Anyway … the other day I was speaking with my sister and we talked about going out one weekend to take photographs around the city. My sister used to be an artist but because of recent health problems she really hasn’t been sketching or painting so I suggested that she might be able to express herself through photograph and she seemed to like that idea.

This past weekend I pulled out one of my older digital cameras – a Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 and I discovered that it had a problem. At first, once I’d put in new batteries, the LED screen would flash on for a moment with the message – “Lens cap still on” – and I’d remove the lens cap and the power would go off on the camera. The lens wouldn’t extend out or move in anyway and the LED screen wouldn’t come on with the lens cap off and it wouldn’t do much with the lens cap on either.

After a lot of research on the internet I finally discovered a a page that suggested that I plug in the cameras AV connection so that the LED screen wouldn’t turn on when I pressed the power button and that that would give more power to the lens motor. I tried it and the lens extended but then the power shut off again and I couldn’t get it to retract! I’d read on several pages to try tapping the lens or gently twisting it to the right to get it retract so I tried that many times and after two days of trying the lens went back in .. but still, the led screen won’t work. Now I’m thinking that it might be one of the retaining rings or the internal battery in the camera.

OR … I just don’t know … maybe I won’t get this camera working again. I’d like to. It took great pictures and it was an expensive camera back when I originally bought it. It would be nice to get some more use out of it or at least to see if my sister might enjoy photography as much as I do.

If anyone has any ideas as to how to fix this cameras lens and led screen problem I’d love to hear your suggestions. I really don’t want to take it to a camera store or back to Sony as that would probably be very expensive.

Naturally once everything was updated I decided to explore all of the new features that were now on my cellphone. It’s a Nokia N8 BTW and it just got Symbian Anna. I know there’s yet another update that some people are getting but it’s not in my area yet.

The new maps are very cool so I decided to try them out when I was walking the dog. It was a very cold day so the gps was a little slow calculating my route when I made turns that it didn’t anticipate but otherwise it worked great. I really hadn’t used that feature or the maps for driving before, but I should because, well with this phone I don’t need a separate GPS navigation device.

Now I want to find new apps to download onto my phone. I was looking at an app that’s similar to Instagram earlier today that I might put on my phone. Watch my tweets for some cool pictures soon!

Have you investigated all of the cool features on your smartphone? There’s just so much stuff isn’t there?

Actually it’s very old it needs a lot of things but the least I can do for it is take a look for some hp batteries and see if I can find one that works for that model.

I’d actually love to do an upgrade on that laptop and get it working properly again so I’d have two laptops that I could truly count on, but as I said that laptop that I’m talking about is kind of old and I’m not sure that it’s worth putting too much into it. Hmmm maybe Santa will bring me a new laptop?

On Tuesday the sidewalk right in front of our house was torn up with one of those big hammer drills. Our whole house shook like crazy! Luckily it only took about fifteen minutes for them to finish. Then … once they removed the broken concrete they cleared the area and at about 4:30 pm they put in new cement and smoothed it out and moved on to other areas.

Before they left the neighborhood they blocked things off with wooded blockades and put canvas over the wet cement but by 8 pm – only about an hour after the guys had left the area someone walked in all the wet cement in front of my house and apparent all down the street (doing the twist in the cement) mucking it all up. Who does that? So it’s all ruined! So I guess maybe tomorrow I’ll have another hammer drill making noise in front of my house again.

Now the sidewalk in front of my house is only partly useable because of the mucked up footprints in the cement. All the little kids parading by with their cute little personalized lunch boxes are having trouble walking on it. I hope they fix it soon.

I thought I’d finally figured out what was wrong and fixed it completely two days ago and then I got the black screen of death and audioses.dll error messages. Now I’m working with my old laptop which is slow as molasses, but still faster than my “new” laptop which takes 45 minutes to load. I’ve been trying to fix the audioses.dll driver problem … but if I can’t get it fixed in the next two hours or so I think I’m going to finally give in and wipe the hard drive and re-install windows.

I’m so thankful that I made recovery disks when the new Laptop arrived back in February! I just hope that they work!

Man if I were a drinker (I’m not I’m not!) I think I’d be looking for some effective alcohol rehab treatment centers!

Seriously … I’m surprised that I’m not bald and that I’m still sane after the week I’ve had trying to fix my computer. When my husband came home yesterday after being out of town for three days he asked me how he could help and I told him he could help me roll the car over and over the laptop. Yes at that point I was losing it … but the black screen of death had just made it’s first appearance after I thought I’d fixed the computer once and for all so I think that was understandable.

Wish me luck on fixing the computer!

I have a desktop computer and two laptops and I love them … but I don’t find my laptop that portable. Now compared to a desktop why yes it is portable .. but it’s still heavy and bulky to bring along, especially on small trips about town.

So … I’ve been trying to do some research as to what are the best netbooks and then comparing them to an iPad and other tablet types. As you can tell, tablet wise I think I’m more of an iPad person, the others just came along too late – although I might still be able to have my mind changed after more research.

That’s one thing about me, usually before I go out and spend hundreds of dollars on an item I do everything from price comparisons to reading reviews online and otherwise. I want to get the best product for my money.

If you were trying to decide between a netbook and a tablet which would you be more likely to buy?

The Blackberry arrived at my house on Monday, but since I don’t want a data plan I can’t even get the Wifi to work because it’s not free with the Blackberry. So … I’m returning the Blackberry and I guess I’ll be picking out another phone or maybe evening buying another phone elsewhere. I was even looking at this incredible s phone that might suit my needs – it’s an HTC … but I’d probably need a Data plan with it, so I’ll have to check that out.

Right now I’m seriously thinking about turning in the Blackberry and getting a Nokia N8 or a Samsung Colby Pro. I’m leaning more towards the Nokia. Does anyone have experience with either of these phones or have any other suggestions … keep in mind that I likely won’t be getting a data plan with the phone but I’d like to take advantage of being able to use Wifi if an when it’s available.

At the rate they’re going their house won’t be finished for about five years!

Right now they have no walls inside, or well just frames and as I said they’re going at a snail pace so it doesn’t seem like they’ll be moving in any time soon. I guess it’s a good thing his parents don’t seem to mind them living with them!

I was talking with the woman and she was telling me that there were going to eventually put in a laminate flooring called armstrong grand illusions. It looks nice. I’m sure their house will be very nice once they get everything done, but as I said, it’s taking forever. I was looking forward to having new neighbors, last year, but … I’m going to have to wait a long time before that happens!

I was up late on Thursday night … I guess that would make it early Friday morning and I was sorting some music in iTunes and syncing it with the iPod when I got a message asking if I wanted to upgrade to the new O.S.. I said yes, but as it turned out … at that time of night (3 AM) I probably shouldn’t have!

Everything seemed to be going ok at first, but just as the upgrade seemed to be nearing completion an error message came up and the ipod screen seemed stuck with a picture of a USB cord and and the iTunes logo. When I unhooked the USB I couldn’t turn the iPod back on, nothing would happen at all and when I’d hook it back up to the computer via the USB I’d get that same usb itunes image again and nothing else. Also, the ipod wasn’t showing up as being attached in itunes.

I restarted itunes, I restarted my computer, I spent literally hours pouring over support and help pages at Apple and finally after hooking the iPod up to my other laptop at about 8:30 Friday morning did I finally get a message via the iTunes on my old Laptop that stated that my iPod needed to be restored.

Sigh … by the time I finally got my lump of an iPod working again it was about 9:30 in the morning and I’d been up for over 24 hours! Believe me I was more than ready to hit the mattress … trouble was I was so hyped up after not having my iPod work and also after watching all the stuff about the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan that I had some trouble getting to sleep.

Anyway … you’d think that Apple would make sure that an OS upgrade would go smoothly .. I mean my laptop is only a month old and all the software on it is up to date so that wasn’t the problem! Grrrrr! Hopefully the next time I have to upgrade it goes better … I certainly won’t do it in the middle of the night.

I find TV shows like Flipping out, Marriage Under Construction, Homes Inspection and any DIY shows interesting.

My husband and I are home renovators. Well … stalled home renovators. We currently have an unfinished living room dining room ceiling and need to finish the wall (currently open and covered by plastic!) that runs between the basement stairs and the dining room. Its been that way for oh .. about … four or more years.

I did say we were stalled in our home renovations didn’t I?

The only good thing about taking our time renovating is that I’ve had tons of time to come up with renovating and design ideas and plenty of time to see what ideas have stuck through the years. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to put in the all glass brick wall between the basement stairs and dining room anymore … you see what a few years to think about things can do?

I’m hoping we’ll put on our renovating hats again in a few months .. I really want to finish our living room dining room. All we really have to do to finish the reno job is put up the tin ceiling, maybe add in monte carlo fans in the living room for cooling, put up molding and baseboards and then work on some new furnishings – possibly.

Are any of you stalled DIY’ers? If so … what did you do to get yourself motivated again?