Computers and Other Sundries

Well, it's been a bit of an end of a week and a weekend.
Apparently Boo was NOT thrilled with the rearranging of his room.  He let us know this loudly and for long periods of time Wednesday night into Thursday morning.  Thankfully he's been sleeping much better, and in his crib, since then.  He likes to play on his bed.  He'll even lay down and put his head on his pillow, but he will NOT settle and go to sleep there and will scream at you loudly, totally upset, and come open the door if you even think about it.  So, I'm not worried.  He'll sleep in his crib for now and get used to the idea of a bed.  Eventually he'll get into his big boy bed and sleep there.  (We did get him a small stool to use to climb into bed, since he's just a little short yet to climb in by himself.)  I just hope it's before June if we actually decide to move.  We're not sure yet.  We've got to talk to the landlady.  We need to see if she's willing to keep the rent frozen another year or not.  If the answer is "no", then we'll have to at least look for another place.  We also need to bug her about replacing/fixing the main light in the kitchen.  It's been out about 3 weeks.  (I tried replacing the florescent lamp, but nope, no dice.  The electrician looked at it a week later (on the 5th) and said that it would just be better to replace the whole fixture.  Then it snowed and I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since and only a vague promise over a week ago now that it would get done "Monday or Tuesday" (of last week) once she gets the fixture.  We're still waiting.  It's a good thing we replaced the lamp over the kitchen sink or else we'd be totally in the dark (and I'd be fussing a LOT louder...).
Anyhow, on Saturday I finally got around to replacing my hard drive.  I've gotten things mostly back in place.  I still need to fiddle with my iTunes, fix a few drivers, install some more software and my printer, but I'm up and running.
And, it turns out it wasn't the hard drive going bad after all.  It was the fan, like I suspected in the beginning.  My brother suggested I wipe this drive clean and try and return it, probably getting hit for a 15% restocking fee.  I decided to just keep the drive.  It is nice to get rid of 3-4 years of ick clogging up the drive.  Oh well... it just means I'll have to get a new fan (which I should have tried first as it is cheaper to begin with...) at some point in the near future and perform some surgery.  The hard drive replacement was quite easy.  I'll give Dell props on their case designs of recent history.  There is plenty of room and things are laid out quite nicely.  The hard drive sits in a little plastic piece that slides and clicks into place.  Nothing to screw in, easy to swap out drives, easy to see and get too.  (That and the case is very simple to open and close, which is a major plus when I think back to the first Micron that I owned, a hand-me-down from Jon... that thing was a bear!)
So, all my nervous fear of doing a hard drive replacement was almost for naught.  Sure, I've had a few issues like not being able to find my drivers CD and having to download my NIC driver off the Dell site on Gak's computer, put it to a flash drive and import it from there... but it's been pretty smooth sailing.  I did loose all of the Dell "goodies" including the great Google side bar that I had, but that's OK.  I'm sure it's on an install disk around here somewhere if I really wanted it.  I'm just happy to have plenty of drive space and great response time again.
The third "sundry" today is the fact that there is now a very nice yarn store open about 1 long block away from the apartment.  Yep, a really nice yarn store within walking distance.  I'm in trouble!  I'm impressed though, I only spent about $20 today, when I could have easily spent about $60.  I will have to tuck away a few bucks here and there as I can for some play money.  They've got a great selection of yarns and more will be coming in for spring. I'm so excited.  Oh, and I'm really, really excited because the store is owned by a crocheter.  Not that I have anything against knitters, but some times they just don't "get" what crocheters want and need.  Sure, we all play with yarn, but there are differences in approach and technique.  I hope that maybe she starts doing an "after hours" stitch session one evening a week, when I can leave the boys at home and snag a little "me" time with my yarn.
Anyhow, speaking of yarn, I've got a baby project to finish up for Gak's cousin Robin, who's due with a baby girl sometime in the next month or so (his mom couldn't remember exactly...)  So, I'm going to sign off and go curl up in my rocking chair with my yarn and hook.

Peace to all and may your sleep be sound, your migrations easy and your yarn plentiful and local.