Love Those Comments

Hartwell Lake where I am workcamping in my wheel estate in Gumlog, Georgia

62F degrees at 8am, but it's supposed to get up to a whopping 79F degrees. If the humidity is low, then I won't be forced back into air-conditioning. I prefer the fresh air and the outdoors. Even though I am layered in clothes with my fleece lined men's bedroom slippers on, I am still a bit chilly. 


Harley is outside with me, playing on his long tether, made of clothesline.  I taught him early on that chewing on the tether was a big no-no.  So even though he could rapidly chew his way to freedom, he does not. Now he is driving his pet parent a bit crazy. He keeps hurling his tennis ball down the hill, then he cries like a baby until somebody (read that ME!) either fetches it for him or puts him on a leash to walk him down the hill for him to carry it back himself, in his mouth. I hope our next workamping assignment is nice and flat, so that I am not interrupted 50 times a day, to go fetch lost balls. All this up and down hill walking makes for a firm fanny. Whoopie. 


I  want everyone to know how much I appreciate your comments on my blog posts. Yippee!  I have it set up where you can even post anonymously without having an account anywhere. Some folks do this and mention their name or nickname in the post body. 


There is a spam catcher, that moves most spam to a file for me to remove later after I review it. Now and then the spammers manage to sneak their posts in.  I have to manually remove them from the blogs. Once in a great while a real comment from a real person ends up in spam and then I have to move it back to the blog.  


I find 99% of your comments to be VERY lovely and ultra encouraging. Thank you so much!


As for you spammers that attack my comment area, I wish nothing but hot daggers stuck in your evil head.  Oh pardon me for being so rude, but I get sick and tired (don't we all?) of the spam comments, the spam email, the spam messages disguised as newsletters I never signed up for and so on. 


I don't send out spam or unwanted emails. You can however, sign up for a paid email subscription to my blog. You can also sign up for a free email subscription to my blog. So what's the difference?  Well the paid subscriptions go a looooooooooooooooooooong ways to help me keep body and soul together. The free subscriptions are an equal opportunity, my ridiculous contribution to promoting reading and literacy. So a big thank you to all my subscribers!  I can't thank you individually by email, because it might be mistaken for spam...  I once tried to send out a mass thank you to all my subscribers, but I was accused of perpetuating spam, so I promptly gave up. 


I read the comments everyday of the wonderful things you say, from the offers of emergency chocolate and driveway camping at your home. (I'll take both!)  Some comments make me laugh, others give me food for thought (Can a brain get fat?  If so, my brain is obese!)


I thought I had posted my email address on this blog layout somewhere, but I guess not. It is located on DearMissMermaid.Com just click Email if you need my address for chocolate... Tee hee hee!


Dark chocolate is VERY good for your health. It also tastes WONDERFUL. My favorite is the 90% dark chocolate though I  settle for anything with real chocolate in it.  I am trying to put my hands on an article I read recently about the health benefits of dark chocolate. 


By the way, today is backup your computer day. I made it up myself! If you haven't backed up your computer lately, do so before you are shedding tears over not backing it up.


Recently I had some computer hiccups. I checked and was mortified my backups were 2 weeks old. In two weeks time I take loads of pictures, write dozens of articles and chapters that are being saved for the next book and future submissions. Losing even 2 weeks worth is a lot for me. 


On the other hand, I was grateful I had a backup at all. So many of my friends have sad tales about losing all their pictures or work, due to sudden computer failure.


In my case I tricked the computer into coming back to life!  WOW!  I am so excited that me, a mere human, with only mermaid traits, could outsmart a computer. Simply amazing!


What happened:
Early one morning, over a cup of coffee, I turned my computer (laptop) on. (No I didn't spill the coffee.) All I got was a blank screen with two words: "Fan Failure".  Apparently, once my fan failed, the computer absolutely would not let me break into the windows system or my documents. At least I could not figure out how. After it briefly said "Fan Failure" it then turned itself off. 


Restarting it multiple times, brought me the exact same result. 


I was able to go on another computer to do some research into this problem. All answers were to replace the fan. Sounds easy enough, but my laptop would need a specific fan to be ordered from some exotic location, it might take weeks, unless I paid a horrific overnight charge and so on. Then once I had the fan, somebody (me?) has to disassemble the laptop to install the fan.


Oh that sounds like fun!  


I found a video online that explained it all in 92 easy steps. 


Basically it went something like this:


First you remove 49 screws. 
Next you take out 17 parts.  
Remove 37 more screws. 
Now you can actually see the offending  fan. 
Then you remove the 14 wires, take out 23 more screws. 
Remove the fan. 
Install new fan.
Solder wires in place.
Reverse the dis-assembly procedure, to supposedly end up with a working laptop again. 


Or there is Plan B.  


Go live on boats and far flung islands in the middle of nowhere for a couple of decades. 


Learn to fix most anything with almost nothing. 


I located the exhaust on my computer, those tiny slots where the internal working fan is supposed to either suck in or  blow out air. I happen to have a separate 12volt powerful fan, about six inches in diameter, that I use in my RV when needed. It's surprisingly fast, really moving a lot of air rapidly. But it's way too big to fit inside the laptop computer.


But I was able to clamp it to my desk (the fan has a built in clamp) then turn it on to blow in those little slots I mentioned. 


This did one of two things, or perhaps both. First it blew out any dust bunnies hiding in there and second it made the fan spin. 


I restarted the computer while the fan was blowing up a dust cloud, which seemed to think it no longer had "Fan Failure" (maybe because the internal fan was forced to spin?)  so now it restarted just fine. Did I backup right away?  Heavens no. I should have, but I didn't. Instead I jumped in to do a ton of work. 


Today, I kicked myself a few times until I finally backed up everything. THAT sure feels great!  (The backing up, not the kicking...)


So backup your computer today.  Then pat yourself on the back and smile. 


By the way, I back up to an external hard drive. Afterwards, I disconnect it from electricity and from the computer. That way, it is excluded from computer bugs or power surges. 

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