Goings ons
First things first, I have excellent news! My momma has recieved her first acceptance letter (still waiting on four others). She has been accepted into the University of Cincinnati's Women & Gender Studies MA Program! She's getting nervous because she hasn't heard back from the other schools yet, and she doesn't want to respond to UC until she does, but she doesn't want to wait too long either. But for now, I'm just uber excited for her and know that she'll do awesome!!!
On another note, my munchkin turned 8 a few weeks back. I can't believe that she's 8 already, and over halfway done with her 2nd grade year. She's so very smart though. Her teacher has her working on 3rd grade math and reading books at an 3.5 level. Her creative writing and her handwriting are still not so great, but otherwise she is excelling in school. The funny part is, she's an excellent reader, has very little problem working out words she doesn't know and can comprehend practically any subject (even the complexitites of the many science disciplines), but she only reads because she has to, not because she wants too. I bought her a set of mermaid books that are for readers aged 9-12 and she reads no problem, but she'll only read a chapter at a time. She doesn't loose herself in the story and has a hard time articulating what it was about the story that she found interesting. In class her teacher has them working on writing their own fantasy stories, and Hannah has major issues thinking outside the box. I'm not sure how to help her, because when I try to make her read or tell her she has to read more she starts crying and whinning that she only has to do X amount for homework and why should she do more. the child has so much potential and I just don't know how to help her cultivate that without making her hate school and her studies. I know she's only 8 but I don't want her to lose the love for school that she has right now. She was helping me make Mac & Cheese last week and as she was melting the butter she was telling me that the butter was having three properties all at once, a liquid, solid, and a gas. We were talking about melting crayons and molecular structure. The child has a mind like a steel trap, once you explain something to her and give her a chance to digest and talk it back to you, she's got it, she doesn't forget. her first grade teacher told me last year that she's like a sponge, she takes everything in and can regurgitate anything and everything back to you, near verbatum at times.
My router took a shit yesterday. I've had it for just about 3 years and it's worked fine, no problems, only have to reset it when we get bad weather and it gets all wonky. Well, yesterday didn't seem any different, the weather had been severely windy but it didn't seem to be inhibiting my cable connections. All the lights were on on the modem and the router indicating that they should be working (the lights never faultered). Around 330 yesterday afternoon my computer started to get wonky, it would detect internet and then it would go down, and it would do that over and over and over until about two hours and massive frustrations later it just stopped working all together. Except all the lights on the modem and router that should indicate they are working was on, except the one tht indicated there was wireless connections. I had two computers and my Wii that should have been connected and NONE of them were picking up the network. I thought it suspicious that all of my wireless enabled devices would go down all at the same time and it not be the equipment. Well, I left it, had restarted the computers, fed children, took care of the typical nighttime happenings, and about 8 o'clock went back to see if the computers were picking up wireless. Nope, still not yet, so I reset the modem and the router four more times with no results so I called Time Warner. Took about 30 minutes or so on the phone with them and them sending signals the modem and doing a check that when you connect the computer by an ehternet cable to the modem that you get internet. Yup, that worked, the modem itself was fine. So I had to call Belkin (hello India - I hate trying to convey problems to a person that is difficult to understand and then try to take instruction on how to potentially fix the problem from said person)....I was on the phone with Belkin for over an hour, before I handed the phone off to mom and went back to my original conclusion that my router was dead. something that I asked the guy when I first got on the phone with him, if it's dead, crispy fired, just tell me and I'll go get a new one. Nope, we went through all the possible ways to configure the router and still no signal was coming out of it, despite all the lights indicating the contrary. he just couldn't seem to wrap his brain around the fact that we went through all those steps for over an hour, reset, configure, reset again, and so on, and neither of my computers were registering the network name. He asked if my computer was picking up any network names. I live in a town that the city limits include 9 square miles. I very flatly stated that I'm the only network in my neighborhood. My best friend has my other computer and she lives two houses down and she uses my connection, none of my neighbors have a wireless network. Half my neighbors are either non-workers on disability or retired. So when the tech decided that he wanted to hand me off to a supervisor because he was totally clueless, I stuck the phone on speaker set it down on the table and left it with mom so I could go to Wal-Mart and get a new router. You don't realize how much you use and rely on the internet until suddenly you're without it. I seemed lost that I couldn't log on to the net, even if it was just to check my non-existent email. Really pissed me off at 330 because I was in the middle of trying to finish the last three chapters of The Witness and the Wife by MarmaladeFever and really wanted to know how it ended. Awesome story by the way. I need to go back and leave reviews on it because I really did enjoy it. But I find that when I'm reading a story that is already complete and has multiple chapters I get so engrossed in the story that I forget to leave reviews on the chapters. Which is why I'm better at leaving reviews on WIPs, but I tend to shy away from those because I hate when a story gets abandoned or hasn't been updated in ages, and I fear getting involved in a story that may never be done. I feel terrible that I've left one of my stories unfinished and readers hanging, but I can't seem to force myself to write lately. But that's off topic. Anyway, to finish my router story; while I was at Wal-Mart the supervisor and the tech both came to the same conclusion mom and I had an hour prior, the router was dead and there was no fixing it. Except, they wanted to send us parts to fix it. WTF? Really? I'm not a tech, never have been and never will be. But I am not about to go and take my little router apart and try to figure out how it works and fix it. Not gonna happen. I'll just spend the $50 to replace the sucker and pray that it last me longer than the last one did (though 3 years isn't bad for a $50 investment). I must admit though, that my favorite part of the Belkin call was within the first few minutes. He had me unplug the router and then the modem, and then he asked me if there were any lights on them. Well no, you just had me uplug it, of course there's not! DUH! and I told him so. Apparently he thought that the modem may have a battery back up. I've never seen a modem with a battery back up - do they make those?
Since I've procastinated long enough, it's back to fending off a reporter that is starting to piss me off!
On another note, my munchkin turned 8 a few weeks back. I can't believe that she's 8 already, and over halfway done with her 2nd grade year. She's so very smart though. Her teacher has her working on 3rd grade math and reading books at an 3.5 level. Her creative writing and her handwriting are still not so great, but otherwise she is excelling in school. The funny part is, she's an excellent reader, has very little problem working out words she doesn't know and can comprehend practically any subject (even the complexitites of the many science disciplines), but she only reads because she has to, not because she wants too. I bought her a set of mermaid books that are for readers aged 9-12 and she reads no problem, but she'll only read a chapter at a time. She doesn't loose herself in the story and has a hard time articulating what it was about the story that she found interesting. In class her teacher has them working on writing their own fantasy stories, and Hannah has major issues thinking outside the box. I'm not sure how to help her, because when I try to make her read or tell her she has to read more she starts crying and whinning that she only has to do X amount for homework and why should she do more. the child has so much potential and I just don't know how to help her cultivate that without making her hate school and her studies. I know she's only 8 but I don't want her to lose the love for school that she has right now. She was helping me make Mac & Cheese last week and as she was melting the butter she was telling me that the butter was having three properties all at once, a liquid, solid, and a gas. We were talking about melting crayons and molecular structure. The child has a mind like a steel trap, once you explain something to her and give her a chance to digest and talk it back to you, she's got it, she doesn't forget. her first grade teacher told me last year that she's like a sponge, she takes everything in and can regurgitate anything and everything back to you, near verbatum at times.
My router took a shit yesterday. I've had it for just about 3 years and it's worked fine, no problems, only have to reset it when we get bad weather and it gets all wonky. Well, yesterday didn't seem any different, the weather had been severely windy but it didn't seem to be inhibiting my cable connections. All the lights were on on the modem and the router indicating that they should be working (the lights never faultered). Around 330 yesterday afternoon my computer started to get wonky, it would detect internet and then it would go down, and it would do that over and over and over until about two hours and massive frustrations later it just stopped working all together. Except all the lights on the modem and router that should indicate they are working was on, except the one tht indicated there was wireless connections. I had two computers and my Wii that should have been connected and NONE of them were picking up the network. I thought it suspicious that all of my wireless enabled devices would go down all at the same time and it not be the equipment. Well, I left it, had restarted the computers, fed children, took care of the typical nighttime happenings, and about 8 o'clock went back to see if the computers were picking up wireless. Nope, still not yet, so I reset the modem and the router four more times with no results so I called Time Warner. Took about 30 minutes or so on the phone with them and them sending signals the modem and doing a check that when you connect the computer by an ehternet cable to the modem that you get internet. Yup, that worked, the modem itself was fine. So I had to call Belkin (hello India - I hate trying to convey problems to a person that is difficult to understand and then try to take instruction on how to potentially fix the problem from said person)....I was on the phone with Belkin for over an hour, before I handed the phone off to mom and went back to my original conclusion that my router was dead. something that I asked the guy when I first got on the phone with him, if it's dead, crispy fired, just tell me and I'll go get a new one. Nope, we went through all the possible ways to configure the router and still no signal was coming out of it, despite all the lights indicating the contrary. he just couldn't seem to wrap his brain around the fact that we went through all those steps for over an hour, reset, configure, reset again, and so on, and neither of my computers were registering the network name. He asked if my computer was picking up any network names. I live in a town that the city limits include 9 square miles. I very flatly stated that I'm the only network in my neighborhood. My best friend has my other computer and she lives two houses down and she uses my connection, none of my neighbors have a wireless network. Half my neighbors are either non-workers on disability or retired. So when the tech decided that he wanted to hand me off to a supervisor because he was totally clueless, I stuck the phone on speaker set it down on the table and left it with mom so I could go to Wal-Mart and get a new router. You don't realize how much you use and rely on the internet until suddenly you're without it. I seemed lost that I couldn't log on to the net, even if it was just to check my non-existent email. Really pissed me off at 330 because I was in the middle of trying to finish the last three chapters of The Witness and the Wife by MarmaladeFever and really wanted to know how it ended. Awesome story by the way. I need to go back and leave reviews on it because I really did enjoy it. But I find that when I'm reading a story that is already complete and has multiple chapters I get so engrossed in the story that I forget to leave reviews on the chapters. Which is why I'm better at leaving reviews on WIPs, but I tend to shy away from those because I hate when a story gets abandoned or hasn't been updated in ages, and I fear getting involved in a story that may never be done. I feel terrible that I've left one of my stories unfinished and readers hanging, but I can't seem to force myself to write lately. But that's off topic. Anyway, to finish my router story; while I was at Wal-Mart the supervisor and the tech both came to the same conclusion mom and I had an hour prior, the router was dead and there was no fixing it. Except, they wanted to send us parts to fix it. WTF? Really? I'm not a tech, never have been and never will be. But I am not about to go and take my little router apart and try to figure out how it works and fix it. Not gonna happen. I'll just spend the $50 to replace the sucker and pray that it last me longer than the last one did (though 3 years isn't bad for a $50 investment). I must admit though, that my favorite part of the Belkin call was within the first few minutes. He had me unplug the router and then the modem, and then he asked me if there were any lights on them. Well no, you just had me uplug it, of course there's not! DUH! and I told him so. Apparently he thought that the modem may have a battery back up. I've never seen a modem with a battery back up - do they make those?
Since I've procastinated long enough, it's back to fending off a reporter that is starting to piss me off!