Still here.

No, we didn't succumb to the flu, get lost, fall off the face of the earth or decide to ditch it all and head to Barbados to live a tropical life of sunshine and palm trees (oh man... why didn't we do that last one?) I tried to update the blog a few times but noooooooo. The computer had other ideas. Actually, the browser had other ideas.

Consider this my public service announcement for the week: DO NOT upgrade to Netscape 8.1 unless you totally know what you're doing. We use Explorer and Netscape interchangeably. When the newest upgrade came out, I downloaded it and installed it just like normal. But all of a sudden, any site that required a password, log-in or cookie? Was not accessible. Talk about a pain in the booty! Everything from the blog to my normal email settings to our bank account and utilities weren't able to load right. Some things wouldn't load at all. Some would load but not let you use any customized pages (for instance, the BGE site would load but once you entered your log-in info the next page would just freak out and crash everything.) Another thing? Even though the update was Netscape? Explorer stopped working too. Every page acted the same in both browsers. Woo HOO! Love technology. Love it.

We never actually "figured out the problem" but we were able to blindly fix it. The solution? Totally uninstalling the upgrade and re-installing the older version we originally had. Of course, had to do this twice. The first time, just installed it normally (which didn't work.) After uninstalling again? Re-installed the older version again but this time told it to start from scratch and not keep any of the old settings. Worked great except for one tiny thing. All of my stored passwords, settings, etc are gone. I can't even remember where I had passwords, let alone what those passwords are.

And, to top off my week of technology bitch-slapping me? I left my card in a random ATM. At one of the ATM's owned by a bank that doesn't contact you. They just destroy it. Yay! I usually only use a few ATM's - Target and our 7-11 up at the corner. Both of those places have the ATM's where you swipe the card instead of inserting it. I never use the ATM at the grocery store where I ended up forgetting to take it out of the machine (I didn't even know the name of the bank in that particular store.)

So I now have a new card, but no PIN yet. And? It was my ATM/Debit card which is tied to our auto pay for utilities, Market Day, cell phone account and who knows what else. So I have to figure that out and get the new card number to everyone (if the bank said the card was destroyed, why couldn't our credit union just give me a card with the same number?!)

(don't answer that last question with some logical answer that will annoy me because the question was purely rhetorical and typed out of utter frustration with our technologically advanced lives)

In conclusion, it's been an annoying but overall everything's back to normal and ok again. Life goes on.

Anyway, I have another post coming shortly. I'm sure you'll get a kick out of it because it involved even more stupidity on my part. With pictures and everything! And as of this afternoon we have a severe weather alert for either an inch of snow or ten inches (depends on who you listen to and when.) So there may a whole lot more blogging going on this weekend.

P.S. I'm thinking it's odd that the Blogger.com spellcheck considers "Blog" and "Blogging" to be non-existent words. Just a random thought.