finished
As you can see, I have gotten the colors finished. I know you may not like them. But I have gotten a few compliments already. Also if you have not noticed I did the color scheme site-wide. I also updated a couple of pages. Some of the pictures and info was out of date. So it's all updated now. So you better leave your comments. Which do you like better, the old scheme of green or the new scheme of blue???

colors
I know my colors are fucked up as of now. Somehow I zapped my style sheet for my blog and I am having to rebuild it. Hopefully I'll finish tonight when I get home from work. So what you think of my new color scheme? Gabe likes it much better. It's growing on me. I did add a few little things here and there, so you might want to take a look around the site to see what surprises I have.

watching movies
Yeah I'm sitting here watching movies at 4 AM. I know I should take my ass to bed. This is especially since I got out of bed earlier than I normally do. I woke up around 10 this morning - well yesterday morning now. So I'm sitting here just watching a couple of movies.


I had a couple of complaints about the color scheme I use on my page. I am considering changing it, but I am not sure I will do that just yet. If you want to see the color scheme I am working on, click here . Be sure to post your comments here and let me know what you think.

CD RW drive woes
Well, the new drive arrived a little while ago. I installed it with no problems of course. I mean how hard is it to mount a drive and plug in two cables right? Nero was only seeing a maximum write speed of 32x so I had to flash the firmware. That solved the problem. I have burned two CD's so far with no trouble. I am sure I will go happy tonight when I get home from work and burn more.

I was talking to Jason, but for some reason he just disappeared. I have no clue what happened to him. Maybe I said something that pissed him off or something. Who knows. Maybe his computer died. I'm sure I'll find out later.

Well kiddies, have fun because I'm about to get ready for work.

sometimes it works and sometimes it don't
yep, I just can't figure it out. Some CD's do ok and some just bomb. I can't figure it out. So maybe it is the drive. I am gonna move it back in the server and try burning several CD's and see what happens. I'll keep you posted.. I know you care!

weird
OK, someone explain this to me. I know there has to be some technically saavy people out there reading this. I just make some changes to the computer. For some reason it seems so far that unplugging the DVD-ROM drive seems to fix the burner problem. Does this make sense to anyone? It certainly doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me. I never had this problem before. I wiped the hard drive and ever since I've had problems burning CD's. I had both drives on the same IDE channel (the secondary of course) and they worked flawlessly. But after wiping the drive and reinstalling everything having both drives on that channels seems to be causing a problem. Does this make any sense to any of you? Do you think changing the master/slave settings would make a difference. The burner has always been master and the DVD slave. It sounds to me like there is something wrong with the IDE driver. This makes me wonder if I need to look on my Asus mobo CD and see if there are specific drivers for the IDE channels. I guess that's possible. That's the only explination I can come up with.

Be sure to post your ideas, I'm interesting in hearing about this.

damn cables
Yep yep, I am fussing about the cables. The cables inside my computer that is. I recently wiped my harddrive. I say recently, actually it was about a month ago. I finally got around to reinstalling Nero last week. Yes, I finally had the urge to burn some CD's. One CD I needed to burn was very important too, because it was for Jason. Anyway, I tried and tried to get this damn thing to work and finally decided that my drive must have gone bad. So I found the paperwork where I bought it and found that it was still under warranty. I wrote to the place I ordered it from and explained the situation. They wrote my back today giving me the instructions to ship the drive back to them for replacement.

Well, this isn't so bad I thought. I will just wait til my new drive comes and and pack the old one in there and ship it off for replacement. Yes, I went ahead and ordered a new one because I'm missing my CD burner. (YEah I know I have one in the server, but it's too slow!) I ordered a new CDRW + DVD combo drive. Of course this is not the DVD burner similar to what Jason has - just a CDRW. I don't really want to spend the money on a DVD burner right now.

Well, I decided to try a few things - like swapping the drives around in the computers. When I put the Mitsumi (that's my fast CD burner) in the server it burned just fine. So that got me thinking wtf is wrong here. So I started checking setttings and shit. Anyway to make a long story short - yeah I know, too late! - the cable that was going to the drives in my desktop was bad. It might just have been bent the wrong way or something. It seems I have some ass backwards cables that have to be turned a certain way for them to be plugged in. I mean that they really have to be twisted, in some cases 180 degrees. I guess they were designed for another type of motherboard or some because they were definately not designed for any of my stuff. But I have new cable in here and the drive is working fine! Consequently the DVD drive seems to be working better too. It was a bit sluggish before.

Would it be too much to ask for you to listen to me whine about work for a bit? I hope not. I am really trying to make the best of my job, but I tell you with some of the people I have to be with at work it really is putting a strain on me. You ever get the feeling that people just don't like you? Well that's the feeling I get at work. I overheard that one ignorant bitch (the one I Really dislike) telling someone "Lisa went and got Robbie to fix the Minganti when I was standing right here". Well there were a few reasons - the main one being that I told Lisa that if that machine didn't start to come get me because I had been messing with it. I just get really frustrated because it seems I am the only one who really knows what to do to keep the machines running. And I try to jump in there and keep them going but it really seems like others dislike that. I guess I'll just start leaving them alone and keepign to myself. And tell them to go get the supervisor to fix their problems. I guess my biggest issue is that I know what I'm doing and I've only been there like nine months. And most of the these other people have been there way longer than me and some can't do half of the stuff I can. And you know the really sad part? I make less than almost all of them. What the fuck kind of shit is that?

And I might have spoke too damn soon on the CD burner. The CD I was playing seems to fuck up on the end. I might go witha different cable. But the only ones I have left are DMA 66 cables. I need to order a couple of the 33 cables. The ones I have are kind of old. So I'm going back to the drawing board. I'll let you know if it's better :-)

Valentine's day approaches
And work calls.. Yep, the actually asked me if I wanted to come in and work Saturday for six hours. Well that might not be so bad, but you moved me out of turning and you now want me to work in turning just because you can't find anyone else. What kind of shit is that??? I don't think I 'll do it. I have too much other stuff to do anyway.

They did come to us about 4:30 and tell us that we would have to work the next two Saturdays. That got changed really quick because some people have a test to go take this Saturday. So they then come back and tell us that instead of working two Saturdays, we will work next Saturday and Sunday. This really sucks because next weekend is Rubenia's birthday. I'm gonna miss my chance to be with her to celebrate :-( I guess we'll have to celebrate this weekend, or the weekend after. I'll have to ask her to find out.

I still have not got everything set up I want to in order for Valentine's Day. I hope everything goes ok though. Hopefully I won't fuck up anything! IT should be interesting. I can't tell you how long it's been since I actually had someone to share this day. So I hope everything goes well.

No trivia here
That's right, I'm not posting trivia here. Well at least not right now. I am sure there are a few of you whom will understand that line!

I had to rid the computer of viruses earlier. Somehow I guess I visited a website and wasn't paying attention to what I was clicking because I sure as hell had a virus on here. And if you got an IM from me on AIM saying something about check out this Osama game, just ignore it. That is some other worm or something that I got earlier.

I am still tweaking the water heater. When I took a shower before work, the hot water didn't seem to last. I adjusted the thermostats again. I also ran a thermometer under the hot water when I got home, the water is only coming out at like 140 degrees. I think it needs to be a tad hotter than that. So I turned up the thermostat a little more. When I took a shower tonight, the water did seem to last longer than this afternoon. I guess the when I have time or feel like it, I will see just how long it will last. IT sure would be nice to have something like a 80 or 100 gallon water heater. I wouldnt' have to worry abour running out then!

I did something kind of weird tonight. I took my truck out for a little drive around the neighborhood. I am hoping to get it fixed in another week or two. I wanted to get a feel for it and see if I'd be able to drive it to Augusta. I am not really sure that is such a good idea. When I get up to about 30 MPH, I hear this whining noise. It seems to get worse as the speed increases. I think it would be best if I just have it towed. I certainly wouldn't want to get over in Augusta with the traffic and cause problems for anyone. I just hope it doesn't cost too much to get it fixed. I guess I'll find out soon enough!

Hot water!! Finally!
Yep yep, I finally got that damn water heater fixed. I have been working on that thing since Saturday afternoon. It's been a real pita.

I started out by draining that sucker Saturday. Ater stopping twice and going to two different stores I managed to get a tool which I could use to extract the elements. So I got the new elements in there and turned the water back on. Low and behold it started leaking out of the drain valve and no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to stop. Well if that isn't bad enough, the wires were also old and cracked when I tried to wire it back up. So those were going to have to be replaced as well as the drain valve. Well it was time for me to be heading out as I already had plans for Saturday evening.

Saturday night Jason and I met up with Rubenia at the Outback. I'm glad that Jason finally decided to join us as I think he's missing out a lot by not going with us. He definately enjoyed himself. He might have enjoyed himself a little too much as before the night was over he was feeling on Rubenia. Millard was supposed to meet up with us, but he never did. He had dinner with some of his other friends and was too tired to join us. I really think we need to get Millard some sort of pep pills as he seems tired too much!

Sunday I managed to goto Lowe's and ask for new wire. Well the guy informs me that the wire I need, they don't sell. He sends me to this other place; I get there and that damn place was closed. Needless to say I really pissed off by then as I had to go back to Lowe's and get the wire I could use temporarily. (I picked up the new drain valve the first trip there.)

I come home and install all this new stuff. It took lots of time to get that valve out of the tank as it was almost welded to the tank. As it turns out the shank on the new valve is longer than the old one which means my cover isn't going to fit on it quite like it should. But I am not replacing it again. It's too much damn trouble. After I got it all fixed up, I didn't turn it on until Jason and I had come back with pizza. I let it sit there for about two hours and go check it. Much to my dismay the water is still cold. By the time I'm ready to cry.

I called Daddy to get his opinion on what could be wrong. So he starts going over everything. I have done stopped so many times to go buy this and that. I have new elements, new thermostats, new drain valve, and new wire. And this thing isn't working. Daddy said "You did put the same kind of elements right, 2000-watt 240-volt?" I said yeah, but got to looking at the package. Then I noticed that the elements my step dad purchased for me were 120-volts!!!! Needless to say at least of them is toast now. So still Sunday night I am without hot water.

Well after tossing and turning most of the night last night, I managed to get up this morning and go find new wire - the correct stuff - and new elements. I am not wanting to keep heating my water on the stove. That shit is getting old! I took it all apart and put the new stuff in there and wired it up. By now I could do this within like 30 minutes! I've gotten good at messing with those things now! Of course by then it was time for work, so I woudn't turn it on just in case something happens while I was gone. I would hate to burn down my house or something stupid. I talked to the boss when I got to work and they let me come back home. So now after all weekend, I finally have some warm water. I think in about another hour or two it will be totally hot. I can't wait to get in the shower and see how long it takes to run it all out again! I just hope it lasts, because that is why I started messing with it in the first place. I couldn't stay in the shower long before the water was cold. But hopefully all this should be fixed. If not, I guess I'll have to buy a larger water heater! LOL

I think this is enough for now. I am sure you will all love reading about my weekend woes. If you don't want to hear about them, wth are you doing here anyway?????
I guess I'll do what I said and go visit my grandmother. She's been in the hospital since last week. I went by there this morning in between my running around looking for parts. I told her that if I got out of work today, I'd come back to see her. So I'm going up there for a while.

And most everyone knows my truck needs work, everyone cross their fingers that it doesn't turn into a disaster like the water heater. Hopefully it won't. I mean after all, I have to pay someone to fix it as I can't actually try to tackle that project! And I guess this is enough as this is about the longest post I've ever put on here!