With the good comes the "bad"

We've been having a lot of good things happening for us the past several months, and we are so thankful. But what goes up must come down, right?

I got some aggravating news from my academic counselor last week. Apparently when I started the bachelor's program in 2009, my academic counselor at that time did not schedule all the classes I needed to graduate. I remember choosing 2 electives in 2009, and I also remember not seeing them show up on my schedule so I thought she figured out I didn't need those electives to graduate. Fast-forward a year and a half to a couple of weeks ago. I applied for graduation because I only had 4 classes left so I wanted to attend the commencement ceremony in April, which I could have done even though I wouldn't be finished with classes until late June. I hadn't heard from anyone for about a week, and then my academic counselor called me to inform me that I did need those 2 electives to graduate so we scheduled them again so now I won't be finished until September. I was really hoping to finish my bachelor's degree in June so I could possibly finish my master's degree before Chris gets out of the Marines next year and before I start looking for a job. So obviously now I won't be able to finish my master's degree before he gets out so I'm not sure if I'll pursue it as soon as I graduate with my bachelor's. I already have a hard time juggling school and a 6-month-old. I can't imagine working full-time, going to school full-time, and having a toddler! So we'll just see.

Chris and I got an awesome and very expensive laptop for Christmas. Within the first couple of days of having it, I noticed it was freezing up a lot and taking a really long time to open programs. I called HP Tech Support, and the guy walked me through restoring the computer back to the manufacturer's settings. It seemed to have worked. But last week, the "blue screen of death" came on a few times and sometimes when we'd start the computer, the screen would say, "No bootable device. Insert boot disk and press any key to continue." So I called HP Tech Support again, and the guy walked me through running a hard drive test on it. The test was going to take almost half an hour so he told me that if that test PASSED, it would move into an even longer test but if it FAILED, I needed to call them back. I ran an errand while the computer was running the test, and when I came back, the screen said something about the hard drive being full. I just clicked "OK," restarted the computer, and it worked fine. (I think I got confused about what he said and thought he said the long test would come on if the 1st test FAILED so I didn't call him back immediately because the long test didn't come on, and I didn't know what the message meant.) Well, the next day the "blue screen of death" came up again and when I restarted, the screen said, "No bootable device." Ugh! So I called HP Tech Support AGAIN, we ran the hard drive test again because I couldn't remember exactly what the message said that came up after I ran it the day before, and the guy finally figured out our hard drive was messed up. So they mailed us a new one, and Chris installed it yesterday. So far, so good. Except that when I tried to reinstall McAfee (the laptop came with a 3-year subscription to McAfee), it told me the serial number had already been used (with the other hard drive). So now I've got to call someone about giving me a new serial number for McAfee and Photoshop. Just a big aggravation! We've only had the laptop a little over a month.

But I know if this is all I have to be aggravated about, my life is pretty dang good!