It’s Tuesday night and I’m finally back on the internet, but I’m at home, not at work or my wife’s house (where I should be during the week). My eBay-purchased HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop computer with its absolutely stellar 17″ screen is — no more. Forever. It died when I, eh, kinda sorta managed to spill some Diet Coke onto its keyboard. That laptop was my sole computer at home.
In the meantime I’ve had to blog whilst either at work (man, is that an issue in and of itself!) or at my wife’s house. During the past two weekends: nada, mang. To say that I’ve been in some sort of withdrawal status is an understatement.
But moreover, I’ve had to resurrect my huge desktop unit. Custom built by Sundance Computers in Auburn (Anybody in the Fornicalia Sierra Foothills area? I’d sure as hell recommend their wonderful, comprehensive and caring service, though I’m not sure they’d be sufficiently impressed with my Hard Astarboard personal recommendation.), it sat for a number of years and thusly had some issues with loading software, dust, etc. I took it back to Sundance and they added a second 400-gig hard drive, another 512 into RAM, though I left the motherboard and processor alone.
Spoiled by the 17″ HP display, I went with Chris’s recommendation for a flatscreen and trusted his taste. He ordered a 22″ Viewsonic VA2226w for me and, I must admit, I’m very pleased with his choice. That’s how much I trust this business.
In any event, I’m Back In Bidness at home but am only now able to divert attention to blogging. Because I’m hosted by Blogger, I was able to pre-schedule a couple of posts up to Sunday. But that’s when things changed.
My wife was stung by what us mountain knuckle-draggers in Fornicalia commonly call a Meat Bee (which is actually a yellowjacket) this past Sunday, directly into an already-open wound on her foot. For the first few seconds, little happened. Then, she doubled over in pain. I removed the stinger a short time later and the pain was such that it remained a continuous “10” for an hour — to the point where I had to transport her to an ER 35 minutes away.
The pain came in waves, and we waited seven hours to be seen. The triage nurse had to take various kids ahead of us who had either broken bones or other more serious events. It became almost a joke — the automatic doors would open and a set of parents would carry or wheel in a small child (or in one case, an infant) and we knew we were bumped back. I can’t blame the parents or the ER or the staff. It’s the nature of triage itself. But it was certainly eminently frustrating. Especially considering my wife’s pain abated little. It was frustrating to see her damned near continuously writhing in pain, to the point where she cried out loud and tears flowed down her cheeks. A very nice nurse knew of the situation and kept checking on us. But with only one Triage nurse, three ER nurses and two doctors on duty, they did the best they could. We simply had to understand.
One injection of dilaudid later, and a prescription for hydrocodone (essentially, morphine), my wife began to experience little pain, but sordid hallucinations. She wanted to get into her truck and drive to work. I spent Monday and Tuesday keeping her in the house, calmed, medicated. The pain lessened. I blew two days’ leave from work. But I couldn’t let her drive.
I finally was able to slink down to Auburn in order to pick up my updated desktop confuser, new flatscreen, and log back into my internet host. The modem works, for whatever reason, quicker in the laptop than on my updated desktop — whereas before I could whip out 54.9kbps on the laptop modem, the best I can acquire on this desktop is 49.1kbps. Hey, nothing like a couple steps backwards on the internet!
I should probably simply count my blessings: my wife feels better, the meds are working (d’ya think??), my computer computes (though I still have to reload every damned bit of software again and again), the screen is nice, my desk is cleaned of dust and lint and, perhaps most importantly, I’d kept my copy of Windows XP and DON’T have to trust Vista.
I suppose this is a long way of saying: I’m back blogging.
In the meantime, I’ve not had time to access any media source whatsoever. And I apologize for not accessing any of My Dear Readers’ blogs. What the hell’s been happening?
BZ
I’m glad your wife as better.
One advantage of my oversized desk top unit is that if I ruin the keyboard with a drink of any sort, I just unplug it attach a new one. In fact I think I have a couple of spares.
Welcome back!!
Yeah, Shop, that laptop thing — don’t think I’m doing THAT again up here.
BZ
Glad Mrs BZ’s better…what an experience!
And, glad you’re back! I personally am considering a few days off ALL internet and ALL POLITICS….if you’d not been so occupied with helping your wife, maybe you’d have had some benefit from being offline!?
I’m OD’ing and there are 2 months to go till the election! I feel like writing an email to everyone I know saying “Don’t send anymore political cartoons or videos..TRUST me, I”VE SEEN IT!”
Sorry to rant…glad to have you back, BZ.
z
Thank you most kindly, z.
BZ
Glad to have you back BZ, when I broke my arm a couple of months back the same thing happened in the hospital.
Anyway, I personally use Vista, NEVER THRUST BIZ OR BASIC EDITION. Ultimate or Home premium works wonders though.
Glad to see you back BZ.
Happy to hear your wife will be OK.
I feel for your wife’s pain. When I was 8, living in Dayton Ohio, I was stung by a swarm of yellow jackets after my friends poored water down their bee-hole (I was unaware, and standing right next to it). The bees blamed me, the closest target as the mischief-maker, and attacked accordingly. It was a nightmare.
Glad to see you back up and running.
XP ‘just works’.
So does Win2K, which I like a lot.
The folks at ReactOS are trying to open source an exact duplicate of WinNT and the heart that is within Win2K, XP and Vista (without the freaking bells and whistles that kill Vista). They aren’t there. Yet.
Welcome back my friend.