Monthly Archives: February 2014

booklook, booksneeze, review

[BookLook] — Once-A-Day Country Faith

countryfaith

It’s no secret that long before I was a “musician’s widow” to a musician playing country music, I was a huge country music fan. I mean we’re talking rabid fan. We’re talking the girl people came to in high school to ask the scoop on the latest country music gossip because they knew I’d have researched it all thoroughly already. I could name a song and artist on the radio within seconds. Heck in many cases, I could tell you what kind of car they drove, their favorite food, and the name of their first grade teacher. I was obsessed.

Today, I live in Nashville, consider several artists dear friends, and I have a slightly different look on the country  music scene as I did back then. But at heart, I am still a huge fan of the genre. So when Country Faith: 56 Reflections from Today’s Leading Country Music Stars came up for review as part of the BookLook (formerly BookSneeze) program, I jumped on the chance to get it. If I could once tell you an artists favorite food, shouldn’t I know their favorite bible verses?

And, that, my dear friends, is exactly who this book is for… the country music fan who wants to know more about their favorite artists and/or songs. The one that wants to know more about the faith driving many today in the music industry.

Personally, I love this book. It’s a great coffee table book or a gift book. It’s a book you can pick up, open to any page, and just start reading. It features new artists (some even I didn’t recognize!) as well as older established artists. The book’s layout is beautiful, and the stories are inspiring.

I highly recommend this book for any country music fan — hard core or casual alike — who wants to know a little more about the people they hear on the radio.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

general-post

CRASH!

Last week, a friend mentioned having had their laptop stolen awhile back. My heart stopped in fear FOR them. I’m that paranoid person who leaves home for work and splits up her laptop from the power cord (after reading it makes it less interesting to thieves because a laptop without power is worthless.) My life is on my laptop. Photos. Finances. Business programs. Everything. Losing my laptop… I couldn’t even…

Then Saturday, it happened. I asked my laptop to do too much. Or something. It crashed. It locked up, wouldn’t do anything, and I did what I always do: a hard reboot.

But nothing happened.

So I rebooted again.

Finally it went into a self-repair. That worked last time! Instead, I got, “I can’t fix myself. Get help.”

No. No no no no no. NoNoNoNoNoNoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

So Sunday, when I was supposed to be getting ready to go to a Super Bowl party, I was at Best Buy praying the Geek Squad could save me.

They tried. But they couldn’t even get into the diagnostics. Prognosis: she’s dead, captain. There’s no saving something that they can’t even read to save. S-O-L. Done. R.I.P.

I looked at my husband who just went, “Let’s go find you a new one.”

And we did. Got a GREAT deal on a new laptop. It’s faster. All fresh, clean hard drive. And it has a great graphics card for photo editing that I didn’t even realize I was missing prior to this. Oh and its HUGE. When everyone is going smaller, I went bigger. This will be awesome for photo editing while traveling.

I got lucky on one front. I was sick all week last week. (Hence being so MIA on Social Media and the blog last week.)  I generally keep my laptop hooked up to an external hard drive that constantly backs up new files, but being sick I took the laptop to the couch with me. But even with THAT, I was only on the computer for about two days total last week. So I literally only lost 8 photos. That’s it. Oh and maybe one PDF copy of paying a bill. Otherwise, everything was backed up.

AND I finally delved into using “the cloud” so I could sync things between my laptop, cell phone and iPad. I knew it was awesome for that. I had no idea how it would save me on this front. I installed my web browser. Logged into my account. And ta da! All my stuff was there. Bookmarks. Passwords. Etc.

2014-02-05 14.43.2

I have never had to start from fresh on a laptop before where I didn’t have an old laptop to refer to find things. It’s always been a case of transferring files. Trying to remember passwords. Looking for links. I was freaked out that it would not only take days to get back to where I was, I might not be back up and running for MONTHS.

Instead? It look about an hour. And I’m slowly transferring “must have” files from the external drive to the laptop, but I am being very picky what I transfer, allowing me to keep this new computer cleaner longer.

So. Who knew? A computer crash ending pretty positive? Never would have thought that, but that’s what’s happened! Taking it all in stride and realizing it is what it is. I still fear having my computer stolen, but at least now I know… its possible to get back on your feet fairly quickly.  WHEW!