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Friday, March 9, 2007

SiteMeter isn't working for me any more. It hasn't recorded any visits since 6 am Wednesday. I tested it by visiting the blog myself through Firefox and AOL, both of which will show up in the hit list, but no show even for those visits. I'm getting no updates at all. I logged in and out, checked the settings and account, everything I could think of, and it all looks good. Anyone else having any problem?

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I ran errands yesterday, seven different stops, got a lot done. One of the stops was to the fuel oil bookkeeper. I prepay for my winter's fuel oil, which gets me a discounted price per gallon. I noticed that the previous delivery ticket said my credit balance after delivery was $416.74. Last week's delivery ticket said my starting credit was $173.51. Um, where'd the other $243.23 go?

They took the payment for my annual service contract out of my fuel oil credit. One of my stops earlier was to mail the check for the service contract, so she gave me credit for the double payment.

It annoys me that they debited my account for the service plan, without my permission. They've almost doubled the price since last year (but they cover more parts under the new plan), so there's another furnace service outfit that has been offering to take over service for less. I might have decided to switch to them. If I hadn't been vigilant, I could have been out the 200+ for a plan I didn't need, wouldn't have used, and didn't even know I had.

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I'm doing laundry today, and for the first time I'm grateful for my silty hard well water. With Daughter and Hercules looking for a house, I've been doing some research on communities in central NJ, and found something weird. Several communities have so much chlorine in the water that it's undrinkable unless it's left standing a while, and it bleaches laundry! Many people on town forums have complained about whole loads of dark clothes ruined.

Daughter is looking forward to having a washer down the hall, instead of having to go to the next block. I wonder how she'd feel about having to take dark loads to the next town!

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I read a bunch of stuff about the laptop yesterday, and I'm finding my way around it. It's getting easier.

I love the touch pad! You swoop the cursor around by sweeping your finger over the pad. The left and right mouse buttons are below it. Roman doesn't like it - he uses a wireless mouse at home and a minimouse (would that be a vole?) on the road.

One problem I had at first was that every once in a while, the system took off on its own, like I had clicked the left button or something. Roman laughed, he says that if you just tap the pad, that's a left click, and I must be accidentally tapping it, so he told me how to turn that off so you just use the buttons. But I'm having trouble dragging stuff because you have to hold the left button down with your thumb while moving the cursor on the pad with the other fingers. It's not too hard to drag up and down, but left to right is awkward.

In my reading last night I discovered that we've got "tap drag", too. If you tap the pad twice, it "grabs" whatever you're pointing at, and then you can swoop things around easily. Cool. So I turned tap back on. I like it! Scrolling is nifty, too. You just run your finger along the right side or bottom of the pad, and the page scrolls.

I don't know how on earth I'm going to get stuff moved from the old to the new system. Believe it or not, my biggest concern is bookmarks! I've got a gazillion of them, in AOL, Netscape, and Firefox, and I really hate the idea of starting all over. And the AOL saved mail. Don't know how to xfer that, either. I'm sure it's all in a folder somewhere, but I don't know where, what it's called. Searching for a phrase I know is in an email doesn't turn anything up.
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