Greys & Things

I am not sure where I have been, but today was the first time that I have heard about the Conflicker Worm.  It is supposed to strike tomorrow, April 1st.  My heart started racing as soon as it heard about it on the news.  I work at home and rely on my computer and I cannot afford to have a worm infecting my system as I am sure you can’t either.

The news program I watch in the morning kept giving teasers about the worm and that an expert will be on to tell me how to protect my computer.  I waited impatiently.  I turned up the TV really loud so that I could hear it while showering so that I wouldn’t miss anything.  I turned on my laptop and accessed the Internet waiting to find out what I needed to do.  Finally, the expert came on.  I was extremely disappointed in his advice.  He didn’t tell me anything because he doesn’t know anything.  He doesn’t know what the worm will do.  He did not say anything about protecting my computer.  The only advice the news anchor gave at the end of the interview was to visit their website.  I did that and finally I was able to at least come up with a way to know if my computer was infected.

This is what I learned.  If you can access any of these sites: Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, F-Secure, Panda, Sophos, SecureWorks or Sunbelt then you are probably not infected. I tested both of my computers and it looks like I am okay.  Here is the link to the site that I found this information. Conflicker Worm

If you have heard anything else about this worm, please feel free to comment.  Maybe it will just be an April fool’s joke and nothing will happen.

Hubby took Rosie Roomba apart yesterday and said that she cannot be fixed without a new part.  He thought he might be able to fix her on a temporary basis, but no, that didn’t work.  I went back to the Roomba website to order the part.  I had looked at it last week and there was a 3-4 week backlog on the part.  The part is no longer listed. What does that mean?  Will they ever have it again?  I will have to contact them today to get some answers.

I checked Ebay and found the part I need for $89.  I refuse to pay that much as the Roomba people had it listed for $49 last week.  I realize that now Roomba doesn’t have the part listed, but I’m not putting that much money into it.  If I find out that they are no longer going to carry the part, which I can’t imagine, then I will continue to check Ebay.  It’s possible that I will find a used Roomba who has some other issues and we can take the part off of it.   I’m beginning to wish that I would have taken the money that I spent on Roomba and purchased an Oreck instead. It sure is nice to push Roomba’s button and have her do all the work though.  I really miss her.

The snow is over.  I think we probably got an inch.  It’s a heavy snow and has some of our smaller trees bent over.  I was asleep when the snow came, so I am not sure if it was hamster, gooey butter cake or bowling ball size.  Those were all the predictions that the weather men were giving for this snowfall. The snow is already melting.  That’s the best type of snow in my opinion.  It’s supposed to be 60 here tomorrow.

We are celebrating the last cold weekend of the season by having a fire in our fire place. I am going to fix chili today.  I hope to not do much work.  I want to make a few dog collars today.

I ordered our fishing licenses on-line and they arrived yesterday.  I can now fish when we camp.  Honestly, I didn’t want to purchase one in person because you have to give your weight.  I didn’t feel like announcing that to whoever took my information, plus I figured Hubby would be standing right there.  I have a thing about not telling Hubby the actual number.   We have purchased fishing licenses in the past, so all of our information is on-line.  I noticed that Hubby hasn’t updated his weight from like five years ago, so I didn’t either.  LOL

We are supposed to head out on Friday for a four day camping trip.  We are going trout fishing.  I told Hubby I would fish in the afternoon, but do not have any intentions in standing out there in the wee hours of the morning.

On a sad note, Mizzou lost last night.  I was really hoping that they would make it to the final four.

Happy Sunday!

It’s true, last night the weather man said that the snowflakes tonight would be gooey butter cake sized.  Hubby and I just looked at each other and laughed.  I think the weather men are trying to out do each other here in St. Louis.  This morning, the forecast was for 3″ to 5″ of heavy snow.  I haven’t heard the latest forecast since we haven’t been home.

Hubby and I went to the city today to do a little bit of shopping.  It was pouring rain, so we ended up getting drenched.  We really need to learn to keep an umbrella in the car.  We stopped at the dollar store.  I spent $25, which is the most that I have ever spent there.  I stocked up on laundry detergent, dishwashing detergent, shampoo, conditioner, trash bags and a few spices.   I wish I lived closer to the dollar store because I probably would shop there first before going to other stores.  I also shopped at a different grocery store while Hubby was at a tool store.  It was fun seeing different things that are offered there compared to what we have here.

Tonight, I am fixing us a steak dinner with baked potatoes, garlic bread and salad.  Sex and the City, the movie is on tonight.  I haven’t seen it yet, so it sounds like a fun evening for me.

I am updating my Blogroll.  If anyone would like to be added, please let me know.  I will be removing my Entrecard next week.

(My Rosie Roomba, she is sick.)

My husband purchased a Roomba for me Christmas 2007.  When it comes to making purchases it normally takes us months and months to make a decision.  The Roomba decision was no different. I probably talked about getting one for six months before we ordered her and then that turned into a big deal.  I thought he was going to get it for me for Christmas.  He figured I would just order it myself.  He ended up ordering it for me at the last minute and it arrived before Christmas.

We make a funny announcement to our family through email announcing the arrival of “Rosie”, which was the name we chose for Ms. Roomba.  We had a photo of Jack and Scout looking out the window waiting for Rosie to arrive.  Everyone thought we had adopted another greyhound.

I love Roomba. She is high maintenance though.  I spend a great deal of time cleaning her out, cleaning her brushes, etc.  Roomba’s battery started going bad a few months ago.  I babied her along until she just couldn’t hold a charge any longer.  I found a battery for her on Ebay which saved me about $30.  The battery arrived and I was so excited.  I charged it up and Roomba took off cleaning.  I was so happy.  Unfortunately, Roomba started making a terrible noise about an hour into her cleaning.  I took her apart and found a small rock in her.  She quit making the noise and I thought she was fixed.  I ran her the whole next day and I noticed that she just wasn’t picking up the dirt. Hubby looked at her and discovered that her brushes are not moving.   It will cost me another $50 to fix her.  I just spent $50 on a battery.  Roomba is an expensive piece of equipment.  Hubby said he will look at her one more time and then we will order a new motor for her.   I checked the website and there is a 3-4 week backlog to order the part I need.  Does that mean that this piece breaks all the time?   Poor Roomba.

I just returned from a trip to “the city”.  I had three bags and which bag did I drop?  The one with jar of cocktail sauce, of course.  It broke in the bag and went all over the salad dressing bottle and the french fries.  I’m glad the cocktail sauce wasn’t with the fabric or thread that I purchased today.  I probably would have cried.

I went to the city to look for fabric for collars.  I finally found a fabric that I think is cute for camping.  It is blue and has ketchup bottles, mustard bottles and BBQ tools on it.  Unfortunately, there was just a small piece of material and I don’t think I will be able to make two collars of it.  I will make it for Jack because it is much easier to find cute things for Scout than it is for Jack.

Last night I finished a computer game that I have been playing.  It was Wedding Dash.  After I finished Pet Shop Hop, my husband said that maybe that qualified me to work in a pet store.  I wonder if now I can become a wedding planner.  LOL  Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone would try to put something like that on their resume.  I verify employment and educations and people lie all the time.  I ran across a diploma mill yesterday.  Basically, you give them $249 and they will give you a high school diploma.  They base it on your life experiences.  It’s true.

I’m feeling down today.  I feel like I’m loosing an old friend with the loss of Entrecard.  There will be no more trips to McDonalds dropping cards until my laptop battery goes dead.  I could usually drop for about an hour and a half.  It was a nice way for me to get out of the house, eat lunch and do some work.  I really enjoyed doing that.  My Internet plan limits the amount of mbs that I can use, so I would go to McDonalds because I could use their Wi-Fi and save my mbs for home use.

I really am sad about loosing some of blog buddies.  Oh, sure, we say we will keep in touch, but you know how it is.  People get busy, new blogs come along and you are left out in the cold.

I joined Facebook last night thinking that maybe I could promote my blog there.  I don’t think that is going to work too well.  I really wasn’t sure what it was all about.  I have avoided joining.  A friend popped up in chat and said something like “I guess he** has frozen over.”  I thought that was pretty funny.

Life goes on and I will just have to pick myself up again and find another way to promote my blogs.  Life is hard.  LOL

On the brightside, Survivor and Lost are both on tonight.  Survivor being on a Wednesday is really going to mess with my mind.

Happy Wednesday!

Effective immediately, I will no longer be accepting ads through my Entrecard widget.  I will be removing my widget as of 03/31/09 after the final ad has run.  I enjoyed meeting many of you through Entrecard and I hope you will continue to visit my blog.

Last night, I made Jack a collar.  Jack is a big St. Louis Rams’ fan, so it only seemed appropriate that he have a collar with their logo.  He has a bandanna that he wears during their games, so now he has a matching collar.  He was quite happy with it.  He danced all over the house making it very difficult for me to get a decent photo.

I am having so much fun making collars.  I plan to head to the city later this week and look for new fabric.  I have already looked at the fabric at our local Walmart about 20 times.

Someday, I would like to make Jack some new jammies.  However, jammies could be difficult for me.  I mean, the legs will all need to be the same length.  LOL  Does that tell you my true sewing ability?

Happy Tuesday!

It’s hard to get back into the swing of work after a three day weekend.  We have to work five days this week.  Next week and the week after, we will only work four days due to another camping weekend.  I’m self-employed so when I don’t work, I don’t get paid.  The pay is so low right now that it doesn’t really seem to matter.  I really hope things improve soon.  It’s depressing and scary.

After we  returned home from camping yesterday, I went to the store to buy more fabric for collars.  I’m so excited.  I hope to work on Jack’s tonight.  He’s going to have a St. Louis Rams’ collar.  The collar I made for Scout last week turned out nice, I think.  I could make a few improvements, but I was impressed with myself.   I knew she would look great in a melon or orange collar and she does.

Hubby was even impressed by my stitching on this collar.  The first few I tried to make were disasters.  The material was too thick and it kept getting stuck in the machine.  It was discouraging, but I think I have overcome that.  I have more confidence now, so I am ready to make another one.

We had such a nice weekend.  The only rain that occurred came around 2 a.m. and only lasted a few minutes.  Rain had been predicted each day, but each day turned out to be sunny at some point in the day.

I was very disappointed in the way that had to update my blog.  I could only update it while we were driving around and that was not easy.  It was hard loading photos.  I had to write the blog in Word and then copy and paste it as we were bouncing around on the road.  I hope the next trip is a little better as far as that goes.  As long as I have a cell phone signal, I am able to get online.

Yesterday, we visited Dillard Mill .  It wasn’t open for tours, so we just walked around.  I’m sure it is a really pretty place when the sun is out.  The sun always makes places prettier.

After the visit to Dillard’s Mill, we traveled to St. James, MO and visited Maramec Springs .  It was beautiful!  The sun was still not out when I took the photos, but appeared while we were still there.

We walked all around and looked at the trout, visited the hatchery and just enjoyed the scenery.  We met a Great Dane.  Our dogs were scared of him.  I guess they have never seen a dog bigger than themselves.  His head was at least 3 times as big as theirs and he towered over them.  I should have taken a photo, but since they were scared so we didn’t talk to him very long.

This morning we took the dogs on a trail. They both really love trails. Scout wasn’t very sure about trails when we first adopted her, but she has learned that they are fun. She likes to be in the lead. She never likes to be last. I think it is part of that racing instinct. You know, being last is not good in a race. Also, the view never changes when you are last. LOL

Here’s Scout and her Daddy on the trail.

Scout and Jack on their hike this morning.