Epilogue to How long does it take to get over someone completely

Every day, it seems, someone comes here looking for answers as to how long their broken heart will take to mend. I guess that shouldn't surprise me, as I turned to all sort of online resources when I was in the midst of my own heartbreak and despair, searching for answers. Searching for something to cling to when my world collapsed around me.

Searching for hope and reaching out for help.

And I found it too, but not on some website or blog, and it wasn't some profound discovery like finding some new continent after sailing across a vast empty ocean. It was more like the ocean tide itself, creeping up ever closer before retreating again, over and over, until finally, one day I realized I was afloat again. No longer aground. That's not to say the hull hasn't scraped bottom a few times since, but I've never end up high and dry again like before.

To those of you still searching, I empathize. I truly do. And perhaps on some of the posts here you may find something that you relate to, something that resonates with you and helps in some small way. (This post is feeling an awful lot like a rerun. Note to self: Need new blog material.... oh and a Powerball ticket.) But I don't have the answers to your quandary, because only you (and hopefully your family and friends) can effect how long it will take to move on from a relationship that once meant so much and is now gone.

Perhaps having a teenage daughter has helped me. It's hard to hate and entire gender when the person you love and care most for in the world is of that enemy camp.

It was amusing to me recently to see her with a new "friend" as she called him, acting all flirty and affectionate (OK, that part didn't amuse me very much) when just the day before she had broken up with the boy who was then her boyfriend. No long-lamented suffering there. Just youthful exuberance that I could only hope doesn't, and didn't, get too exuberant, if you know what I mean.

I wish I had some great "happy ending" to write for all you heartbroken seekers out there, but I can't do that. Not yet. For the ending to my life and love story is not yet done.

Once upon a time, my every waking moment was consumed with pain and loss. Now, I can't say there is are no down times or irritations. But it's normal life shit -- frustrations with work and gas prices and trying to balance the checkbook, not getting to spend enough time with family and friends or just living life to the fullest. Normal, old, boring life passing the time until the next time I get to express the passion and love for life and another person again.

But I say it again, people, this is not an advice to the lovelorn column. Someone left a comment on an one on my earlier breakup posts and I was tempted to fire back and just say "get over it already, and get over your damn self. Move the fuck on!" But I realized that isn't fair. For many, the pain is new and fresh or lingering. And they aren't trying to pull me back into my previous pain. After all, I chose to write the things I wrote and post the things I did. And maybe, just maybe, it will help someone to have something to read, or a place to vent some of their emotions too.

But I am not whomever the modern equivalent of Ann Landers or Dear Abby would be. I'm just me and past heartbreak doesn't rule my days or my dreams anymore. In fact it's not much more than a fading memory, like when I realized the other day that I got 4 stitches once after getting cut playing baseball, but I couldn't quite remember just how I got cut or just how much it hurt.

It's just a line on life's resume.

There are more important problems in my life now, like broken computers and the inability to update my iPod. Now that, my friends, is the stuff of 21st century Shakespearean tragedy.

Gateway to hell (part 3)

There's no such thing as a short stay in hell.

When I arrived home from work there was a message waiting on voicemail. The before-mentioned beleaguered laptop was back from Gateway and ready to be picked up at my local service center.

So, I trotted off to pick it up and returned home to attempt to at least reformat the drive and get the machine operational again. After all, before shipping the machine off to get it checked for the hinge problem, the service technicians had told me there was nothing wrong with the hard drive, other than it needed a complete reformatting. How that happens when there is nothing wrong with it and more virus protection on the thing than would fill a cyberpharmacy, I have no clue. But I figured, what the hell, I wasn't going to pay service technicians to reformat the drive and reinstall the system software.

But the kicker is, the drive wouldn't reformat. I tried it three or four times.

So, it looks like I will be making another trip back to the service technicians where they can check the thing over again. We'll see if being 19 and having zits makes them any more adept at software installation, not that I'm going to pay for it.

Have I mentioned the fact that I will never buy another Gateway laptop again?

So the saga continues.

Gateway to hell (part 2)

So I was checking my blog visitor report today, which doesn't take long when only a handful of people show up each day. And in the report I noticed that someone had come here by searching for "Gateway laptop broken hinge," which got me to thinking.

Hmmm, maybe my problem with my laptop is not unique. Maybe it wasn't a fluke, freak thing that the hinge on my laptop broke.

So, I got to doing some research. And I found several user forums and review sites that feature complaints or questions about what people have had to do to deal with broken hinges on laptops by Gateway and a company called eMachines, which Gateway bought out.

Moreover, there are posts on these forums reporting hinge problems, cracking and breaking, dating back to at least 2004. Like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one that doesn't talk about the hinges, but does talk about hard drive problems, and this one about all sorts of problems.

Now, on my computer problems, I went through the people who sold me my computer, not the manufacture up to this point. But I think I need to change that and give Gateway a call directing and find out just what the hell is going on and why they have been selling laptops that they know are susceptible to breakage, and then when they do break they don't fix them. I find that very curious. Curious indeed.

Now, I'm really irritated.

I'm not sure where all this is going to lead or what is going to happen, but this is not over. Not by a long shot. I am not happy with Gateway, but I'm getting a little worked up about the folks at the store I bought the machine from either, if their purchasing folk knew they these types of machines had defects. I think I need to ask their service folks point blank when I pick up my machine if the problems I experienced are common with these machines. I will be curious to here what they they say and just how they go about saying it. We'll leave the name of the store out of it... for now.

Gateway to hell

Got word today the manufacture of my laptop does not consider the broken hinge something they will repair under warranty. The estimate to repair it was more than half the price I paid for the machine in the first place. I won't be paying the $460-plus dollars to fix a machine I've had less than a year, mostly only used at home and which has crashed (meaning software/booting type crashed, not fallen) so hard twice that I had to restore the software and the latest crash wiped out all the data on the hard drive.

Nope, not worth fixing in my mind.

This old, slow computer is driving me nuts. Everything takes so long. Was it always this slow, or does it just seem slowers because CPUs are so much faster than they were when I bought this one? Or perhaps it is crappying out too in sympathy for its laptop brother made by the same company. I liked this old desktop machine and it is a reason I chose the manufacturer I did when I bought the laptop. But now this old workhorse don't want to work no more. But I'm going to have to live with it for a while until I can save up my pennies for a new machine, which will probably be another desktop model. For one thing, it will be cheaper than a laptop. And for another, I'm a bit leary of investing penny's I don't have in a portable machine to be my main computer now.

This last experience has made me gun shy about laptops, even though I loved the convenience of having one. Maybe I can nurse my fractured one along for a while. But do I dare load it back up with music again? Or photos? Not without a backup external drive, which is another expense I can't afford.

So I don't know what I will do. All I know is that when I am ready to move forward to get another computer, I WILL NOT be going through a Gateway to get there.

Is there a time limit for napping?

I'm so bored. I've been trying very hard to watch my spending because money has been very tight lately. But I am struggling today to figure out something to do that would be fun and not involve spending money.

I may have to give in and at least spend some of my gas and go for a Sunday drive tomorrow or something. I'm going stir crazy hanging out in and around this apartment. You know it's bad when napping becomes a favorite time to whittle away the hours.

Yesterday, after I got home from work I was so exhausted. It had been a long week I guess, because by about 7 o'clock I just couldn't fight the call for a little shut eye any longer. My normal favorite napping spot is the couch in front of the TV, but for some reason, I flopped down in bed for my little snooze.

And snooze I did. When I woke up it was pitch black outside and inside the house. It was very disorienting. In my groggy fog, I remembered that I had laid down for a nap, but this was obviously not a 15 minute cat nap.

Once my head and eyes cleared enough to find the light and check my watch I realized it was 11 p.m. I had woke up just in time to go back to bed! Some nights I only get four hours of sleep so I'm not sure that even qualified as a nap anymore.

Of course I didn't go right back to bed, but even after a 4-hour nap yesterday and sleeping in late today so I could still get 8 hours of sleep last night, I still ended up taking a nap this afternoon. And the sad thing is, I could probably take another one.

Maybe it's the warm weather and no air conditioning that's sapping my energy and just making want to sleep.

So I'm bored and in need of a nap. No wonder I don't scare many social invitations. No one could confuse me with being the life of the party.

Don't tease me like that

I got the call from the computer technicians who had my laptop today. They had recovered data from the hard drive on my laptop. Needless to say I was thrilled. They also said my hard drive wasn't dead, but would need to be reformatted, which would wipe out the stuff on there. But they put the stuff they recovered onto a DVD. Could I come down and pick up the disk and sign some paperwork?

Hell, yes!

So off I went to the store, picked up the disk and signed paperwork to have the machine sent to the manufacturer to see if a they would fix a part that was broken under warranty. They said they couldn't guarantee the manufacture would say it was covered under warranty. But what the hell, I figured, it's worth a shot, and if I tried to keep using the machine with the broken part pretty soon the machine could become unusable. Since the machine is a laptop and the broken part is a hinge, which makes it damn near impossible to close the top without lots of sounds of cracking plastic and squealing on the part of the computer and myself. And if it keeps breaking further, what use is a topless laptop?

So off I went to my house with my little disk, all giddy. My photos! My music purchased from iTunes! It was worth the $99 for the recovery to not have to replace the music and there would be no way to replace the photos.

I got home, popped the dick into the old PC and went to look at my files. I knew I wouldn't have room on the old PC to move the recovered files there, but just to see them, to know they were there and safe would be reward enough for now. And there on the DVD were folders that looked familiar. I opened up my documents folder and inside that I opened up my photos folder. And all I found were the sample pictures that were in the folder when I bought the computer.

My giddy joy was replaced with sinking dread.

But I didn't panic. When they guy called to tell me they recovered stuff from the hard drive he told me they had found 4 backup attempts. He said he salvaged the last one. Obviously my stuff was in an earlier backup. So I call the store back. The guy one the phone plugged my machine into some other machine and he checked again. The earlier versions of the backup were completely empty.

Now it was too late to panic. Now the dread became outright despair over treasures lost.

There was one piece of good news out of the ordeal, although it involved another trip back to the store, and that was that they refunded my $99 recovery fee since, in fact, nothing was recovered except the basic files as part of the software installation. Oh, they said they could send my hard drive to their super tech gurus and run it through another whizbang machine, but that would cost several hundred, perhaps up to $1,500 dollars, or about twice what I paid for the laptop in the first place. And again, no guarantees anything could be recovered and weeks of waiting.

No I said. I can't afford that. Not financially. And I certainly couldn't afford the prospect of holding onto some slim hope again only to have those hopes dashed. Again.

So, now all that's left is to see if if the manufacturer will fix their machine. I mean, it seems reasonable to me to expect a laptop computer to be able to handle the wear and tear of opening the lid and closing it now and again. But who knows if they will think I'm too demanding of a customer. If they do think it's unreasonable I will certainly think it is unreasonable to pay them to repair it, and will most definitely find it unreasonable to ever buy one of their products again.

A guy can only stand so much rejection.

The computer ate my blog-work

Yea, yea, I know. I haven't been around much.

But I have good reasons.

First, I got all caught up in the College World Series and Oregon State's run to repeat as national champions, which, in case you weren't glued to ESPN like I was, they did! Go Beavs! (And thanks for noticing Gene, I was touched that you did, and commented as well.)

Then, well, then....

I was going to say I got busy, but that's not quite true. I just sort of never got back here.

Oh, I've had ideas for blog posts.

Like the day I filled up my car with gas and was so thrilled to be paying under $3 a gallon again until I realized I don't want to be happy about only paying 50-something to fill up my tank instead of 60-something. I want cheaper gas! Like under $2 a gallon. Which, sadly, we will never see again.

Or like the day when it got hot and I once again lamented the fact that I don't have air conditioning, before stopping to realize it's only hot here like one week out of the year and I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars so I can buy a window air conditions to cool one room of my apartment for a grand total of 8 days a year. It's sort of like me buying a box of condoms. Good to have around, but let's be real, will it (they) ever be needed?

Or like the day when my laptop computer died and I was going through withdrawal without being able to check for new podcasts every 5 minutes on iTunes or check my e-mail while brushing my teeth.

And perhaps the dead laptop, as much as anything, has kept me away. My old computer is slow, and cranky. Sort of like me. And we get in arguments frequently because we are both stubborn and like to do things at our own pace, which is similar, in that that pace can generally be described as "when I fucking get around to it." Of course I want to be the one who says "when I get around to it" and when I want the computer to do something, I want it right fucking now. For all the fucking being fucking bellowed around here, neither of us are is popping off any orgasms, but we are both pretty well screwed. So, when we fight, I send it (leave it) to its office, and I go off into my room and we both sulk. Me, because my iTunes and treasured photos of family and friends are now gone, and the computer because it is a pain in the ass with a bad attitude.

So I haven't posted.

Does that bother you? Does that make you unhappy? If you want more posts, why don't you pay me more!?!? Oh, that's right, you don't pay me anything! So lick my Fishwrapper and leave me alone! You'll get new posts when I'm damn good and ready!

OK, maybe the lack of air conditioning is making me a bit cranky. Crankier than normal.

Oh, shut up! No one asked you to comment!

Fucking mouthy computer.