Personal: Why the blogging absence?

So why have I been away from the blogging world for a week? (and, nope, the image to this post – which you CAN click on to enlarge – has got nothing to do with this post).

A combination of things really. For those of you who don’t know me too well, apart from working as a search engine optimiser, I also run my own small business (which does make a profit, but not enough to cover my mortgage and other large bills: when I was “unemployed” I was managing off the income from my small business and the paltry £42.70 income support I was getting managed to keep me going for around 6 months) and I’m a bit of a media personality (hey, let’s face it, not many people have met me and been able to forget moi 😀 ). I’ve been in several news stand magazines, newspapers, on local radio, across the internet and on national television to name just a few sources that I’m aware of – but last Thursday a picture was published in a newspaper (which I won’t name here) that I wasn’t aware even existed. It showed somebody who I had met only once in my live, one person I know really well and a number of other people who I don’t believe I’ve ever met. I therefore thought it might be a bit prudent to keep a low profile for a few days (and, no, I won’t discuss the photo or anything)…

Come Sunday, and I think it’s time to start blogging again (as I did have a few things to make entries about) – however, my computer thought I could do with a few more days off. After fighting with it for several hours just to get it to boot into Windows Safe Mode (yep, it was that severely damaged: the “emergency repair” console and process provided no help at all and I had to really change settings that I probably shouldn’t even have access to to try and get it to boot). I finally managed to get it into Safe mode to burn off some CDs (I brought over 150 blank CDs from WH Smiths in the past fortnight or so and I’ve used over half of them already), cleared down some other stuff, deleted programs, moved files etcetera and a day later (Monday) I was able to connect to the internet. Over 3,000 spams waiting and new ones coming in at the rate of around 300 an hour (not what I like – but they are still coming in at roughly 100 an hour at the moment: three days later!). So that had to be sorted.

On Tuesday, I got home, got the spam-removal system running (so I stood a chance to access my main email box) and then fell asleep waiting for it to delete the 4,000+ emails (I don’t know exactly how many as I’ve needed to clear down the logs of the anti-spam system) – waking up on Wednesday in time for work.

Today (ok, yesterday, since it’s no longer Wednesday), I just made 8 pancakes (since I missed out on Shrove Tuesday yesterday) and I’m just getting things running again. I’ve only suffered one crash since Monday – and that was 30 minutes ago when I was doing a bit of picture editing in Photoshop.

Hopefully things ARE returning to normal, but I may have to seriously consider getting another computer to complement the two currently either side of my sexy long gorgeous legs (hey – I’m allowed to complement myself on my own blog) so I’ve got backup internet access if my main machine fails. My spare machine no longer has a functioning modem (it’s been cannibalised, but I’m sure I’ve got a spare somewhere, but finding it is going to be near impossible – the correct power adaptor even harder) and, for technical reasons, it can’t cope with ADSL…

We’ll see how things go: but first I’ve got to get Guess That Movie 32 up and running as Kymberlie has already managed to guess the previous image whilst I was typing this (damn her! 🙂 ).