A new added feature is they want to run an optimization scan of my computer. “It will only take a few minutes…”

So this morning, after, 2 days, 5 hours, 23 minutes, 29 seconds I decide to take my marbles and go home and hit “Optimize with next scan” after clicking their nice big “STOP” button…… 2 days, 5 hours, 31 minutes, 15 seconds now I’m hitting ctrl-alt-del…

This morning’s search reveals many others frustrated with the hijacking of computers by AVG 9.0 and instructions on reverting back to the previous version.

Maybe AVG’s programmers will think twice before shooting out a new release without more thorough testing. It’s all about trust guys!

My superman hoisted a bench, one I had requested be moved into our bedroom and placed at the foot of the bed, up over his head and mumbling – this is the last thing I’m moving today – to which I chuckled at just before hearing a thud on the bucket. The I here him yell, “What did I hit?” I immediately grimaced as he continued walking – and mumbled… “I don’t know…” then call to him…. “Don’t look – Don’t look… just go in and sit on the bed for me for a sec…..

See, Slobo passes out when he bleeds….. He later told me he knew there was a problem when he felt a warm drip down his leg.

I’m sorry to say, he hit the end of that rod with his shin bone and fileted the skin and meat to the bone. He had sat on the floor in front of the potty, leaning against the wall, because he knew that I couldn’t catch him if he passed out sitting higher. He refused to get stitches, so we’ve kept him cleaned and bandaged with butterflies for a few days. Miraculously, he his almost healed up. I was considering some body armor for his birthday in a couple of weeks as a joke. Starting with those silver chain mittens when chopping and a pair of steeled toe boots, since he is invariably running into anything and everything! I found this site that sells Steel Toe Boots. They offer free shipping and seem to be competitively priced. Met Boots has lots of options from boots that prevent electrical shock to gardening, hiking and steel toed boots, I’m sure I should be able to find a few pairs to handle each situation as we run into it in our house!

There are many other opportunities available for being environmentally aware during this season as well. Ornaments made of recyclable materials such as string popcorn garland instead of metallic plastics, dried fruits, carved woods, papier mache’ contstructions can bring old fashioned sentiments to your holiday joys. It doesn’t have to be recycled at the end of the season either. I have popcorn garland that my little brother strung 15 years ago one winter with me, Dough and wood ornaments that I made in kindergarten and carved wooden ornaments from Germany. There’s also blown glass, crocheted cotton angels, feathered ornaments – all of which have special memories for me.

One of the things to consider, if you don’t want to go to a great deal expense lighting your decorations season after season, try LED string Christmas lights. Though the initial cost is more than a standard set of lights, they use less energy, up to 75-80% less and will last a great deal longer than the cheap strands that you have to purchase over and over again each year. I have used LED lights in the past for decorations that I don’t want to rewire each year because a bulb burned out. Like the tomatoe caged snowpeople and train layouts. My son wants a outer space theme in his room and I will probably use a combination of fibre optics and LED lights for the subtle illuminations.

This year, if we all begin to be more aware and concsious of the bigger picture, we will not only have a warm sentimental feeling this holiday season, but a greener and brighter future – free from toxic chemicals and lead based products polluting our landfills and waterways.

A dentist I did receive a lecture from tho, recommend Dentemp OS to me. Slobo ran out to get some. I was happy to see a post about it, because since that weekend, I have told everyone I know about Dentemp and have even bought some for my brothers to stock in their homes. I check our own box of it every few months to make sure it hasn’t expired. This is truly an easy post for me because Dentemp OS is truly a life saver and I HIGHLY recommend keeping some on hand. You just mix the paste up and fill the hole until you can get to a dentist. It shelters the throbbing nerve and gives great relief from pain until you can get to a dentist!

When he talks on the telephone, he paces, constantly. It’s as if he has to be doing something, anything, because he can’t wave his arms around wildly while he’s talking.

Tonight he showed me the Tango Video Phone from Packet8. It’s a nice little device you attach to your existing analog phone that turns it into a video phone. The Tango has a thin modern look with a 5 inch screen and a 180 degree rotating camera.

Packet8 offers voice over internet protocol phone service with unlimited local and long distance calling packages. We would save a bundle by signing up with them for our regular phone service, and if we bought a set of the phones we could make sure the grandparents got to the see the kids more often, even though they are thousands of miles away.

With all of the birthday and baby shower party supply stores online, it could be really fun to hold a party for the Grandmas or even new Grandads! I was looking around the PartyPail.com (I love the name), and they had this really cute Winnie the Pooh Baby Days theme.

Isn’t Winnie just an adorable character? That is what I had decorated our son’s baby room in and I still call my 49 year old sister, Pooh Bear. The enchantment of a Hundred Acre Woods childhood never leaves, even when your the Grandma.

Think it’s time to rescue the rescue couch?

We bought this couch about 8 years ago from the LaZBoy oops backroom. It has seen alot of bouncing boys, influenza episodes and hairy dogs. It’s amazing how well duck handles being washed over and over and over again in hot water and bleach or lysol.

If it wasn’t for the threadbare spots, I would probably just add some more stuffing, fix some broken springs, and call it a day. But alas, I think t’s time to do a rescue and reupholster it before the holidays come. I’ve tried numerouse quilts and throws to cover the holes, but with boys, they never seem to stay in place. The covers are always being called into action to be fort covers, magic carpets, ghost coverings, etc.

Maybe with paid blogging, I could look into some new home furniture when the kids are teenagers. I’m sure I’ll need it by then.

When I gave Slobo googley eyes (hoping he would take the hint and come up with something for me) he just smirked and sent me the link for The LB. Told me to go blue too.

Seriously, tho, he doesn’t deny me very much, so I’m sure he will come around and help me with it after he’s made his first million. In the meantime, I was looking over Life Blue’s website designs. Search engine optimization is something I really need to consider. My site was picked up for google’s catalogs yet most of my sales are from Yahoo searches. I’m sure there is more I can do to promote it but fear of being inundated two weeks before Christmas again holds me back. I’ve begun research on how to optimize tho, so that when manufacturing and production is up to speed, I’ll be ready.

We have been calling the power company, who comes out (even at 1 am – I was surprised), and they tell us it might be the dew, an improper ground on our neighbors house, even dirt. They dusted off the meter box inside once, and said “log the times”… maybe we can figure this out. It rebooted our systems 3 times last night. We have already lost a dishwasher and a battery backup to power problems. I recently backed off all my files and burned them to CD’s, before we lose any computer’s drive. Until last night, when three power trucks came out and woke us up just before dawn, ringing the doorbell non-stop to tell us, we weren’t crazy after all, they saw the lights flicker just before they left…… argh!

On the bright side, once during an outage, I managed to knit a litte more by candle-light. That was actually very relaxing and easier to do than I thought it would be. As I knitted along, I dreamed of living a life where the power company was not a necessity. If it wasn’t for the flammability issues with small children – I definitely would consider it!

Slobo was talking about a backup software that can burn full and incremental backups to DVD’s. Having worked in the past as a systems analyst, one thing I miss about home computer software, is a great backup software. Acronis makes a product that looks really good. It will back up the software and keys too, which would be great. I’m always trying to round up CD’s and remember what I had on the computer before each restore. Each time I have to do a ‘clean’ install, it’s like my house – I know before I cleaned, I had a particular item and can’t find it. Here’s hoping the power company gets sick of us calling soon!

It’s been so hot the last few days that I’ve returned to the computer once again for a little ‘summer cleaning’. The kids will be back to homeschooling in 4 weeks so we needed to make more room on the computer for all of us. They now have their own desktop “creation” folders in which to save their work. We’ve also downloaded several ebooks, so there will be a library on the desktop as well. I’ve just go to figure out how to make cords accessible for 4 zens. Maybe I’ll knit or crochet some cord cozies. Something with a different animal head for each child, so they know who’s is who’s. Maybe a big flower for me with the cords in the center. That would be fun!

With Home School supplies coming around the bend, also, I need to find a way to get more advertisement for Buttercup Mercantile. It has been getting reorganized as well and filing is finally – well – logically filed. I’m sure the Tax guy will appreciate that! Business has been picking up steadily on certain holidays and with the Christmas season coming up, I’d like to streamline it more.

I’ve been working on some new product ideas. I’ve got five items that sell really well, while the others are just so-so. I’m not sure if it’s because of advertising, as most of my customers are purchasing for their parents, but I’m considering pushing items to a clearance section and add some new departments.

One I’m considering is a textiles section that would include yardage for both hand printed fabrics as well as fabric from my vendors. Most of them oriented around durability of goods and hand printed designs. There is also a redesign of the quilt section in mind.

Another big to-do is to make the site look fresher. I love alot of the ‘cleaner’ looks to other sites. So, I’ve started hunting templates and ecommerce solutions. One solution that I was looking at is Ashop shopping cart. It would be 39.95 plus a setup fee and a 24 month contract, but they are offering a free design setup and it comes with Inventory Control features that would be great if I go the yardage route. Kathleen was right, it takes about two to three years to gain acceptance into the design business. I’m on my third year and sales quadrupled the end of last year. So, it’s critical I grow with it. Hopefully, in a couple more years, I’ll be out of the red… That would be nice!

It would be really nice to use this sight as a memory post where all of us seamstresses and seamsters can post pics and memories that our machines bring. Oy, yet another project (to stifle the feeling of age maybe), but it will be really fun. I’ll get it setup with Drupal (been wanting to learn that) as time allows. He says that we will be able to create logins and post our own pics and pages. Sounds like alot of fun!!!

Let me know if ya’ll would like to participate by sending me an email at:
admin at allsewnup.com

so I’ll know if there’s any interest by others to post their memories too.
Any willing nostalgic people out there???