A - Z Challenge -- Reflections

Thank you to Arlee Bird and his A-Z Blogging Challenge. April was a whirlwind of blog posts, commenting, and site hopping. I loved it. I met people from all over the world and learned about their interests, passions, failures, and aspirations. From Greece to New Zealand...India to California, the people on the other side of my monitor lifted my spirit with beautiful poetry, moving photographs, verses, and prose.

If I had a problem figuring out what to blog about before, I've been cured. I posted more times in the month of April than in the past two years combined.  I learned how to grab photographs from Flickr, self edit, manipulate HTML tags, and use the Mr. Linky...all in one month!

It was definitely difficult to keep up with all the comments, but seeing yours in my email motivated me to spread the joy.  Someone out there was reading my posts...someone that didn't share my last name, or genetics, or was otherwise cajoled into "checking out my blog". If someone came up with a "post every odd day" fest or something similar I'd definitely throw my hat in the ring again.

Thank you for sharing all of your rants and praises. For letting me into your world for a few moments while you celebrated and hoped and even grieved.  I had a wonderful time...and will contiue to follow you all.

Photograph by lrargerich, Uploaded on January 17, 2009.

Do Laptops Mutiny?

Broken Message
Originally uploaded by lrargerich

I am a gleeful techie. I love gadgets, and software, and all the wonderful ways they enable creativity. My computer holds a special place in my day-to-day life because not only are my manuscripts on it…so are all of my children’s grades. So suffice it to say, that even though all my important documents, pictures, and information are backed up…it drives me crazy that my computer is beginning to mutiny.

It started with random shutting off, usually in the middle of grade submissions. Argh! I have a cooling fan under it, I periodically use disk cleaner, registry back up, and I delete my temporary files regularly. So why is the portal to the written world fighting back…more importantly…is there a sale on computers coming up?

I took typing in high-school. It was required and we used actual typewriters. In fact, we fought over the new electric ones because you didn’t have to manually return the carriage. I remember that white typing correction film that never quite did the trick. How far we’ve come, and yet, when things go awry with my laptop, I start to wonder if old school isn’t the way to go. I mean, if something goes wrong with a typewriter, I break out the screw driver and fix it. I don’t have to wait for a guy in a bug to show up, pocket protector and all.

I’m going to take another look at the hard drive and maybe run some more diagnostics on my precious laptop before I start to panic. I wanted to give a shout out to my daughter for getting off the family computer long enough to let me post this. Until next time…gulp…hopefully…rb