The Phoenix is BACK!!

WHAAAA HOOOO!

Now that I have my new State-Of-The-Art computer, I am now able to acess this site and blog to my heart's content! While viewing a random blog back in November, I picked up a trojan horse that refused to let me back into this site! No matter what program I used, or anything else I tried, I could not get rid of it! I had too much stuff on my hard drive to just reformat and start over, so I just stopped blogging for a while. My old computer was dying anyway, so... after Christmas I bought a whole new system! YAYYYY!!!! FINALLY!!!!!!

My new system is an AMD 64-bit Athelon 3000+ and boy, it goes like stink!!! With 1 Gb of RAM, and a 256 Mb video card.. I am back in the designer's seat now! And games??? I might have to clone myself so I can have enough time to play all the games I've wished to but couldn't on my old antique system!

The last two months have been an exercise in frustration and "character building" for my wife and I. In the beginning of November we applied for what's called an "Equity Line of Credit" to help us cope with all the bills and such that accumulated over the several months I was unemployed at the beginning of the year. I applied for enough to pay the bills, then be enough to cover me for 6 months salary, just in case I end up laid off again. Even though the Canadian Government is crowing about our "strong economy" right now, lay-offs and downsizing are at an all time high! We were approved within 10 days of our application, then the frustration started! The lender kept coming back with new "conditions" for the LOC to be closed, and each time we met those conditions, they found more! To make a long story short, on December 23rd, we finally got our cheque! So... it was a fast and furious Christmas shopping trip that evening! Just crazy!

Not only was that a worry, my computer picked up a lot more than that trojan horse in November! After a two day ordeal with multiple anti-virus programs, spyware programs and such, I was able to clean out over 12 trojan horses and over 50 spyware programs that my usual programs hadn't caught! BUT, even after all that, I still had major computer problems! My cable internet was down to a snail's pace, I couldn't access numerous websites and I was just really getting frustrated with the performance!

If those problems weren't enough, my wife's grandmother in Northern Ireland passed away on the 27th of December after a lengthy illness, and my grandfather in Winnipeg is deteriorating rapidly! So we were on "pins and needles" waiting for the word... and whether or not were going to get enough warning to get plane tickets to arrive in time for the funeral! My wife is currently in Northern Ireland and arrives home on the 5th of January. My daughters and I have been having fun "bacheloring it" since Wednesday, Dec. 29th. Thank goodness for Kraft Dinner, Chef Boyardee and fast food restaurants! My grandfather is holding on... and hopefully he recovers! We were hosting my wife's family for Christmas, and the uncertainty of whether she was even going to be here for Christmas was very trying. Of course, the cost of airfare was another worry... would we receive our LOC in time to be able to afford the ticket at all? We still have the worry about my grandfather, but everything else seems to have worked itself out! Still... we couldn't see the ending, and the uncertainty was extremely hard to deal with.

Christmas was great this year! Not that has been otherwise any other year! I did very well this Christmas... receiving a set of golf clubs and bag from my parents (my birthday is the 28th, so they combined the two to give that one BIG present), the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD from my wife and a cordless screw driver and shirt from my daughters! For my birthday, my wife and daughters bought me a PlayStation 2.. which is something I've wanted for years, and I bought myself this smokin' new computer and the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Special Extended edition! All these new toys and so little time to play with them all!

Well... I'm being bugged to go play video games with my girls, so will close this for now... guess I'll have to re-develop the habit of regular blogging now!!! LOL!!