Give or take a few hundred.........

Tonight when my husband and I got home from our weekly Friday night date, we found Max, sitting at my computer, taking pictures of himself in Photo Booth.

I asked him who taught him how to use the program and he told me that he had figured it out by himself.

He was making up all sorts of faces and poses as the camera clicked multiple pictures of him.

After a while, my husband said "Hey Max, that's enough. All of those pictures are taking up a lot of memory on the computer, you've taken about 30 or 40 pictures."

Max looked closely at the screen then turned around and said "No Dad, it's more like 623!"

Messy mirrors and sleepy computers

A few days ago I went to lunch with my bloggin' buddies Jo, Bonnie and Amber.

Blogger friends + all you can eat breadsticks. Life just doesn't get any better than that:0)

I brought Max with me to the lunch. He was starting to get a little restless, so I asked him if he could show everyone how he imitates windsheild wipers. He immediately went to his intermittent setting, and then remembered the big mirror hanging on the wall behind him.
He got a gleam in his eye, and I knew he wanted to spit on the mirror so he could wipe it off.
I tried to distract him, and thought I did, but by the time we left, there was a slobbery/fingerprinty mess on the mirror.

I would like to apologize to whichever person at the Olive Garden gets to clean the mirrors.

The lunch was so much fun, and a well needed celebration for the kids being back in school. (Mine had been out of school for 4 whole weeks!)


********************************************************************

Not too long ago, CJ and Aaron got our two old computers and took them apart to see if they could get them to work again.
The good news is that they were able to get one of them to work.

The bad news is that they took them apart on the family room floor in the basement, and it made a bit of a mess. It sat there for a while until I got sick of looking at/tripping over it, and told them that everything needed to be cleaned out of the family room.

They got it all cleaned up, and the room looked great!

The next morning I went to get Aaron out of bed and found him asleep on the floor. When I turned on his light I discovered why he wasn't sleeping in his bed.

One of the computer CPUs were sitting right in the middle of his bed.

I told him that he needed to find a different place to put the computer, and he assured me that he would.

The next morning I went into his room to wake him up, and again he was sleeping on the floor. This time both of the CPUs were on his bed.
I explained to him again that he really needed to find a different place for the computers so that he could sleep in his bed. Again, he promised that he would move them.

Yesterday morning, once again, I nearly tripped over him on the floor. He had moved a CPU to his desk (what a novel idea!) but the other computer was still sitting in the middle of his bed, and next to it was sitting our Dirt Devil cannister vacuum.

I think he just prefers sleeping on the floor.

On the bright side, if he's not actually sleeping in his bed, I probably don't need to wash the sheets.

Yes, I love technology.....

Everyone can stop worrying now.
The chocolate cravings have returned!
Strangely enough, I the cravings returned on Thursday, which was a very stressful day for me.
Coincidence???
Hmmmmmm.......

So here I am, having a full blown chocolate fit, and no chocolate in the house. If I wasn't already in my pajamas, I would go to the store for a Dove bar. Heck, I'd even settle for a Hershey bar. I won't, however, stoop to eating the Palmer brand chocolate. I'm craving chocolate, not chocolate flavored wax.

Okay, on to another subject.

I need some help. If there are any computer nerds or technology geeks out there, listen up.

There's a program on my computer that I really want to either disable, or get rid of completely. I'm not sure what its called, where it is, or how it works, all I know is that it is making my life on the computer quite difficult, and it also seems to have a big effect on my printer. Since I don't know the name of this program, I will describe to you what it does, and maybe someone out there can offer some advice on what to do.
Okay, here goes. Feel free to take notes.

Whenever I need to have some work finished in the immediate future, some sort of sensor in the computer is able to measure my exact level of stress. It then takes this information, and causes the computer to misbehave. The problems will range from the computer running a little slow (mild stress on my part) to freezing up completely (Major stress)
As I mentioned earlier, this happens to my printer also. If I need something printed pronto, it begins to print v e r y ......s....l....o....w.....l.......y.
Or it runs out of ink. Or it says it is running out of ink and so I open it up to check the ink levels which are fine, and then when I close it, it says that there is a paper jam that needs to be cleared, but I know darn well that there isn't, because I just looked inside, so I open it up again and then close it, open it, close it..............until it says the paper jam is gone, then I start to print, and it catches several pieces of paper at once, so when it gets to printing the last page, it is then out of paper, and it freezes up also..........

I think my all time favorite malfunction happened today.

I needed to get some things done and uploaded to a site. The first file seemed to go smoothly, until I realized that I had sent the wrong version, and I couldn't find any way that I could just cancel or delete the file, so I could re send the corrected version. I couldn't leave it as it was, but I couldn't find any way to fix it. Nothing I tried worked. I even tried just deleting the whole thing.

Nope.

Were you aware that you can scream at a computer for 5 minutes, and it still won't do what you want?
Seriously, no response whatsoever.

I've decided that deep down, my computer is probably a teenager.

I finally figured out how to change the file after it had uploaded, but not before frightening my toddler.
I calmed down and re applied my mascara, and then tried to continue, but the program I was using suddenly decided that it was a trial version, and wouldn't work for me.
I needed to register my software (which I'm pretty sure I already registered) I now need to find the original box.

Yeah right.

Apparently, my computer had managed to hide the box under a huge pile of paper, toys, and other miscellaneous items on my desk. When I found it, the disk was not inside, and I couldn't find the code I needed to get into the website to register my software, which I knew darn well that I had purchased.
I briefly thought about finding the receipt and showing it to the darn computer, just to prove that we owned the software, but I couldn't find the receipt either.

I typed in the # on the box, and wouldn't you know it?
WRONG #
So I go back to searching through the box to find the number, when my 12 year old son smugly points to the back of the software tutorial handbook, where we find the code.

Like anyone actually reads those instructions anyway!

I FINALLY got everything done and uploaded.

Don't get me wrong, I love all the technological cool stuff that the computers can do now. I just want the stress level sensor removed from my computer and printer.
I don't think that's too much to ask.

Anytime I hear the word "Technology" I think of this.

I'm also worried that sometimes, technology might be going a bit too far.
Do you notice any similarities between this...........

And this?

Something to think about.

Apple obsessed

I was walking past Max's room and heard him talking on the new toy cell phone that Santa brought him for Christmas. The conversation went something like this;
"Hi Deef Dobbs, How you Deef Dobbs? What doin' Deef Dobbs? New phone Deef Dobbs. Like I phone Deef Dobbs? O.K. Deef Dobbs. See ya Deef Dobbs. Bye bye Deef Dobbs."
"Hey Max" I said "Who are you talking to?"
"Deef Dobbs" he says.
Then it dawns on me, he is talking to Steve Jobs, as in Apple computer Steve Jobs.
I had no idea they knew each other. Max has several conversations a day with Mr. Jobs.
You may wonder why my two year old knows Steve Jobs. I'm pretty sure they were introduced by his 12 year old, Apple obsessed, computer geek, brother.
CJ will sit down at the computer with Max and they will watch videos on you tube of anything related to Apple computers.
We go into the Apple store, and Max will get really excited over the iMac and iPhone. He even knows the difference between the iPod nano and iPod shuffle. I think most two year olds would just try to eat them.
CJ is very technologically gifted. He has been using the computer since before he was 2. He would discover programs on my computer (that I had no idea were there), and figure out how to use them. I am always so amazed at his understanding of technical things. He reads software tutorial manuals for fun. Seriously.
When CJ was 10, we were at a family party, and someone asked him if he had a girlfriend to which he replied "There are more interesting things than girls, like technology" (He will NEVER live down that comment)
We recently got the new operating system for my computer.
"LEOPARD"
CJ was overjoyed. He could hardly contain his excitement!
I will admit there are parts of it that are really cool, but I've been discovering a few things that have been a problem, like it dumped my really old operating system which I was using to open my even older version of Photoshop. It also did something weird to my e mail, I'll need to have CJ fix it for me.
The desktop of my computer is really cluttered with different documents and files. It kind of bugs me to have it like this, but I do have a general idea of where everything is, and I have no plans of changing it.
Yesterday, CJ comes into my office and said "Mom, you really need to clean up your desktop, it's not very Leopard-like"
Hmmmmm..............
O.K. CJ how about your room? It's not very Leopard-like either.
CJ's room is subject worth an entire post of it's own. Maybe later.