Ok, so a lot has been going on in the last couple of weeks. So much so that I haven't really had the time to sit down and write about it. And when I did have the time, the blistering heat kept me from wanting to do anything other than... die? It's been really hot, hitting 100 degrees every day for the last week or so, and it's miserable. Today, I laid on the couch beneath the ceiling fan and just kept switching positions to dry the sweat off of me, and that was the best I could do for the better part of 2 hours. At least it gets cool at night. So, the plan is to just start telling some stories of what's been going on. I'll probably put it in a few blog posts, so it won't be one huge one. :)
Computer Repairs and Failures - 2 Saturdays ago
So, a couple of Saturdays ago, I was doing my usual laze about the house routine that I do on most Saturdays. That day, I decided to be more committed to learning the Dvorak style of typing, which is much easier and extremely fast once learned. After several days of watching at least a dozen videos on how to remove keys from a keyboard, I got brave and got started. After I had removed all of the letters from my keyboard, I realized how dirty it was under there, so I got a paper towel and started carefully cleaning around the rubber buttons and clips that hold the plastic tops in place.
I was partway through this when Tito and Cesia came in and Tito asked me to help with one of their laptops to get on the internet. Now, the last time they asked me to do this on their old MacBook, I literally just opened the wireless signal tab and it started working like I was some sort of computer goddess. This time, it was almost just as easy. I first checked that the password was right, and that was the problem. Having fixed the problem in less than 2 minutes, and having been in the middle of cleaning my empty keyboard, I looked like some sort of computer genius.
Although I admittedly am better with computers than a lot of people, I am decidedly NOT a computer genius. I have, on more than one occasion, been frustrated to the point of tears with simple troubleshooting problems that I simply could not figure out. But, at that moment, I was feeling good, and then Tito brought me their other laptop, and said something about drivers and internet. I decided I'd give it a shot.
So, with my own keyboard still in shambles, I began trying to figure out what the problem was with Tito's computer. I quickly discovered that it had no wireless internet drivers. For those who are computer illiterate or unfamiliar with these terms, I'll attempt to explain. In order for the computer to connect to the internet wirelessly (as well as many other things), it needs something called "drivers." Most of the time, the computer knows exactly what drivers it needs and will automatically connect to the internet to download them. But the problem here is that it couldn't get online wirelessly, so the problem was not so easily solved.
For the next two hours I worked on finding the right drivers for the make and model of the laptop as well as the computer's operating system. Using a thumb drive, I would download drivers from the internet on my computer, save them on the thumb drive, put the thumb drive into Tito's computer, and install them there. Sometimes, they would just install and then do nothing, and other times I couldn't even figure out how to install them. I finally did enough research to find the exact drivers that I needed, and got them installed.
Then, a window came up, saying the computer was almost ready to connect to the internet wirelessly, but it first needed to download the correct drivers. But it didn't have the drivers to connect to the internet, so it couldn't connect to the internet to install the drivers it needed to connect to the internet. Confused? Me too. I quickly got caught in what I call the "troubleshooting loop of doom" where I go into the help menu for information, and they send me to the control panel, which wants me to troubleshoot, which finds nothing wrong, which then sends me to the help menu, which is still not helpful.
I finally had to tell Tito I couldn't get it to work, and he thanked me for trying. I was just glad they were there, because I most certainly would have been crying in anger and absolutely frustrated if I had been left alone with the computers. Afterwards, Cesia gave me some amazing Honduran lasagna, so it did end well. So, I was exalted at first, then extremely humbled. Lesson learned: I am not a computer genius. Also, it's extremely hard to learn a new style of typing when you've been using QWERTY for 18 years.
Fashion and Beauty Magazine
As many of you know, I do online writing jobs for extra income, and it's been extremely helpful to me. I was actually able to buy my ticket to/from Michigan for the summer mostly with money made writing articles. Usually the articles I do are informational and for things like tanning rabbit hides, keeping parrots as pets, and Nepal vacations. For those, I write 12 new articles with the keywords I'm given, then rewrite each of those into new articles for a total of 24 articles. And I have to find a copyright free image for each article. I get paid $50 for those.
Recently, I got contacted for a different type of article writing, and was asked to name my price. For the 400-500 word articles based off of keywords, I told her $3/each, which is on the high end of average for a keyword article of that length. She agreed, and I'll be writing a total of 30 articles for her throughout April, totaling $90 and there are no pictures, tedious rewrites, or extensive rules about the exact choice and placement of keywords.
I'm loving it. I've done the first 10 already, most in one day, and am so excited about getting to the rest of them. The only problem is I can't seem to work when it's so dang hot during the day. The other "problem" is the subject matter: fashion and beauty. People who know me know that although I have in recent years developed a decent fashion sense, I am in no way interested in keeping up with latest trends. And although I am beautiful (God made me, so how could I NOT be??), I don't really care all that much about make-up and beauty products and such.
Yet, here I am, writing articles for a fashion and beauty online magazine! Obviously, I do my research before I get started and skim through a few different webpages before talking about this summer's fashion trends (which turn out to be lots of color and horizontal stripes among other things), but it still strikes me as ironic that I'm writing these articles. I am grateful that it is also a health magazine, and I do know a lot about that, so I can get in a few good health articles as well, which will be a lot easier for me.
Unless she offers me another job, I will be taking a break from my online work for a while to focus on getting college finished, which has fallen to the side. I already let my other employer know that I won't be doing any more jobs for a while, but these fashion and beauty ones are so much easier and pay so much more that I don't want to give them up if I don't have to. So, that's what I'm doing with my online jobs.
Sidenote: I've made about $3 from you reading my blog, so thanks! Keep reading and sharing it with others, and this will be a great way for me to be able to support my ministry just by talking about it! I've also made $2 off of YouTube videos, though I'm not sure how because I read somewhere you only get $1/1000 views/video, and the video that apparently made that money only has like 30 views, so..... I don't know.
So, here's a link to one of my recent videos I posted. If you like it, you can support me by clicking the like button, commenting, favoring it, subscribing, and sharing the video with your friends!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qng7sztEUjs
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