Microsoft is Cabbage

Allow me to explain my idiotic title... since I am now a gibbering idiot, turned this way by the corporate stupidity that emanates from Seattle....

My computer died. It's only 6 months old and came with Windows 8 pre-installed (that is a whole 'nother hate filled rant...) The company I bought it from has gone out of business, so no help from that quarter...

I replaced the motherboard and some RAM.

It's now better, stronger, faster than it was before (cheezy humming of theme from The Six Million Dollar Man implied, folks...)

But, it lost its Windows Activation. Yesterday it didn't say anything about that. We went out to celebrate Kev's 50th Birthday blissfully ignorant of the corporate chicanery to follow...

We ate in a new to us place, where I ordered a roasted pumpkin stuffed pita. Well, it was phyllo dough, not pita, and the contents were decidedly un-pumpkiny looking.

Upon querying our waitress, she told us that "Ees garbage!"

Uh, what?

Eventually, someone with less accent explained that she meant Cabbage.

So in our house, cabbage has become a synonym for garbage these days...

Back to my computer woes. Since Windows was preinstalled and all I did was click a button that said "Activate", I never had the &&#@^$&@&*%$ product key code, so couldn't reinstall it...

So we tried Microsoft Support Chat.

I cannot even begin to tell you how incredibly unhelpful they were. But the basic gist is, have a hardware failure, lose your software license. Microsoft sees your frustrating and already expensive problem as an opportunity to pile on and add insult to injury.

We finally found a way around the insanity. We tried activating by phone, and they gave us a replacement activation code (the phone robot was more useful that the chat human!)

So, the evil thing is now reinstalled, and thanks to a nifty freeware product called Belarc Advisor, I have now managed to extract the actual product key number and stash that puppy for the future...

But I am now completely convinced that Microsoft is Cabbage!

Catching Up-- Writing, Crafts at the Library, Science at SMLI, etc.

Sorry I have been offline so much lately. I had high hopes that I could write a novel in November a la Nanowrimo, but I am waaaaay behind on word count. As a practical matter, I only get to write uninterrupted during the one hour a week that Mikro is taking a craft class at the library. But I have rediscovered how much joy there is in sitting down and creating a story. So whether I "win" Nanowrimo or not this year, I'm declaring the attempt a personal victory, because my writing jones is back!

Unlike last year, Mikro is supposed to be typing his own story up for Nanowrimo (instead of dictating to Secretary Mom...) Which is proving something of a problem as he is not really enthusiastic about the process of pounding the keys. He's totally a hunt and pecker, and he doesn't even use all his fingers, so I can appreciate that it is slow going, but he just isn't trying. So I get to choose between birthing my own story or changing my focus to being midwife to his... I suspect it will be the latter...

Mikro is loving crafts at the library. They are reading and discussing Aesop's Fables, and making paper mache masks or sculptures of their favorite characters. They also do a warm up craft, something seasonal and fun, like a leaf collage, construction paper pumpkins, a paper calavera for Day of the Dead, and a woven mat in seasonal colors. He is having a blast. He's made some new friends, and he's come a huge way in willingness to get his hands dirty and make something. I owe huge thanks to our wonderful children's librarians for making this experience so joyful.

Mikro is doing research for our homeschool group's annual history fair. Science classes at SMLI are over for the time being. At our last session, the kids enjoyed a portable inflatable planetarium, and learning about the constellations and related myths and legends. We aso took a stroll through the woods that are home to Rocket Eating Trees, and were amazed to find the nose cone of our rocket. A few weeks earlier, after a storm, we managed to retrieve the other half. It just needs a new parachute and it is good to go!

Our newfound free fridays have not gone to waste. We've had some fun field trips in the past few weeks or so, and I'll post about them soon. I've just had big trouble with my data drive, and it disappeared over a month's worth of photos and research files. I am scared to think of what I don't yet know about that may be gone forever... Surprisingly, I had most of the photos still on memory cards, but I can't believe that I could have been lucky enough to back up everything... I'm pretty bad about it, actually. I just hope I still have all the homeschool stuff for putting together our next quarterly report.