I was overjoyed when I received the call last night (and again this morning) that my PC was back from the Geek Squad and could be picked up at any time.

“It has a new motherboard, a new card reader and is running like a dream,” I was told by the enthusiastic Geek.

Then I got it home.

The first sign of trouble was this: my PC, which had great sound when I sent it in over two weeks ago, now recognizes NO sound device as being installed; not my speakers, not my headphones; nothing!

The second sign of trouble was when I received a runtime error when trying to run some of my games; they refuse to play, even after being uninstalled and re-installed.

So I called up 24-hour Geek Squad Support and was told I’d be connected to a techie who could fix things over my internet connection. Nice enough, I supposed.

Thirty minutes goes by; still on hold. At forty-five minutes I lose patience and fire up the 24-hour support software from Geek Squad. Takes ten minutes to get someone on a chat window with me.

And what does she tell me, even as I’m burning up an hour’s worth of minutes on hold, waiting for a live techie to help me?

“Oh, you need to take it back to the store anyway. We can’t help you.”

They couldn’t have told me this fifty anytime cell minutes ago?

So during all that time on hold, I got curious; I opened the box to see if maybe a wire wasn’t connected that would acknowledge the sound card. Nope, it was attached.

Then I looked more closely at my PC icon and noticed… my card reader’s slots were still invisible!

And right about then, my PC’s video started freakout out and sent my to a blue screen!

What? I realized the truth, then: all the same problems were still there, new motherboard or not.

I can’t say for sure whether my PC has a new motherboard in it, but I can say all the problems that were there are STILL there!

Then I remembered a KEY fact: My extended warranty was scheduled to expire on February 15. I renewed it for a year, though.

My suspicion? Best Buy gambled that I wouldn’t renew it, sent me the broken unit back un-fixed, and hoped to catch me out-of-warranty so they could either charge me for the repair, or force me to buy a new PC.

Heads will roll when I take this thing back to Best Buy Richfield tomorrow: BELIEVE IT! Outer banks foreclosures will be more pleasant!

Sometimes… not always, but sometimes… I regret not picking up my teacher’s license back when I was in college. It would give a writer like me a handy fallback career, being able to teach. Of course, that’s kind of why I didn’t pick it up to begin with; because I don’t think teaching should be viewed as a fallback career, but as a calling.

If I ever change my mind, however, it’s nice to know that there are resources available now such as I never had back when I was attending college in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Resources like an online university as well as online degree programs such as are found at Western Governor’s University.

With several areas of specialization, it’s far more convenient for working people to train and get licensed as teachers these days at a place like WGU. And more convenience will ultimately mean more and better teachers available to teach children to become tomorrow’s leaders. What could be better?

My interest in blogging has been on the rise lately. Sometimes I’ve gone almost two weeks between posts, but lately with my increased attention on writing in general, my interest in blogging is moving back up to a high water mark.

Maybe I’m just more in a confessional mood lately, or maybe I’ve balanced my life out a bit better. Whatever the case, I’m certainly enjoying the increase in my writing life, and it leaves me in a better mood in general, whether I’m working on my novel or contemplating the political aspects of garage flooring.

OK, so I’ve learned not to over-rely on hard drives; my big mistake last Friday was that I’ve come to over-rely on my flash drive. It went down suddenly after Windows 7 offered to “scan and fix” it. It scanned my drive, all right, but there was no “fix” to it. Windows 7 killed my flash drive!

And of course, I lost several sermons and commentaries, as well as any progress I’d made on my novel since the last time I backed up to my PC hard drive… back in October. Ugh!

Well, at least I didn’t lose it completely, or have my hard drive go down at the same time as my flash drive this time. That’d age me enough to need to look into the best wrinkle treatment around.

After as many times as my hard drive has crashed the past couple years, you’d think by now I’d have purchased a reliable external hard drive. Well, you’d be wrong.

Largely that’s because novels are tiny and I have an 8GB flash drive and while it certainly won’t store everything on my hard drive, it does a very nice job of storing all my critical files, and was only $20 compared to $80 or so for a decent 500GB hard drive.

Hope to still get an external hard drive at some point, but right now, it’s just not in the budget.

The spookiest winter story I’ve heard recently wasn’t crafted by Stephen King or Clive Barker. I heard it on the news.

A married couple in Oregon decided to go up into the mountains to get a rare breed of pine tree for their Christmas tree. This happened about a week ago. They haven’t been heard from since.

While a chupacabra pet franchise might scare some people more, this is in my eyes a whole lot eerier. Just the unknown aspect of it. And the fact that it actually happened.

While it used to be that the University of Phoenix was rather unique, now there are many online universities where one can acquire a high-quality online degree without spending a fortune or setting aside one’s current professional life. One of the more recent such places to emerge is Western Governor’s University, a nonprofit online university founded by 19 governors of western states.

WGU has solid programs in education, business, information technology and health – all areas that deliver much-needed professionals into decent-to-high-paying careers, even in the middle of a very down economy. What could be better?

Of course, the thing I appreciate most about WGU is that they’re non-profit, which means tuition is lower than at many other places, making it an attractive option.

I don’t care to the idea of daydreaming now that I’m over 40, but I do like to think about things I hope to do one day, like making New Orleans hotel reservations to attend a mystery writer’s conference.

Wouldn’t that be fun? I’ve been to Louisiana only once, but nowhere near New Orleans. But I get the feeling that even post-Katrina, it’d be a nice place for a mystery writer’s conference.

Of course, to get to that someday, I have to crack the whip on myself and finish some mystery novels; otherwise I’d be an attendee and not a guest.

A dirty little secret of writing is that sometimes writer’s block has its benefits; for one, it’s one of the great appetite suppressants because if you can’t write, you’re going to usually be to concerned with that little fact, rather than mundane concerns like eating.

Also, it gives you time with your family; let’s face it, when we’re “in the zone” we tend to tune out all life around us and that includes family members. Sometimes, a little writers block and be a marriage-helper. But not for extended periods.

Today was my birthday; I turned 43.

Want to know how I spent my evening? On a romantic dinner with my wife? Nope. On a family dinner with my wife and my father? Wrong again. Hanging out with the guys and watching a game? Not even close.

Nope, I spent the evening of my 43rd birthday in a dentist’s chair, getting a chipped tooth drilled and filled. Don’t you just want to be me right now? Ahh, the life of a writer…

Next thing you know I’ll be spending birthday 44 testing diet pills or something. That’s about my luck lately. Heh.

One thing that’s true about writing is that you don’t burn a lot of calories doing it. I’ve had a decent summer of writing, but I haven’t been very active and what that translates into is that there’s now about twenty pounds more of me. Considering there was already about sixty pounds too much of me before this, that’s not good.

Of course, society is brimming with solutions, from weight loss supplements to diet programs to exercise videos and more. There’s even a TV show, The Biggest Loser, about America’s battle with waistlines.

Trouble is, so many people seem to think that if they’re a little bit cruel to be kind, calling you fat or commenting on your weight, that this will somehow motivate you to lose weight. Might help some folks; doesn’t work on me.

Personally, I am quite honest with myself. I know what I’ve eaten and overeaten to get me where I am. I know what I need to do to lose it again: eat less and exercise more.

It’s that simple. Which means I am without excuse. I either need to do what’s necessary, or stop complaining.

OK, so the running total of hard drives I’ve been through in the past 18 months just reached four. I’m now on my fifth drive and this time I ordered a high-quality, well-reviewed unit with a two-year factory warranty. Most drives come with 90 days, so hopefully the longer warranty is an indication of some sturdiness on the part of the newest drive.

Sure, I could have had warranty repair done by my local Nerd Herders, but they were responsible for the last one, so forget cheap parts provided free under warranty and free labor; it was time to buy quality and do it myself. Same goes for anything you need, like RV insurance: quality matters.

It’s done, and thanks to my flash drive my novel was completely unaffected. Let’s just hope this hard drive lasts longer than the six months or less average I’ve been suffering through lately.