Not Again!!

I seem to have a bad luck streak when it comes to IT stuff lately. Just last month I had a panic attack when my external hardisk crashed, then suddenly out of nowhere my PC at my office blinked and died! I tried to reboot the dang thing but all I got was a blank black screen with some error message that a ntoskrnl.exe is missing. Wha?? How did that happen?!

Since it is an official asset, I had to call up a technician to come and take a look with high hopes that my suddenly banged up PC could be restored. She tried to do some recovery with Windows Boot CD but that didn't work. She had to take my PC away to get some diagnostic things done to it. Fine. I'll just hang around doing nothing since I don't have my source of work tool anymore.

Waiting around doing nothing is no fun I tell you. So I asked my dear husband to send me my netbook so at least I have something to do while waiting. Later on, another technician came by my office room and told me the bad news. The hardisk on my PC is dead! What??!! Again??!!!! I nearly hyperventilated when I think about all my work data inside that PC! Oh My God!!!! I begged the technician to try and do some recovery data pronto since there are quite a number of classified information involved. He told me that the vendor didn't cater to recovery of data but they did gave him two numbers to contact regarding this problem. The recovery is quite costly because the cheapest is RM400 and it can go up to RM4000 per recovery! I told him just to try anything and ask the treasury whether it is allowed to be financed by the organization since it is their property to begin with. (Hope it works!!!)

Then, at home I had some trouble with my bluetooth mouse not connecting to my netbook! Arrrghhh! It was working fine during the day but suddenly the bluetooth toggle didn't recognize any devices at all! I feel like killing somebody (my netbook maybe?) since there are too many problems associated with IT lately. I looked up loads of information on how to make my netbook detect bluetooth devices but to no avail. I even tried reinstalling the bluetooth's driver this morning but still it would not cooperate! Lastly I resorted to just using a normal wired mouse grudgingly. I am going to have my brother take a look later with hopes that he can do some miracle with this thing!

Reaaalllyyyy not a good time for me! :(

Hardisk Crashed!

My treatment is currently put on hold during this holy month of Ramadhan.. I guess it's a good thing to take time off and relax from all those needles, ultrasounds and poking (really really not a fun experience I tell you). 

Last weekend my husband and I went to Low Yat Plaza to buy IT stuff because we wanted to get good bargains during the PC Fair event. We went there with the intention to buy a printer (the one that can be modified to cater external ink tank), external hardisk casing (my old casing got busted because I dropped in once too many times!), external hardisk for each of us (they are getting cheaper by the month!), bluetooth mouse for my netbook, a cable replacement for our GPS, and a set of speakers (my husband added this item on our shopping list at the last minute!).

So, on a fine Saturday afternoon, we drove there and trotted up and down the aisles of shops to find the most best bargain we could. It was tiring and my feet were killing me. We didn't bring a lot of cash but armed ourselves with plastic cards. The problem with Low Yat retailers is that they do not want to bear the cost of government tax for credit card accessibility and imposed that tax to the customers. That is SO unfair! They have this attitude of 'you don't want to pay? Some other people will come and buy'. This is because throngs of IT-starved people like us do go there and succumb to the greedy merchandiser there just because there's no other place to go for IT parts and merchandise. So, note to all: brings lots of cash when shopping for IT stuff at Low Yat Plaza.

Ok, moving on.. So we went there and bought all the stuff on our list plus a couple of other things as well (impulse buying is not good - but I call it shopping therapy.. hehe!). We brought home along with  the other stuff a cigarette port extension (for the car), a USB port replicator and a very cute portable speaker (for me!).

I had quite a tough time finding a replacement casing for my IDE hardisk because it seems that they are not produced anymore since all the external hardisk sold now is SATA. The salesman that sold me the casing told me this fact. He also has an IDE hardisk and he's praying that his casing won't break or malfunction because it's hard to get a replacement. Even though the casing wasn't at all nice-looking, I had to make to with it. 

Back at home I tried plugging in the newly-cased old hardisk of mine into my laptop and it worked fine. It suddenly struck me that I need to make a backup just in case anything happens to it. So when I unplug the hardisk, and plug it into another laptop, it wasn't recognizable! Suddenly the computer is asking for me to format the hardisk! What?!! Oh no! Backup intuition came too late! I panicked BIG TIME! So i unplug it and tried plugging in into the other computer and the outcome is still the same. I thought it was because of the casing so I changed the hardisk back into the old casing with high hopes that it would all be all right. I was dead wrong! The hardisk was still unreadable.

I called my IT-whiz brother and told him about my predicament. He broke the bad news to me that my hardisk had crashed. It is now officially DEAD. Waaaaa!! All my life is in that hardisk! So now I am on a quest to try to recover all my data from the crashed and burned hardisk. Hope I can find a solution with freewares one of these days.. huhu..

Waiting Out..

I called the LPPKN today to set up my appointment. As usual patients have to call after 2.30 pm on the first day of their menses. The line is usually congested at this hour but sometimes your luck kicks in and you'd get through the busy line. Today my lady luck kinda laid back so I had to call a few times to get to my designated doctor's office to book an appointment.

The nurse that picked up my call sounded unfamiliar and she even asked out-of-routine questions. Usually the questions are 'what's your registration number?', 'when did your menses start?' and then you'd get a date for your appointment. This time around since the questions were getting a little bit weird, I sensed that I wouldn't get any dates at all for this cycle. And I was right!

The nurse told me since Ramadhan is around the corner (about three more weeks to be exact!), they are not taking Muslims appointments until after Raya. Meaning I'd have to wait out two whole cycles this time. I wasn't that disappointed since I have figured out that something like this would definitely happen to me (yeah, I kind of have the most rotten luck in the world.. bummer). But I did some quick count of the days to start a treatment cycle starting tomorrow and it actually could be done. If I were to meet the doctor tomorrow morning, I'd get three sets of hormone injections for 31st of July, 2nd and 4th of August. Then I'd have to see the doctor on the 6th for an ultrasound scan, give myself a Pregnyl injection on the 7th and undergo IUI procedure on the 9th. See? Ample time for a cycle treatment. But it depends on how big my eggs grow since my doctor is a perfectionist and he wants the eggs to be a certain size and no less for him to agree to do a procedure. Very very frustrating!

So, since I am told to wait out two whole months (four if you counted the two last abandoned cycles), that's just what I have to do I guess. Let's just take a break..

Bills! Bills! Bills!

Tomorrow is pay day. Whoopee! I am sitting alone at home counting my pennies before I can even spend them. Yup! Pennies! Every month is the same routine for me. I get my paycheck, then pay off as many bills off as I can with my meager income and then stretch as much as I can with the balance until the next pay day comes. It's not much but it's my life. My hospital bills are actually the culprit to adding up my monthly bills because every visit to the doctor's office costs more than RM100. And that's a cheap visit mind you! Oh well..

This month there's not much LPPKN activity for me. It has been almost two weeks after my last visit to the doctor's office and the abandonment of my last treatment cycle. We just let things go natural this cycle but so far there's no indication or early pregnancy symptoms whatsoever. My mood has been going up and down like a roller coaster and I find everything uninteresting. I know that this is also a sign of depression but I just can't help it. I guess I need a looong holiday to flush out all these bad vibes that's pulling me down.

God please please make me a billionaire.. (one can wish can't they?) ;)