Queen Anne's Lace and Lilacs

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

This afternoon, I began having weird problems with my computer.  Specifically, one of my external hard drives.  The one with my photos, my family trees, my scrapping pages, all of my digital scrap kits.  I wanted to throw a huge fit, but I think I handled myself rather decently.  For me.  But, poor Tim.  He's not able to feign ignorance in these matters - and I know he'd love to.  So, he came home after dealing with computer issues all day to figure out what the heck happened here.  We still don't know, by the way.  I like to post a photo or two with my posts, but I am too disgusted to select, edit, and find some kind of frame.  I've decided to just vent.

Except, in the midst of all of this, there has been some excitement!  First of all, I heard from my best friend in high school's mom.  I enjoy hearing from her - and she had wedding pictures.  I love wedding pictures.  Actually, she emailed me last night, and I'd been planning to email her back this morning.  I also wanted to write, here, about her and my friend.  Well, as the day wore on and it was turning out to not be a fluke about the EHD, I didn't get the email done.  Then, as things were getting tense as we were discovering all the different things that weren't working properly, computer wise - and they weren't that tense, not really (I think he was mostly unhappy because he didn't get to watch the Celtics-Lakers game) - I received an email from one of my friends from Continentals.  We haven't corresponded in years!  A few hours later, I received an email from another Continental friend.  I was so excited, giddy as a schoolgirl, my anger and disgust with this computer began to fade (I'm sure they'll both be back tomorrow).

As a venting post, this hasn't been so bad - thanks to old friends.  Thinking positively that nothing else will go wrong, I'll take care of those emails in the morning (remember, what may be morning for you, may not be morning to me - even if we're in the same time zone).  However, if you hear a yell coming from the west, things have probably taken a turn - back to the worst.   

It's Not Working!

I'm not one to go off on a rant (wink, wink), but  we recently purchased a video editing program - Sony's  Vegas Movie Studio.   We made sure  that it  would work with Vista,  since this is the  operating system that came with my laptop.  More  on Vista later.   Tim downloaded  Sony Vegas on his laptop, too - his laptop runs Windows XP.   Well, everything works fine, as long as  mp3 files don't  get involved.  Once you try to add an mp3, Sony Vegas immediately crashes.   Only on my machine with the Vista - on Tim's XP machine, it all works fine.

I sent the error message that accompanied the crash  to  the Sony help people.  They sent back a list of steps to perform that took about an hour and a half to complete.  Didn't work.  Sent  them another email telling them, "Yo, didn't work," along with the new error message.  I'm then told to send them the file of my system information.   Did that immediately.  My most recent email from Sony says basically, "Wow, too bad.  Hey,  if you ever find out what's wrong, let us know.  We're kinda curious!"

Of course, we all know the problem -  VISTA!  AAARGH!!!!  I cannot tell you how many times I have  to  restrain myself from  physical violence (you know, pillows....what did you think I meant?!) whenever I have to deal with Vista.  No judging, you who have no knowledge or experience with  Microsoft's  pathetic  excuse for an operating system.  You'd think they were new to the  whole computer thing, and Vista was their first attempt! 

As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Tammy Bruce talk about the insanity of the U.S. having drugs made in China - that, oh my goodness, are contaminated.  What?  How could that happen?  Did you know that the FDA has a budget of only $10 million for foreign inspections?  The whole conversation is not calming me down.  Oh, well, I'm done with my rant.

For now.

A few weeks ago, I saw this gorgeous layout at Digishoptalk (click photo for a larger view).  I had to make it.  So, (sigh) another scraplift.  I wish I could say this all came from my own little brain, but, seriously...

Little Bethany, back in the day when I had influence over her clothing purchases.  I miss those days.  She does fine in her selecting, and I absolutely have the final say, but I'm only there for approving or denying.  My sense of style and taste is no longer required (sniff).