Ayn's Multiple World

Little bit of a rush ... on to Dr. M's

Good morning … I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve written … I just now posted my last project … we’ve been working, but maybe too much obsessing too. I find now that we’re too tired of it to proof read one more time. We’ve probably gone through it about 100 times and at this point feel like throwing the whole darn thing, so best not to look at it again. Hmpf!

While we’re here we’re going to make a little confession. We bought some stuff at Baker’s Square last night. We’ve never done that before and usually don’t go out at night for anything. No, I’m not ready to say what exactly and how much or nothing, but it’s weighing on our mind AND hips. We talked a few minutes to our buddy this morning, but we didn’t say anything to him although we were thinking we should. Just couldn’t … think we’re a coward at heart.

Ok, trying to detach from those thoughts a bit. Feeling too much pressure. Maybe we will cope a little better later on.

We’re using the new 2007 program from Microsoft this morning. We don’t have all the bugs worked out yet, but we’re trying her out. We haven’t seen all the things that come with it. She has like 10 programs in one package … we got the Enterprise one. We had been looking at it and hadn’t made a decision because it cost like probably above $8-900 minimum. The ultimate and professional plus models are between the Professional where we used to be and the enterprise model. They gave a price of $679 for the ultimate and they won’t tell you the price above that of the professional plus and enterprise without speaking to a sales associate. Yah right.

What changed us over though to getting it was we got an advertisement from a company at soft4download.com. They have about 100 titles or so and the Enterprise was one of them, but instead of paying $8-900, it cost $87. The price seemed too good to be true, so I called a couple of numbers. It does seem to be upfront good, but there is some problem messages coming up that I want to talk over with someone. I sent a troubleshooting thing into them this morning and now they are supposed to get back to me in 24 hours. That’s better than pay Microsoft $35 and them contacting us within 72 hours. We’ll have to see … I hope to get all the options working soon.

There there … we just had a call back to on a loft that we’ve been looking at for quite a while. It is right across from a park in Chicago near work. The lady called back today. She said they are about $200,000 for 695 Square feet. For that you get hardwood floors 11 foot ceilings, a balcony, 1 bedroom and a den. She says that the kitchen, living room and dining room are all open … which seems pretty cool to me. Good chances are that I’m not going to be able to afford it, but we’ve been watching this building transform from a warehouse to lofts for so long, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask. She gave me the number to a mortgage company and now we are waiting on that. I think they take care of people without great credit ratings. I still don’t have a credit card so that hurts my rating, BUT the major part is that we went bankrupt in 1997. Hopefully after this next year at 10 years that rating will not show up on our reports, but for the meantime its still a sting.

Yeeks just looked at a simple mortgage calculator. It says that 30 years at 5.75% interest $200,000 would be $1,167.15 a month … we’re paying $870 now so I’d have to come up with an extra $300 each month. Don’t think that is going to happen unless I get a HUGE raise … hmm maybe 8% … Don’t think that’s happening. AND, even though they have Internet options, I think I have to buy our own fridge. I could give up the oven for a bit. I wish I knew how much space I am living in now. That sure would help.

Aha!! That’s all about over now. Got the call back from the loft realtor and the mortgage guy and back to the realtor. I’m being bumped down now to a realtor that looks for cheaper places. Basically, with mortgage, assessments, and tax I would be looking at a 42% increase of what I’m paying now. To breakeven at about $1,000 worth of payments that I could do … we’re talking about a place for $100,000. The first realtor shook her head and said … don’t know of any place for that range. Mortgage guy was a lot nicer than the realtor. She said I had really hoped I could work with you and that made me feel guilty for not making enough money. I think I figured out too how much square footage is. You need to put feet by feet of the room convert to inches so my living room which is about 20 x 20 would be 240 inches x 240 inches = 57,600, which needs to be divided by 144. That means the room comes out to 400 square feet … I did the same for my other major rooms. It seems then that I’m getting about 900 square feet apartment WITH balcony and free parking, where her $200,000 loft was only 675 square feet. That’s like a reduction of 25% for about twice the cost. I understand throwing rent money away compared to home ownership, which is an investment and saving money on your yearly taxes due to interest payments. But, the bottom line is that things are skimpy enough so let’s not press it. It would be different if I were living with a partner and we had at least 2 incomes of $45,000, but we don’t. AND, we don’t want to share a misery 675 square foot home … so that’s enough of that!

I guess we just have to continue throwing our money away and appreciate that someone else does maintenance, replaces my appliances, and hopefully hangs up tapestries on request.
AHA! That leads to another discussion. The tapestry is in!!! We went down to the center yesterday to pick it up. I was so relieved it turned out there was only one box, but the tapestry, rod, AND tassels were all in the same box. WOOOHOOO. I spent a great amount of time yesterday ogling the tapestry and trying to figure things out. We came to a stop point when we couldn’t find a needle. We are going to need to sew a few things to get a couple of secondary tapestries up. BUT, we called the building management and asked for help putting up the new tapestry, moving the old “tapestry” – art work to the bedroom, and about a half dozen other various pictures. We worked hard to figure out on the additional two tapestries how to hang them. Means sewing. Gulp. I had bought standard thread and needles, but they’ve disappeared. I hate that when it happens, because it took me forever to be at the right place thinking the right thoughts toward getting the package of needles in the first place. Now, we’re thinking the repairmen is going to come and we’ll not have everything ready.

I guess this means that we’re going to need getting ready at some point. We need to prepare better for company too, because we still think the boys are coming on Saturday. AND, we need to remember to go to Dr. Marvin’s place – leaving her about 3:40. Pshwoo … that’s a lot on our mind while just trying to figure out we want to avoid everything and just write.

Hmm. Where were we? Just spaced out …. But I don’t remember what we were just doing.

Something on computer … hmm, maybe something with email, because I think we just sent something to Deb about her weather. She’s having a string of snow that’s for sure. She probably already knew that though. I think its going to turn to rain again by the time it gets here. Read a little on President Ford not liking Bush’s war, and something about a Chicago/LA Producer for cop shows. Don’t recall what that was about … think there was more, but our brain is burning up with difficulty rating. Maybe we’ll have to reread a sec to see where we left off.
Hmm, tapestry. I think we were about done there. But, for the record, I want to say that I’m very, very happy with the purchase. Our friend saw it last night and I think he likes it too J.

It’s colors are kind of muted on the dark side, but that gives it an appearance of originality. The funny part? One of the major colors in the map – all the oceans match exactly the color on our couch … it’s like sage I think. We draped it over the couch to get a feel for it and placed the pole with it and tassels. It is absolutely gorgeous. We knew within minutes of seeing it that we were going to need putting it in our living room rather than the bedroom. It is like a masterpiece YAYYYY! Our friend said that it would make the living room look more scholarly. That is a thought we had too, but the resounding thought is that it appears as if it were made exactly to go with the couch. It’s pretty darn classy. Even if we are just a little classy.

I think we said before that the tree will go to the bedroom. I think it will do ok there. Mostly because I still love it. It’s about 6 foot by 5 foot tree. We’re just soo cool to have really neat things. EVEN though, we can’t cramp them in a 25% reduction of space HMPF! The lady was trying to emphasis at the loft having 11-12 Foot ceilings. I WOULD LOVE THAT! But, not worth paying that much for, because you couldn’t use the space reasonably. Be cool though, wouldn’t it?

Let it go, let it go. I really do love our apartment and how its all pulling together. Just a little disgruntled of throwing away $10,000 each year, which goes toward the landlords equity and not ours. We’ll see, we’ll see. Ok, moving on … what’s next?

Hmm, it’s already noon. Haven’t taken a shower today. Haven’t done anything serious. Haven’t even done light pick-up. We brushed our teeth though that should count? The last hygienist or whatever they are called at the dentist office asked if we were gargling. LIKE HMMM??? Sure, right. But, that seems to be the next thing toward good teeth besides brushing with fancy tooth brushes and flossing. We let it go, but then yesterday when looking for needles (in haystack), we found we had a brand new big bottle of mouth wash in one of our closets that hadn’t been used yet. Hadn’t even cracked the seal. So … WHALAH! We’re gargling. Haven’t taken a shower yet, but our mouth is good to go.

I’m thinking that Dr. M’s time is going to sneak up on us and the right choice would be to get it done now. Why is it that I resist so much moving and handle best just writing even if its writing about not wanting to do what we are avoiding? Lord only knows. I suppose the right thing then would be to stop writing and just MOVE! Ok, ok … we can do this, right? Has anyone thought of opening our goal stuff? Maybe we can think that through just a minute? It would give us our lists of things to do, right? Where did we leave that off last. Which program do we open?
HMMM??

Oh, I remember … it wasn’t working out on the Project Manager, so we opened the excel program and developed something there … Let’s take a look, k?
Woo HOO … forgot we color coded it …

Shoot doesn't work

It looks something like that. ‘Cept in actuality it goes out to Saturday. I guess its been awhile since we thought of this, because the last time looks like we were here and not finished on Monday. Pshwoo. That’s the part I hate about holiday’s they disappear like you in quick sand.

Damn.

Spose the right thing to do then would be to read what it says and follow its instruction. Seems though we got to add something that has apparently changed our time. And, that’s that even though we said nothing new, we ended up getting the MS Enterprise program and that’s like 10 programs of learning new stuff. Better add that to the chart.

Oh good figured something out. I decided to add another subheading so that work is a highlighted category and the job of paper tiger was an item of that. We’re using the 2007 Excel for the first time and we found that if we copy a cell where there is one formula, we can highlight all the cells we want to place that formula with the exception we want it to be relevant to the new column … if we use “paste special” then it will ask us what we want to copy, and then it give us an option of using “formula” and that’s exactly what it did … WALLAH! What we wanted it to do even. That was some pretty smart figurin. BUT, we don’t know how to get the Outlook program to behave correctly. We want it to send our AOL email to it, but we couldn’t figure that out. You gotta know stuff under stuff, which we don’t. SOOO their instruction are useless unless they tell you the steps to get to the point they already assume you know. POO!

AHA! I just figured out something. I CAN get my AOL email on Outlook … I just have to look under a file that’s attached to some imap something. Ok, that’s not too bad. And the nice thing is that I still have the option of looking it up under my aol account. That’s good, because I don’t have it all connect to both home and work accounts.

Hehehehe we’re teasing Deb back and forth … we figure she’s like a ZOMBIE! Girl doesn’t get enough Z’zzzzzzzzs

Ok, got the next thing figured out too. Our maintenance guy just stopped by and it seems as if having him work on the tapestries is going to be a done deal. He was just checking on hardware, he is going to come back tomorrow around 10 am to do the work. WOOOHOOO!!! Hehehehe just left a message with our sweetie pie. We told him it is an extended gift that he doesn’t have to put the heavy thing up. SOOOO happy. And, just because he is who he is and operates as he does. We don’t have to listen for three years of well, I’m going to do it … We don’t mean to be mean to our sweetie, but he’s a slooooooow person when it comes to home maintenance tasks.

PSHHHHHHHHeeese!

So, that’s making us feel pretty happy. We will send pictures of it when we are done. He thought it matched good too and he said it before we rambled on to that subject. They are both fuzzy soft muted colors. Pretty darn cool. We told our friend too that they matched our National Geographics. Hmm I didn’t really think of it before, but I guess we do have some interest in the world and sciences. I know pretty darn sure that if it’s a choice between Women’s Day and World that we’ll take world any day.

I think Roberto is used to seeing us in pj’s because he didn’t seem to mind. I started to show him what I wanted done and he asked if he should follow me. Hehehehe maybe Roberto gets propositioned often by women meeting him at the door in their pjs … just for the record mine are long and flannel! I’m glad that he’s always been so gentlemanly, but the guy just seems to gosh darn happy! *Giggling*

Hmm, maybe I should give him a tip too. YES! That’s a good idea. I think I have one more $20. I don’t have my cards here, but I can tell him it’s just my way of saying a little thank-you! I think we did that before, but we’re not sure. Good enough. Ok, we’re not going to stop here to obsess. Let’s move on to our next thought. Shoot, sure is a beauty of a wall hanging though!
Think it be ok if we left our Christmas decorations up a couple of months? Getting to look pretty neat in here. I’ll NEVER want to go back to work. Shoot! Just think REAL art! I told my friend something pretty sexy about it that I won’t be repeating here, but man-o-man!

SHHHHHH…

Ok, ok … it’s about 1 pm now. Let’s do something about that task list over on the excel program. I know, I know … we’ll do it in a second. We’d like to take just a tiny couple of peeks and open a few of the other programs, K? We’re going to do the one called Groove … I think its about several computers working together … woohooo we’re going to watch a movie!

Well, maybe no movie. It looks pretty much like the program is just a skinny launch bar for program sharing. I’m doing an experiment right now with it. It gave me a sharing folder, so I made a copy of “My documents” everything I got and put the copy in my new sharing folder. It’s thinking its going to take a long time … it’s copying literally everything in my docs. I hope it works. It seems like not to hard a set of instructions to put it in sync with my computers at work … this would be even better than our flash drive, though maybe not so fancy. It’s a pretty good deal nonetheless and one of the reasons we wanted the higher version MS.
Now since it says its got about FOUR HOURS of work? Who knows. We’re going to look around at another of their programs. BRB

Next one we’re looking at is InfoPath. We’ll check that out … hmm slow to load, where is it?
AHHH

Seems this one has stuff to do with forms… might be bogging down cuz of the other program, OR because we’ve got about a dozen windows open now. Hmm 74 minutes left … now time is 1:45 pm no shower in site. Just said bye to Deb she’s off somewhere to do with a sidewalk? Hmm, I worry about that girl.

Hmm seems like the new program for groove does not share programs that exceed 2 GB (5,000 files in their shared space. We got the warning, but it still looks like they are copying now it says about 30 minutes just seconds after … timer is unstable now says 124 … best to leave it go.
I’m going to drive myself bonkers if I watch the time changing on the copying screen … bottom line is that I have to watch and see what it can do. Then we’ll know what to do next. Ok, moving on … where did we leave our last program, hmm?

I’d like to find out more on Sharepoint, but I think that’s another expense Item of MS … seems like it is a place on-line where people can share different information. I think all the new 2007 program features are lined-up to be using it. I think it would be the best thing now for the center even if I haven’t seen it yet. Maybe I could take a look now. What I think it is though would be a place we could use to back-up all the center’s files and share all the information on computers as networking was supposed to do and we never got to figuring it out. Really need a course on networking … remember to look that up when there’s time heheheh. Think the special thing about it is that we can network through sharepoint with computers outside our center and with our computers that are in different locations like our friends laptop or my home computer. Let me check that out though.

Hmm, saw a couple of movies there. That is like WOW! Some system, but again MS scares the hell out of me. I went to one site and they list all these component programs that they are making you pay for each round. And on that one they talk about licenses, which means everyone in the system is going to pay again. AND, they don’t tell you what any of the costs are … they make you talk to a rep who probably doesn’t play static on you line and drop you until they figure your company isn’t worth more than a half million dollars. HMPF! Whoops super breaks. I went to one page trying to get financial bearing and it says something about annual payments amortized over a three-year term PSWHOO BACK-UP Girl … thinking they want us to take out a private loan to pay for the service … BRRAAAKEES SSSSSSSSQQQUEEEEEALLLL!

I’m still a little foggy on what a server is. We really have to figure in more time for business and IT planning. WAY out of it here. BUT, we’ve managed to successfully play around on the computer and avoid taking that dreaded shower for a little bit longer. Now looking at the clock it is 2:30 and we’re a half hour away from our … emergency get in the shower now messages! We’ll use that to our advantage, which automatically gives us a ½ hour to play … Let me see what other programs look like. BRB.

Shoot still bogging down because of that “runaway program” AHA! Checking out PowerPoint. Bout time we figured that one out!

Hehehehe well man-o-man I figure that is about the easiest thing to do … is to create a slideshow. That adds allll kinds of elements to the fun. Now, we have to figure out how difficult it would be to get a computer to hook up to a TV screen so that the movies could be played to others. We’re thinking in mind here specially of the meetings for staff and for thinking Group.

They loved looking at the pictures we had for the slide show, but it was terrible quality on the old overhead projectors. I was excited that I could figure out how to make slide shows though.
I just made a couple slides one has our ever-ready Aardvark. We’re now emailing ourselves a copy to see how that works. Hold on let me check mail. Darn .. oh there it is
Should never do a whole file … think its including all the videos. Hmm, can’t publish slides yet.

Might be because the other program is making the space unavailable or it might be that generic problem we’re having all over the place. Hmm that’s pretty cool found a place that will let us look at our slideshow from the beginning .. umm we have only 2 slides. Shoot froze the screen … it didn’t like that I wanted to try out the Snag it part. So I did it by hand and now its being stubborn shoot. Trying to close it, but it says its doing a capture … shoot, we don’t want that to happen anymore … it’s taking too long and its 2:59 pm.

Double damn … just closing windows and I think we cut off the one we’d been waiting on for so long. Ok, ok … good good checked it out … I can open the email attachment of the slides from both emails. 3:03 man we’re messing here now … I want to try the next program, but we know better better get this published and on our way … thanks for stopping by!

posted by Ann Marie @ 12/28/2006 03:06:00 PM Comments: 1