there may be hope afterall

there might be some salvaging of my laptop and I hope this is true. My dad says he THINKS the motherboard is fried but he's going to take the laptop to one of his friends to have him look at it. If it is the motherboard and the hard drive is still good, my dad said I should buy a hard drive case which would turn my laptop hard drive into basically an external hard drive that I could plug into a computer using a usb port. AWESOME! I also looked at external hard drives to possibly replace the one my boss is trying to get to work again. I'll need something large enough if I'm going to rebuild my music/tv show/movie collection. My dad pointed out a 500GB for what he said was a good price.

Like I said I hope this is the case. We went to Fry's last night (I looked at the laptops, movies & books with my mom) and I don't know what my dad looked at, but he bought the new Star Trek movie. I bought my favorite movie, Constantine (it was only $9) and my mom bought Stigmata and Blade 2 (it was $4!).

My dad wants to go back for the after Thanksgiving sale but I don't get paid until the 29th. I could totally ask for and get my check early, but I know me. I'd be too tempted to spend it all, and I have bills due at the start of December.

it was nice while it lasted

I'm 99% sure my dad and I (yes I'm taking responsibility for it as well) killed my laptop.

it'd been overheating and the little external fan I had wasn't much help. we took it apart, took a bunch of dust out and it was working ok. Still overheating so that meant there was more dust.

when my dad got home from picking my mom up from work we went through and got to work un-dusting it again. my dad went a but crazy with the canned air. vapor was coming out and I asked if that would mess with the laptop in any way. he said no, but something told me that wasn't true. we put it back together and I turned it on. the hard drive wasn't going. I TOLD my dad not to mess with the hard drive. but he still did. there was power. I felt the air coming from where the fan was and the green lights were on, but no orange light saying the hard drive was going. GREAT! I call him back to my room, we take it apart, put it back together and the same thing. "You're in big trouble" he tells me. I'M IN BIG TROUBLE?! he's the one who went crazy with the canned air and messed with the hard drive!

Now I have no laptop and no external hard drive! I'll be taking laptop to place I bought it for them to look at it. hopefully it can be fixed & won't cost a lot.

I swore to myself I wouldn't let him tinker with my laptop as much as he has in the last 2 months and look at what happened! This refurbished laptop lasted me about 20 months. No telling when I'll have the money saved up to buy myself a new one.

eta: oh! big plus! I found the cell phone I had before the one that was stolen! and it still had a sim card! coming back to cell world soon!

still lost

finally got a "live body" with the insurance company who covered my phone. I asked abt the type of replacement phone I'd get if I placed a claim with them and the lady told me the only way she'd know that is if they start the claim process. well I don't have the deductible.

If I ask my mom for the money, I won't be able to pay her back until sometime in December, which would screw up my Christmas shopping

you win electronic universe

so...I'm pretty sure I broke my external hard drive...

I plug it in and it lights up, so I know it's getting power, but nothing else happens. Before that it would freeze in the process of transferring and anything that did transfer was said to be "corrupted" when I tried to open it. I magically did something because it was working fine up until about 2 hours ago when I tried transferring some videos when it would freeze...and now not do anything.

with the exception of Castle 208 Kill the Messenger, FlashForward 108 Playing Cards with Coyote and anything I haven't downloaded, ALL my music, tv shows and other videos/movies are on it!

edit 1: ugh! 3 times I said it's NOT my computer/laptop giving me problems and 3 times this girl tells me that I need more ram in my computer! UGH! as "technologically advanced" as you claim to be, you should know what I mean when I said external hard drive! 2 different devices connected by a usb cord

edit 2: and I removed her. I don't need someone telling me not to feel a certain way when I just lost 6000+ mp3s, videos and some other pictures! and if her friend tells me anything, she's gone too. I don't care if they say it's petty high school crap.

edit 3: so my boss said not to toss it. to bring it to church and she or her husband would try to get my music

what a relief!

my cousin didn't get my e-mail I sent her last week about my cell being stolen and she'd been calling me and there's a recorded message saying "per the subscriber's request, they aren't accepting incoming calls" and she thought I was avoiding her.

she came over to see me and we chatted for a while. then I asked about our other cousin Brenda (the one who had swine flu and pregnant). well she's better, out of the hospital and had her baby 11/6...that's a little over 2 weeks past her due date and everyone is healthy.

I'm so happy! planning my visit to see them now

and that's the end of that

I finally put an end to a 20+ yrs friendship I was desperately trying to cling to by being facebook friends with my ex best friend's mother. I took the mother off my friends list and that's the end of that.

I know that from time to time I'm going to think about them and wonder how they're doing, but I don't need to be reminded that they don't want anything to do with me every time I see pictures from their fun times with friends.

it's not worth my time and energy to complain to my mom and current best friend about how they don't want anything to do with me or whatever.

PS: my dad got my laptop working. apparently the internal fan was so clogged that Windows & my laptop knew it was best not to go any farther than it was going before shutting down. I still want to get a new computer, but at the moment, the ones I want are too expensive so increasing my ram to make it faster will probably be best. that'll happen my next paycheck or so.

*grumble grumble*

I can't get my laptop to stay on. I can't get Windows to load. I guess Windows not loading has to do with the fact that MY LAPTOP WON'T STAY ON!

I can't even log in on safe mode because the laptop will shut off.

went through 13.5 hrs of defragging last night and a scan for viruses only to not be able to use it today! what kind of mess is that!? Plus, it's still getting really hot and the plug in fan I have doesn't seen to be cooling it down any.

this is really making me mad.

well...yeah

so my little "sister" decided she didn't want to be on the Church Board anymore. don't know the reason but I'm sure it was something in her control that she didn't want to take care of. But she's a good kid and doing better than I was doing at her age.

anyways, I was asked to be on the Board and said yes. I kind of should have been asked from the beginning since I type up and store the mins and all other official documents. But now I have an in to give my ideas to get more people to possibly come to church (and stop hearing the elders complain about how there's no "young blood" in the church). My only thing is, I don't know how open the elders would be to my ideas.

Update about my phone...my wonderful friend Jeanine said she'd send me her old phone so I don't have to go through my insurance to get a new phone. yay! In the mean time, My mom put money on her pay as you go phone so I'm using that. It's very weird not texting. I don't update Twitter as much (I think). I also find myself getting on my laptop later and later in the day since I don't have my own cell. isn't that funny? lol I have to call T-Mobile and see about getting the unlimited internet access removed from my account or if I'll still have to pay that since it's apart of my plan...all things to do once I get a replacement phone

Church is over (12:15 pm). board meeting starting. must go.

toodles!

time is ticking away

with 20 something days to re-activate my t-mobile acct (or I'd have to pay a $200 early termination fee) & about the same amount of time to let my insurance know that my phone was stolen and pay the $130 deductible and they'd send me another phone (don't know if it'd be the same one or if I would be able to pick what I wanted) "in a day".

Point is, tho, I don't have that kind of money. like at all. Not with all the bills I have, that's for sure. Oh, and though my acct is suspended, I'm still a day late in paying it. it was due 11/3. oops?

Why did this have to happen?! My mom has an "old" tracfone and I'm sure she'd let me use it while I go for job interviews and while I'm just out in general, but you know what really sucks...I don't have $10 to buy a card to put mins on it! How pathetic is that!?

I need to figure out something. Thursday I'll be at a Career Fair in Downtown LA for most of the day, Friday I go to the Church for work and after the weekend, this starts all over again. planing what I can & can't do during the week just waiting for Friday when I go back to the Church.

I'll figure something out. I almost always do.

i wanted a new cell phone but not this way!

I was waiting for a bus and there was a kid also waiting. he asked what time the bus comes and I said it should be coming (several were actually due) and after a few moments he asked if my cell was prepaid and I said no. he then asked if I could call his grandmother to let her know he was going to be late. I said sure and he told me the first number. it didn't go through for whatever reason, then he told me another number and it started to ring. I gave him the phone as the bus was coming (he said he was getting on the same bus I was). I saw in through the bus driver's mirror and he was right behind me. I showed the driver my pass and went to the nearest seat to sit down. it was then i realized the kid wasn't on the bus! the next stop was about 1/3 a mile away so I got off and hauled butt back to the first stop. along the way I was looking at buses as they passed to see if I could see the boy but I didn't. when I got back to the stop he wasn't there. I freaked out a bit, then went to the pay phone to call the number. no answer. I freaked out more, cried thinking about all the bad things that could happen with no way to contact anyone, I only know a handful of numbers by heart (one being my sister's but she's a good hour from me).

All I could do was wait for the next bus home, try my number again and cry more. I still haven't been able to get anyone to answer my phone, and it's not turned off, but it's still on vibrate, which is probably why no one is answering.

I'm waiting for the next bus to go to the sheriff station to make a report, then I have to call t-mobile and asked how much a new phone will be since I had insurance on the stolen phone.

this just seriously sucks!

Its like I dont update this thing anymore! (copied from my writing journal)

Well hello there NaNo!

yup! it's that time of year again. NaNo is upon us!

with 5 mins left before Day 1 is over on the West Coast, I've done mighty good for the first day.

I'm right on target you could say.

Before I get into all that, the background.

Cover Art! It's not exactly good, but I'm learning and the best way I learn is by doing.

Family Secrets Series

That totally didn't come out how I planned. the colors are all off so this one will be done again!

Dead By Sunset

This was actually the first one I did for the series. I think it came out okay.

Ransom

This is the second one I did. This is the effect I was aiming for with the series art, but as you can tell, that didn't happen.

I'm still looking for the right images for Lost, Maybe Never Found. It is so hard finding just the right pictures. I'm sure the quick solution to that would be to do something abstract, but meh. I don't want to go that route. i also don't want to take up too much time looking for pictures that I don't get as much writng done.

Speaking of writing, Today's goal was 1667 and what do you know, I did just that! Tomorrow's goal is 3333. I figure if I work in hour chunks and take breaks (nap, read, watch tv/movie) I should do well.

Also, summaries for each story will come later. right now, my pillow is saying it's time to sleep