Been busy...

Well, I didn't get an opportunity to post all of yesterday or today. We have been Christmas shopping and decorating the house!! I do love Christmas! I am burning my Christmas Berries candle from Yankie Candle (that I love... just that smell puts me in a good mood). It is almost gone because it is just left over from last Christmas. I am going to have to go get a new one!

I still have no tree up, but that explaination will come later in my post. But Maddie is talking about Santa Claus non-stop, so I think that this year she actually 'gets it', which makes me even more excited for Christmas morning. Mike has off, so he doesn't have to jet to work right after opening presents. We can have a wonderful breakfast/brunch together as a family, and I can't wait! I feel like a little kid!


Verizon came today. I decided to give them a second chance. Well, I guess I have to backtrack and explain what I mean by that. Last year in August, Verizon was having this mega-deal where if you switched to their DSL service, phone and signed on with DirectTV then you get them all for like $33 a piece. This would save us a lot of money, and I love to save money :) Actually, I love to spend it, but thats another entire post!



So, last August I agreed to switch from Comcast (because I think they are money hungry pigs who monopolize us into thinking cable is it!) to Verizon during this deal. The person I ordered with on the phone ASSURED me that the DSL would be as fast as cable, which I knew wasn't true, but was willing to take a little hit in the speed department for more loot in my pocket!



So, first the DirectTV guy comes and hooks us up with the dish. I love it... no complaints there! Next, the Verizon tech comes and replaces my fast cable with a turtle of a DSL connection. I would have stuck it out, except it was intermittenly just loggin off, booting me offline, and just giving me a headache. For those who know me well, you know I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT my COMPUTER! First off, it is part of my livlihood, and secondly, I need to be able to communicate with people via email and chat rooms for school work, sub lists and all that jazz... and thirdly, I LOVE to be online chatting with my buds via Yahoo. I can't deal if I can't get my email, that is like next to the jugular in my life!

So, after alot of bickering, sitting on hold, six visits from tech support from them, I finally gave up and went back to comcast for my internet provider. It was such a slap to have to call them back and get hooked up again. The last guy who came to help was like, just hang on until fiber optics come, then you will be hooked up! I just couldn't wait.

So, this week I got a little flyer in the mail about Verizon Fios, and after some investigation I learn I will save a shitload of money by swiching. I call and verify the prices and seriously, I had to try it out. My mother in law already has fios and she LOVES it. So seriously, it can't be that bad! She lives next door, so it can't get messed up between two houses, can it?

The dude came on Saturday morning. I was without intenet for a whole "GASP" five hours! But it was so worth it because my download and upload speeds are incredible! Seriously, I love it. Couldn't be more pleased.

But, there was a little issue with the Nortons Antivirus program that they provide. It kept saying it couldnt install because of some program I have called Authentium... and sent me to the CONTROL PANEL to remove it from my programs list. But the problem was, that it wasn't there! I couldn't find this program at all.

After about an hour on the phone with a techie, he couldn't fix it either. But let me say, they have the coolest shit! I called and had to sit on hold for like forty minutes (yes, you read right). I just put it on speaker and laid it on the desk while I tried to fix the shit myself. When the techie gets on he is SO NICE, funny and very helpful. He proxies in to my computer through the fios -AWESOME! So I just sat here and watched him go through all these steps and trying to fix it and find the Authentium in my computer, of course he couldn't find it either.

Then, my cordless phone starts beeping... I am going to lose the connection because the battery is dying. I am like, OH HELLLLL NO, I didn't sit on hold forever to finally get someone to lose him! So, I tell him, my phone is going to die. He took my cell number. About five minutes after the irritating beeping 'your battery is dying' started, it went dead. A box popped up on my screen, and he types in like a little chat box. "I lost you, calling you on your cell" and my cell phone started ringing. Hell, yea... he was a kick ass techie!

Ultimately though, he was unable to solve my problem and referred me to Microsoft tech support. Yea, as if I am calling them so they can charge me $20 an hour to fix it over the phone!
After the kids went to bed, I searched online to try and find a fix on my own and I did.

Here is the fix: Go to MY COMPUTER > LOCAL DISK > PROGRAM FILES > COMMON FILES > Click on COMMAND SOFTWARE FOLDER > THEN CLICK FOLDER CALLED AVSDK. This is the installer program, however it gives you the option to uninstall prior to installing the program so don't be afraid to click on it It really did work for me, and I felt like a member of the Geek Squad I was so freakin proud of myself.

So that was tonite... now I am going to bed!