The broken crap theme of 2011 continues.  My computer is still not working but I have located the recovery disks (yay!  thanks to cleaning out my closet) and can now attempt to fix it.

At work, we are transferring all our shared drives over to one single drive called the O drive, powered by Oracle.  Coincidentally, I am learning all about Oracle in school, where I'm taking Database Design.  I liken Oracle to ESRI in terms of propaganda and cornering the market, but they work well enough (although I still curse Jack Dangermond from time to time).  Anyway, guess whose computer the new drive does not work on?  Yep.  Apparently, some other program I have and the new program do not like each other and it was messing up my desktop and some internet things.  A tech guy came and tried to help me but all that ended up happening was him uninstalling the program and telling me that I'd have to access the drive through the internet server instead.  Not a huge deal, just annoying.

On Tuesday or Wednesday, I was sitting on the couch and noticed that the clock on my cable box was turned off.  Thinking that was odd, I tried turning it on, and hey, guess what!  That doesn't work either.  I called Comcast and they will be arriving with a new box on Sunday. 

Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is my map that I've been working on for the past week.  I am so sick of that map.  I want to punch it in the face.  And I only have to do like 6 more.  Ugh.  Friday could not have come any sooner. 

I should probably talk about something more upbeat.  Um, two weekends ago, my friend Erica came to visit.  It was fun.  Today she posted a picture of us hiking in the mountains by Travertine Falls.  So I am stealing it.

I thought I'd start this up again.  And yes, I am most definitely going out of order and skipping things, but, eh... I feel like it. 

There are two supercool animals I would love to have as pets.  They are:

1) The miniature giraffe from the DirecTV commercial

2) A really sweet, really expensive ($35,950) cat, called the Ashera

It's hypoallergenic

But seriously, the pet I most want, and have always wanted, is a dog.  I want to rescue one and give it a good home.  I think I could be a really good dog owner.  I would be really motivated to go out hiking if I had a dog.  I wish I could have one now, but with my schedule it just wouldn't work.  Someday, though...

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how to manage my finances and invest my money in a beneficial and meaningful way.  While I was going through my mail this morning, I found that I had received a few things that made me begin to consider these options a little more.  First of all, I got my income tax forms.  Exciting.  It's interesting to see the difference between how much money I "made" and how much I actually got to keep.    Next, I got two letters from two wildlife foundations asking me for money.  One is the National Wildlife Foundation, which I have given to in the past, and the other was the World Wildlife Foundation.  I'm considering giving to one of them, since I do like animals a lot (I mean, who doesn't?) and I got really upset the other night watching a show about two moose babies whose mother got shot and there was no place to put them so they had to be killed.  Matt turned it off before they got to that part though.  He's nice like that.  And also?  Donations = tax deductible.  I don't know how much it really amounts to in the end, but it would be an interesting experiment.  I should just ask my dad.

Ok, so far, I've gotten stuff telling me how much money I make and how much I give to the government and some places asking me to give them money.  Wouldn't it be nice if someone gave me some money in the mail?  Well, the stars must have been aligned correctly today, because this was the next thing I opened.

yup.

Now, let's backtrack a little bit to last summer, when I received a mysterious survey in the mail with two crisp dollar bills inside.  The letter attached said, "Here, have $2, and if you fill out this survey you will get $10."  At first I thought, yeah, right.  I didn't even think the money was real at first, so I asked Matt to check.  After it was confirmed that the money was, in fact, real, I decided, what the heck?  I'll give it a shot.  They said it would be about 6 months, so of course I had forgotten all about it until just now.  But they kept their promise and I now have $10.  Woo-hoo!

So now that I am super rich (haha) I really do want to give back.  I'm thinking I'll go with one wildlife foundation and one nature-type foundation.  So who should I give to?  The Nation or the World?  The world is a big place and can use help from everyone, for sure, but there's a lot going on right here at home too.  I'm also seriously considering donating a case of food to our local food bank, maybe a couple times a year.  It's a better alternative to giving those bums at the intersection a dollar toward their beer/drug fund.  These are things I need to consider, along with some other investments I need to make (again, need to ask my dad) and just keeping better track of my day to day spending, which I will start doing once my computer gets fixed and I can make myself a little spreadsheet.  This year will be the year I stop just spending money, and actually figure out what I do with it. 

Oh yeah, and I'm participating in Saturday Steals.  You should too!

Hello there.  I'm back.  Did you miss me?  I've been having issues with my computer and haven't been able to go online or open any files or do anything, really. It's very sad.  The worst part about it is my computer isn't even that old.  I got it a year ago for Christmas and the warranty just expired.  Actually, that is the saddest part.  Stupid one year warranty.  Right now I'm at Matt's house and we're running diagnostics on it to give some info to HP, and even that is causing some trouble.  That has been our project for this weekend so far.

Last weekend, I arrived back in Albuquerque and began to deal with my other problem.  The day before I left for Michigan, my car battery died.  I didn't have time to do much about it at that point, so I put it off until I got back.  There was a lot of corrosion so at first we thought that might be the problem.  We took out the battery and cleaned the terminals with water, baking soda and a toothbrush.  I was the flashlight holder. We also took the battery in to be tested, and the voltage looked good.  So we put the battery in and it still didn't start, so it was back to AutoZone.  They are super helpful there.  I've been there for other problems and they are honest and never try to scam you into buying things you don't need.  We tested the battery again, and in this case, decided that I did need a new battery because the charge was low.  We installed the new battery and the car started up right away.  Yay!  The entire process took about 4 hours.

So far, 2011 has been the year of technical difficulties.

On a happier note, today was a really nice day so we decided to take Matt's dogs for a walk in the foothills.  They loved it!  Star was super excited, as you can see here.

At first, they had lots of energy and took off ahead of us up the trail, chasing rabbits and bicyclists and rolling around in the little patches of snow.


Toby mostly just wanted to eat the snow.

After a while, though, they began to get tired out so we finished our loop around the trail and headed home where both dogs proceeded to pass out on their "beds."  They had a fun day!