WARNING: Dirty Pictures Ahead

Computers...we all rely on them but we know little of what makes them tick...Mine is seven years old and been getting quite slow lately.  I have assumed it was because I have bogged down it's memory with loads of pictures.  I need to be better at off loading my multitude of files onto flash drives...but ain't nobody got no time for that.  Well I think I need to make time to take care of one of the most important machines in my house...my PC.

This last week it gave me a lot of stress.  It started early in the week with my inability to get a picture on the monitor.  My DH and I had quite a few disagreements about the cause of this.  I thought the monitor itself might have died.  He disagreed because it clearly had power...evidenced by the blue power light on the bottom and the side panel had all it's lights on...but if I turned the monitor off and back on fifty times or more, at least occasionally, I would get a less than a second glance of my log in screen.  It just wouldn't stay on.

IT tech at work had recently advised me to open the tower up and blow out the dust with a can of air.  I figured at this point nothing ventured nothing gained and let's face it...possibly the PC was already dead...what did I have to lose.

Beware the following picture is gruesome and DIRTY!!!

This is what I found inside my PC that had been slowing it down

Seven years worth of dust bunnies had taken up residence in there and I wasn't taking it anymore.

 I huffed and puffed and blew that whole can of air in there.  

This is what came out...

Holy pile of dust bunnies!!!

Guess what after I put it back together.  I still couldn't get a picture to light up on the monitor.

$#%@ ...  Now the question was had my computer indeed died or had the monitor?  This thought was quickly followed by more $#%@ as I was quickly listing off all my files that I would miss if indeed my computer had died.  I soon realized I could google it on the smartphone and try to figure it out.  A quick search had me convinced it was either my power source in the computer or the mother board (which I didn't think so because occasionally I could see the log in page) or the monitor.  Since I didn't want to throw money at it to figure it out...my husband and I figured the best solution was to find out if the monitor was working or not.  Luckily, he works for a small company so he just took our monitor to work and attached it to his computer there.  To his disbelief, it was dead---even though all the power lights were on.

He borrowed a spare monitor from work to also check out that I hadn't killed the PC with my dust bunny kick ass maneuver.  Not only did the computer work...it really has improved it's performance and speed.  

That being said, we gave it a lot of thought and decided if the monitor died after 7 years, the PC probably wasn't far behind.  Before this last long stretch we had been upgrading our computer about every 4 to 5 years.  Having contemplated what the consequences would be if I couldn't retrieve my files...if it were to suddenly die again...we decided it was probably time to think about checking into a new PC.  So despite a snow storm that dumped 8 inches of snow on us this weekend, we went to Best Buy and ordered a new computer today.  Funny thing is, this one is working faster than ever at the moment.  We pick the new on up this coming Friday...what a sweet Valentine's Day gift.  We picked up a new monitor and this one couldn't be happier.  I vow to learn to take better care of my files on the new system and to learn to do some general cleanup on it that I am not good at doing on this one...like defragging.  

Well, this has been a long post and so as to not let my dirty little pictures be permanently burned in your brains, I will leave you with some pictures of some UFO's that should at some point be making it onto my Lovely Year of Finishes list at some point this year.  They are one of the reasons I started blogging 2 years ago and still they are UFO's.  Believe it or not each of these tops were made over 8 years ago!!!

I love pictures in the snow, but it rarely snows here...so today was a great and rare opportunity to drag them out in the yard.

This one I started when my oldest daughter, was into the cherry motif.  It features a lot of cherry prints and is done in the Mary Engelbreit style and was suppose to have cherries appliqued on it.  It just needs a border and quilted and bound.  Still debating the cherries...now my daughter is into camo.

This one would be fairly easy to finish.  It is smaller than the other two, and would just need quilted and it would be complete.  I even have the backing bought already.  The only thing holding me back is...I love the colors, but it features cats.  I know, I know, most quilters love cats but not me.  Sorry for that confession but why did I make this one with cat fabric???

The third one, should have been this month's goal but it would have been too much work and it is a short month already.  It needs borders and I would need to shop for fabric for that.  I think I want to send this one to a long arm quilter when it gets completed, as it could be stunning if the quilting complemented it.

Keep Stitchin'