all in all, it was a good day

our computer died this past week. my DH troubleshot it and determined the logic board was a goner. saturday was devoted, at least on his part, with getting the new computer and getting it home and all hooked up. (i was away battling goblins and critters like that with my d&d buddies.) he was also able to get the old hard drive out and hook it up to the new computer.

the thinking was, we could get our firefox information from the old hard drive; things like the bookmarks and all the saved passwords. we also wanted to make sure we had all of our data off the old hard drive but that was easy. you see, we knew where that was.

macs don't make things easy when it comes to searching for certain things. i know where to find things in a *nix environment. i was unable to do much of anything with the hard drive when it was attached to the new mac so i hooked it up as a usb connection to my laptop which is running (thank goodness) debian. once i was able to do that i was able to search more easily for tell-tale data strings in the directory structure and generally do some more poking around. the upshot was i was able to recover the firefox information and grab the rest of the stuff off the hard drive, pass it over to a thumb drive which then got dumped to the new mac. did a little presto-change-o with default profiles and bob's-yer-uncle we were good to go.

in addition to all this productivity i was finally able to finish up 3 bags/purses for my etsy shop! take a look. the link is over there on the right. i want to start filling my etsy shop up with various things and the purses were a good start. i made these with old jeans that i have cut up and turned into fabric. fabric with some really cool texture what with the interesting fading, worn spots and all. i have a ton of old jeans so there is a lot of fabric to do things with!

i also want to offer some simple jewelry, soft dolls and photos, if i can get the D(ear)H(ubby) and D(arling)D(aughter) to get some of their photography prepared.

here's a little sneak peek of some detail on one of the purses. enjoy! (and check out the shop!)

my mind is a terrible wasted thing...

no, wait. that's not how it goes.

so, i have a disability check that i receive every month from the VA from my time in the army. no, it's not from that time i fell off the barstool.

anyhoo. i needed to change the bank this check comes to so i call up the handy dandy little number to take care of things. we go through the usual question and answer period to prove that i am who i say i am.

her: your name?
me: (gave it to her)
her: date of birth?
me: august 1955
her: day you went into service?
me: oh man. i haven't thought of that in a while. wait a minute, yes! it was 1994.
her: uh, ma'am? 1994?
me: yes, i think so.
her: ... we show the date to be quite a bit earlier.
me: no... i graduated high school in 1993, spent a year in college... no, it was definitely 1994.
her: ... and you were born in 1955?
me:
her:
me: (suddenly realizing) !! OH! no! it was 1974! 1974!

we started laughing so hard that we couldn't even continue for a while.

her: i was trying to not be rude but i was thinking wow; born in 55 and graduated HS in 95?
me: yeah; i was slow. man, i haven't even had anything to drink today! (well, that set her off again and it was some time before we could proceed)

i told her i just knew what she was going to do when she hung up with me; tell everyone around her about the nutjob she had on the phone. she said there wasn't anyone around to tell and i told her that was a shame. what a wasted opportunity! well, we finally finished our business and she very nicely told me to be sure to take my medication.

see? public service isn't dead after all.