Delusions of... Everything

F5 (The PJ20 Version)

Pearl Jam finally made the announcement about their 20th Anniversary weekend festival.  It's Labor Day weekend at Alpine Valley in East Troy, WI... You know, where it all began (insert major sarcasm here).  It's a two day music festival with many bands, including Queens of the Stone Age and The Strokes.  There will special fan club only areas, a special poster and "some other goodies", again only for fan club members.

Tickets went on sale to fan club members on Monday.  Here is the short version of my ticket purchasing experience.

Took a couple hours off work on Monday to purchase tickets.

Problems with the 10 Club site from the very beginning.

Hit F5

Hit F5

Hit F5

Hit F5

Hit F5

Hit F5

Go back to work empty handed after giving my friend, Chris (who took the whole day off, smart woman!), all my log in and cc info, just in case.

Text from Chris, got tickets in both our carts, cannot make the purchase.

Text from Chris, the site has crashed.

Text from Chris, the site is working.  Still cannot make the purchase.

Get home from work and can see the tickets in my cart, but can't make the purchase.

Hit F5

Hit F5

Hit F5

Hit F5

Hit F5... for hours!

10 Club announced the site is down for the night.  "We are so sorry, blah, blah, blah.... Please be patient, blah, blah, blah... If you had tickets in your cart stick with us, blah, blah, blah..."

Tuesday I had a class and no access to the internet.

10 Club announced the major malfunction of the site has been fixed, tickets back on sale at 10:00 am. 

I snuck to the bathroom (how old am I again?!) to called my friend Nick (who somehow mangaged to get tickets the day before) to give him all my log in and cc info, since Chris was at work trying to purchase her tickets.

Text from Nick at 9:00, GOT THEM!!

Apparently if you had tickets in your cart the day before, they stayed there waiting for you to log in and purchase them before the "official" sale started.

*Side note:  By 10:20 the site had crashed again!

That was truly the most stressful ticket purchasing experience I've ever had.

I'm just so thankful to have some great friends who basically got tickets for me, even though I put in a lot of time pushing F5!!

 

Sweet 16

I'm now the mother of a 16 year old daughter.  Not sure how that happened, but it did.  Time flies so fast.

This is after Handy Man took her to get her gift.  At least someone in the family finally got a laptop!

 

Last night was her Sweet 16 Birthday Party!  It was tons of fun.

I still can't believe she's 16!

Optimist/Pessimist

Generally I'm an optimistic person.  I see the glass as half full.  I tend to have faith that everything will work out.  I see problems as challenges.  Handy Man on the other hand is totally the opposite.  He worries that things will not work out.  A problem comes up and he thinks of the worse case scenario. 

The other day the computer went cattywompus (yes it's a real word, here is the urban dictionary definition - topsy-turvy; weird; To be all helter skelter and askew. Not functioning on all cylinders, or just plain strange.)  That exactly describes what the desk top looked like.  It was all big and jumped around every time the mouse was moved.  It was dizzying to look at.  Handy Man's first reaction was it needed to be taken into the shop.  My first reaction was, Star Wars Son can fix it when he gets home from school.

It turned out the mouse scroll knob got pushed while the apple button was pushed, or something like that... which magnified the screen.  You know who figured it out after some brainstorming with both the kids?  Handy Man... the chronic pessimist who initially said it needed to go into the shop ended up fixing it.

It's been very difficult for me to stay optimistic in my job search when I know Handy Man is in the wings thinking we are doomed to a life of poverty.  The interesting thing is that I can totally understand his fears.  It's possible we will have to pay the mortgage on two houses for a few months before our rental house sells.  That is very scary.  Super scary.

I'm a firm believer in the power of positive thinking.  However, when surrounded by heavy negativity it's very difficult for me to draw a positive thought.  I'm struggling on the edge of depression.  Some days I don't even want to get out of bed let alone pick up my camera, write daily or read my book (I've been reading the same book since the first of the year).

Yet I'm powering on.  I do get up every morning.  I work out 3-4 times a week.  I'm showering.  I'm reading your blogs.  I'm applying for jobs.  I'm even cooking dinner (mostly) and doing the dishes.  Every one of those things has been a huge chore.  At the end of every day I'm congratulating myself for being productive and hoping I can get up and do it all over again the next day.  That's the best I've got at the moment.

Now I'm off to look for my optimism and apply for more jobs.

GAH!

The Mac is giving us grief again.  It's so frustrating, especially when I NEED it to search and apply for employment!  It seems to be connected to our internet browser, however it's not picky, Firefox, IE and Safari all keep freezing up.  I can keep chatting on aim when the browser freezes.  I can use other applications without issue.  What the heck is going on?!

Yesterday I managed to get three job applications turned in, so that makes four this week, which I think qualifies for my unemployment requirements, so at least I'm covered there.

I'm having issues commenting on the blogs I visit.  It's hit or miss.  I tried three times to comment at MPM's blog and it froze up every time.  In fact I just went there to link her blog here and the browser froze up.  So please know, I'm still reading even if I'm not commenting.

This is so frustrating!

Finally

The computer is fixed!  A new, larger, hard drive was installed by a Mac wizard who has a shop just down the road from us.  He was able to mirror the fried hard drive and install all of our "stuff" on to the new hard drive so we didn't lose anything, not even passwords!

On Christmas Eve the wireless router mysteriously stopped working.  It didn't really matter because we didn't have the computer anyway, but that meant the iTouch we got Dancing Daughter for Christmas was useless.  The Mac wizard was able to fix that too. 

Now I am up and running.  I have much to catch up on and oh so many pictures to edit!  It's all going to take me awhile.  I hope to read what all of you have been up to in the next few days!

Meanwhile you can go check out my Wordless Wednesday photo here.