I spent the past couple of days without internet and it really demoralized me. I'm still not entirely sure how we fixed it, so I'm just going to try not to touch the cable modem for the moment. Don't want to jinx it. I was sure we were going to have to buy a new one.

You know, I had said to myself I was going to get back into The Sims 2, but I was not ready yet, so I didn't. I'm just relieved. Need to catch up on a few streaming shows.

Hmmm. What will show up? I ordered pig / chinchilla treats, but it sez this is parakeet food. I haven't purchased parakeet food 15 times as we don't have any and when we did more than 10 years ago, I didn't have a Amazon account.

This is not the first weird thing that has happened this week with Amazon.

I got a email about some socks I ordered last month. They're socks, its all good. The email stated that my refund was denied for said socks because the item returned didn't match. I never asked for a refund for the socks. You do you, Amazon. Deny a refund that was never requested. It was the sweatpants I ordered with the socks I returned which and they gave me a full refund for because they sent the wrong size.

Who is running Amazon? Are the clankers taking over? The more people tell me they don't mess with AI, the less I believe them. This crap is everywhere...

EDIT: The pigs and Sterling will be happy. We didn't end up with 10 pounds of parakeet seed.

Supposedly my new office windows are going to be here next week. Originally I thought the big box store screwed up the order and they did, just not in the way I thought. I thought the manufacturer built the windows the wrong size, nope. The big box store didn't put the order in, at all. They had no problem taking our money, but decided not to do their job after that. Our contractor called me all kinds of pissed off when he found out what happened. He wasn't mad at us, although he's still not thrilled I didn't go up one side and down the other of the manager that didn't do their job. I was told the other day that if the store screws up again, I am to rip them a new one. His words, not mine.

Our contractor is a nice guy, but he does draw lines in the sand and not ordering windows after they've been paid for is one of them. That isn't a unreasonable expectation.

Either after or before the new windows are put in, some interior doors are going to be replaced. Currently we have the ugly, flat, no character interior doors from the 70s. The door to the The Boys' room took a beating when we had cats many moons ago. They would want to get into his to room, so they tore up the bottom of the door from scratching at it. I miss our cats, but I don't miss that kind of stuff. Then there is the issue of office closet doors.

There used to be bi-fold doors for the closet. There were removed after the doors kept coming off the track or they'd get stuck. They were more of a PITA than what they were worth. Not having the doors makes the room look bigger than it is, but it is time to bring the doors back. I don't care that my space is a tiny hole in the wall. The only person in this room most of the time is me which I share with the dogs. They have their pile of blankets on the floor, but they prefer to sleep near my chair so I can tell them to move what feels like 100 times so their toes don't get squashed by a wheel of my chair.

All that to say, I need to start packing up my office. The computers will moved later in the week, but the rest of the stuff can be put in boxes or something. There is going to be dust everywhere and I don't feel like spending more time cleaning up afterwards than I have to. If nothing else, maybe this will spark more decluttering because whatever I move, I have to put it back.

It has been one of those weeks and it is only Wednesday.

Hubby was supposed to call the contractor yesterday for the price of materials to have the interior doors replaced. (We pay our contractor in cash. I like to have the money on hand.) He didn't do it. He got busy, forgot about it, whatever. It still made me mad as I sat around all day waiting for this information. I need to stop doing that. I've spent over a month sitting around waiting for people to get back to me for one thing or another. It never works out.

Contractor called this morning stating my office windows are in transit. Doesn't know if they'll be here by the end of the week or not. Whatever. Then there was a big discussion over whether anything should get done this week. Yeah, no. The doors and trim are stock material. There is no excuse not to get at least that project done and out of the way. I asked for a price, that required yet another phone call. I finally have the number that I was supposed to get yesterday. Technically I should have had this amount last week, but give a inch, take a foot.

Last night I decided I was going play my game. Nope! Denied! I was allowed to play for about 10 minutes before the game would shut down. Deleted a few things, nothing changed, so I gave up and went to bed. This morning my game was still squirrel-y even after swapping out the mods folder from one computer to another. Deleted the save that was giving me a hard time and now my game is fine. I don't know WTF the problem was, but I'm going on a remove / delete mission later today.

I let my game run without touching or doing anything other than moving the camera to find something interesting to look at. Here's what I came across...



Ma'am...nah!

While I'm trying to type this, my stupid phone won't stop ringing. It is a sign to STFU and get off the computer.

Today I reinstalled my mom's old laptop, because it was literally crying for a help and she refuses to buy new one.

​Her laptop is an early 2010's budget model with pretty weak hardware, even for its era. It has a dual-core 1.3 GHz CPU with integrated graphics and 4 GB DDR3 memory, but recently the HDD got replaced with a SATA SSD (the first upgrade since it was bought).
​Sadly, the CPU is soldered to the motherboard, and it's impossible to replace it with a more powerful one without a person who will be qualified to do so. The RAM can be upgraded to 8 GB, but it probably won't make a significant impact. Even with the faster storage disk, with this weak hardware, it was still struggling (Idk why she installed Window 10 on it in the first place).
​
I replaced it with a OS which is made for old machines. After the installation, both the laptop and I got some relief from Microsoft's slop . The thing I have to do now is to learn how to use Linux, because this is actually my first time using it, and yes, I have to teach my mom too.

The other thing is that the keyboard must be replaced, because some buttons are not working - it's normal, because so many years have passed plus laptop keyboards are more fragile and wear out faster. The replacement keyboard probably will be hard to find because of the laptop's age. For now I will try to use keyboard for desktop PC till I replace it. The screen must be replaced if possible, because it's awful. The fan also must be replaced because it's worn off and pretty noisy.

I'm really sad today. We had to put our beloved 16 year old dog Taz down yesterday. We loved him so much and I feel so guilty, he was showing early signs of cancer and if left untreated would have been in a lot of pain. We could either pay £500 to run a bunch of tests and then possibly even more depending on treatment, or £365 to have him put to sleep. I feel really horrible, but at the same time having him go through all the treatment, spend loads of money and for him to still pass of old age anyway would be heartbreaking. We had to cancel our holiday at the end of August just to afford to put him down, but the vet was nice and said she would cremate him seperately at no extra cost. He hated other dogs, so the idea of his final resting place to be mixed with them like is usual practice upset me.

We took him in yesterday at 10:30, after he had a wonderful big breakfast (plain chicken, sausage, boiled eggs, rice, carrots and apple) and he passed peacefully surrounded by me, my husband and our children. I called off work for the next 2 days. My husband had him since he was a small puppy. His Dad and Step-Mum had found a dog and her litter on the side of the road abandoned and taken them in. They kept the Mum (Tess), and her pups eventually got sold, apart from the runt of the litter who was very sickly, with a bad skin condition and noticable skinnier than the rest of the other dogs. He did really well considering he had such a difficult beginning. It was clear he bonded with my husband, so when he moved out of his Dad's house a year later, Taz came with him. I met my husband 6 years later and he's been our dog ever since.

I will miss him so much

It has been a long day. Contractor was here at 7:00 AM as promised. The new windows are in. It no longer sounds like traffic is driving through my office. I'm going to be finding drywall dust for the next couple of weeks all over the place, but I can clean in silence if I want to. I'm glad I packed most of my stuff in boxes. I don't miss much of what I packed, so it may be time to let stuff go.

The new doors are going in tomorrow. I swear the people that built this house were taking drugs and or drinking. They hung the interior doors, then put down the flooring down so there is a gap which will have to to be dealt with as the door frame was part of the floor. Then the door sizes from the same room are also different by a 1/8th of a inch. I'm not surprised as the hallway is wider at one end than the other, but still.

@Bigsimsfan12 I'm sorry for your loss. Sending all the hugs.