April Fools Day

What a morning!  I've been on the phone for over two hours and I don't like talking on the phone.  Yesterday (without going into a whole lot of boring detail) my word program (that came with the laptop) quit working or disappeared or I did something....I don't know. I'll never know.  I wasn't able to open any files I had previously opened with ease.  After spending an hour on the phone with my daughter, she couldn't fix it either.  This after she "took control"  of my computer remotely.

I called my local computer guy and made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.  Meanwhile, I decided to take my daughter's advice and call Dell to get phone support.  I hesitated doing this because I've done it before and it's not a pleasant experience.  For one thing, you can't understand what they're saying.  After 50 minutes of this guy from India taking control of my computer, finding over a hundred viruses (he said) and telling me that hackers can get into my computer while I sleep at night, and telling me he couldn't fix the problem until I paid $90, I decided Nope. Not going down that road. I asked him again...can't you just fix my word program so I can open my documents.  He then informed me that was another department and he'd transfer me. 

Of course no one ever came back so I hung up and said some very unladylike words. I decided to call my sister-in-law and her husband up in Everett as they're both very computer literate and patient with an old lady in panic.  After trying to  restore my computer to a previous days' setting, we still couldn't make Word operate and Hal was of the opinion that my free word program had expired and they wanted me to buy the new program.

I  bought the program once and it's still on my old computer but alas, they won't let  you transfer it. Another reason I kept the old computer...sometimes I go there to work in a word program, if need be.
I wish I had paid more attention to the word program details on my laptop.  I thought it was free forever, and that it was fine for basic work and just didn't have all the features of the regular office program. 

Hal, bless his little pea pickin' heart, walked me through downloading this FREE FOREVER program that allows me to open my files, and work in an office program and excel just like the old Word did.
I am so thankful!  The website, if you want to download is called openoffice.org.

I'm just glad all this didn't occur while I was in the middle of editing my book. That might have caused me to go on drugs.  ha ha 
Am looking forward to seeing that book too.  Hopefully, a couple of weeks. I hope it looks as good as I think it's going to.

I went up to the library yesterday. Intended to spend 45 minutes browsing through old Leaders. When I finally got up to walk (and found walking was very hard) I realized I'd been at it for two hours.  I printed off odds and ends and it gave me an idea for my next Leader blog. I'm going to play around with it today.

It's looking pretty nice out there this afternoon.  Slight wind but mostly blue skies and sunshine. Maybe I'll hop on my bike and try to convince my legs that "it only hurts for a little while."  I went out into the backyard to empty a garbage bin of recycle trash and noticed my tulip bed sprouted with the recent rain.  Won't be long before pretty tulips are showing their colors.

Time to push myself away from the computer for a while. I'm making up a small potato salad for supper along with some baked beans and a couple of chicken legs.  I need to put some music on too. This whole computer snafu has made me tense. Good thing I quit smoking or I would have probably smoked an entire pack!