WEEK 1 -- Getting Started, Stumbling Immediately (OR: Yahoo Avatar & Why I Hate it!)

D-I-S-A-S-T-A-H!!!  This is not making me happy.  A Tuesday evening in early October.  Thinking, I'll go and do me some "23 Thangs." Been just grating on my anxieties; need to get started.  Need to get engaged with this assignment.  OK, so I managed to create a blog and get it registered.  Next, to really get things off to a spectacular start, I lost almost a month, due to an extremely bad experience with 23 Things.

FIRST:  I tried to make an Avatar, as instructed for the first week, when a GREAT SUCCESS might be helpful & a nice incentive to tempt me to get involved and to start enjoying (yeah, right!) this unsolicited extra set of 23 More Things to add to my already, um, imposing To Do List, currently clocking in at an impressive 7 pages (yes, seven!) in Word.

SECOND:  CUE THE DISASTER:  I dutifully accessed the Yahoo Avatar site and followed the first few instructions.  Everything was in slow-mo and took f..o..r..e..v..e..r and didn't work.  And then...it FROZE my PC, and gave me the blue screen of death.

THIRD:  CAVEAT EMPTOR:   Use the freeware Yahoo Avatar site at your peril!!

FOURTH:  My PC froze using Yahoo Avatar, a very clunky site.  The next morning when I logged in I couldn't get to any of my email, nor was my Web Browser, Firefox, working for me.  This, despite a week's worth of Bugzillas, phone calls and visits from Trijoon, Sohrab, Michael, Dougie, Niraj, and other IT folks.  Yes, my PC froze late Tuesday afternoon and was out of commission the rest of the week.  Finally, the next Monday, things began to stabilize, thanks to the dedication and expertise of our IT folks.  But Thursday and Friday were days from you-know-where.  By Friday morning, my malfunctioning Outlook was crashing several times an hour and my Firefox was going down with every new search.

FIFTH:  GRRRRRR.....so just imagine a nice bear or woodchuck or some bucolic scene, cuz there will be NO Yahoo avatar on my site.  Use your imagination, please.

Thank you kindly.