I’m not quite sure but I think the rum is starting to kick in. It’s a shame too considering I haven’t even started on the wine yet. I picked up some Strawberry Arbor Mist, which is probably my absolute favorite wine in the world. Baby overloaded his cup with rum but that’s typical for him. He’s been nursing it for most of the night. I don’t think he realized just how good Mango Rum can really be. I mixed up much lighter versions of it though, Kay really enjoyed it too.

I use the Magic Bullet which is the best “As Seen on TV” investment I’ve ever made. I filled up the cups with ice and then threw in a splash of rum, filled the rest in with the mai tai mix. A few seconds in the blender to crush up the ice and voila – perfect mix. I just made myself a mix with the Arbor Mist, it’s basically like watered down wine but I kind of like chewing on the ice so no big deal there.

It took me a little while but I was finally able to get rid of all of my pop up issues. I strongly recommend that you purchase Spyware Doctor 5, it’s probably the only program that’s worked for me out of every one that I downloaded for the last few days. It’s only about $30 but it’s truly worth it.

I went ahead and uninstalled quite a few of the programs I’d downloaded. Considering only two of them actually FOUND the infected files on my computer I figured it would only be worth keeping the ones that work for me. It’s hard to find programs that do the job, it really is.

Highly recommended downloads:

• Spyware Doctor 5 – Free to try, $29.95 to buy
• Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 – Free; Paid upgrade available.
• CCleaner – aka Crap Cleaner – Free; excellent!

With spyware doctor, the only downside is with the free version you can’t get rid of the issues you’ve found. I paid for it and now I’m covered for a year so I really can’t complain. Just intend to purchase the program, or patch it – whichever you happen to choose. I wouldn’t condone patching the program I think you’d have better luck purchasing it, honestly – at least you get the support out of it. AdAware is great as the free version but the Pro version is just as effective with a few extra goodies. Either way you can easily use the free version to do everything you want to do.

I’ve finally started to get everything together. I only have about four more programs to install but I can’t get those done until I can dig the disks out of a box. I still need to get Photoshop on here and I’m unsure of which one I’d like to install anyway. I may wind up sticking to Adobe 7 though, I use that more than CS by default anyway – I can just leave CS on the desktop for now. I do still have to get my fonts worked in but since I don’t have a graphics program installed that’s really not a huge issue at the moment. I use Verdana for everything and since that comes with Windows by default, I think I’m going to be ok for now.

It’s so warm in here it’s unreal, it’s gorgeous outside but there isn’t really much of a breeze. Even with the windows wide open it’s not really making much of a difference. I should get Baby out of the office though, the garbage has to go out tonight and there’s quite a bit of stuff to put out on the curb.

The one thing I hate the most about reformatting my computer is the fact that I have to spend countless hours reinstalling everything I need to use on a daily basis. Thankfully everything of importance is already on the external so it’s not like any files were lost. All of my email reads off the external as well, it’s easier to run Thunderbird on two computers considering I really don’t know which computer I’m using until I happen to need to get online for something. Now that my laptop is back up to the speed of where it was when I first got it, however, I think I’ll be on it a little bit more than the desktop anyway.

I’m waiting, ever so patiently, for the 78 windows updates to process. These are 78 after the 15 I installed not even an hour ago. I figured this was going to be the most time consuming part of my day, it’s just a pain in the ass. I know that importance of having security updates but what I don’t understand is why there needs to be thousands of files to be updated. Why can’t there be the most recent update that works for all of the previous updates? Don’t mind me, I really just can’t stand waiting for things that I have no control over. But yea, as you can see by the screen shot, there’s quite a bit of a wait left. [edit = another 4 are downloading now that I’ve rebooted – unreal]

So I guess I should get some things done around the house. I have a few posts to do as well. I’ve kind of been neglecting curvy-chick.net, I should get some things done for that too.

When I was outside with Bella about an hour ago, there was this funky haze in the sky. Now it’s beautifully clear skies and I have to say – I don’t like that. I kind of hoped to get more rain then we did. I will say that the amount we got is equivalent to how long the sprinkler was going to be on so at least the flowers were watered. I know that tomorrow I’ll be outside, rain or shine, transferring the plants over to their new pots because while those are already grown – maintaining them is just as important. I can’t wait to see things pop up from under the ground though. I hope they turn out as gorgeous as they seem in the pictures…heh.