Sympathy for the Housewife or Windows Vista Jinx? Hard Drive Crash Put Roxiticus Desperate Housewives Out of Commission for Almost a Week!

Mick Jagger says that weird things often happen to the Rolling Stones when they play "Sympathy for the Devil." And after posting "Sympathy for the Housewife," my introduction to Roxy's Best Of... at 3:30am on Tuesday, August 12th, I can tell you that weird, bad things happened to my PC. I went to sleep for four hours before waking up to take London and Maddie to Pavan's Tennis Academy at Fox Chase Tennis Club. When I got back to the house and tried to boot up my souped-up HP notebook, it was dead. I started to think I had jinxed myself with my "Please Don't Freeze" post about Windows Vista Small Business Assurance only three days before! After hours on the phone with various tech support people, the problem seems to be a horrifying blend of hardware and software issues ("serious display driver error," "unrecoverable system crash," to name a few of the kind messages Bill Gates' Dog has delivered). I've spent the past five days recovering my business and personal programs, documents, photos, and e-mail to a new PC. Yesterday, I laid my old computer to rest in a pine box and shipped it off to Hewlett-Packard.

Thanks to my loyal readers for your patience with my lack of posting...I've tried to use Rex's Mac to make at least minimal EntreCard drops and commenting rounds of the blogosphere. I'll tell you all the Staples "that was too easy" story after our Bay Head Family Reunion disperses on Tuesday. In the meantime, let's all sing along with Roxy, the song that caused so much trouble:

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a gal of wealth and taste
I've been bloggin' around for three long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Garden State Ballet
Added Randolph to the chain
Made damn sure that Sammy's
Washed their hands before you ate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name (Roxy)
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around Peapack-Gladstone
When I saw it was a time for a change
Cafe Azzurro served up dinners
Coco Luxe set out a cake

I rode a tank
In the Fox Chase rank
When Pavan's tennis camp raged
And the munchkins' shots sank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

I watched with glee
While London and Maddie
Danced and sang and played
At Annie's Summer Stars finale




I shouted out,
Who's got dinner for me?
When after all
It was Sweet Louie

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a gal of wealth and taste
And I made plans for Oysters Bingo
appetizers when we reached Limestone Cafe

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

Just as every Far Hills cop calls me criminal
And the Perrotti Brothers Butchers saints
As heads is tails
Just call me ROXY
cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name (Roxy)
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game (Roxy)
Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!
Tell me baby, whats my name (Roxy)
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name (Roxy)
Tell me baby, what's my name (Roxy)
I tell you one time, you're to blame (Roxy)
Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who

Please click on any of the links to explore my new Roxy's Best Of... WordPress MU Community, and do let me know what you think!

Thanks!
Roxy

Windows Vista, So Civilized. Oh Please....Don't Freeze! At Least, Have the Courtesy to Ask My Permission First

While my Sitemeter shows that visitors come here looking for some unusual things every day (like lapdance haircuts and lonely housewives in Morris County, NJ, to name a couple of my faves), my loyal Roxiticus Desperate Housewives readers know that my blog title is not entirely accurate: I'm neither desperate nor a housewife. A former disc jockey and advertising copywriter, I'm a happily married mom-of-two and the owner of a small investment banking business with my husband, Rex. Since we moved in together more than twelve years ago, Rex and I have had a sweet deal in our household: Rex does all the four-star cooking, and I do all the spreadsheets. My official title of President and Chief Operating Officer means nothing around our LizWorld office, as Rex and Brent often refer to me as "Senior Tech"...or "Junior Tech" if I can't bring the server or laptop back to life.

You may have figured out that I'm hopelessly bleeding edge in my technology acquisitions. I had to have the iPhone when it was first released, I relentlessly upgrade my Canon Digital SLRs each year to the latest greatest most megapixels, and I bought an HP notebook pre-loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate (the one that combines business with pleasure) in April 2007, when Vista was only a month or two out of beta testing. If there's a bug to be found or a blue screen of death lurking in the shadows, I've welcomed them into my home and office on a regular basis. And believe me, computers never pick a convenient time to go down. A few years back, our office server crashed within days of my personal/business laptop failure, and we discovered the fancy RAID backup wasn't functioning properly either, supporting the pessimistic theory that bad things come in threes.

On the average night, after I read my girls their bedtime stories, you'll find me snuggled up in bed with Rex fast asleep and my souped-up HP notebook humming away on my lap: writing offering memoranda for our clients using Microsoft Word, manipulating financial spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel and pasting them into the Word document, boiling it all down to a PowerPoint management presentation...and at the same time, posting to one of my many blogs, working with WordPress designer extraorinaire Lisa Sabin-Wilson to put together my new Roxy WordPress MU community, "Getting Wicked" by dropping at least 150 EntreCards with 12 Internet Explorer tabs open (sometimes in my sleep), and trying to leave a comment on one of Lady Java or Mariuca's blogs...if something is going to go wrong, you know it is going to happen in the middle of the night when Smug Robert, our outsourced technology guy, is nowhere to be found. With all those Windows open, I realize that 4GB of RAM is never enough, and my computer is bound to start searching haphazardly for our NYC server and disconnect from our Comcastic Internet service. Oh, please...don't freeze! Or at least, if you do, have the courtesy to ask my permission first!

As you can see from the snapshot at the top of this post, Windows Vista is so civilized...always making sure you really really want to do something foolish before you do it. I've heard and read some complaints about the security features in Windows Vista being "belts and suspenders," but for someone who makes mistakes, I actually appreciate that Windows Vista checks with me before opening up a program that could wipe out my hard drive or start sending out viruses via my e-mail system.

Another nice touch that Microsoft added in July 2008 is Windows Vista Small Business Assurance, complete with a responsive customer service team available at all hours of the day and night to help with Windows Vista issues. It's perfect for small business owners like me. Or rather, small business owners who are perhaps a bit smarter and much less cutting edge than I am...the offer, which will continue through September 30, 2008, is for small business customers who purchase PCs with Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate after July 1, 2008.

When you buy a new PC with Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate like I did, only do it now through September 30th, 2008, you'll receive free support, compatibility assistance, and one-on-one coaching from Microsoft to help ensure a smooth transition. I may have to buy a big new "Terabyte" PC with Windows Vista to take advantage of this offer and to store all of those 12.2 megapixel photos I've been taking with my cutting edge Canon EOS Rebel XSi...I'm sure I could sneak in a few questions about my existing Windows Vista notebook, like what to do each time my computer shuts down when I step away for 10 minutes and re-installs Vista Service Pack 2 behind my back! I'll let you know if the Windows Vista Business Assurance customer service team is anywhere near as good with spreading the midnight magic as the blogalicious Lady Java.... meanwhile, I'm going to pour another cup of coffee and hope not to spill it...I'm pretty sure not even Windows Vista Business Assurance can get the fuschia shade of Starbucks Raspberry Mocha out of my keyboard.

Bill Gates and His Dog

I am soooo mad at my computer right now, and it may sound a little crazy, but I blame all of my technology problems on Bill Gates and his dog. If I remember correctly, the mangy hound I'm talking about came with Windows 98 and whatever shiny new version of Microsoft Office came out around the same time. Whenever you hit the Help button, Bill Gates' dog would pop up in a corner of your screen and offer to help you. The blue screen of death was usually hot on his heels. Ever since, whether it is a temporary glitch like I'm having right now ("you do not appear to be connected to the Internet so we're not going to let you look at every third page you try to open") or permanent hard disc data destruction or the fact that half of the useful software in the world (including the Alexa toolbar) doesn't work with Windows Vista, I blame it on Bill Gates and that darn dog.

Based on a small sample of Roxiticus Desperate Housewives, Husbands and Friends, I have come to believe that there is a 100% technology product failure rate in all brands today. Or do I just have a personal magnetic field that messes with the inner workings of electronic devices? Here's a small sampling of Bill Gates' Doggy Treats, in which I have watched hardware and/or software, in most cases brand new stuff, crash before my very eyes:

• one brand new SimpleTech 160GB External Hard Drive ($109);
• one shiny new Archos AV420 Personal Video Recorder ($399);
• one brand new IBM Thinkpad (probably $4999);
• one 3-days-out-of-warranty IBM Thinkpad (probably another $5,000 down the toilet);
• one very important older HP Server that notably crashed the same day as the brand new IBM Thinkpad;
• multiple Dell notebooks, in various stages of use, launching the catch-phrase "never another Dell"
• my beloved ACT database, because even the 2008 version of ACT software advertised to work with Windows Vista doesn't work with Windows Vista if you were foolish enough to buy the special 64-bit Ultimate version (yes, friends, ACT is contact management software, and Bill Gates and His Dog are the reason I haven't called or e-mailed in almost a year) -- a cost of $400 for two sets of software that didn't work and weren't refunded by Sage.

I feel certain this doesn't happen to Walter Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal. In fact, I bet Walter doesn't let Bill Gates' Dog on his lawn, never mind his computer.