It Crapped Out On Me!!

Sometimes in life, it just feels like things do that - crap out on you. Break down, fall apart, quit working, etc. For many of us, it always seems at the most inopportune time: on the road, in-between paychecks, while you are not somewhere near to replace/repair. It never fails. One Murphy's Laws, or another close relatives of Murphy anyway.

I know I have bitched/whined/complained about some of mine. Lately, it seems like the van. Lately means the past 2 years (rolls eyes). My oldest son and I took it up to the garage yesterday. Spent an hour and a half for them to say "We think we found the problem, but we are not sure". Oh, nice and affirmative! Seems the rear drums had some 'grooves' in them, that the theory is the brake shoes were grabbing, then slipping, hence causing the sort of thumping noise I heard. We gave them a turn on the lathe, to knock out the grooves, and so far, they are doing better. Great! Only wasted a little over 2 hours there to do that. At least it was covered since I just had them done Friday.

Things are looking up! Then in the afternoon, my computer mouse, quit working. Weird. System reboot seemed to fix the problem. It happened twice more throughout the afternoon, until I was just aggravated by it. I could not figure out why it would 'freeze up' - no new programs, nothing out of the ordinary. Well, at the Wife's computer, the kids had evidently spilled some sticky drink on her mouse at some point, and the buttons would stick occasionally, so I figured it was time to just replace them both.

We took the family out for dinner to Sizzler, and were met up by Reverend Mother and Preacher Tom. Had a nice dinner, then headed to Fry's Electronics. Picked up a couple mice of the cordless variety (wire-less, cordless - what's the diff?) and hooked them up once we got home. This morning, the Wife's wouldn't operate. After a reboot, it worked fine. This late morning, mine wants to get crazy with me, and occasionally just stop, then unfreeze and work normal. Teach me to go with the cheap stuff, but I couldn't see spending $40 for a fricking mouse.

While we were out, I picked a USB wi-fi card for the middle son's laptop. I tried to get that working last night, and it appears almost everything is working, except it is not giving him an IP address, so he can't connect to the internet, though it shows signal strength and access to the home wi-fi network. I have plans to call on that today.

So, some things crapped out, somethings just don't like me, and y'all are probably saying it is operator error. Just laugh at it, and move on.

PeacE