Death and Taxes

Are they really the only two sure things in life? Nope~there are so many more than that!! Three and four are (in no particular order) germs, and crashing hard drives.

Just when I finally decide to start making lemonade, too.

I've been feeling under the weather for a few weeks, so haven't felt much like plopping down thoughts on (electronic) paper, which explains the gap in my blogging presence. But I've also been out more, having finally gotten off my duff and made some strides in the networking department. Early morning meetings, driving in torrential rain, eating cold eggs (that weren't green and there was no ham, either!) on St. Patrick's Day ~~ all in the name of 'getting myself out there' so I can keep my life moving forward.

Remember my "I'm sticking with Networking" entry? Well, I stayed true to my word. One friend introduced me to another friend, who is a pretty well known speaker and a staunch supporter of networking, and who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help me meet more people. In the past 3 weeks, I've met about 20 more people, and still have 3 meetings coming up in the next week. In the process, I've helped someone (which felt great, there's nothing like seeing someone else's light bulb go off), and finally had an a-ha moment of my own. After telling my 'story' (the long version, not my 15 second elevator pitch) to an executive who offered to help me get on track (again, thanks to networking!), I finally understood exactly HOW my resumé needed to be tweaked. I have always known what was wrong with it and that it needed to be fixed, I just wasn't sure HOW.

Well, the newest incarnation is one that I can honestly say, really does represent me. It's about time! Before, all the facts were there, but now it finally TELLS A STORY!

Thank goodness I've already emailed it to a few people and use gmail. Plus, I learned my lesson and run weekly backups. I knew something was up last week when I got a pop up error message about one of the files being unreadable. My hard drive is on the fritz. AGAIN. Some of you may remember that LAST March, I got the BSOD one week before the warranty expired on my brand new laptop, so they replaced the hard drive. The new hard drive has a three year warranty, but the warranty on the laptop ran out. It's been one year PLUS one week, and the new hard drive just crapped out. The BSOD reared its ugly head and there were orphaned files everywhere. My integrated webcam is acting all wonky. But the computer does still work, though I have the feeling my days are numbered. I ran BIOS diagnostics and sure enough, "You may need a new hard drive" was my test result. So now I have to either get up the guts to open up my laptop and change it myself, or find a reputable shop that doesn't charge $75 to unscrew the case!! For now, I am just saving anything new to my external drive, and hoping that the last good backup (from March 14th) will actually work on a new hard drive. I also dragged and dropped everything I could onto the external so that even if I don't have an official backup, I will have most of my files.

As for taxes, yup, I did 'em. Proud of myself for clicking 'send' before April 1 ~~ why wait when you know you're getting a refund, right? And GUESS where my refund is going THIS year :(
At least I don't have to replace the whole thing.

So maybe silver linings (or at least a bright side) are a sure thing, too!!