have a cell phone and have had one for 12 or 13 years. It's never been something I've used a lot though. It's always just been there for "just in case" needs. And I can tell you that when my very first cell phone came with features like call waiting, I didn't see the need. But it was standard and it was more of a hassle to get it removed than to just keep it, so I kept it. I didn't figure it would be an issue, since I wasn't giving out my number anyway.

So, the few times someone DID actually call in when I was using the phone, I disconnected all parties. Don't know how I was doing it but, if nothing else, I was consistent. About the time I would figure out how to work all the features, I would get a new phone and start the process all over again.

Well, a few weeks ago I switched cell phone service providers. As such, I was required to change phones. Now, I still don't see the need (for me anyway) to have all these extra features. While I am using my phone more frequently now, it's still a "just in case" phone to me (although, I haven't replaced my dead house phone yet so it's the only phone I can be reached on at the moment - but that's another story). Even so, the sales person tried to sell me their top of the line phone. She kept showing me these phones with all these features ("you flip it this way for easy text messaging" she said. "I don't know how to text message," I replied. "This one takes pictures," she said. "I don't need a phone that takes pictures," I replied. "You can make this one have a bigger screen," she said, "for when you're on the internet." "I don't need to access the internet from my phone," I replied. And on it went.). I did end up getting a camera phone though, mostly because you can't hardly get a phone without it anymore - plus it was free with my company's plan.

Which, by the way, I want to recommend an improvement to the (or maybe just my) camera phone. You see, I was snapping shots of my dogs and got a great one of Max. Thing was, no one told me that you had to SAVE the picture (yes I'm THAT stupid) so I lost it when I flipped it closed. So my recommendation is that the phone alert you to the fact that it's not saved. You know, like maybe making a sound and then asking "are you sure you want to close this document/picture without saving?" before you lose it. It's just a thought.

But, anyway, I'm still learning the new phone. And last night I was talking to a friend of mine and I heard this beep. I wondered what it was. It was brief so I wasn't sure. Then it beeped again. I started thinking someone was calling me. It was going to be my first call waiting call. I was pretty anxious about it because of my track record of losing both callers in the past.

Then the beeping stopped. My friend had been talking the whole time and I didn't want to interrupt so I hadn't said anything. Then the beeping started again. This time I interrupted my friend and said "Hold on, I think I have another call."

I pressed the "send" button, assuming that's what would switch me to the other call, right? Well, after I pressed it I hear the hi / low pitch you hear when you're phone has been off the hook too long. Figuring I'd missed the caller, I pressed the "end" button. When I tried to get my friend back, I found out that I had disconnected "both" calls. Doh!

I called my friend back, apologizing for disconnecting our call. We were only talking for a few minutes when, again, I hear the beep. I sighed heavily and said, "I think someone is calling me."

She said something and I responded, "Did you hear the beep?"

"Yes. Wait, I think I did."

On cue the beep sounded again. "That?" she asked.

"Yes!" I replied.

"Honey, that's in the store. I'm in WalMart! That's a sound in the store."

Oh.

So I hadn't really disconnected two callers, like I'd thought. No. I'd merely HUNG UP on my friend, for no apparent good reason! LOL

Not embarrassing or anything.

Now, don't you feel better about your skills? ;-)

The Geek Squad

I know I've been a bit neglectful, if you will, of my blog recently but I've really had a good reason. I've had zero computer access at home for the last two weeks and an unstable computer environment for a couple of weeks before that. It wasn't until last night that I was able to get back online at home (and don't think I'm not happy about it - I've been spending the last four hours catching up on internet surfing! :o) ).



Anyway, I found out just how little I really know about computer and I also learned that the experts don't know a whole lot more than I do. This all started the first weekend of the month when I noticed my computer was going slower than usual and I shut it off. It shut off alright . . . it wouldn't reboot for me to save my life.



I took it to work and, on the first try mind you, a co-worker got it up and running. I immediately started yelling "save my newsletter! I've gotta save my newsletter!" And then I promptly saved the one document (to a flash drive) that would be the most easy to recreate, should I lose everything and we shut 'er back down - where it once again died.



An "expert" told me I should try to re-boot it from my boot disk and I did, and it actually worked. At that time, I copied as many files as I could (starting with all my partial wips) on the flash drive. It didn't get everything but it got a lot. I'm thinking I'm doing pretty good. I was getting advice that I should re-install everything on my computer and start fresh (I'd bought Norton because the initial diagnosis was that I had a virus - and maybe I did but in the end, it wasn't my biggest problem, but it wouldn't install on my computer) but I wasn't finished with the newsletter I was working on and I really wanted to get it out before I wiped the slate clean, so to speak.



Well, with each change I made to the newsletter, I resaved it to the flash drive, right? That is until my computer quit recognizing the flash drive. You know, the one that had my life on it? Yeah, that one. Suddenly I didn't feel like I was doing so good anymore. That's when I started emailing EVERYTHING on my computer to my gmail account (gotta love 'em) so I could feel good again. :o)



So, I finally finished the newsletter and got it out and decided to reinstall everything. Oh, during all this, I was having some issues with my computer where if it stalled, I could tilt it and it would un-stall, if you know what I mean. The Pam said she thought it was my hard drive. I told the computer "expert" at work all this and he disagreed, saying that if it was my hard drive that I would hear a grinding noise and it would just crash. Which is exactly what happened after I stayed up all night reinstalling everything on my computer.



That was two weeks ago tomorrow.



Tuesday I went Best Buy and bought the hard drive that the computer "expert" from work told me to buy. To shorten the story, it was the wrong hard drive. Fortunately I made the decision to have the "geek squad" at Best Buy install it. Some thought it was a waste of money to do that but considering it turned out to be the wrong hard drive and they wouldn't have refunded my money had someone else opened the box and tried to install it, I think it was money well spent! Anyway, the geek squad had issues too but at the end of the day yesterday (and I mean the end of the day!), I was finally back up and running. (If you wonder why I wasn't up before then - let's just say this was a contributing factor.)

In any event, it's good to be back! :o)

The "Experts"

Well, I'm still having connectivity issues with my internet - even though I've switched providers. It started Tuesday night, I believe.

Anyway, I would be working along and suddenly I would be dead in the water, so to speak. So I called the DSL technical support.

Have you ever seen the episode of Friends where Phoebe takes a job as a telemarketer and they sit her down with a manual "for every eventuality" so that she can answer any questions the customer has? Well, I got that guy Tuesday night because every time I asked a question it would take forever for him to get back to me (and I usually had to ask the question multiple times), presumably because he was looking up the answer.

At one point our conversation went like this: (he's taken me to the command prompt)

Him: Type in "ip" (pauses)
Me: Okay.
Him: Type in "config"
Me: Is that all one word or is there a space between them?
Him: (long silence while he looks it up)
Me: Hello?
Him: Yes, I'm here. Type in "ip" (pauses again)
Me: I know what I'm supposed to type, I need to know if it's all one word or not.
Him: Just type in "ip" (pause)
Me: I know. (in an annoyed voice) One word or two?
Him: It's (then he starts spelling it out) i-p (pause) c-o-n-f
Me: (cutting him off) I know what you're saying and how to spell it. What I need to know is if there is a space between them or if it's one word!!!!!
Him: One word.
Me: Thank you!

It is at this point that I type in what he spelled.....ipconf....not what he said. So of course, I get an error message, which I read to him.

Him: Let's try this again. ip (pause) config
Me: (realizing my mistake and typing it right) Okay.
Him: What does it say?
Me: (I read it to him.)
Him: Now type (he gave me some command that I don't recall)
Me: Okay
Him: Now type a backslash.
Me: Ooohh. I'm not good with the backslashes. Which one is that?
Him: (long silence as he looks it up)
Me: Hello?
Him: I'm still here. Type a backslash.
Me: Which one is the backslash?
Him: (silence)
Me: Is it the one over the question mark?
Him: (unconvincingly) Yes.
Me: Okay
Him: Nevermind, you don't have to type the backslash.
Me: What?
Him: Type (gives me the command again)
Me: Okay
Him: Now type www.google.com
Me: Okay
Him: What's it doing?
Me: Nothing. (pause) Oh wait (then I read the error message it gave me)
Him: You must have typed it wrong.
Me: (uh, wrong answer! but I kept that to myself)
Him: (gives me the command - again - spelling it)
Me: Okay
Him: Now type www.google.com (and then spells it - as if I didn't type every single day)
Me: Uh huh. Exactly as I typed it before.
Him: Just do it.
Me: I did. Got the exact same error too.

We go through this exercise a few more times with yahoo before he realizes, there really is a problem, and puts in a ticket.

Him: We're going to send someone outside your house.
Me: You're sending someone to my house?
Him: No. I put in a ticket and someone will come outside your house.
Me: So someone is coming to my house?
Him: No. Someone will come outside your house.
Me: If someone is outside my house, they are AT my house.
Him: No, someone is not coming to your house. They are coming outside your house.

I have no idea if anyone stopped by or not but my connection seems to be working...at least for now.