I Blame Mercury!

by Tawny



Ooooh, boy, this has been one stressful month! And it's not even at the halfway point, yet - that scares me a little. There have been house stresses and kid stresses and writing stresses. You know, the usual life stuff. And I'm pretty good at (or immune to) rolling along with those stresses. But it's the technology stresses that wipe me out!



I'm blaming Mercury. The planet, not the element. Mercury went into retrograde on August 3. Now, please don't think me a fatalist who hands my world over to my horoscope, or someone who plans my life around the traveling of the stars. I don't. Usually things like this barely make a bleep on my radar. But this month... oh boy!



First my daughter's laptop went klaboom. It'd been on it's last legs for awhile and I'd tried various repairs, but it was beyond help at this point. Because we use the laptop for homeschool (most of our curriculum is computer based) her having a computer is mandatory. And I don't share mine, so it had to be either a new laptop, or giving her mine. I figured, hey, I use the iPad more than the laptop these days - mostly it's become a glorified backup for documents and photos. So I wiped the harddrive, loaded her school software and handed it over.



Then my computer started glitching. It would freeze. It would lose information. I began writing with the thumbdrive in the usb slot, backing up every couple of paragraphs... just in case. Needless to say this didn't do much for my writing production. My PC is 6 years old. Not aged by any means, but given the usage and the fact that I never turn it off (hey, it might not turn back on!) I figured I'd check with geeks smarter than I for advice. The advice? Start looking for a new computer.



That was another adventure. I finally decided on a laptop instead of a PC, but to get a docking station. This will, in theory, streamline my computing and make life easier and faster and better. We will see. Because the laptop is backordered and I won't have it until the end of the month.



sigh.



Then my website crashed. Bigtime crashed. It was having minor issues anyway, and my host suggested upgrading. Sure-go for it. Except the upgrade resulted in 2 weeks of stress and lack of website love. It's almost fixed. Or, at least, it's loading again which is a major improvement (and a credit to my awesome webchick, not to me or Mercury).



Okay. So, again, I'm not blaming the planet's retrograde for all my woes. Not really. But I am waiting to sign my new contract until after Mercury goes direct. No point in tempting fate, right?



So... whats your take on the sneaky influence of the planets? Do you check your horoscope? Is it ever right? And how about Mercury? Do you believe in the influence of a retrograde? And have you had any technological woes in the last 2 weeks??? It can't be just me!