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My sister upgraded her printer recently so she dropped her old but still functional scanner/printer here.  I used it recently to scan paperwork that I’ve honestly haven’t looked at in over 10 years.  Lucky for me, the stacks were all single sided so the scanning was long and tedious but I didn’t have to mess around too much in Acrobat to put the pages in the correct order. 

The stack above got about 50% bigger by the time I ended the scanning session.  Surprisingly, the files weren’t that big.  I thought the files would fill up a CD but it’s only about 30MB.  (Adobe Acrobat decided to cooperate and work in Windows Vista, something it’s been resisting for the last 9 months so that was a nice surprise.)

So during the scanning, I also cleared out some old stuff and I had to laugh when I found this.

This is an old award from my pre-elementary days and I laughed because I could clearly see my graffiti handiwork on the bottom.  I was quite the graffiti artist as a youngster so I made marks all over walls and clearly, I thought awards were meant to be marked on.

And this is my handiwork about 5 years later. I have no idea why I saved this but I do remember making this with the red ink from a red felt pen and thought I did a great job of mimicking blood drops/splatter.  If only my parents encouraged my  love of graffiti, I would probably be a graffiti artist now.

San Andreas Fault

It’s been a while since I last posted and honestly, this post started because I wanted to install a widget from eMusic that promised a free song everyday (mostly for my benefit).  The widget didn’t work as advertised so I took it off but I decided I should post something.  So here’s the something.

It’s a picture of the San Andreas Fault from Joshua Tree National Park.  I was inordinately excited when I saw this from Keys View.  I probably saw the fault line before when I flew into Palm Springs years ago but I wouldn’t have recognized it as the San Andreas Fault. 

And in case you wanted to see where San Andreas Fault line crosses throughout CA, here it is. 

Parrots in San Gabriel Valley

Parrots in San Gabriel Valley

Not a great picture but those birds sitting on the telephone wires are parrots.  I wish I had a better camera with me this morning but all I had was my phone camera (without any zooming capability).

Coffee Trivia

Here’s another one for the ‘SC folks.  4, 5 & 9 are incomplete.

Premonition

If you’re interested, check out Elizabeth Edwards’ book, Saving Graces, page 254.  Not saying she could have foreseen John Edwards’ future, but it’s clear (in 2004) his family was very aware of how much John Edwards liked getting attention from women.

Amex Daily Wish

I’ve tried to “buy” cheap cars and TV’s off of American Express Daily Wish for a long time.  Most of the time, my attempts looked like this.

This morning, I was finally successful in “buying” something off of the Daily Wish.  I clicked on the cheaper but more plentiful offer from Target and saw this: 

I got 2 and half minutes to fill in the screen and I now have a month to spend $100 @ Target  to get a $50 discount.  Not exactly what I thought the offer was going to be…I thought it would be a coupon but supposedly, if I use the AMEX card and spend $100 within the month, a $50 debit will show up on the statement.

4 legged trivia

Here’s another one for the ‘SC folks.  I didn’t finish this one, as I imposed a ten minute timeline.

Testing Windows Live Writer

Even though I didn’t get to install Windows 7, I just installed Windows Live Writer to see if this makes blogging easier.  Not that I’ve blogged much lately.

I’m wondering if I should give Windows 7 installation another try.  The initial attempt had me un-install several programs, including my beloved Kaspersky Internet Security, so I’m not exactly ready to open up my computer to viruses and worms for the duration.  Since the 62% hanging problem did not go away with the new system variable for me and that is the only solution I found online (and through tech support), I am 99% sure that I won’t give another try.  MS people were calling me everyday last week and that annoyed me even more!  I was pissed off as it was for having wasted time on the endeavor & I was in no mood for their persistent calls.  Do they really need my $? 

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How I wasted time on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

Windows 7 - before the nightmare

I got the sucker on Monday and boy, was I dumb!  I was pretty excited, thinking I could upgrade to Windows 7 pretty easily since I have Vista.  All the major newspaper articles were pretty much on MS side about the upgrade from Vista and the better functionality of Windows 7 vs. Vista.   Not true in my case.  I tried to upgrade 5 times and all those attempts were failures.  It always got stuck @ 62% completion and I’m not the only one to have had this experience.  Calling customer service was no help.  Some acknowledged that this is a known issue and some acted like this was my problem.  Then, early Wednesday morning, I finally found the answer to my problem. MS REFUND POLICY!  I have 45 days to return this and they will refund the purchase price along with $7.00 in shipping/handling.   So relieved that I can get my $$$ back!  (This might be masochistic but I think I’ll hold off for a few days on mailing the item out to San Leandro in case MS releases a simple solution to the upgrade problem. )

Update:  Got the refund from MS on 12/02/09.  Check was dated 11/13/09.  MS really wanted to hang on to the $ for as long as possible!

Car Dealer Auction

So if anyone is wondering what happens when a car dealer goes out of business, just keep an eye open for auctions, especially GM and Chrysler dealers. I tagged along with my father to an auction on Saturday since he wanted to buy the alignment machine and the Chrysler dealer in Signal Hill closed shop. I’m not sure if the auction house had plants in the group since the folks were bidding up stuff to close to new price levels. The auction had some new stuff but mostly used stuff, like office furniture, tool sets and used automotive lubricants. Personally, I thought the auction house owner was being a dick when he yelled at a guy to knock it off when the guy bid $1.00 for a lot of used stuff in unidentified bottles. And believe me, the stuff looked overpriced at $1.00.

(Really, this post should have pictures but I totally forgot to take pictures with the phone. I didn’t have any coffee or tea that morning so I wasn’t very alert.)