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March 20, 2005

"TheArmpitOfHell" and Fixing Computers

I got to "TheArmpitOfHell" about 3:30 yesterday afternoon. My mother and I went straight to Pat's Gowns to pick up my dress for Barbara's wedding. We had perfect timing because Tracy, Darvin and Barbara were there. I took some pictures of her in her dress, but I'm not posting them in case a sneaky groom starts reading my blog.

After picking up the dress, we went shopping for shoes for the dress and I found a new purse. I needed one since the one I have been carrying, the lining is all torn up. Then we drove back home where I quickly changed clothes and then raced back to La Fiesta for the shower. We were there for about two hours and then I came home and fell asleep on the couch.

This morning my mother woke me up by walking thru the motion detector, forgetting that my dad had turned it on when he left for work at 4am. He got home about 8:30 and I got up and started attempting to fix my mother's computer. She has multiple problems with her machine and I think I got two of them fixed, at least temporarily.

First of all, she is quickly running out of space on her 6GB harddrive. I bought her a new one but I cant seem to find all the software she claims she kept so I haven't installed her new 120GB harddrive until I can find a friend who has Ghost so I can just copy her old drive before I put it in there. I went thru most of her drive and deleted all of her temp files, internet files, my account on her computer and then I compressed all the files that hadn't been accessed before January 2004. She is now up to 698MB free and hopefully that will keep her content until I get back in two weeks.

Secondly, she hasn't been able to print for a while, err, actually, since I moved to Dallas. I uninstalled and reinstalled her printer when I moved but I think I had a bad install.exe file because it showed the Lexmark software running in the taskbar, but it didn't show that the computer had any printers installed and couldn't find it when it searched. I ended up going thru the system files and deleting every Lexmark file I could find, redownloading the drivers and starting over. Finally, the woman can print, at least that's one less thing she can complain about.

Lastly, she started complaining about a month ago that she has started receiving some "not-so-nice" emails and she wanted them stopped. I downloaded the new Beta version of Microsoft AntiSpyware and ran it. She didn't have any spyware on her computer so I wonder how she got on whatever mailing list she is on. This download, however did create a problem, that everytime you try to open a Microsoft Office Application it attempts to run Microsoft Installer and wants the Office CD. This CD just happens to be somewhere in Dallas in a box I apparently haven't unpacked yet because I cant seem to find it. I am hoping I can find the CD before I come back, because she is NOT going to be happy about having to cancel the installer everytime she tries to open something.

About 4:30 I finished working on her computer and I started getting ready to come back to Dallas. I noticed that my cell phone showed two missed calls and I had voice mail. I quickly found out that our meeting at Panera Bread at 7:30 this evening was canceled and that since I am off tomorrow I don't have to drive back tonight with all the spring breakers returning to Dallas. My cousin is in Dallas and was expecting me to go out with her and her friends this evening, and I may still go back, but at least I don't have to worry about being late to my meeting.

I have some pictures from the shower last night and I will post those when I get back to my apartment, I didn't bring my camera dock with me.

Posted by FutureFoodTVStar at March 20, 2005 05:19 PM

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