Dovely's Days

Monday, August 29, 2005

Throughout today I have heard updates from customers about what has been going on along the gulf coast that has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Much of the news was not good, however until I got home and was able to watch the news I had no idea how devastating the damage is.

There are thousands of people from Mobile to New Orleans that are going to be displaced because the damage is so horrendous that they have probably lost everything that they were not able to bring with them when they evacuated.

I talked with many evacuees today who were fearful they wouldn't have much to go to home to, and unfortunately they are probably correct in that assessment. All of the area hotels and motels around here are packed with evacuees, and a shelter was open in Dothan to accommodate those who were not able to get a room anywhere.

These people are going to need a lot of help over the next few weeks, not only financially, but spiritually as well, I am sure. While I am sure most of us have been praying that the worst wouldn't occur, it has, and we all need to show these folks the love this country has for their fellow Americans.

Please visit one of these websites and make a donation to help out the hurricane victims throughout the gulf. They need your help, and if you can give it, please do so.

The Salvation Army has readied vans to feed the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The American Red Cross will be accepting donations and you can contact your local Red Cross office, call 1-800-Help-Now, or visit here. Also keep in mind, there are going to be many that are injured, so please take the time and donate some of your much needed blood.

On a personal note, I spoke to my sister last night and she/family arrived in Tuscaloosa at 11pm after spending close to 12 hours on the road. According the news reports the area where she lives is flooding and showed footage of a shed floating around in the flood waters. :( My sister-in-laws folks are also going to have severe water damage as the area where they live have homes with water above waist high. The important thing of course is that they are safe and although I'm greatly saddened at the losses they and many others will be experiencing, I'm grateful that they were able to get away from the storm. Lives cannot be replaced, but things can.

God Bless all of you and I sincerely hope your family and friends are safe and well.

posted by Dovely at 8/29/2005 03:17:00 PM | 0 comments

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Awesome Hurricane Website!

As I have mentioned I am poor and can't afford cable. :) Seriously. Anyhow, because I do have family from the New Orleans area and I don't have access to the Weather Channel, I did some searching for more in depth information on the internet.

I came across this website that has live feeds of hurricane information. For the better part of the day most of the news was from a news station in New Orleans, and until the last few hours it has gone back to the people who run this website. It's very interesting, so you should check it out.

Hurricane City

I have heard from my brother and my sister in laws folks made it there a-okay. I have not heard from my little sister as of yet, but I imagine they have made it to Tuscaloosa by now also.

The last few updates I have heard suggest that New Orleans area, as well as surrounding areas will be UNINHABITABLE for up to six weeks. God be with every soul that has stayed behind.

posted by Dovely at 8/28/2005 06:22:00 PM | 0 comments

And so there is Katrina

Yes, of course there comes another hurricane. This storm will not majorly impact myself, however it will impact my family. My sister lives in Mandeville, LA, witch for those of you not familiar is located about 5 minuets from Lake Ponchatrain and the causeway. My brother's in-laws also live in the New Orleans area.

My sister and her family left the Mandeville area this afternoon headed for T-town, as well as I'm sure my sister-in-laws folks. This is no little storm. This is going to cuase major damage in the New Orleans area. I fear for my sister's home, and for the many families who are going to be impacted by this storm. To give you an idea how large this storm is, I live about six hours away from my sister's place and we are already experiencing some of the "outer bands" here. We had a brief downpour about an half hour ago (of witch I got caught in while I was filling the gas tank up and buying ice) along with some thunder. For most of the day today the sun has been shining, but when you look to the south west it's nothing but black.

Around here we are to expect up to 10 inches of rain and wind gusts up to 50mph. Along with that, I'm sure we'll have to deal with tornadoes and whatever else comes our way, but compared to what those who are sticking around the New Orleans are going to experience that is nothing.

I imagine much of the French Quarter will be wiped out, thousands of homes are going to be taken out. I guess I should be glad that my family was smart enough to get out of there, but I still fear for the losses they may experience as far as thier home. I'm afraid for those sticking around there. I'm afraid for my family and the thought that they may loose everything.

Not much we can do but be afraid, and PRAY!

As I mentioned in a earlier post, most of the family will be in T-town next weekend. Looks as if my sister and other family members will be there for most of the week. Who knows when they will be able to get back to thier home to acess the damage, or when they will have power/water back up and running.

For those who are on the road moving away from the storm, and for those staying for the storm, my thoughts and prayers are with you. Stay safe, and for heavens sake stay out of the storm!

posted by Dovely at 8/28/2005 02:07:00 PM | 1 comments

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Here comes Alabama Football!!!!

Yes, boys and girls. It's almost time. Only 8 days to go before the opening game for the Crimson Tide football team. One word. WOOOHOOOO!!!!! The good news is, I will be in Tuscaloosa for the opening game. The bad news is, I won't be AT the game. waaaaaaaaahhhh! 4 tickets, 4 men, you do the math. lol. I guess we ladies will just have to chill in the air condtioned house and watch the game on t.v. while the guys enjoy themselves in the 100% humidity and sitting under the glorious hot sun. I still think the guys are getting the better end of the deal, of course outside of my sister-in-law, I'm probably the only other one who really cares about weather or not we get to go to the game or not. Although I'm not sure, I believe we ladies will be outside of Bryant-Denny at the tailgate party, while the boys are inside at the game. Oh well. At least I will still be able to hear the excitement inside of the stadium, and watch the game on the TV that will be set up. Sounds fun to me all the same!

My gorgeous niece Avery will be getting baptized on Sunday, September 4th, so most of the family is going to be in T-town for the weekend. It's going to be quite the weekend with the first Bama game and the baptizim jam packed into one weekend. I'm really looking forward to it being that I wasn't able to go to the last family function due to car issues. Yes, I'm rather excited. I haven't even seen the little tyke yet other than in pictures so to say I'm thrilled is a understatement. It will be great to see everyone too, I sometimes feel like I'm left out of the loop because of my financial situation and not being able to take off to see family as much as I would like. I feel like I'm missing out on watching my nieces and nephew grow up and it kills me!

Well, anyhow, for those of you out there who are interested, here is the Alabama Football Schedule:

Sept. 3rd ... vs. Middle Tennessee in Tuscaloosa ... kickoff 6 pm ... televised Fox Sports South
Sept. 10th ... vs. Southern Miss in Tuscaloosa ... televised ESPN2
Sept. 17th ... vs. South Carolina in Columbia, SC ... televised CBS
Sept. 24th ... vs. Arkansas in Tuscaloosa
Oct. 1st ... vs Florida in Tuscaloosa
Oct. 15th ... vs. Ole Miss in Oxford, MS
Oct. 22nd ... vs. Tennessee in Tuscaloosa
Oct. 29th ... HOMECOMING! ... Utah State in Tuscaloosa
Nov. 5th ... vs. Mississippi State in Starkville, MS
Nov. 12th ... vs LSU in Tuscaloosa Nov. 19th vs. Auburn in Auburn, AL [Iron Bowl]

posted by Dovely at 8/25/2005 07:19:00 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Spammers Beware!

Well, yes, it has happened again. While checking my comments I find yet again someone has spammed my blog! Is nothing sacred anymore? Just to let you other spammers out there know, if you leave any unwanted spam that is unrelated to my blog, I will report you period and delete your message immediately.

Thanks and have a super great day!

posted by Dovely at 8/23/2005 06:33:00 PM | 0 comments

Back in Business

I have finally done it. Yes, believe it or not, I have accomplished something that I thought was not possible. I fixed my OWN computer. The big ticker is that I managed to do it without reinstalling XP. Yeah. I’m waiting for it. The applause. Wohooo.

Actually, I am rather computer savvy, and under most circumstances I can usually fix up the problem, or at least figure out what is wrong if nothing else. For the last month my computer has been doing the old “hang” thing. If you have ever experienced this, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You know, the open a program and wait 20 seconds for it to load, then wait another 20 seconds for the computer stop hanging, then work for a minuet on whatever it is you are trying to get done, and then hang again. Very annoying and very frustrating to say the least.

It all started about a month ago when I lost power unexpectedly. I do live in the great state of Alabama now, where during a hurricane there is no interruption is power service, but on a bright and sunny day, whammo, no power. Needless to say, the computer was on during this power outage and when I booted it back up, so started the hanging problem, as well as the apparent loss of one of my extra drives.

I did everything I could think of. I scanned for virii about 50 times between using the Norton I have installed on my computer and using the various online virii scanners. No virii. I used my trusty Ad-aware to scan for malware, adware, and spyware. Found many infections and removed most of them. Except for this nasty malware that would just not be removed no matter how hard I tried to delete it. It would pop up in my start up programs and no matter how many times I would remove it, it would miraculously reappear. I finally did a search on the internet for the culprit, and discovered that I had to use a handy program called Killbot. Killbot basically replaces the malware with a dummy file so you can easily remove it. That done, and ad-aware didn’t pick up anymore threats, however the computer was still hanging. I couldn’t imagine what more could be wrong with it, but decided I had better try a couple of different spyware removal programs. Surprisingly, it’s a good idea to have a couple different spyware detectors. I was shocked to find that after I downloaded spyware doctor that it detected 133 threats and neatly removed them. No hassle. In the end I actually downloaded 3 different spyware removal tools, but found spyware doctor to be the best, and it also has a few extra handy options added into the program. Spyware Doctor will immunize your computer against future threats and has a neat little on guard protection so whenever you go on the internet it zaps the nasty spyware before it ever hits your computer. Absolutely worth the money in my book. Alas, I still had the hanging problem.

Next step was to clean out the registry. Your registry tends to get bombarded with not only spyware, but whenever you remove a program from your computer it leaves trails of the said program behind. If you clean your registry regularly you won’t have to worry about the clutter and fortunately there are quite a few programs out there that will remove the clutter for you, especially if you are not comfortable fooling around with your registry files. I had a registry cleaner on my computer that I use periodically, however after running RegCleaner the computer was still hanging, so I searched for a better registry cleaner. I found a handy tool called Registry Mechanic, and after running it, it found a bunch of stuff the RegCleaner did not detect, cleaned it up nice for me. Registry Mechanic also has a nice little feature that makes it easy to back up your registry, just in case something is removed that wasn’t supposed to be removed, so you can easily use the back up. It’s a rather quick tool as well, witch is something I appreciate being that I’m the impatient type. All well and nice, but my computer was still hanging. By this time I was about ready to give up and had pretty much told myself that I would have to reinstall xp to get things back to normal, so instead of focusing on the “hanging” problem, I moved on to the problem of my extra hard drive. After a couple of days of fooling around trying to get the problem fixed, I ended up just scrapping it. Not to worry though, I don’t even remember what I had on the drive, it wasn’t a very big drive to begin with, and being that I can’t remember the last time I even looked at the contents of the drive, I came to the conclusion it wasn’t a big loss.

Then it happened. Most out there in internetdom probably don’t know, but my husband and I have been going through the he** of immigration. He’s Canadian and we have been trying to get him here. Long road it has been. Anyway, when I was talking to him I mentioned I was having problems with the computer and he suggested that I make sure that there aren’t any missing system files. I can say a lot of things about my husband, but he is quite the “EXPERT” when it gets to computers. I of course did not know how to check for missing system files asked him how I would go about that. I learn something new everyday. It was so simple, I almost feel foolish for not knowing about it.

Ok, here is where I’m going to explain what you should do BEFORE you go through the pain of reinstalling XP and loosing all the information on your computer. If you have checked for virii, cleaned all the spyware off your computer, and cleaned the registry and are still having problems you should really try this!!!

In windows, click on start and find where your c: prompt is located and click on it. (My husband said you can just type this in the “Run” option, but for whatever reason it didn’t work for me.) Once you can see the c: prompt type sfc /scannow and hit enter. A small box will pop up and start scanning your computer for missing or corrupt system files. You will have to pop in your XP cd so it can get the correct files and replace them. Easy!!! When it’s done scanning your computer make sure you reboot your computer, and find out if it fixes your problems. It did mine, thankfully!!! Also, just for extra, while you are in the c: prompt mode you can type in sfc /? And a list of options will pop up and show you some options for scanning at the next reboot, or scanning on every reboot.

Most people out there probably have a cd writer on their computer. I highly suggest you back up any programs and files, email addresses, and any other important information you want to keep periodically onto a cd, so in the instance where you may have to reinstall XP (or windows, or whatever OS you are using) you won’t have any troubles getting everything back to normal. As good as it is to have the option to return your computer back to when it was working properly, sometimes that just isn’t good enough.
Unfortunately I do not have a cd writer yet, witch is why I was hoping against all odds that I would not have to reinstall. I have hundreds of family photos on this computer that I would be really upset if I lost. I really need to invest in a cheap cd writer, or a new hard drive.
Well, that covers my missing weeks posting to this blog. I hope some of the information I have provided will be helpful to someone else who may be having some of the same problems I was having. Like I said, I’m no computer genius like my hubby, but I managed to get this computer back to normal and that is enough for me!

posted by Dovely at 8/23/2005 05:10:00 PM | 0 comments