WHEW!

WHEW! was Originally Posted on September 9, 2004 by lavarock

This past week has been quite full of problems.

Weeks ago I was working on my most important computer and loaded some software which would help me send out business newsletters in HTML format. That software appears to have caused me lots of problems. I kept having rpoblems with certain webistes not displaying correctly in Internet Explorer; seemingly changing the character sets on the webpages to some European font.

I reset most of the settings and finally took the extreme step of uninstalling IE from the machine. Microsoft does not make it easy, because many people will strip the box of it and use something better. Their system will then be quite a bit more secure too. To fully remove IE youm have to actually play around int he registry (an internal Windows database).

That still did not fix the problem. I then tried a few Windows updates and somehow got the Service Pack 2 partially installed. I tried everything I could to keep that from installing, but it did anyway.

From that point on, my most important system would not boot! I tried my favorite trick of attempting to install a new copy of Windows in a seperate directory to fix the old copy, but still could not get the system to boot.

After 3 days of pulling my hair out, I discovered the hangs were caused by a seperate disk drive the box has which is connected to a special card. That card’s driver was not compatable.

AFter some playing around, I finally got the system fixed and recovered 99% of what I needed from the system.

THEN, I attempted to install a module in my shopping cart which would automate Ebay sales from my online store, then allow the buyer to come back to my store to check out (and possibly add to his items) while allowing me to keep him as a store customer. The install would have been quick, had I been running an unaltered store. Actually, few people have unaltered stores. They do as I do, add multiple modules which allow different shipping methods, new reporting modules, and so on.

Anyway, after spending all day putting this thing in, I find that the part of the module I really wanted, must be performed manually OR I have to subscribe to this guys service and pay a monthly fee to have it fill in the buyers info automatically! I was NOT amused. I had to read through 37 pages of support info to find that out! Now I can’t easily remove the thing without spending hours more.

As the commercial goes, I do have some GOOD NEWS!

Last week I called the Mortgage Company and poked them again on my loan. They finally sent the “FINAL LOAN DOCUMENTS” to the Title Company. Although the Title Company had not yet determined how much I needed to supply at “closing” I got a good estimate and wired that from my Credit Union t othe Title Company.

I went to the Title Company office and signed the loan forms. Now that they have the check from me, they are just waiting on a fax of one form from the seller.

They say the next step is for them to record the deed with the county and that should happen about Tuesday. If that is the case, then this journey has taken me over 18 months. In contrast, my sister sold her house and closed on it in something like 2 weeks!

My “closing” was not as most people experience, as most everything was signed by mail and at the loan signing, it was me and the Title Company representative. I have been here on the farm clearing some brush, keeping the house lived in and doing minor repairs. I have also not had to pay rent or mortgage. It is a nice arrangement and although I’ll be sorry to see it stop, I honestly DO want to start paying a mortgage. I could ahve bought the place for cash, but then I would have used all of my spare cash and been left with a property I owned and no money for food or utilities.

Now I will have a 10 year mortgage and spare cash to start some real renovations. I need to replace the water line t othe house and get an official agriculture water meter installed. I need to strip out and rebuild the kitchen, two bathrooms, and replace two outside stairs.

I want to start building pulping and drying decks, a storeage area for green coffee (it has to be airconditioned) and I need to start dozing the property to make lots of room for coffee.

All the while, I’ll be marketing, selling, packing and shipping coffee. I’ll also be sowing plants from seeds to be planted a year from now when the land is clear. Growing coffee seedlings from seeds will cut the cost of the plants by 2/3’s!

The other day I went to the Post Office and had two surprises. The first was some computer parts I ordered which came sooner than expected.

The other surprise was a registered letter from a legal firm. WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR WHO THIS IS FROM!!!!! Details in a future blog