Adios, sayonara, and au revoir

Let's just say all the above plus a hearty goodbye to this week! The week started out well on Monday but then slowly descended into an almost disaster. :D



Venting for a hot water heater in 1984, the completion date on the house, is not sufficient for the newer hot water heaters. When I walked into the utility room Wednesday morning, a strong smell of something burning met me. In a nutshell, we needed another vent in the hot water closet to circulate the air so the fumes would go up the vent. Fortunately, a truly wonderful plumber, Jim Berry at Clearwater Plumbing in Driftwood, TX, was referred to me. He came within 30 minutes of my telephone call, identified the problem, completed the work, and best of all, at a reasonable price.



I bought a new printer the previous week and had all kinds of problems getting the software installed. I installed and uninstalled five times. I spent several hours online with tech support on Tuesday and Wednesday. Just when the sixth uninstall was about to be done, the computer went crazy. The computer has been acting up for a few days, but Wednesday afternoon the computer's performance became more and more erratic.



Again, I was fortunate in that a friend's husband told me it sounded like a virus. He made a disk of two programs that helped him fix his son's computer; but if I couldn't get the computer fixed, he would try this weekend. I drove 40 miles to get that disk. However, it was too late as the computer was on life support. I considered waiting until the weekend but made a call to Dell and was switched to Dell-on-Call. The computer was locked out of the Internet. So after approximately two hours on the phone trying to get around the connection problem, I had to do a restore to the day-one configuration. Again, sensing that something was going haywire on Tuesday with the computer, I copied of all data files to a stand-alone hard drive.



I must sing the praises of the Dell-on-Call tech support person. He was wonderful, patient, knowledgeable, and got me back up and running. I've heard of computer viruses, but never had one. And frankly, I always thought "we were on our own." I had no idea that Dell or any other computer manufacturer, etc., would walk you through the process. I originally called Dell to see what I could do if my friend's husband could not fix the computer this weekend.






So while the week was full of challenges, there were fortunate components in each challenge that minimized the inconvenience. The bright spot came yesterday, Friday. A local art gallery, Sol'stice Gardens, put my fused glass on display. He sold a pendant within 30 minutes after my leaving his office. My name will be listed when Chris, the owner, updates his web site on Sunday. I'll do a separate blog entry on this wonderful place.






Until next time, God bless.