the badbadivy experience

Man, yesterday. Let me tell you, yesterday was one hell of a day.

It started out fine, the usual, getting posts written, etc. My MIL was supposed to be in town by 9 AM, but we hadn’t heard from her by about 11, so Mr. Ivy called her. She was in town, checked into her hotel, but hadn’t called us yet for whatever reason. She and Mr. Ivy arranged to meet for lunch at Waffle House. By the time we left the house it was 11:40 and Megs was out of school at 12:30. I hoped the service would be ultra fast.

No dice. When we got there, MIL said she was STILL waiting for service  for her coffee. Oy. I started thinking of how I could get Megs in time. Just then, MIL started shouting at the waitress.

“Hey! You’re giving away my coffee! I’m still waiting for my coffee!” Seriously, who yells at a Waffle House waitress? They hire the oldest and crustiest. I braced myself to get yelled at by the waitress, but she was nice, she came over and gave her coffee and we gave her our drink orders.

By the time she got back to take our food orders, it was 12:15. I decided I’d run home, grab Megs and then come back. I ordered my food, figuring I don’t mind cold food, and dashed home. Megs got home not too long after I got there, and I grabbed her up and we went back to Waffle House.

Megs decided she wanted a chocolate chip waffle, so there MIL goes again, shouting at the waitress. “Yoo hoo!!!” she shouted, “We need service over here!”

Ack. Ack. Ack. People that know me know I am exceptionally polite to servers. It drives me batshit crazy when people are rude to them- waitressing is a hard job and people treat servers exceptionally bad sometimes. Even if the service is not good, I am never rude. And the service wasn’t great at Waffle House yesterday, our server was slow and only seemed to be able to do one thing at a time, but still, no need to be rude.

So the waitress ordeal was finally over, MIL went back to the hotel for a nap and we went back home. I got my paycheck in the mail, so Aaron and I went over to the bank to deposit the checks (after 4, alas) and Megs stayed home and played on the computer.

When we got back, Mr. Ivy  said that the computer had shut down while Megs was using it. Well, that had happened to Heather when she was here last week, but it restarted right away. This time, it wouldn’t start. It would get to a screen where it asked did we want to start Windows in safe mode or normally, I’d choose one and the computer would just stop. Oh noooooooo.

So since it was after 5 by this time, I took it over to Best Buy and the Geek Squad. Luckily, I got this tech that really knew what he was doing and was really cool. He and I joked around while he was running a scan on my computer, and he really put me at ease. I hate, hate, HATE for other people to touch my computer. Especially when I don’t know them. But this guy was really cool.

He ran a scan on my computer and said it looked really good. He couldn’t figure out why my computer, which wouldn’t start at home, but naturally started up just fine at Best Buy, would do that. But then he said, “Wait, let me look at just one more thing.” He checked the temperature my computer was running at and was like, “A-ha! It’s running really hot. Let’s try cleaning it.”

Now, my fan had been running really loud for about 6 months, and lately it had been running pretty much constantly, so I totally believed the too hot theory. And it was pretty dusty when he opened it up, so I believed that it needed cleaned. But what he said when he came back from cleaning the computer, I was totally unprepared for.

“How many cats do you have?” he asked. Apparently when he was cleaning out my computer, hordes of cat hair evacuated. Ewwww. I was running my computer with a cat hair blanket and that’s not good. Computers like to be nice and cool, not insulated.

So he started the computer back up and for the first time in months, the fan ran quietly. Woot! Woot! Woot!

So I went back home. The MIL had come over for dinner, which I had long since missed. I plugged the computer back up and said, “Give me a minute to just email Kat Coble and I’ll be around to hang out.”

I opened up my email and saw that I had 21 emails from MCB. What the hell. It was a crapload of spam comments. Went to the site, it was running exceptionally slow. Yep, we were being attacked by spam commenters. Lovely.

So, I had a massive coronary, and then I chilled out and emailed people. Called Chris Wage who told me the only thing to do, really, was close comments, call Dreamhost, and wait it out. So I did that, except the calling Dreamhost part, because I couldn’t find a number to call them with and I could see MIL and Mr. Ivy were getting irritated with me.

And it all calmed down eventually. I played Whoonu with the family, tried to calm down, managed it (sort of), and the rest of the night went fine.

Hopefully today will be much, much more on an even keel.