It's not really the couch that's calling me.

It's the new deck we're building. The birds I get to see while drinking my coffee from the new lawn chair that Hubby purchased for me. It's the sunshine, blue skies and unseasonably warm temperatures were having. In other words...it's my life. My real life seems to be interfering with my blogging.

There will always be rainy days, and we will still be experiencing cooler weather. Just not today. Excuse me, I hear something calling me.

See you guys later.

After spending days replacing the customer files on my computer while kicking myself in the butt for being so uninformed, I found that I am not the only user of the computer prone to mistakes. While amusing myself and looking for inspiration this morning I came across an article posted on Switched.com  that says women are more likely to give their passwords to strangers in exchange for a bar of chocolate. My response? You're kidding right?

No, they weren't. A survey taken outside of the Liverpool Street Station in London, England found that 45% of the women surveyed were prepared to give their passwords compared to 10% of the men. The number of people participating in this survey was 576. It gets worse. Of all the people involved in this survey 60% gave contact information, names and phone numbers, when told they would be entered into a drawing for a free trip to Paris. So, now we have the name, phone number and password. A related survey found that 88% of people surveyed use the same password for all their accounts online.  No wonder there's so much identity theft.

In many cases the password chosen was on the list of least secure passwords. I chose passwords for my accounts based on my ability to remember it, and even I didn't use anything listed here.

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (your first name)

In addition to the list above, here are some things the editors at Switched recommend you avoid:

1. Your birthday
2. Your pet's name
3. Your girlfriend/boyfriend's name
4. Your street name
5. Your social security number
6. Your favorite color/number

I guess this gives new meaning to one of my least favorite television commercials. If people will give all this information out for a chocolate bar, just what would they do for a Klondike Bar?

Three days of diligent work with occasional breaks online has restored the missing customer files from the computer. Lesson learned. Will not ever download any program that removes files from the computer without checking to see if there is a feature that allows me to tell it to leave certain files alone. Mind you, not that I knew enough about it to determine that such a thing was necessary. Some folks shouldn't be left alone with new programs.

Fine thing that it is a fait accompli because today brings with it a new day along with new trouble. Todays trouble is called "Taking The Cat To The Vet". I would love to be able to say "we won't go there" unfortunately...we did.

Bashful is a very vocal kitty. She expresses pleasure quietly and displeasure rather loudly. Loud vocalization of displeasure is accompanied by biting and thrashing around, both while outside and inside of the pet carrier. She fights to stay out of the carrier and then fights to stay inside the carrier once she arrives on the exam table. Getting her into the carrier resembles one of those cartoons that show the animal spread-eagled with claws firmly embedded into the door frame. If I can manage to get the hind legs in, I also have the front legs, with claws to contend with. It works best if I open the carrier and set it on it's narrow end facing upwards. That allows me to grasp her hind legs to guide them in and the front legs next. Once the legs are clear of anything she can grasp onto, it's drop her in and slam the door before she can launch out.

When we enter the exam room and the door is safely closed, it becomes necessary to open the door, lift the carrier from the opposite end and shake until kitty falls out.  Once out of the carrier she attempts to bury her head in my belly. Fortunately for all concerned her howl is worse than her bite. During her first year as a diabetic she lost all of her teeth. That is a very good thing as during the trimming of her toenails, without warning, she bit the vet. No hissing, she just glommed onto his hand with her gums. Who knew a man of his size could jump that far? I laughed.

She is 14, has been a diabetic for 6 of those years. Dr. Falk told me before we began treatment that she would represent the necessity of sacrifice that some owners aren't willing to make. She was 8 years old, weighed 8 pounds and was so seriously dehydrated that her lack of potassium alone should have killed her. He sent me home with potassium pills that no one was sure we'd be able to give her, a script for needles and insulin that we had to start her on every 12 hours. The only thing we had going for us was there was no evidence of kidney or liver damage, if we weren't successful in controlling the glucose levels there would be.

We had to do this blood test every week called a fructosamine test. It measured how well we were controlling her levels for a 6 day timeframe. Some vets have you do the daily test, but he decided it would be too stressful for both of us to do it that way. For $10 a veterinary technician came to my house, drew a vial of blood and most of the time took it in for the testing. Her name was Joanne, and she was starting her own pet care and training business. She thought of it as a challenge and never failed to get what she came after. With no exam table we had to do the blood draw on my dining room table. So much for no cat on the table in my house. Dr. Falk stopped the testing earlier than he planned on because in Joanne's estimation Bashful had the kind of owner that would do what needed to be done. I keep in touch with her now and again because she was an integral part of Bashful's recovery, she cares.

We are now 6 years later. From an 8 pound animal knocking at deaths door I have acquired an 11 pound 2 ounce feisty bundle of fur. She eats all kinds of things she shouldn't, and I allow it because my experience has taught me that the stress of denying her what she wants is actually worse for her than giving in. She usually just wants enough of something to enjoy the taste. I made the necessary sacrifices for her and I've never been sorry. She's worth it.

There is a streak of silliness in me a mile long and a mile wide today. I found this picture at the usual lolcat site and I have been stuck with the song running in my head ever since. I just LOVE to share my earworms with you.

On top of spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball,
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table,
And on to the floor,
And then my poor meatball,
Rolled out of the door.

It rolled in the garden,
And under a bush,
And then my poor meatball,
Was nothing but mush.

The mush was as tasty
As tasty could be,
And then the next summer,
It grew into a tree.

The tree was all covered,
All covered with moss,
And on it grew meatballs,
And tomato sauce.

So if you eat spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
Hold on to your meatball,
Whenever you sneeze.

If that doesn't just get you in the mood to do some boo-tay shakin' there's always the Hokey Pokey.

Are you laughin yet?

Sometimes it just doesn't pay to try new things when you don't know much about them. I went to IObit and decided I'd try their Advanced Windows Care Plus program. I've had it on there for a week now and this morning I deleted the program from my computer.

When I told Mountain Man about it he said it was a good program and one I should learn to use. Since he knows more about computers than I do I thought it would be safe. So I downloaded it and used it twice this week. It seemed not to make much of a difference in the running of my computer, so this morning when I used it again I carefully read over everything it isolated before telling it to fix the problem. I hadn't done that before because I thought "junk" files were temporary internet files. I had looked at everything else in all the other features but not this one because there was nothing untoward in any of the other features.

One section of the program concerns junk files, and today I opened it to see what junk files actually were. Listed in there were a few cookies, and 40 of Hubby's business files. This particular feature does not allow you to tell it which files not to delete, and all other of the features did. Oh no! I can't have it removing the business files so I told it not to delete that list and went looking into my Internet Options at my cookie cache and history. What a shock. I had over 7000 cookies stored in my cache. I've never had that many cookies ever stored in my cache. Then I went into the customer files and discovered I have close to 100 of them missing.

Usually I use the Disk Cleanup feature of my Windows XP program which compresses stored files and deletes temporary files like my cookies. It has never removed offline files from my computer, just compressed them. I had over 700 stored customer files. Items like names, addresses, telephone numbers and dates of service, and what service provided. When I took the time last weekend to add up all the stored files I had 712 of them. Today I have 627. The two times I used the IObit program without looking at what "junk" files it was removing seems to have deleted the customer files but not any of the temporary internet files.

The IObit program was also telling me that I had only 27% available space on my C drive. After it had defragged. According to the disclaimer at the top of the feature it also said it might not be accurate. So, I went to systems tools and defragmentation and discovered that after 20 minutes of additional defragging I have 84% available space on my C drive. I also removed the 7000 cookies from my cache, making sure that I have all of my password information still available to me.

Thankfully I have hard copies of all of our customers. I will just have to haul out all their receipts from 2001 to this year and compare them with the remaining files in the Customer folder on my computer. Sub files are annually so I should be able to locate the missing files and put them back. If Hubby doesn't kill me first.
At first glance it appears that 30 or so files are from this year, so I will be able to undo a great deal of damage in a hurry this afternoon. I also just called Mountain Man and told him what happened. He has personal files stored on his computer that are family related and something that he wouldn't want to lose. Fortunately he hadn't used the IObit program yet, although he was going to this afternoon when he went on his computer.

I may be back tonight with music, but I must admit that I'm in none too festive a mood at the moment. I will just have to see what I can accomplish and whether or not I live through it when I tell Hubby. I actually shouldn't say things like that. All he'll do is bitch at me. Come to think of it, I'd rather he killed me. It's quicker, and a lot less painful. I could, I suppose , work real hard at locating the missing files and get them all back into the computer without saying anything to him. I won't do that, I'll own up to my mistake and take my medicine. Maybe if I look suitably depressed over this he'll at least offer me a spoonful of sugar with it.