November 2008

1. "I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again." --Mark Twain. I never knew how intelligent this man was.

2. Murphy's law is still alive and doing well. One week ago I turned on my computer to a black screen. I reinstalled the operating system as instructed by the words on the black screen, but to no avail. After I realized I had emailed my up to date thesis to my committee, my heart started beating again. Then I thought of all the data I had input into a variety of spreadsheets and the publishing work I had done for my work over the past two months and my heart started to slow down again.

I took it to a Dell customer service center--no, not one for people like us, one that is for corporations. The lone security guard looked somewhat confused as I walked in. I pleaded my situation and he generously grabbed a technician for me who spent 30 minutes playing with my computer before determining the hard drive had crashed...dead...not ressurectable...kicked the bucket...you name it. He politely asked if I had any thoughts as to why this might have happened. I replied "because I am defending my thesis on Monday?" He laughed. So Best Buy said they recovered all the documents off of it. Took it home, and the only two folders that didn't transfer were "thesis" and "work docs." Nice. I love Murphy.

My committee was more than accommodating stating they would not make me rebuild all my data. But I still want all of that work!! I had to leave for Utah, but I haven't given up hope on taking it back to best buy and having them try again. Needless to say, we bought a desktop.


3. Nothing says Christmas like "Please Daddy don't get drunk this Christmas" and "Christmas for Cowboys" by John Denver.

4. Never trust a quoted price--why quote it anyhow? Maybe I need to learn how to do my own cement.