Liquid and Laptops – A Bad Mix

On Saturday I got a phone call from my friend in Pennsylvania. She said, “I’m having a panic attack and you’re the first person I thought of to call; My son spilled a huge glass of iced tea on my laptop.”

I told her that this has to have happened to a lot of people out there. She said the laptop was not under warranty and then she said, “Not that this would be covered under the warranty anyway.” She and I were thinking out loud basically.

She said she came home after this had happened and her son was trying to turn the laptop on and off, on and off. When she attempted to turn it on, she only heard a crackling sound and shut it right back off again. She said they were attempting to take it apart to let it dry out.

I told her she may want to think about getting the hard drive out of the laptop; that if worse came to worse and she lost this laptop, at least she would have that backup.

Since this event happened I have thought of a few things I am going to keep in mind:

• If liquid gets onto my laptop or a PC, I will NOT attempt to turn it on
  (so nothing gets fried)
• I will dry the computer out as soon as possible (with laptops tilted)
• Call my computer guy before I do anything (he’s never not been available)
• Before a computer crash of any kind might happen, I will back up my files on my external hard drive   (preventive measures)

Things have turned out OK for my friend; her laptop is functioning just fine now and hopefully it will stay that way.

S.L.M. 11.16.09 @ 2:02 p.m.

A Baby Cousin Is On The Way

About a month ago we found out that my husband’s youngest sister is going to be having a baby (due March 4th).  My husband has two sisters and neither of them have had kids yet.  We have two sons (ages 10 and 8).

The family was together at my husband’s parents’ house and we were about to sit down to dinner (family dinners are becoming less common as we all stay busy, however they may start to happen more with a baby on the way) when we got the news in an unusual way.

The month before this (September) I thought I was pregnant, which is ironic based on the way things went at this family dinner.  My father-in-law, with a busting, ‘I can’t wait to tell you something’ smile said, “Someone here is pregnant.”

He let everyone look at each other and wonder (really only my other sister-in-law wondered because the parents already knew).

It was fun to be told that way although I knew it couldn’t be the other sister-in-law; she’s allergic to the idea of having kids of her own (she’s a great aunt though!)

After a few seconds, my pregnant sister-in-law spoke up and about the same time my father-in-law exposed who was really pregnant.  It was a relatively muted reaction by everyone but I would never have expected any different from them; they are a laid back group.  I am very excited from the start and I hope my enthusiasm shows.

My sons are thrilled to have a boy cousin on the way.  Yesterday the kids were doing the math and figuring out how old they will be when he’s old enough to…ride a bike, go to elementary school and do other stuff like that.  My oldest son said he’ll be driving when his cousin goes into pre-k.  Hm, he’s right!  My husband’s sister and her husband waited 14 years before deciding to have a baby, so that does have an effect on the cousin-age-difference thing.  I told the kids that hey, at least they’ll have a boy cousin that they get to see.  My 44 year old brother in Seattle has a 2-1/2 year old but we never see them.

This got me to thinking about what unique ways there are out there to announce a baby is on the way.

S.L.M. 11.01.09

Firefox Rocks

I use Mozilla Firefox and I am glad that I do. I have IE6 still (never bothered trying to get IE7) so that I can check what different sites look like in different browsers for different users. I do not like to use IE and I rarely ever do. Somehow, IE has expanded itself and made itself look all blocky and zoomed in. I researched this on the confusion that is the Microsoft website.

Upon researching the subject, “Text size on a Web page changes unexpectedly in Internet Explorer 6” I arrived at the MS website on a “Hotfix” in the paragraph starting, “Important This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up…”

Ya right! Like I am going to mess with all of that junk! This is exactly why I do not use IE and why I do use Firefox. I can simply hold Ctrl and press the – button to zoom out and again hold Ctrl and press the + button to zoom in again with the Firefox browser. Talk about a “Hotfix”!

So the summation for me is that I stay far away from IE in its 6 and 7 forms and only view it now and again to see how the sites I am working on look in it. I also use other browsers just as evenly. I never use IE for actual browsing purposes, so I guess the zoomed, chunky, disgusting look is simply an annoyance.

Hey, I never said I didn’t get IE all messed up that way completely on my own. I just happen to think Firefox rocks, that’s all.

S.L.M. 5.6.09 @ 10:15

WC3 (HTML) and WC3 (CSS) Site Markup Validation

In getting this site to clean up and make good, I am trying to get it to be the best it can. I am having difficulty getting my manager to see that I can get the site clean and without errors in CSS but apparently not HTML 4.01 Transitional as well.

At least I am not sure that I can make the site error-free both ways. I know that the CSS is clean (no errors found) and that’s why I do the site this way. HTML is harder to work with.

I use Fagan Finder to test the site and it is a great utility (developing, linking, etc.) I would recommend this tool to anyone who works on websites.

I would take a suggestion or five on validating markup. Here’s the home page in question, thanks.

To validate a site, follow these steps:
Go to http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/
Enter web address
Click “view page”
Then click the “develop” tab
Then click the first link “W3C (HTML)” and/or the ninth “WC3 (CSS)”

S.L.M. 5.5.09 2:53

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

Depression & My Beliefs

I found this article very interesting regarding how depression feels. This article discusses more on unbiased depression treatment.

Since I have included links to the media website regarding what I believe, here is a direct link that explains my beliefs. Many times people have questions about Witnesses but ask from their friends, coworkers or others and get confusing answers. This will give you a fair and objective opportunity to get more answers and/or information on your own, if you have questions, directly from the source and from the correct website.

S.L.M. 5.5.09 @ 8:29