Well, someone claiming to be Lamont messaged me here & left me his phone number a week or so ago... I've procrastinated & procrastinated contacting him because, well, I hate the phone. I hate talking on the phone. I also feel awkward calling someone I haven't spoken to in 20 years. But anyway, I finally mustered up the nerve to text them (ah, yes, the wonders of technology) and after a game of 20 questions, they told me it was a wrong number.
I had a very busy weekend... I actually went outside and did yardwork on Saturday, planted some stuff in jiffy pots. (Yes, all poisonous, except the lavender, heh). Supposed to go see the doc tomorrow about my hair loss.
Restored from Draft:
This was Saturday:
Bought a little mini-barbecue a coupla weeks ago & finally ventured out in the back yard to set it up. I had relinqueshed the back yard to the scorpions over the past year or so. It’s gotten bad out there - some of the weeds out back were progressing into bushes. Anyway, I swept and killed weeds & removed dead weeds, cleaned Ed’s old tank for Nessie and Rob & I assembled the barbecue grill.
As I was cruising the landscape, I noticed a strange hole in the planter out against the wall. It looks like we’ve either got a true tarantula living out there or some other fairly large funnel web spider. It’s a good sign because burrowing spiders won’t normally choose territory that’s infested by scorpions. With all my cleaning and sweeping nothing turned up except dead spiders and crickets.
We also did some running around getting more adapters and cables for Rob’s new computer. We’ve been working on that thing on & off all day, trying to install his game controllers, fighting with the general no-new-programs-or-hardware allowed attitude that Vista has.
All in all, I’m tired. I called in sick at the Excalibur - said ’fuck it’. It puts me at 5.5 points so I’m not quite getting suspended.
This was Friday, around 1:30a.m. :
Rob, with all his static, managed to fry his computer. Literally. Wednesday night he turned his computer on & his mouse was frozen. I got to messing around with his machine, trying out some of the other USB ports. I kept seeing this little tiny flash of light, but I was thinking maybe it was the network card or something, and then as I’m fumbling around with the plugs in the back, it felt like something was stinging my hand. So I stuck my head behind his computer & it looked like a very tiny sparkler was spraying from the problematic USB port. I said, as calmly as possible concerning the fact that I had stuck my face up real close to the sparks, "Sparks. Rob, sparks. There are sparks coming out of your computer." So he got back there & confirmed that yes indeed, sparks were pouring out of his USB port. There was also a definitive burning smell emanating from the computer and the game controller cord that had been plugged into said port was quite hot to the touch.
Rob tried one of the non-sparking USB ports and actually kept using his computer until Friday morning. He was sitting here playing WoW & his video card kept crashing. Then he smelled something burning, opened up his case and revealed a small fire on the motherboard.
It’s been awhile since Rob has had a bona fide new computer. He struggles with these chop-shop newspaper classified computers that he twiddles with and tweaks ... and they always seem to literally catch fire and go up in smoke. So we still had a smidge of the tax return left and I took him computer shopping.
He got a pretty decent deal on a new Sony VAIO - Pentium Centrino Duo, 3G of RAM, nVidia 8400 w/256MB of onboard RAM - I don’t like the RAM-sharing most laptop graphics drivers have. Of course, getting one that doesn’t share RAM (like from Voodoo or AlienWare) runs about... oh, $6K.
All the new computers have Windows Vista on them, including Rob’s, and from the little experience I have w/Vista I don’t like it much. I don’t know who the people are who convinced Microsoft that a computer should not allow them to do anything without confirming that they do indeed want to do it, but they should all be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes. Vista acts like you should be content with whatever programs are loaded into it at the factory and you should never have to load any new programs into it whatsoever.
Not only does it have Windows’ own firewall/spyware/anti-virus on it, but Sony added in a Spyware blocking tool and Norton 360. Every single time you access a program, Vista asks if you meant to do that. If you go online, you can’t actually visit any websites because they’re all blocked - you have to change the internet security settings from the first boot-up. I had to install WoW immediately because Rob’s having withdrawals... Even after turning off all the Windows security features, the Spyware blocker and NAV, to install the original WoW, it still wouldn’t auto-install. I had to copy the installation from the discs into a separate folder and then restart Windows in Safe Mode just to run the installation.
If Rob can actually manage to access any online porn, his computer should be completely safe from any number of viruses, Trojans, spyware, adware, malware, you-name-it-ware. Vista is the equivalent of a full-body condom for a computer. Rob’s mom is thinking of getting herself a new laptop - her’s is less than a year old but she’s aiming for something smaller. I may end up with a new laptop - also with Vista. Which means yeah, I’ll have a nice computer I can take anywhere, but if I want to get anything done, I’ll have to use my desktop with XP... the last version of Windows that actually works. Gods, I miss Win 98se so hard!
That’s the first time I’ve ever actually had to use Safe Mode to install a program. I’ve been futzing around with that computer for 4 hours now, but at least Rob can have it back finally. Of course, he went to bed 2 hours ago.
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