Weekend Update #50731

Again, not terribly too much to report from the weekend... had some landscape work done early on Saturday morning... caught up on some old TiVo regular television on Saturday night and visited with Todd's parents on Sunday.  So here are the other highlights suitable for public consumption:

From Flat to Sex
Off to the left, you can see that I am onto a new book.  Finished Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat in fairly quick fashion and now onto the Sex Lives of Cannibals.  Now before you think I have gone of the deep end, this book is a comic real-life travelogue of an unemployed mid-20 something guy, with no better options than to head off to an island in the equatorial Pacific with his girlfriend.  Found this book in the Borders freebie flyer, and needless to say the topic interest me... but Troost's experiences will be much different from ours... no 5 star resorts... let alone consistent electricity or basic hygiene and/or sanitation on this island! 

Ed Vs. Norton
I think my latest round of computer problems are over!  Shortly after getting back from our vacation, my PC decided it just wanted to re-start itself whenever it darned well felt like it.  While many folks could live with it, when your home computer is your work computer... you get VERY paranoid when you can lose your work at any given moment... let alone that blog entry you had been working on for the last half hour or so!  I tried to narrow the problem down without much success... i.e. what programs did I have open, what was I doing when it did restart, etc. 

Finally my suspicions circled about Norton Utilities, Anti-Virus, etc... after all, this is a programt that is always running... I uninstalled it last week... and voila no more re-starts since (let's hope I just did not jinx myself!).  The computer repair shop that fixed my computer a few months back were the ones who installed Norton... so that was not my choice.  I have always been under the impression that Norton causes more problems than it fixes... and needless to say this latest experience has not changed my mind.   And I have already down a pre-emptive strike with Scott-O ... I am well aware that silly things like this would NEVER happen if I had an Apple computer!  Haha!

Home
Over the weekend, I came to the conclusion that I really need to stop procrastinating and get back East to visit the parents.  I have not seen them since they were out here last April-ish and I have not been back there since June 2003... which is probably a record. I tend to not go back during holidays... so I seem to be thinking September or October... although it is a little frightening to realize that today is August!   I am currently waiting back to hear if one of our bitchier clients is going to stay on with the company I do the majority of work for (they are putting their work out for bid)... if they stick with us, I will be fairly busy through much of September...if not, I should have a pretty good opening next month.

Also, I am hoping that Todd can come out for a long weekend... he has never been back East with me... and there is certainly an overwhelming amount of things I would want him to see/do... top 2 priorities: somehow do justice to NYC in a day and a half or so (some place that I have not been back to in 15 years!)... and also to meet my very best friend from college... the "Grace" to my "Will."

Spoiler Free
I hesitate to talk about last night's episode of Six Feet Under... I certainly don't want to ruin it for those who have not watched it yet... but let's just say, I was surprised and not surprised.  I thought I had detected a spoiler via an upcoming TiVo program description, but was definitely misled (or misinterpreted it).  The final 3 episodes should be interesting!

Comments

[Scott-O-Rama]

See? I'm keeping my promise and not mentioning how much better off you would be with a Mac! ;-)

[Scott-O-Rama]

P.S. For the record, Buckaroo still uses a PC, and I *do* have a PC as well... I just don't use it much.

[David]

hey, don't diss Norton (at least not the software; as far as the actual guy goes... eh, you're on your own). If you're running Windows XP, it's unlikely that it's any software that's causing the reboots anyway.

A main cause of computer freezes and reboots is excessive heat. I've heard it's occasionally pretty warm in Arizona ;)