Cheerier topics?

Just thought I'd pop up for a breath of fresh air and pass along an interesting link. It's a world map, showing, 'in real time', all the volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, biohazard incidents, epidemics, airplane & vehicular accidents, etc... like everywhere! OK, I doubt it shows EVERY fender bender on the planet. But it's pretty dawgawn cool, anyhow! To see basic information, click on a symbol. Its info box has an option to click for more details. I've noticed a lot of the air incidents don't dish out much detail. Just a link to the FAA page. Fair warning... I did notice it made my browser (Firefox) really sluggish after a while. I don't know if that's due to FF's memory hog reputation or just an overload from too much information flowing. I haven't tried viewing it in IE yet.

Another similar, but not nearly as comprehensive, site: Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System.

The fun never ends

OK, so I got fed up with all the funny little things IE8 was doing and downloaded Firefox. Idano why I was so hesitant to do that. It's great! Well, it WAS great... until... apparently some sites are just die-hard IE fans and refuse to let FF in. I tried one site three times and every time it crashed all my browsers. Now I just have to learn which sites require a switcheroo.

In other news, several times just today, I've heard someone say those words our family has come to know and... tolerate... 'never saw anything like that before!' We have to laugh. Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many times we hear that phrase. It's like our purpose in life is to train the repairmen and customer service reps of the world.

I opened a new bank account - for household expenses... plus there was a $25 start-up bonus - and when I went in to make the initial deposit, nobody could find me in their system. Their supervisor had called me just a few hours earlier to confirm that I was coming in, but I just wasn't there. And nobody could figure out what to do about it. It was New Years Eve and the right people weren't there.

I got my new CVS Extra Care card in the mail yesterday. This evening, I went online to register it and it wouldn't recognize the number as valid. Called customer service, got it all fixed, went back to register it and... 'sorry, this account is locked'.

DS was trying to use the old computer - still on dial-up - and kept getting connected at about half the usual speed. (And I use the term speed quite loosely). I made a phone call a few minutes later and could faintly hear someone else's conversation. The phone company sent someone out a couple weeks ago to check on that same problem and the man found nothing.

Kinda gettin' the picher here? We have decided there's an invisible M (our last initial) tattooed on our foreheads and 'they' see us coming. The family joke is... it's the tattoo. And at least one of us says it, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, practically every day. Well, if that's the worst cross I ever have to bear, I'll grin and bear it. 8-}

Y'all have a JESUS-filled day! ^i^

Entering the 21st century

Well, it took me 10 years, but I finally made it. On 31 December, I hooked myownself up to DSL. I gotta tell y'all, it's a love-hate relationship so far. At first, it was pretty fast, Then, yesterday, it got slower and slower until it was worse than dial-up! Duller finally called tech support and the guy ended up telling us to unplug every phone in the house, then plug them back in, one at a time. The last one was the culprit. Apparently, there's something wonky in that jack, coz it was kinda like speeding down the autobahn and pulling the emergency brake. The engine was revving to beat the band, but the car wasn't going anywhere. OK, no phone in the family room till it gets fixed. WAHOO! The speed was back and I was zipping along with the rest of the Jetson world. When I had to tear myself away to run some errands, Duller decided to give it a whirl. After a while, he called and said he couldn't get anywhere. The browser refused to display any pages. (This was on the desktop on which I had finally downloaded 57 Windows updates that were collecting for about 2 years). DS finally stepped in and did... er... something and got it working. This afternoon, it pulled the same thing on me. DS tried, but it didn't work this time. I finally did a system restore - back to pre-updates - and now it's working again... BUT - there has to be a but - I can't get Norton to uninstall. I keep downloading their removal tool, saving it to the desktop, but it's not there. Tried just running it and nothing happened... just showed the loading progress box, finished and poufe. Oh, and the connection keeps jumping to local only (as opposed to local and internet). Techie says it's likely a bad card in the desktop... or maybe a virus. *sigh* Right now, I'm running CenturyLink's virus scanner. Looks like I'll have to take it to an expert to get rid of the Norton remnants. I did the same procedure on my laptop and it went like clockwork. Then again, I hadn't tried to uninstall it via add/remove programs first.

Am I having fun yet?!

On the plus side, it no longer takes me an hour to download an mp3 file. And I don't have to go to the lie-berry, which is closed Sundays and Mondays, to view little veejo clips. The first one I saw, BTW, was such a hoot! Check it out here, at the end of the post. And I actually read every couponing/money-saving blog in my list in ONE DAY! WOOHOO!

OK, looks like it just can't be all roses and no thorns. Now I'm trying to print two steenkin' coupons and it says thank you for printing, but nothing happened. Did a test print and the printer worked, but won't print my Betty Crockers. Methinks it's their overzealous security program. Never a dull moment! I'll be seein' y'all soon as I get the kinks out. 8-]

Have a JESUS-filled day! ^i^