I am fed up with this piece of shit Compaq laptop. I never should have bought it. I really wasn't gonna buy it, but it had been about a year since HP bought them out, and I figured that my luck with HP was good, it should be OK.

Well apparently there is a design flaw how the power cable plugs into the laptop motherboard connection. The plug has a 90 degree connector and when it is plugged into the jack, the poor design puts a strain on the jack connector on the motherboard. After awhile the connection was failing and I found if I wiggled the connection "just right" it would do the trick. Eventually the thing just wouldn't work any more. I went to the library and used the public computers to get online and research the problem. Well, I found I wasn't the only person who had this problem. Some one had posted pictures here, here, and here on a way to jury rig repair the connection problem. After looking at what was involved, I didn't want to tackle the job myself. I called one of the local computer places and told them the problem and what I wanted done, They told me they don't do solder repairs but they would replace the motherboard for $600. I laughed at the guy and told him that I wasn't going to spend that kind of money on a year and a half old computer that costs $800 and hung up on him. After not having a computer a while I finally decided to tackle the job. After tearing it to 1001 pieces, I soldered a few wires to the motherboard and eventually got it working. Had a few extra screws left over and one broken keypad, but computer booted up just fine. Only had one problem and that the touchpad mouse didn't work anymore. I think I fucked up the ribbon cable plugging it into the motherboard. So I went out and bought a cheap fellowes PS2 mouse. Well that got me going good enough to use the computer, but most of the time when starting up the computer, the mouse refused to work until rebooting two times. Other times the mouse would start getting erratic and move around and just close open windows uncommanded. Finally I got tired of these little bugs I decided to install some MicroSuck mouse drivers. Well that was a fucking mistake because after that, the mouse wouldn't work at all. You know what a bitch it is trying to find and download mouse drivers online without a working pointer device? Well after a few downloads and about thirty(no shit) re-boots, the mouse and the scroll wheel started working again.

I wonder how long it will last. What I need to do, is go to Florida and get my shit out of storage including the two computers in there, but a road trip to is out of the question for awhile but that is another story.

Yesterday, I decided that I would add a news reader on my computer. After do a little research about news readers, I installed Omea Reader system. It is a free program and you can even get a free permanent license key. It seems to be a simple install and doesn't appear to have any adware/spyware with it. You can find the download page here.

If you use a news reader, I found a site that contains 330 news categories to choose from. A complete list of the free RSS news feeds available here. It would be a good place to get started getting feeds for use with a news reader.

Well, today is Thanksgiving day. It is about 70 degrees here and the wind is blowing it's ass off today.

On the Discovery Channel today, they are having an all day marathon of American Chopper and going to watch the shows I haven't seen before. If you haven't seen it before it is about the daily ongoings in the Orange County Choppers custom motorcycle shop. This shop is in Rock Tavern, New York, about a half hour drive across the Hudson River from where my mom lives. Next time I am visiting her I may take a trip to check it out.

Going to cook a turkey breast, potatoes, and roast an acorn squash for dinner later on today.

I downloaded a software program called Hello today, and this is a test of the upload picture feature.