So, I got my new Dell Inspiron 570 MT computer this past Thursday.

I spent the better part of Thursday, and part of the day on Friday, resolving various issues, and I'm still not completely up and running.

On the plus side, I am internet- and email connected. The difference in speed between my new computer and the old one is like night and day. I love the wireless mouse and keyboard, but I'm still getting used to the keyboard.

But here are some of the problems:

In the package, I purchased 3 years of McAfee software, but when I got the computer, it indicated I only had 30 days. So that necessitated a phone call to Dell, and then a 3-way phone call with McAfee, and about an hour of time to resolve this simple omission.

A bigger problem is that the Word/PP/Excel that's apparently on my machine is not accessible to me until I "unlock" it using a product key code which Dell was supposed to ship to me under separate cover. (I guess this prevents people from loading the software onto more than one computer.) I was supposed to get that from UPS last MONDAY, but despite the UPS website indicating each day that it was "in transit," I never got it. So Dell finally agreed to send out another product code key which I'm now supposed to get Monday or Tuesday.

It's a real pain in the butt becus i can't use my computer now to respond to a job posting I saw over the weekend, if I want to attach my resume and writing samples, or do any work involving Word documents.

The 3rd and final straw was when I couldn't get my printer to work. When I called Dell tech support yet again, they said that my Dell printer was not compatible with Windows 7. It'snot that old,maybe 5 years, and works fine. You would have thought that the Dell salesperson who sold me the computer might have inquired what printer I had, especially since I ordered a print cartridge from him in the same purchase. Since I needed to tell him the model printer so he could determine the cartridge size, you'd think that would have alerted him to the fact I couldn't use it.

So that means yet another outlay of money for the printer and cartridges. I did make arrangements to return the cartridge I purchased which is now useless to me and i have a call in to Dell sales asking for a callback.

I hope to get a credit toward to purchase of a Dell printer for all the inconvenience of having to wait over a week to use the computer waiting for the software key, and now the lack of a printer.

It's all been very annoying.

On top of that, all the photos i copied onto disks apparently didn't take. It looks like I copied empty folders. I know i could have used a flash drive instead of 4 disks, but i had them here and didn't want to spend more money if i didn't have to. Looks like I'll now have to reconnect to the old hard drive and try the process all over again, this time using a flash drive.

BA, I do wish you were here to help me!!

I had no luck trying to get ointment in the cat's ears. I called the vet and asked if they have an oral antibiotic I could try instead. They agreed (why didn't anyone suggest that before?) and Waldo's now into his 3rd day on the pills, which i can much more easily hide in the center of a soft snack and which he'll then swallow whole. I have yet to see any lessening of head scratching and shaking but I pray this does the trick. Is it possible it could be a fungal infection, not a bacterial infection, that wouldn't respond to antibiotics??

My other piece of major news:

Had a conversation with my absentee builder/handyman..you know, the guy who doe great work, like my sun room, but who never finishes a job o time. Anyway, he finally did show up on Thursday, but only to say he hadn't forgotten about me and would definitely be here by Saturday. (He wasn't.) But anyway, we had a talk which got around to Dave Ramsey and paying off the mortgage and all that.

This was the final nudge I needed to finally take definitive action. I cashed in 1 mutual fund and $9,000 from an online money market fund for a total of $22K going into my checking account. When it clears my checking, I'm writing out a check to the bank that holds my mortgage and I will pay off not the whole thing, but a big chunk of it, thereby saving myself a lot in interest.

Yeah, I may be unemployed, but it just doesn't make sense to have money sitting in accounts earning around 1.25% when my mortgage is 6%. (I can't refinance becus I'm unemployed.)

Hopefully I'll be able to pay down that mortgage next week. I'm not sure I'm ready to pay off the whole thing (cashing in more mutual funds would be considered taxable income that would bump me into a higher tax bracket, and right now I'm in the comfy 15% bracket where I'd like to stay this year), altho I could, but doing this much will make me feel better. The balance should then be about $38K.

Even after paying down the mortgage, I'll still have about $94K in taxable money left.