Thursday, July 27, 2006

Blog Problems (message from your friendly blogger)

July 27, 2006

Hey, computers are great when they work right, right? Right. Well, my AOL software finally went south late last night, and I ended up reinstalling it (which I really should have done MONTHS ago when it first started acting up) -- TWICE! Once to get the version that was on the old CD-ROM that I found in my desk drawer, and again to download the version I had been using -- the current version (AOL 9.0 SE). I went to bed and let it download itself (yeah, I'm still on dial-up), since it took all night (or so it seemed). Anyway, I'm up and running again, but things always come in threes, you know.

The second problem is my blog. Every so often it acts up at the host site, which is what it's doing now. The little tool bar is missing at the moment, so until their engineers get it back on there, I have no control over stuff like font type, size & color, or being able to do boldface, italics, upload pictures, etc. I just tried out one article, the one on the origin of ORTA, and it seemed to come out OK -- nothing weird, like font so tiny that you can't see anything but straight lines, or captions so big that the words get all jumbled together and overlap. Weird things happen all the time to test my ingenuity. After the nine+ months I've been doing this, new glitches are STILL occurring on a regular basis. Anyway, I just wanted to warn you, in case something comes out looking really strange. Hopefully it won't, but if it does, I'll try to get back in there later on, when it's fixed, to straighten it out.

The third thing? Just my car. Nothing huge, but problems always occur at the most inconvenient times. When I ran one of my harps up to Lakeside on Tuesday (to leave at Hoover Auditorium; my second harp will accompany me & a vanload of music, strings, bench, music stand, tuners and all the stuff I need for living in a rental cottage for a month this weekend), I noticed my AC wasn't working up to snuff in the 86° heat, and it was time for an oil change. Since my Olds dealership of 40 years finally bit the dust in April (in Alliance), I've felt like an orphan. Then I found out my ProCare place in Westerville had morphed into Monro Muffler & Brake (& Service). I decided to give them a try anyway, and boy, am I glad.

I was there several hours this morning, chatting with some neat women who were having their cars serviced; the guys were great, intelligent, didn't talk down to me, showed me the filthy filters, etc., explained stuff to me and didn't pressure me. Ended up with a new battery (the other was the original, 3+ years old, nearly 80,000 miles -- yes, I'm on the road a lot), new air intake filters, charged up AC, and oil change. And all at a reasonable price. When I drove out of there, I felt like I was floating on a cloud, my car handled so beautifully ('02 Olds Silhouette minivan); it felt almost like a brand new car again.

So my blog is the least of my problems. As long as I can keep it chugging along, and you guys bear with me, everything will be fine. Thanks again for hanging in there. I will have computer access at least several times a week in Lakeside (no phone line in my rental cottage, but the Lakeside board seriously wants to make Lakeside wireless; no telling how soon that will happen), so I will keep up with this as I can. Here's the Lakeside website: http://www.lakesideohio.com/ (sorry it didn't show up as a live link -- you'll need to copy & paste); I'll be playing in the Lakeside Symphony, which I've played in almost every season since it started in 1964 (this is my 40th). Here's our concert schedule, in case you're in the area sometime and would like to check us out: http://www.lakesideohio.com/ArtsEntertainment/
HooverAuditorium.aspx

Hope the rest of your summer goes well; keep cool, and be healthy -- and keep those guys honest down at STRS!

Kathie Bracy
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