ugh. i'm sorry i know it's been forever since i posted anything. any recent attempts or thoughts to do so have been thwarted by the fact that my computer died a death last week. it's capacitors are corroded. it no longer starts up when i push the on button. not even an inkling of life remains. the good news is that i called dell and 1. someone answered my call on the first ring! 2. it was some guy named john who was not only in the united states but who also was knowledgeable. don't get me wrong, i don't doubt that the foreign dell people know what they are talking about, i do sometimes know that their ability to convey this knowledge due to language barriers is a real problem. it must be incredibly hard to try and translate such a technical topic into a language that is not your primary one. anyway 3. john helped me within 10 minutes of making the call. and 4. a dell technician will receive a motherboard and then call me to set up an appointment to put it in my computer for FREE. wahoo! thank you dell and some crazy lawsuit that requires you to do this. the only problem seems to be that the dell guy works strictly 9-5 and so far has not been very eager to work with me on narrowing a time down for him to come. i cannot take off an entire afternoon of work to wait for him. i tried to get him to make an actual appointment, but to no avail so far. i'll have to call him again monday and get something set up. so anyway that is where i've been..............using the church laptop for e-mail checking and music listening, and blogging/reading blogs/live journaling/facebooking on alexis's computer when i can get a chance. i shall return my dear readers, i shall return.