"All My Things Are Breakin'"

[kentauros]

That's the title of a country song I know (not aired on the radio that I'm aware) and seems appropriate here ;)

First off, my modem had been acting up and finally decided it wasn't going to connect any more. I'll be calling my ISP tonight (their hours for support are too short, and not 24/7, but they're a better ISP than the big guys.) Hopefully, it's on their end instead of mine. Because if my modem is junk, then it really is junk, as it's only 6 months (or less) old! Then again, it also never would connect with my wireless card while that continues to pick up several wireless networks in the neighborhood. Won't be getting that brand again! (Net Gear)

So, with the modem crapped out, I discovered that my computer then wouldn't boot up. Or maybe it would. I couldn't tell because there was never anything on the screen. It looked like it was doing something, but still nothing. The "fix" for that is if I unplug the computer and then turn the switch on, it loads fine, but it doesn't if I have it load the "normal" way.

As I couldn't do much with my computer and modem acting up, I tried watching TV. "Tried". I had noticed the DVR freezing from time to time in recent weeks, and it had outright frozen on live TV the other day when I was trying to watch "Shutter Island" for the first time. It's freezing got so annoying, that I then shut it off. (Each time I had to unplug the unit to get it to accept any command, whether from the remote or the front panel.)

So last night, I start watching the latest of Top Gear (I know, it's not really the latest, but I'm too lazy to find the torrents and can't get them anyway at the moment) and the episode then freezes while they're in an Italian city trying to get out. I unplug it and plug it back in. It sits there, going through the "finding satellite connections" or whatever that screen is. Okay, fine. I know that stuff and leave it alone. 20 minutes later, it's still on #2 out of 5! No-o, that's not normal. After several unpluggings, I gave up and went to bed. Now I have two tech support units to call tonight. Oy!

Is there something astrological going on that I might know about if my eyes didn't glass over every time some of y'all start to talk? :p I need an explanation that's "jargon-free" or I really won't get what you mean. Astronomy I get, but not astrology. But I do recognize that there are things it covers that affect things the way I'm currently experiencing them.

[kimmerspixelated]

1. I can certainly relate.

Almost everything I attempted this month, to finish , complete, repair, take care of, etc., etc.,ended in fail.

[kentauros]

9. I wish I could upload that song I referenced

because it's funny and we can all relate. Anything to help get through this, and funny is always good :D

As much as we know that all things to do with communication are basically screwed-up this month, we still have to do them because they need to be done now, whether they work or not. Frustration squared!

[shanti]

2. +1

car wouldn't start this morning, and neither would my propane bbq or ceiling fan. :( that's three.

[kentauros]

10. When the car doesn't start, that's one of my biggest frustrations, too.

Here's a stanza or refrain or paragraph or whatever from that song, "All My Things Are Breakin'":

"When my day is done I get in my truck,
I'm feelin' tired and sick.
I turn the key and the only sound
Is a sad and lonely 'click'!"

I've heard that "sad and lonely click" before and it always cracks me up, because that's exactly what it's like! lol You can't do anything about it other than have it towed at that point or do it yourself if you have all day (replacing a starter is an all-day job.)

I hope your things are okay now, or soon will be if not now :hi:

[shanti]

13. thanks, i needed that!

:hi: i purchased one of those little jump starter thingies and am planning to fire it up in a few minutes. hope things are going well with you too!

[kentauros]

14. You're welcome!

:D

Things are getting better. We'll see if I can still say that when I get off work at 8pm tonight (13 hours at the office, one hour for lunch. Repeat tomorrow.) ;)

Good luck with your jump-starter :hi:

[Ricochet21]

3. It's the after-effects of Mercury Retrograde

Should straighten out pretty soon

[lildreamer316]

4. Oh yes. Me too.

My tv in bedroom died completely. I was having very similar DVR issues also. I was very frustrated for the last two days.

[kentauros]

11. In my situation, it might have all been due to 'bad' electricity.

Check your outlets. Bad or no grounding can cause some problems. That and power spikes. I asked the service guy about getting a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and he said it could help, other than the grounding issue.

If you can move your DVR to another TV, do that and watch everything you haven't yet seen, as I point out below.

Maybe we can also use this thread to show what we've gotten fixed, replaced, or just started working again as if nothing happened :7

[lildreamer316]

17. My cell phone lost the connection to the router..

..so I had hella time making calls in the house.

Lost my car key right off the keychain somewhere between the register and the car at the grocery. In the rain. 20 min to find it..in the bottom of my purse.

Kitten fell behind water heater; 30 min of effort and lots of loud meowing to rescue him.

I did get the tv situation worked out,but what a pain.

Had received a letter that a payment had bounced two weeks ago...called about it today, they said everything was fine. ??!!

Bathroom overhead fluorescent light was flickering for two days..now it's fine.

Tires on car are bald..only on ONE side. Have had car checked, nothing wrong to cause such wear. ??!!

Have major issues with a check coming in that needs to clear on tues but may not because of labor day..crossing fingers on that one.

Husband has company scooter to use in Raleigh for transport; it died on him the other day. Two days later it started right back up as if nothing had ever happened.

etc. and etc. ...LOL.

[eilen]

5. I'm in printer/scanner limbo now

Waiting for Merc to be less...well... moody.

[marions ghost]

6. Mercury Retrograde

I'm starting to believe in it...

Things break, esp to do with communication, past things come up again, plans are dramatically thwarted in some way.

This was a classic, difficult Mercury Retrograde for me and others around me.

[MagickMuffin]

7. My HEART

Yes, on a personal level I would like to say that my dream job that I finally got the opportunity to interview for just got filled by someone else. :cry:


I did have some electronic problems, but my Heart is the most devastating thing to me.

[kentauros]

8. Mostly positive update :)

I'm back online, tentatively. That is, while my phone-line is back on again, it's full of static. Severe static. So much static, that at times you can't hear the dial tone. And that messes with the DSL and the connection. Fun! :P

It appears that my phone line has a target painted on it. For the last six years or so, every time a new tenant moves in and gets phone service, when they are hooked up, I am "unhooked". At least three times in the last six years, if not four times (can't remember exactly.) Predictably, there's static on the line that has to be rectified the next day, with another service call. And I'm assuming it will get fixed this time, too.

The DVR had to be replaced. Thus, everything I had recorded (and those movies/shows not yet watched) is gone. Easy come, easy go. ~sigh~

My computer is still having problems booting. When I called the repair place (same guys that built my computer) the voicemail said the inbox was full. I know their sign was gone from their building a few months back, but didn't think they were out of business (they've often had "difficulties" business-wise.) They may be and I'll have to find a new place. They did great service; I'd sure like to be able to contact them again...

I discovered from the satellite serviceman (a nice guy and knew his job well) as well as from the onsite handyman that while the electrical outlets here are three-prong plugs, there is no ground. It seems that in the late 50s or early 60s, when these apartments were built, they didn't ground outlets. And there's no way to ground them, either.

It may be related, but for the complex tonight, two tenants have no a/c, the electricity is out in the laundry room, and other than one lone porch light, the rest are off, constantly trying to flicker on.

Lost a day's work, but I did get some naps in, so that's good :7

Thank you, Rick for succinctly explaining what's going on. I didn't mean to sound rude if it might have come out that way in my OP. I appreciate what you can do, even if I can't understand much of it :)

I'll get to everyone else as my connection allows (it's taken over an hour to get this post up...)

[kentauros]

12. More weirdness/communication issues.

The person that's our 'lead' in our group is also whom I contact if any of us will be out of the office and so forth. So, I emailed her from my phone, through Gmail on Tuesday night. I never got a reply on Wednesday, so I assumed she was just too busy all day to reply. That's both understandable and acceptable. I never phoned because I knew the email had gone through (didn't bounce) and I've sent emails home through it (this is the first phone I've ever had that allowed me some kind of decent Internet and email service.)

She never got the email, even though I made sure it was addressed to both the new and old domain names (our company changed names earlier this year.) I checked my phone and there's no record of the emails being sent, nothing in the outbox waiting to be sent, and nothing in her spam folder. The connection is fine from my phone. A test email just went home okay. And this building is notorious for blocking cell phone signals!

I will be very happy when this weirdness is over! Can we build a Faraday shield against Mercury Retrograde? :P

[Ricochet21]

20. It's all good

I try to make it understandable, quite a challenge.

[woodsprite]

15. CPU power supply, washing machine, and ice maker troubles here. n/t

[hermetic]

16. For me it was a mailbox

A snail-mail box. Fell right over, splat. Glad it didn't fall on me, it was heavy. I'm on a rural road so it was on a big, old wooden post which had rotted at the bottom. Now I'm scrambling to find a new one and have to stand outside and wait for the mailman to hand the mail to me each day until I can get it replaced. Weird.

[MorningGlow]

18. Mine was alarming

I'm taking a short break from querying agents for my novel, and I had a pretty large balance from an iTunes gift card, so I decided to rent some fairly recent movies I'd never gotten a chance to see. I did that for a few days, then I went to log on to download another couple of movies I thought of, and I got a message that my account was disabled "for security purposes" and to please change my password. Hmmmm.

Did that, rented the movies, and logged off, intending to watch them later. Logged back on later that day, and I got the same message. Changed my password AGAIN. But I got to thinking--why would it do that? So I checked my credit card account assigned to iTunes, and I found two $1.00 charges on it that I didn't make. (I'm still burning drawing off the gift card.)

Yipe! Mr. MG said that sometimes hackers do small "test" charges to check the validity of a credit card account before they, you know, charge up a storm, so I got REALLY alarmed. I called the credit card company and they were really nice (even though they're Bank of America LOL) and flagged the account to let me know if there were any more weird charges from iTunes on it, but they couldn't dispute the $1.00 charges because they were still pending (hadn't cleared yet).

I tried to contact Apple, but of course you can't get a human being. The closest I got was an e-mail Q&A, so I wrote to them. I got two e-mails back, neither one with any explanation that pertained to my situation. They said that the $1.00 charges were from Apple, temporary authorization charges because I either changed my billing information or hadn't been on iTunes recently (neither one was true in my case). They promised the charges would not go through and would be removed within a week or two. Uh huh. LIKE I TRUST ANYBODY AT THIS POINT!
:rofl:

So I changed my password a THIRD time to something completely unlike the previous ones, and now I visit the B of A Web site to check my credit card account every day, just in case.

Modern technology...grumble grumble grumble... :banghead:

[southerncrone]

19. Yep. Breakin' down here, too.

We had the same TV problem as yours a few weeks ago. Ended up they moved our dish (Dish TV) closer to our house, plus replaced a 20 yr old cable. That fixed it. We were afraid we'd have to get a new box or dish. Got lucky on that one.

Our HVAC system condenser crapped our during the first 100+ heat wave this summer.
My husband's recliner broke thru the seat.
Both of our air purifiers stopped working the same week.
My daughter's netbook crapped out.

Hoping this is it, but holding our breath that we can catch a break from the breaking!

[Kookaburra]

21. It's like an epidemic

My wireless router died last Tuesday, then today my iPhone decided it no longer wanted to show its touch screen.

Annoying!

[Why Syzygy]

22. Other than

crappy Time Warner cable performance for the last couple/three weeks, I've been able to skate this one.

Not so my house host. He doesn't carry a cell phone. So he walked home from the grocery yesterday to get
me to go back and give his truck a jump.

TODAY: The AC unit stopped blowing. That last time this happened I just turned it off for a while and it
came back on later. I'm the only one working on this. He is watching sports and working his puzzle.
I happen to enjoy resolving issues! And I ADORE having cold air in the house :P :argh:

[Why Syzygy]

23. wow - but get this!

I fixed the AC. All good on that front.

Something I find amazing: I made online purchases for a few things yesterday. One of them already shipped! Yesterday!
Same day as order. I found this neat place to order incense. The Tara really has helped me when I felt down.
http://www.thebuddhagarden.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=The-Buddha-Garden&AFFIL=93525
(Just in case it matters, I originally found the Tara at the New Age Bookstore in Austin.)

Another order was shipped TODAY! This is unheard of in my experience. I ordered through amazon.com and it was
shipped by Vitamin Shoppe.

Good ole' Mercury seems to be zooming the same direction I'm moving! I'll take it :P

I'm still expecting two more orders. *woot* I love shopping online.

[Ricochet21]

24. I think we have till the 10th until Mercury Rx finally gets sane again

then it will be back at the point at which it stopped to go retrograde. I'm having the same nutso experiences too.
Another week.

[kimmerspixelated]

25. Explain..."Nutso"

:smoke: :evilgrin:

[Ricochet21]

27. Well, it's kind of like a nut, so, it cracks

sometimes it tastes good, but most of the time you wish it hadn't cracked because you have been trying so hard to "keep it together"

Any clearer?

Also, for sure, it depends on what kind of nut it is.

[kimmerspixelated]

29. Richochet Riddler!

:rofl: :hi:

[murielm99]

26. Not too many things broken here...

except for my finger. A window fell on it. Actually, the window caught the tips of the fingers on both hands, but only the middle finger on my left hand got broken.

This happened a week ago, and it still hurts like hell.

[Ricochet21]

28. Ouch, sorry!

[arikara]

30. til the 10th you say

I don't think we can take much more. Washing machine broke and replaced, element in stove literally blew up, it blew out fuses and stove clock. Probably have to replace stove because self clean oven won't work now and my lungs won't take the chemical option. Had to take fridge apart to tighten fan but it is still rattling when it wants to. Engine light won't go off on the truck even though a few things have been changed. Nor will the air bag light. Bathroom sink clogged but instead of water slowing down it just ran out under the sink, not enough to show just enough to sit there and make a mess. Front steps... replaced, back deck... replaced (that was the only thing that was planned), the Mr forgot to latch the gate and a deer got into the garden last night. I'm sure there was more but that's enough.

This has been one mean Mercury retrograde indeed.

[WhiteTara]

31. Mine too. How do you unjam a garbage disposal

I have this tool and have no idea how to use it. We had a power outage and I forgot to turn off the disposal. During the blackout, a plastic measuring spoon fell down the ook hole unbeknownst to me. When the electricoty spiked on, it ground the spoon, but jammed the disposal. Now the sink is a mess a day later. Sigh. Just one more thing.

[kentauros]

32. Sorry to bump this up again, but there was a "burp" in electronics problems...

That is, what I thought was a major problem with my computer (motherboard gone out or one of the PCI slots) was in fact something so simple that I feel like an idiot! :P

This past weekend I decided now was the time to upgrade my RAM and get another big (terabyte) external drive. I did just that, putting my new ram in place and reorganizing all of my USB-based peripherals. Spent an hour just getting all that under-table wiring bundled and in good order. Turn on the computer, and no picture on my monitor. Okay, I guessed the video-card had finally gone out as I heard the computer boot up and go through its paces like normal (not entirely like normal, but I'm getting to that.)

I drove back to Microcenter, bought a new video-card, and learned from the salesman that I would have to check my power supply (PSU) for wattage. It appears that the new cards use even more power while promoting themselves as "energy efficient". It was too late in the evening to buy a new power supply if I needed it, but I didn't think I did. The card needed a minimum of 400 watts, and I knew from the last upgrade my computer had been given a much more powerful PSU. Of course, it figures that it was rated at 380-watts. 20 watts short! Naturally, when the monitor came on this time and only posted a little screen-saver pop-up stating simply "Check Cable Signal" I thought it meant that the card wasn't getting enough power to actually work. Spent the evening watching "Miracle Day" and episodes of "House". At least that endeavor was enjoyable.

Slept in on Sunday just because I didn't want to go through more headache, even if I was anticipating success. Got a new PSU on my third trip, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to install. I might be able to build my own computer next time at this rate! :) Well, we'll see about that :P

And, same pop-up on the monitor, no-go on the card. Okay, finally it clicked: "Check Cable Signal". The cable! Of course! That was the problem all along, even if I've never had a cable fail. But I remembered the mention earlier here about a coax-cable failure that produced the same DVR troubles I had. So maybe a monitor cable that was a few years old could fail. I was thankful that when I went back a fourth time for the weekend that the salesman listened to me and recommended a shorter cable for my needs (3' instead of 6') so I saved ten bucks. Or not. Didn't work either.

So, I spent another evening watching TV, figuring I could ask around at work the next day. The IT guy was too busy yesterday, apologizing for not getting back to me (he's a good IT guy.) I wrote him a (much) shorter version of this when I got here today. Because after getting home last evening and rebooting my computer with the HDMI cable to my TV (the new video-card has that capability) and still getting the same results, I decided to start checking the connections, power connectors first. All were fine, even the 4-pin connector to the motherboard (that one's important.) Then I pulled out the ram just to check it and put it back in. Only the little clips on the side weren't "clicking" against the sides of the ram cards. That wasn't right. pulled them out again, checked their seating in the slots, and pressed a little harder.

~Click~
Yeah, one of those 'moments'