Last weekend- actually, August 22, we picked up the remains of my husband’s computer. He had shipped it to a friend back in October of 2009 through a company that uses Big Brown Trucks. The package was damaged and we hadn’t actually seen it for ourselves yet. It was a little shocking. I don’t mean a dented case or a slightly damage USB port. The thing is basically not salvageable. We have been going back and forth for over nine months now to resolve the insurance claim on it but still have heard nothing. I wrote up a long entry with details and pictures but delayed in posting it. I contacted a customer service representative and was given a magic phone number that was supposed to fix things. We’re still waiting. Depending on the outcome of a phone call that husband is going to make tomorrow I might just push the Publish button and name names. Waiting over nine months on a legitimate claim is ridiculous. I’m talking call the BBB AND email The Consumerist ridiculous. I probably should have done something like this sooner but I am too much of a forgiving person.

So that took place on Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday I sat down to work on my pictures from the weekend and also from the beginning of August. My thoughts were to use some of them for a Wordless Wednesday post. Little did I know that more than two thirds of the photos had been corrupted. I’m using a temporary set up for my hard drive because my own computer is definitely out of commission. The hard drive containing my photos, though, is so far fine and I wanted to remain consistent with my storage methods. The hard drive is jury-rigged using a SATA to USB cable. All that I can guess is that somehow when I transferred my images from my camera card straight to that hard drive the files were corrupted. I did find a free program called PhotoRec that allowed me to bring back most of them. The others I think are lost because my genius self said last Friday (the 20th; this is what happens when you don’t update for so long- last, next, etc lose their relevance) “Self, you should format your card because that article you read said that regular formatting made it easier to retrieve accidentally deleted files.” Oops. But in the days between realizing the original copies were toast and being able to resurrect (some of) them I was a total mess.

Also, that whole week, The Place I Don’t Talk About Much was causing crazy amounts of stress. I don’t go into specifics about my job but some things happened that make me question what some people I work with really think of me. I’ll give you a hint: it’s definitely not like an equal. There is so much more I wish I could say but the Internet Police might get me. So in a word: stress.

Thursday night terrible things happened. Things were fine until around 8:00 when what turned out to be one of my worst headaches EVER started. And I do mean a literal headache. Sharp stabby hot poker-like pains behind my right eye. I thought no big, that usually goes away after a half hour or so. NOT THIS TIME. It progressed in to something bad so I took an Excedrin Migraine. I used to swear by the stuff; just a half a dose usually gets rid of whatever I have. It didn’t. So about a half hour later I took the second half of the dose. Instead of anything getting better it settled in to a mixture of a steady/sharp headache that after 2 hours was no better. Thinking that I could sleep it off I went to bed. WRONG. I woke up a few short hours later. I think it was from the headache itself. After sleeping just a little while longer I continued to wake up and eventually emailed in to work to say I couldn’t come it.

All day Friday I waited for it to go away. And waited. Once again I tried sleeping and got the same result: a nice, painful headache that woke me up. Since my go-to medicine had failed and you’re only supposed to take 2 every TWENTY-FOUR HOURS (read: eternity when you have a headache like that), I didn’t take anything else. Come Friday night I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep lying down so I tried to sleep in our papasan. That didn’t work. At 4AM I was literally counting down the hours until the weekend clinic would be open. That wouldn’t be until 10AM so I eventually gave in and slept on the couch.

I dragged the husband out of bed at 9:30 (ON A SATURDAY) and asked him to drive me which he did without fuss. The doctor there told me pretty much what I expected to hear. Need to visit my family doctor… oops, I really don’t have one of those yet. Should probably get a referral to a neurologist to schedule a CT scan “just in case” this is something abnormal. Was not pleased at all to hear that I had been on Accutane this year. (Oh hmm. I never mentioned that here, did I. Maybe another day.) Said I should also visit an ophthalmologist because it’s been way past time I do that anyway. My last pair of contacts? They’ve already gone past the time I should still be wearing them but I don’t know that I can get an appointment before SEPTEMBER 28th.

In the end I walked out with a prescription for Fioricet, which the pharmacy took over an hour to fill. Thought that was a bit crazy. Anyway, got the medication, took it, and waited. Nothing much happened. Four hours later took another. Still nothing. Yet another 4 hours later I took another and decided it was time to sleep. AND I GOT TO SLEEP. I can’t tell you what really getting to sleep for several hours straight and not waking up with a raging headache was like. Some of you might know but it felt AWESOME. I continued to feel good for most of Sunday. I did end up taking more medicine once but that was it. Decided I could go to work on Monday (meaning this morning) so I did. Most of the day I felt pretty fuzzy headed and was told at least once that I didn’t look so good. –Doesn’t that always make a person feel GREAT? For other people to go “You look terrible” or “Your eyes make you look exhausted”? I always just have to kind of smile and nod and try to go on.– I ended up leaving a bit early because I felt extremely tired and thought a nap would help. I also have a meeting in the morning that I need to go to and I didn’t want to make myself sick by staying.

So I came home and tried to rest. And woke up with my head hurting again. It’s like I can’t shake this at all. From all of my 4AM Googling and research I keep wondering what if something is truly wrong. What if there is no cure? What if I’m stuck with chronic headaches for life? WHAT IF I NEVER GET TO SLEEP AGAIN?? I know it’s crazy but I’ve talked about my irrational fears that I continue to have even when I know they’re irrational. I’ll find some way to deal. I’ve made one of the appointments I need: ophthalmologist (I have said that so much in the past few days that I don’t need spell checker for it anymore). I didn’t get an appointment until September 28 (as mentioned) so we’ll see.

I have started keeping a headache journal to see if there is anything I can identify that triggers these things. There hasn’t been a single thing that I can remember but I don’t think my memory is sharp enough to keep up with every headache I’ve had.

Oh, and Sunday? (I had written “Monday” but realized that today is Monday, so yesterday was Sunday. GAH.) My host had the motherboard go out on the server I’m on. Had I sat down to write when I intended I would have found out then but I didn’t until later.

I almost forgot this part: on Thursday night I had tried to order my computer. I found what I thought was a decent priced pre-built computer that should suit my needs. It should definitely be faster than what I had. But the company’s website wouldn’t let my order through. Friday the husband tried to order it for me but the free shipping coupon wouldn’t work (my order was totally eligible) AND the site still wouldn’t let my order through. He started a chat support session with the company. I don’t know what all they said but they were like “If it’s eligible the shipping coupon should work. You have to create a profile to order the computer. That computer isn’t eligible for the 25% discount coupon. The site still won’t let your order through? Just give me your credit card number in this chat and I’ll order it for you.” That last bit is where I put my foot down. Putting a card number in a secure cart system is one thing; giving it to an agent in a chat session? Totally out of my comfort zone. They ended up calling us and getting the computer ordered on their side. I still feel like they should have given us something extra for the trouble but OH WELL. My computer should be here September 8 or earlier. I will finally have something to really work on photos with.

So that is all of last week’s tweets in the expanded form. I think. I have a few other projects that I’ve been trying to work on and here I go being cryptic but I may also have some hopefully good news to share. I’M NOT PREGNANT; my family always seems to jump to PREGNANT when they hear things like “good news.” If by some chance I actually am (I SHOULDN’T BE) I would probably pass out and you wouldn’t hear from me a for a while because I don’t think I could handle the shock.

I’ve got to do something about writing these massive walls of text.

What is this? I posted it to Twitter this morning because even though my husband told me about it yesterday, I didn’t see it until then.

This is the hole husband put in the dashboard. He says that (while stationary) he was getting something off of the windshield and his elbow just came down on the dashboard, didn’t hit it hard at all, and made this hole. I’m not sure what I imagined when he first told me but it wasn’t this because I saw it this morning and thought THERE’S A HOLE. IN MY DASHBOARD. WHY? IT’S HUGE!

Unfortunately all but one of the pieces fell down inside the thing. I don’t think it’s possible to get them out without taking the whole thing apart. The somewhat irony of the situation? It needs to be taken apart anyway. The vent that is just below this GAPING HOLE? It’s the only one that really functions. Something is wrong with the fan and that is the only vent that is able to blow air more than an inch away. My mechanic cousin said that I would need to take it somewhere else where they could pull the entire dash apart in order to see if it could be fixed. Which, of course, it probably could if I could a) afford the time to take our only car somewhere and leave it for who knows how long and b) pay them to fix it. I honestly have no idea how much that would cost but it sounds labor intensive.

The lucky part is the hole in the dash didn’t make a hole in the vent. However, it might just be my imagination but I don’t think it was blowing as well today as it had been.

To be fair to him, a different part of the dashboard already has a good size crack in it. I think the plastic is just worn out and brittle to the point of breaking from a tap after 10 years of sun and the resulting heat of a baking car.

But his solution to the problem? Electrical tape. And if we found all of the pieces? Duct tape. Because you know, a little tape and anything is as good as new!

I don’t consider myself that good of a writer. I always feel like I can never fully express what it is I want to say, that whatever I write is inadequate. I figure I’ve got the technical part of it pretty squared away. (Is saying “I figure” less southern than saying “I reckon”? Cause some people have made fun of me for saying “I reckon.”) I can generally piece together coherent sentences and even some well structured ones. It’s the art of choosing words and knowing how to use them effectively, placing words so that the flow instead of standing stiffly that seems so elusive.

So while I may not be good at it I love writing. There are a lot of times I use it as a type of therapy. Even when I know that not many, if any, people will ever read it I feel better putting thoughts down. And I want to get better with my writing. I’m not going to sit here and say “I’m not a writer” because that would be stupid. I write, therefore I am a writer. I may not have aspirations of writing for publications or creating novels or making a living from writing but that doesn’t mean I’m not a writer. (This sort of goes along with my “not a photographer” gripe.)

I’ve struggled to find topics to write about for this site. A lot of my life right now focuses on my job, which I am not willing to write about. I don’t view that as a form of censorship; I see it as being smart. I’ve never tried to keep this site anonymous and I take full responsibility know that family, friends, and employers (current and theoretical future ones) could find and read to their heart’s content. I have no desire to start password protecting posts, either. That’s why when I do mention anything remotely job related I make sure that, given the chance, I don’t say anything that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Besides, it would mostly be boring things about SQL and report writing and– here’s where I stop myself.

What I’m trying to say is that I feel like I lack purpose. Why do I write here? I don’t have a cause. I’m not an advocate for anything. I don’t lead an amazingly interesting life. And I’m not a mommyblogger (not that there is anything wrong with mommybloggers). I’m not out to monetize the site through sponsorships or advertising. And I’m not about to start regularly blogging about my cats because I’m not a crazy cat lady. Yet.

In spite of all of that I feel like I could be doing something with this site and writing in general. I’ve been doing ok with having Wordless on Wednesday posts fairly regularly and while I highly enjoy sharing my photos (I think I’ll be writing another post on that), I want to write. Having a blog seems like having a mass of potential that is just waiting to be used. So I must ask myself why I haven’t used that potential yet.

Maybe I just haven’t found “my thing” yet. Or my niche if we want to get fancy. I’m about to equate this with my “real life.” Actually, now that I say that, I don’t want to have to make a distinction between the two. I am who I am; I don’t need to create a different persona. This is part of my real life. Also, it pains me to see writers who say they are afraid to write certain things because they’re worried about what their established readers will think. (Watch, I’m about to really contradict that statement.) I think that happens because maybe sometimes they intentionally or unintentionally create this online person that is only part of them or is entirely fake. I don’t want to create a persona that isn’t wholly me. (Wow, that’s a whole other issue to tackle.)

Rabbit trail over! What I mean to say is that fairly often I feel like I’m sitting on the sidelines. Part of that is intentional. I really value my alone time and I don’t always need to be in the thick of things. I’m no stranger to being called an introvert and let’s just say I didn’t socialize much when I was younger. Or ever. And while I’ve been raised to believe in “hogwash labels” I think I have some form of social anxiety. I have irrational thoughts about how I just know that people are going to judge me for saying or doing ANYTHING and I just freeze up and do nothing. As I said, they’re irrational. I know this. It doesn’t keep me from thinking them. The fear of being judged is really strong for me. Awesome thing that is the internet: I tried to see if “the fear of being judged” has an amazingly cool name like triskaidekaphobia. (I ALMOST SPELLED THAT RIGHT WITH NO HELP. Stupid “k.”) (By the way, that is fear of the number 13.) From what I can tell it doesn’t. It’s the definition of social anxiety or social phobia.

So. Social anxiety. It’s not extreme to the point of my not being able to be in any sort of social situation. I can and do function. I do, however, feel like I don’t and never will fit in anywhere. Not even in online communities and the quasi-anonymity they offer. I will never meet most of you who read this. I could hide behind my screen and write whatever I want and probably never have to deal with the consequences. I don’t want to be like that (but I could).

There are so many times that I see people talking to each other, having conversations, and making good friends and I want to jump in and say something because I don’t want to be a total hermit. But then fear of people not liking me holds me back. I want to be a part of their group but what if they hate me? What if they think I’m being rude or totally random and crash their party? Why should my opinion be worth anything? What if they call me weird or crazy? I joke and try to tell myself that everyone I know has called me crazy at least once. I think that’s a coping mechanism. While it may be true that many people I know have called me crazy it’s a very painful truth. I am not literally crazy. Why do they feel the need to label my behavior as such when I’m no more crazy than they are? Maybe that’s a separate issue.

There’s a vulnerability to opening yourself up to others. (There is a lot of vulnerability in sharing art but I’m saving that for another post.) Maybe my social anxiety has developed from the number of times I have been burned and now I’m afraid to open up to anyone. Because that fear of being judged? It’s not completely irrational. I’ve experienced it before, and from the people I had thought most would be the ones to at least accept, if not understand, what I had shared. I’ve never ever had buckets or even slightly moderate amounts of self confidence. So why am I writing at all?

I want to get better. The little reading I did about social anxiety said that cognitive behavioral therapy is the way to correct it. I think cure is too strong of a word. I’m not about to sign up for therapy. Not yet anyway; I’m not going to completely rule that out but I don’t think it’s likely. Besides, I can’t imagine what some people would say about needing therapy for this. Or anything because all psychologists and psychiatrists are quacks, right? (I’m joking; others wouldn’t be.) From what I can tell, all of this is in my head. There isn’t anything wrong with me in a neurological or chemical any other sort of sense. It’s thought processes, processes that can be retrained. The first step to recovery is usually admitting that there is a problem in the first place.

And so, using my own form of therapy, I’m writing about it. Writing a massive post that is starting to resemble a wall of text. I should give a cookie to everyone who reads it all. Virtual cookies. This is definitely a work in progress and I plan to revisit the topic of social anxiety as I try to figure out how I can overcome it.

And I wish that I had some pretty pictures to break up this massive wall of text but I don’t. I’m making do with a laptop that has lasted over 7 years now. That qualifies it for the label of dinosaur, right? And the edit area for my WordPress dash on this laptop screen is SO DAMN TINY.

Oh, I said damn… what will people think?

I tried to start up Malwarebytes Anti-malware. It can usually find and clean things that antivirus programs miss. And I’m not talking a specific antivirus; McAfee, Norton, AVG, Kaspersky, Avast, you name it, they miss things.

It wouldn’t run. Cue more of a bad feeling. I’ve had experience with a certain virus/trojan that does not allow programs like Malwarebytes to run.

The next step was to start Windows in safe mode to try to keep the virus from running, which would hopefully allow me to try to clean it. First attempt was met with the message that I wasn’t allowed to force a safe boot because I wasn’t an administrator, which is entirely false. (Lecture me later on always running as an administrator.) Bad feeling gets even worse.

I already suspected that I had a variation of Vundo. Researching the different process names that my antivirus had tried to delete and/or block proved it. Vundo has a lot of variations, often manifesting itself as “Personal Antivirus” or “Antivirus 2009″ or some other bogus piece of crap. Some versions place “infected” files on a computer and then try to get people to pay money for their “antivirus” program which is guaranteed to remove the “infected” files. Other behaviors of the virus are disabling network cards, replacing screensavers and wallpapers with “warnings” and hiding the options to change them back, disabling antivirus programs, Windows updates, firewalls, and malware sweepers such as Malwarebytes. Often times a machine becomes so corrupted with files that keep recreating themselves that formatting is the only option for completely cleaning it. While researching I had managed to get the computer started in safe mode run Malwarebytes. It found several infected files which it said it fully removed but I still saw some unusual things in the running processes. I decided to reformat it.

Problem was we already had plans to go out of town for the weekend and I wasn’t able to start formatting until Sunday night. I got all of my things backed up then and got started with formatting and reinstalling Windows Monday night. Everything seemed to be going well except that while I was making preparations to back up I wanted to write down the models of my ethernet card, video card, etc so that I could later download any missing drivers. Quickest place to find the part names is usually device manager EXCEPT… the trojan hid every device from device manager. I thought no big deal, we can get it off of the motherboard later.

Except after we took the case off to look at the motherboard (it’s a custom built computer so I couldn’t just look it up on a manufacturer’s site) and then put everything back to start it up again it didn’t start. It typically beeped once if it was going to boot up. This time? No beep. No BIOS start up screen. In fact, nothing showed on the monitor. The fans were running so it was definitely getting power. We’ve tried all sorts of things; even taking all of the RAM out didn’t produce anything different.

Everything points to a dead motherboard. This does not please me in any way. Things started going wrong when the computer got the virus. I don’t even know how that happened, by the way. I keep my antivirus up to date; Avast has never failed me before. I keep Windows updates installed. I keep Java and Adobe reader updated. (Those two are more of a security risk than what they seem to be worth.) I even have Adblock Plus running most of the time so that ads can’t sneak anything malicious on my computer. The motherboard might have failed had we not been looking at it, trying to find out what drivers I needed but that wouldn’t have been necessary if that damn trojan had never wormed its way on my computer.

For now I am left using my 7 year old laptop that I got before I started college. Thankfully I kept all of my photos on a separate hard drive; they should be safe but I have no way to access that drive right now. I don’t know if we can try to fix my computer (I think that motherboard is no longer in production) or try to buy me a new laptop or desktop. See, my husband’s computer was having problems last November so he shipped it to his friend to have some parts replaced. The computer was damaged during shipping and we have been going back and forth ever since trying to get the insurance claim squared away and the check that should come along with it.

I am so disappointed. I had thought that maybe I could get another lens for my camera and/or purchase some needed software but NOPE. Disaster (ok that’s dramatic but ugh) strikes AGAIN. Every time it seems like we have an opportunity to buy something a little “extra” something else breaks. Or an emergency appendectomy is required but hey, that was completely necessary. Considering some of the other things that have been going on (which fall under the category of “I don’t talk about that because it’s work related”) I am just not thrilled about money at all right now. I guess, though, that this is what some people call first world problems? I mean, I do still have this laptop.

**The title is a reference to the series of posts I wrote when I was trying to get my computer fixed the last time the motherboard went *poof* It took at least three months to get the parts to replace it…

I’ve noticed quite a few things in different photography groups and communities. People can be very opinionated. I don’t know if other hobbies or activities have such strong minded people but sometimes “established” photographers can have very strong convictions and end up being downright intimidating, dictating what is or is not photography, who is or is not a photographer. Here are some of the “crowds” I’ve observed and their definition of photography.

The Snobbish Crowd
There seem to be many types of snobs in the photography world. There are the film snobs who insist that if you don’t know how to work a fully manual film camera and develop your own negatives you aren’t a real photographer. The ones who say that if you don’t post photos that are “straight out of the camera” that you can’t call it photography anymore. The gear snobs, ones who say if you don’t have the latest greatest top of the line DSLR, only a $100 point and shoot camera, then you’re only a person who takes “snapshots.” Some people even go so far as to say that they feel you haven’t put enough thought or emotion in to the shot and are therefore not a photographer.

While it is true that an understanding of the fundamentals of photography, knowing to not over process photos, having equipment sufficient for what you are trying to do (you probably shouldn’t start a wedding photography business if you only have a tiny point and shoot), and having purpose to shooting instead of aimlessly pointing the camera, none of these things should limit you or be reason for another person to put you down.

The Hypercritical Crowd
This is a subgroup of The Snobbish Crowd. This group often talks trash behind other people’s backs, saying something along the lines “Did you see what they just uploaded to their ‘Photography’ album on Facebook? It’s a joke! They aren’t a photographer! It’s just a picture of a flower!” All of this with a “how dare they!” attitude.

I am going to admit my own guilt here. I have researched different photographers who have somehow got a website running and are posting portfolios and rates and so forth, presenting themselves as professional portrait photographers. I have seen some rather atrocious work and wondered how on earth the person ever got paid for anything. But we all started somewhere. I think people are too quick to forget that at some point, they probably took that same picture of a daisy and thought it was the most amazing photo they ever took. We should not be so quick to put down others. (The photo at left was taken in August 2008 with my Olympus FE-140. I used to think it was TOTALLY AWESOME and do still enjoy the photo.)

The Self Deprecating Crowd
I’ve seen this all over the internet and I think this Crowd bothers me the most. Someone has a blog, they have some sort of camera, and they like to take pictures. But when it comes to describing themselves in the “about” section they will go on about how they daren’t dream of calling themselves photographers because they are not worthy of the name. They “just take photos.” I’ve seen it outside of blogs, too. People who appear to be fairly accomplished and good at what they do compare themselves to big name photographers and lament that they will never be “that good” and so can not truly be called a photographer. It really bothers me when people say this about themselves in what is seemingly a grab for more attention, for people to shower them with praises. “Oh no you’re great photographer! You’re awesome!” And so forth.

I understand that people have doubts about their own work and artistic ability but most people are their own worst critic. From my own experience I feel that it is normal to have that sort of doubt. Here’s the thing, though: everyone is different. You might be completely comfortable with your own work. That’s fine. It’s also fine if you question your abilities, your drive, anything, so long as you don’t wallow in self pity and actually do something about it.

I am a Photographer
I have realized with photography, just like most things in life, we should not let anyone else define who we are. I recognize that I still have many many things to learn. I believe photography is like any other art form, comprised of artists who are always growing, always learning. Without this they can never improve. I have a long way to go in building the confidence that I need but one step in doing that is to say that yes, I am a photographer. That’s the only label I need; there is no real reason to dissect it further. I am passionate about what I do. Some of the photos I take are for me and just me. It really should not matter if anyone else likes them. What I want from the photos that I take for friends and family is for them to be able to look at the photos and to be able to remember the day, remember the events surrounding that photograph. It’s a way of preserving memories for them. What would this post be without at least a couple of examples?