I Love To Read!

I absolutely love to read. I like to read so many different types of stories. My favorite are murder mysteries and love stories. In fact, I have a favorite author, James Patterson, and he is famous for writing both types of novels. In the past month, I have read five of James Patterson’s novels.

Two of the novels, The 6th Target and 7th Heaven, are part of a series that follows a group of women (a detective, a lawyer, a medical examiner, and a reporter) who solve murders. This has also recently been made into a TV series on ABC called Women’s Murder Club.

Then I read two murder mystery novels. The Beach House is about a law student, Jack Mullen, who is trying to solve his brother, Pete’s, death because no-one else in the town seems interested in what really happened. The Quickie is a story with plenty of twists and turns. Lauren, an NYPD detective, sees her husband meeting secretly with another woman so she decides to have an affair of her own. During her one night of passion she witnesses an unbelievable crime. What she does next could cost her her job, her marriage, or even her life.

Like I stated earlier, James Patterson is also known for writing love stories. Some of you may have read the book, or seen the movie, called Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas. I read it awhile ago and was amazed that an author who could write such enthralling murder mysteries could also write such amazing love stories. The book I just finished reading (literally about 30 minutes before writing this post) was another one of James Patterson’s love stories. Sam’s Letters to Jennifer is actually two love stories in one. Jennifer experiences her own love story as she reads letters about her grandmother Sam’s own love affair.

I still haven’t decided what my next read will be, but I wanted to share my most recent reads with you so maybe you can check them out!

Recovering Files From a Laptop Hard Drive

A lady at church, Angela, couldn’t get her laptop to load successfully and needed her work files that she always traveled with. I looked at it for her and was unable to access her files at all through the laptop. Luckily though I was eventually able to get her files for her so I wanted to post about it in case anyone else ever has a similar issue and to let them know all hope is not lost!

Problem Details (skip if you just want the solution used)

It seems a windows update had messed up some GUI system files so nothing would show when the laptop booted. It was just a black screen with a white cursor. Booting into safe mode had the same effect. I booted to a Windows XP cd to try and access the Recovery prompt. To do so you have to have the administrator password though. This was a Gateway laptop so who knows what the password was. I tried blank and some other defaults but couldn’t guess it. So I officially had no way of accessing her files through the laptop.

Solution

I went to CompUSA and bought a “Laptop Hard Drive IDE Adapter” which allows you to plug a laptop hard drive into a normal IDE cable that is used in a desktop PC. This enabled me to turn on my computer and access her laptop hard drive as a secondary hard drive which means I could browse its files without its Windows being used as the operating system. Then I just copied the files she wanted backed up to one of my other hard drives and I burned a DVD of them. Hopefully this helps anyone whoever needs to access files from their laptop hard drive when their laptop isn’t working for them.

Caution

This was done with the understanding that the laptop hard drive was not malfunctioning and that it was a software issue that was causing the problem. If this had been a hardware issue and the hard drive was malfunctioning this solution would probably not work.

Spending Time With Friends

Recently I have really realized how important it is to spend time with family and friends. Kyle and I have been doing a great job of it last weekend and now this weekend and even next weekend.

Last weekend:

We went to dinner and bowling on Friday evening for Cherie’s birthday. Saturday we had a date night and watched a movie. On Sunday we went to lunch and to see “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” with my mom, grandparents, and aunt.

This weekend:

Tonight we are going to have dinner at Morgan and Eddy’s along with their two little ones. We are really excited about that. Then, tomorrow morning, Kyle and I are going to a “commuter focus group.” Don’t laugh, we are getting paid $75 EACH for the two hours of our lives (yeah, that’s $37.50/hour)! After that we are going to relax a little. Then, in the afternoon we are going to a pizza/pool birthday party… for 2 of the sweetest 6 year olds I teach at AWANAs. Seriously, when their mom asked them who they wanted to invite to their birthday party, the first name out of their mouths was “Mrs. Liz”. You don’t know how special I feel. Sunday we aren’t exactly sure what we are doing. We have a few things we may do, but we are undecided at the moment.

Next weekend:

Although nothing is set in stone yet, next weekend looks to be like a fun weekend. On Friday night I plan on going to see “Made of Honor” with some of my girl friends. On Saturday or Sunday evening Kyle and I may get together with some of our close friends we haven’t seen in awhile. Then early Sunday afternoon Kyle and I are going to celebrate our friend Elizabeth’s graduation from college.

It is so important to make time to spend with those you love and enjoy the company of. We are finally seeing how important it really is!

What To Do, What To Do? Part Two

I posted a blog yesterday, but took it down shortly afterwards for certain reasons.  If you have an interest in reading the blog, leave me a comment with your e-mail address and I will send you the blog along with an explanation as to why it was taken down.

The blog is about a predicament I am having making a decision about some things to do in my life.  It isn’t anything spectacular or amazing, it is just some in depth thoughts I had and wanted to get out.

Lenders and Borrowers

I got a kick out of this quote. It summarizes one of the things that has really bothered me about the mortgage issue besides everyone who took on too large of mortgages, those who lent the too large of mortgages.

Bet on this: Whatever moral qualms are being urged on borrowers to keep them from walking away from their mortgages, they’ll count for a lot less than the economic reality facing borrowers whose homes have fallen in value by half. Lenders had no reservations about selling borrowers loans with rising payments that would be poisonous in a rising market. Now it seems borrowers have no reservations about leaving those lenders with the risks they begged to take.

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