The Blog With No Name

Just randomly the other night, I watched an episode of “The West Wing.” It was apparently from the first season. I laughed my head off. Now I find that I want to watch it every night. It’s on from 10-11 pm Central time. This is a seriously bad development – six hours of sleep per night is Not Good. Guess I’m finally going to have to figure out how to operate the VCR…

I’m still torn on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It has funny moments but overall it is just sort of creepy. When I figure out why I’ll be sure to let you know.

It’s a Good Thing (I suppose) that my current course instructor wants most of the assignments handwritten. Turning them in word-processed would be a bit of a challenge right now. Ha ha. Ha.

I don’t miss the computer as much as I thought I would. Of course, having the spousal work laptop computer available briefly every day is nice. I am worried about syncing my finance program from Palm to computer, need to do that soon, but otherwise, it’s really an eye-opener for me. I spent way WAY too much time fiddling.

I am despondent. I am lower than low. I am … I don’t know. I have managed to destroy, completely and utterly, my, no OUR computer. Luckily I was able to back up two years’ worth of digital photographs, and other things that would have been dreadful to lose. One of my former instructors (the hardware guy) is going to take a look at it, but I’m not holding my breath. The Windows registry info is gone gone gone, the BIOS is messed up somehow, it is just catastrophic. Apocalyptic. This all started when I installed the MobiPocket document reader for my Palm. The desktop portion of it was being annoying, so I thought to shut it off. Locked up, rebooted, thinking nothing of it, but instead saw a message that the registry files were missing. Downhill from there. Bah.

After almost two years with this computer, running WinXP Home, I had a) never made any significant backups and b) never set any restore points. Guess what two items are going on my recurring to-do list now?

I somehow messed up the system.dat part of our registry files. I was in a PANIC this morning, thinking of the near-1GB worth of photos I had scanned, hundreds of MB of MP3 files (all *legal* thank you very much…) and so on.

At Charles’ urging, I called Dell. I was hesitant, to say the least. I had heard stories about tech support people who couldn’t speak/understand English, telling you to reformat at the drop of a hat. Well I am here to tell you that it didn’t happen to me! Unfortunately I didn’t get the guy’s name. It was 1 am in India, and I got a self-taught computer geek who knew enough DOS still to tell me how to use chkdsk /r and HOORAY FOR HIM, I say!

Moral of this story: *BACK* *UP* *YOUR* *WORK* !!!

I wonder how difficult / more costly it would be to “buy American” 100%, or even close to it.

Someone reading my posts for today would get a really twisted idea about me, I think. I’m a nice person. Really.

…I think I will get home after work today to find a new car in the driveway! Goodbye, gas-guzzling minivan! Hello, not-so-thirsty Ford Focus! A local dealer had an ad in the paper expressing a willingness to PAY OFF the existing loan on one’s trade-in. We are upside-down on the van (owe more than it’s worth), and I was getting disgusted with the frequency of gas-station visits, so off they went today to see what could be done. Yee-hah! I’ll be the only mom in the pre-school parking lot who isn’t driving a mini-van or a *$&@ SUV!
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I started (and finished, at 1 am, sigh) Conspiracy Theory by Jane Haddam last night. (Jane Haddam is a pseudonym, by the way, for a lady named Orania Papazoglou. I believe that her surname is Turkish, which you might find humorous or bizarre in a few moments.) As Jane Haddam she has written 19 mystery stories with an ex-FBI administrator of Armenian descent, Gregor Demarkian, as the detective. It’s been several years since I read any of them, but I recalled liking them when I saw the book on the New Mysteries shelf at the library the other day. So, home it went with me. Damn, I wish I hadn’t read it.
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This might be TMI, but I have to tell you – I got one of those cheapo electric toothbrushes (OralB, I think – $5.99 at Target) and I just don’t see why anyone would use anything else to brush his teeth. That thing ROCKS! I brush my teeth just for the sheer joy of it! And they feel SOOOOO CLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAN!

The crazy woman is back. After a semester of respite, I am doomed to suffer. Oh God I can’t stand it. This person makes me nuts. She thinks she’s my best friend. I would not classify her as an acquaintance. I wish she’d go somewhere else for school. Now she wants me to read her English papers. My semester just got way WAY worse. Sigh.

Bible Mathematics

What’s wrong with using, say, a MATH TEXTBOOK !! ?? Oh gosh, never thought of that one…

I’m just going to have to move to Canada one of these days.