Shattered!

What a day yesterday was!  Turned on the computer and decided to save some of the videos Mike and I have been making to disc.  Also quite a lot of photos needed that treatment as well.

So, I put in a disc and started  to save.  Just a minute, what was that?  My disc drive started to make a grating sound followed by a high pitched whine and then nothing.  Yes, the drive had packed up.  Now, it is only just over a month since the drive went before and, as the computer has a service agreement, after a lot of haggling over the telephone, they did send us a replacement.  Mike was a bit concerned at the time because it came in a tatty box and there were scratch marks down the side.  It did not look new to him.   It seemed o.k. though but just a short few weeks later..........phut.

After hassle over the telephone (I think they thought we were playing around and just wanted to get extra new parts) Mike took it down to the shop.  They tested it and proved it had conked out.  Mike said he thought it was a second-hand unit they had sent us.  The manager smiled and said it was standard practice.  When a part is returned as faulty, they are "mended" and sent to the next poor mug. Mug is my word and not the managers.  They could not offer a replacement in the shop, that had to be done over the phone with the service department.  Oh no,  been there, done that.  So him indoors decides he might as well buy a new drive.  At least he would know it was new and not get fobbed off with rubbish.

So, he comes home and fits the new drive. It completely changed the system on my computer.  When I wanted to copy and save photos or similar to disc in the past, all I had to do was highlight them and then click on Copy To Disc and they went straight through. Well, the copy to disc feature had gone.  After a lot of fiddling and adding the "burning" disc that came with the drive, I did figure out how to burn my files onto a CDRom.  Err, well I thought I had, the programme went through, there was the name of the items I wanted copied, the blue lines went across,then I was told my disc had been burned successfully. Good.  Took out the disc and did a couple more.  Better check them I though, went to play them back.  "Windows will not recognise this file" was all I got.  I spent hours going into device manager, trouble-shooting.  Mike tried playing them on his computer. No go.

Him indoors takes the drive out again, I have to remove from the computer the programme that came with it.  Back he goes to the shop.  You must have put it in wrongly he is told.  They had a fiddle around with it and told him to change it over and put it in the top slot on my computer and that would solve the problem.  Back he comes again, puts the drive in exactly as told.  Nothing.  It would not copy, it would not play discs, not even ones we had previously saved to CD.  By this time I was just about getting ready to sling the computer into the garden.

This was about 9 p.m. by now and I had been on the computer mostly since 10 a.m.  So I went to bed and grabbed a bit of shuteye.  Back up at 11 p.m.  I asked Mike to try once more.  He took the drive out again and put it back the way he originally had.  I re-loaded the programme that came with it.  About another hour of fiddling and hey, I had managed to burn a video onto disc and it worked. 

Not wanting to leave it here in case I could not repeat my success, I sat and did the rest of the videos and also photographs.  So far they have all saved and are playable.  The only snag I have is with my graphics file.  Like I said earlier, it used to be so easy to save my graphics to disc.  I just went into Edit, Select All, so that they were highlighted and then click on the Copy To Disc on the left hand side.  Now that facility has gone.  I can burn them but it means importing the files one by one, adding them to a list and I have around 900 graphics on the computer right now.  As it was 2 a.m. by this time I decided to save that little delight for another time.

So, I eventually fell asleep around 3 a.m. and had to wake at 7 a.m. for my medication.  I feel shattered!!!!  So does Mike who did all those trips to the computer shop, plus having to walk the dogsand spend hours fiddling withthe disc drive. Yes, it was Friday the 13th!!!!!!

Becky and Dean are back from holiday.  I do not know when we will be seeing them. She has to pick up their cat from the cattery today and then pick up her car, remember it was damaged in an accident, well the first garage that the insurance company insisted she used, made a right hash of the re-spray and it did not match.  Lots of hassle with the insurance company over that.  Eventually she got permission to take it elsewhere and it has been away being attended to whilst they have been on holiday.  However, I have spoken to her and they had a good time.

Now, I have another little niggle.  For some reason my skin has become very very dry and I have itching all over which is driving me mad.  I have not changed my washing powder, I have not changed soap, I have not changed or increased my medication and I have been on all my medication for several years.  I have not made changes in my diet.  This has just happened.  Believe me, it is very uncomfortable.  I just hope it will not mean another trip to the doctors!

I was wondering which one of you would be most observant, maybe several of you.  Well, it seems that none of you have noticed.  A couple of days back I changed my picture on All About Me.  Figured it was time.  I have been writing this journal since July 2004 and the photograph I used when I started was then six months old.  Yes, I have aged in that time but then, haven't we all?

I hope to catch up on all your journals sometime over the weekend but I am very tired and, we will be seeing the family at some point and hearing all about their week away. So please bear with me.

Oh, I looked out of the bedroom window this morning and saw a beautiful Blue Jay.  Not seen one of them around here for years.  It had one of our Rowan berries in its mouth. I got such pleasure from just watching it.

Have a good weekend, my friends.