Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Spiders, June bugs and memory dumps

So I am up and running again. I did one of those – I’ll wait till later and try to turn it on again, as if waiting 2 hours is going to make a difference. Except it did. Hmmm. My fan has been running loudly and non-stop for a while now. It has been suggested that my laptop is over heating. I guess that’s a possibility.


I vacuumed any vent I could see hoping to suck any dust and or cat hair out of there. Don’t know if that helped or just letting it completely cool down did. The error I’ve gotten twice in the last few days was scary, Windows just shutting down and giving me the blue screen. “Beginning memory dump.” WHAT??? “Memory dump complete.” Argh-h-h. (see Shelagh? Even my computer says it took a dump!!) :)


After that one I did what I would normally do – look the error up on the internet! Found the only real suggestion I could do was a scan disk, essentially, and to load Microsoft’s newest service pack. I was also advised to make sure that anything new I may have installed, is installed properly. Well how am I supposed to know that?



I’ve never seen a program pop up and say “just a friendly note to let you know I’m not installed properly.” No, I get things that say “A disk read error has occurred” Uh huh, what’s that? And when I try ctrl+alt+delete to restart a couple of times, I get another message “No bootable devices – strike F1 … yada yada yada.” And then … No boot device available – internal hard drive ..” It all sounds so bad.


But – it came back up, slowly, told me it had recovered from a serious error which I found absurd but – okay. So I’ve had my computer going down and back up again and giving me strange messages. I had ants in my kitchen today and what I didn’t mention earlier is that I could not get my oven to work and my toaster oven decided to toast only from the bottom now. Yay. How many strikes do you get in one day??


A little while ago I hopped in my car with a raging headache to drop a package at the post office. Leaving the house the wind was starting to gust and I felt a web go across my face as I stepped off the porch. I hate that! You don’t see the spider but you know he’s there. Watching you. Ee-e-w-w. And what was gracing the window next to the door as well as on the screen on the door? Yeah, June bugs. They’re close, it’s getting toward the end of may. They are a lot darker this year for some reason, makes them even creepier.


I may hate the beetles but they make for some good clean fun for Abby, she’d love it if one of them actually got in the house. At least she thinks so. In reality my cats rarely know what to do with a bug other than bat at it till it just gives up and dies and they lose interest. Jake is usually the only one who will actually chase one and eat it.



Click on the picture to better view the bugs. Ick.


Anyway, now I am at my computer – using a chill mat of my son's that he had but had never opened. And really, the bottom of my laptop is much cooler to the touch. So we are alive again, whether or not it is temporary remains to be seen. I’m hoping for a better and more productive day tomorrow without a major headache or computer problems. And ants, I don’t want anymore ants. Blech-h-h.


**Edited to add - Try the daily jigsaw on the right sidebar! I actually have a jigsaw program on my desktop and I find it very relaxing to do one or two now and again, so I had to try this widget when I found it.


4 Comments:

BetteJo said...

Click on the picture to see the June bugs better. I guess it depends on what part of the U.S. you live in, but I grew up knowing that sometime around June these beetles would show up and cling to the window screens, being attracted to light. They are annoying more than anything, but apparently their larvae can cause damage to people's lawns. They fly kind of stupidly so if you startle them and they take flight - they can fly right at you and I have had them get stuck in my hair once or twice. Blech-h. Here is a place you can look to find more than I know about these things. To me - they are just a sign of summer coming.
http://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/bimg139.html

Anonymous said...

I just heard about these cool mats recently. I bet I'll be sorry for not getting one!

BetteJo said...

I'm thinking laptops were never meant to be used 20 hours a day. But really - I mess with mine a lot. I change the look, the icons, I download things. I try to be safe but. ... you never know.

Anonymous said...

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