Not what I want to see on the screen of my new laptop

Isn't it great?! Straight out of the box. Ok this was after I tried to fix it and out of the box was MUCH worse.

After less than a week the screen would randomly turn into a pink checkerboard -> vertical stripes -> big square in the center of the screen -> restart. I had no idea what was wrong and spent a lot of time searching the internet but came up with nothing. Over time it started to come up with a screen of yellow or grey pinstripes and I would have to force a shut down

Shortly after that started happening one time the pink square had text in it that said something about resetting the display driver. Once the computer restarts (...) I look up info on that. I roll it back and everything seems ok. My computer goes the rest of the night without any mishaps. I was definitely relieved!

My relief was short lived. I started it the next morning and that picture is what I saw, grr. I could move the mouse so it wasn't frozen just the display was messed up. Once I restarted it it was fine. But it's not without problems. Now it will have a few lines looks like that -> go to a page with grey stripes -> then recover. The screen will occasionally flicker too. So it's not fixed but much better than it was!


Time to email HP and see what they say.

*Note - My husband pretty much forced me to buy a new computer. I knew my old computer was well... old but at least it was running. I had no reason for thinking that HP computers are crap but I always have (and was apparently right). I just couldn't pass up the fact that with the instant discount and code it was $400 off and cheap for really good stats. They tricked me! :)

Happy birthday to me!

Today was my 21st birthday, woo! I didn't drink before I turned 21 and don't plan on it now. I seriously only drink water because pop burns my throat. I can't even imagine how drinking alcohol would feel (and taste). Horrible? Very likely.

This was destined to be my worst birthday ever. I'm 5000 miles away from all my friends and family and my husband was gone. So I was going to spend the day alone doing nothing. However, my husband came back today, yay! His sub left last Friday and wasn't supposed to come back until well into next month. The old captain volunteered them for this mission and then was relieved and left the sub in March. :/ The new captain decided this was too long of an underway and tried to get them to come back for a couple days. He succeeded and it just happened to be on my birthday! Tomorrow is also our first wedding anniversary so I'm VERY happy they came back this weekend.

I still did absolutely nothing but at least my husband was here too! Even if he did go to bed at 8, ugh. At least now I can enter 21+ contests. :) Ok I'd like to stop aging please!

iPod overboard!

A week ago while my husband was on watch he texted me that I needed to buy him a new iPod Touch. His managed to fall over the side of the sub into the water. He said he was bent over tying something when it slipped out of his pocket. Apparently he thought that having it in his shirt pocket, with the buttons unbuttoned, and a life jacket on would keep it in. *sigh*

Here's a person with no artistic skills rendition. Just imagine the stick figure in NWUs and a life jacket :)

 The only reason he was upset is that he'll have to live without one until his new one arrives. He tried to justify this incident by saying that he's had it for 1 1/2 years so he needed a new one. That he needed to replace his perfectly fine iPod anyway (?) Psh, I've had my Creative Zen Vision: M for at least 6 years! I've also had the same cell phone for almost 5 and my (crappy) laptop for over 4. So clearly we don't share the same philosophy on replacing electronics.

He's not really careful with anything so we'll see how long this one lasts...

Our electricity usage for April. Can you tell when my husband came back?

I try really hard to use minimal electricity. If I'm not using something then it's unplugged. We live in military housing and this year they set an electricity limit. If you're under you either get a check or credit in case you go over another month. If you're over you have to pay. The gap in which you don't owe or get anything back is really generous! I would have to work hard using electricity to just get into the gap so I can't imagine how people can go over.

At the end of April I logged onto the website to see how much we'd get back. Nevermind that I said I wanted checks and they're still giving me credit : / +$100 credit is pretty worthless! Anyway the yellow line represents our usage.

I couldn't help but laugh. You can tell when my husband got back from his underway: April 14th. He was able to make it incline that much and there's days when he's not even here. He has duty every 4 days so he doesn't come home after work and stays on the sub overnight. One of those days was the 18th... where it levels a little on the chart, hehe.