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Archive for July 2003 The computer issues should be hammered out by today. One thing I noticed last night is that XP, at least GUI-wise, seems better planned out, more solid than 98. The interface looks like a block of candy dipped in melted candy prepared by chefs made of candy, but you can disable some of it. The stuff I'm talking about is the failure of Win98 to actually permit "Yes to All" when deleting a bunch of files and not wanting confirmation; it'll find reason to ask confirmation for each one anyway. In XP, Yes to All deletes All and you had to say Yes but once. Which was the idea, I imagine. Also, they're trying to take a page (or several thousand) from Unix and OSX by not letting a crashed program bring down the whole OS, but I haven't seen that in action yet. I'm using 2000 at work here, which seems to be able to do that. I think. Anyway, the point was not to pat XP on the back, but to say something completely unrelated! I came upon this last night but forgot to share it. If you are a fan of Lovecraft, you, like me, may not have encountered his most terrifying work, "Sweet Ermengarde," which is a parody of damsel-tied-to-the-railroad-tracks type drama. The fact that Lovecraft wrote it is even scarier! http://www.ech-pi-el.com/lovecraft/works/ermengarde.htm Favorite moment: "One day as 'Squire Hardman sat in the front parlour of his expensive and palatial home, indulging in his favourite pastime of gnashing his teeth and swishing his riding-crop, a great thought came to him; and he cursed aloud at the statue of Satan on the onyx mantelpiece." I bought a new processor and graphics card, partly because I wanted to upgrade, and partly because Kurt needs a new machine, and we need parts. Well, something happened and the processor killed BIOS on my old motherboard. That shouldn't have happened, but of course it did. So I bought a new motherboard. But a new power supply was in order to account for the new equipment (probably), so I bought one. And Windows 98 was a bitch to reinstall. And it would lock up randomly. It looked like a heating issue, but my new power supply and billion fans were keeping it 20 degrees cooler than my old chip. Apparently the motherboard uses a chipset which is unsupported by Windows 98. In fact, I guess Windows 98 is unsupported by any new chipsets anyway, as of some months ago if I remember right, in order to migrate everyone to XP. I bought XP at lunch and installed it today. It's slow as a mother and the ethernet controller is dead. It could be a RAM issue, says Melissa. NOT GODDAMN WORTH THE TIME, MONEY AND AGGRAVATION. AT ALL. Putting together a machine used to be a relatively straightforward affair, but I guess it isn't anymore. Hopefully Kurt will have a very nice machine at the end of this. Maybe I'll give him the new one and reassemble my old, functional one for myself. Don't let anyone tell you putting together a computer is straightforward. Not even me, not even you. Every time I do it, I immediately enter a dark tunnel of doubt and regret. I should be seeing better performance than this. Why isn't it posting? Did I waste the money? Why am I doing this to myself? I suppose it will work again eventually, but right now I feel like, who cares? The short story is that on the weekend, my BIOS and began conjuring charnel gods of an aspect man was not meant to behold. I eventually decided to seize the moment, and with Melissa's liberal help, build a machine for my brother which I was supposed to do months ago. So we have assorted parts for two machines, mine and my brother's, but mine is still having problems for insane reasons (i.e. Windows is always a nightmare to get running on a new machine). It will get resolved eventually, but goddamn if next time I don't say "the hell with it, I'll get Alienware or something to build it for me and be done with all of it." Co-worker: Did you get in fight? Me: Yes, with a razor this morning. Him: Did you beat him? Me: No, because he was made of metal. But I'm gonna meet him in the school parking lot after 3:00 tomorrow for a rematch. Him: You want me to go with you? Me: You'd have my back? Him: Tell him your friend is from Middle East. I think he won't even show up. I was doing a real good job shaving this morning, then I went and cut my lip somehow, and bled for a good while before going to work. It doesn't look like anything right now, but I thought "oh crap" and that I would need a stitch or something. I guess the amount of blood coming out was more than you'd think you'd get with a cut that small, since my lips are so full and juicy. That's why I use Clairol Infinite Color Plus Vitamin E for the ultimate -- I will have pictures of Texas up eventually. Maybe... ten years ago -- no, not that many. Probably six years ago. Anyway, Kurt and I were watching Jenny Jones or Ricki Lake, or one of them type shows, and it featured a mom shrieking at her misbehaving child. The show was titled, "Damn, Girl, Why You Gotta Be Playin' Me Like That And Stop Acting So Skanky" or similar. The thing was, the child in question really wasn't acting up, and it started to look like a plant, like they couldn't find a child dangerous and out-of-control enough to put on the show, so they grabbed some average kid, told him to sneer, and the mom to yell. The mom was really getting off on screaming about how bad the son was. So we (or maybe just I) made up Richard, pronounced like the French would, who is only three years old, has the body of an adult, speaks perfect English in a James Mason voice, is super-strong, and super-intelligent. And the joke was, the mom still shrieks at how horrible a son he is. Why should I tell you that? Because, with a different mom, this would be Richard. This kid is nine years old, a freaking bodybuilder (which is very frightening and I wonder if it's bad for him), and taking college math. And his name is Richard. The pictures are really disturbing and look fake. I'm still in Houston. We saw T3 the other night, and it was there that I shushed my first whining brat. I don't understand the reasoning behind bringing your children to the theatre. This was an 11:15 PM showing, and about halfway through, some kids start screaming, perhaps two or three years old. It's like... midnight. The kids are in the small corridor on the right of the stadium seating -- for all I know, the mother didn't even buy a ticket and had wandered in. I saw the re-release of The Exorcist a couple of years ago, and some woman behind me had brought her infant. I read an article that parents with very young children are being turned away from rated-R movies in some places. Oh, but that's not fair! It's my child! I should be able to raise them how I want! It says, children not permitted without guardian! I'm the guardian, and I say it's okay!! And then the kid spends the next two hours running up and down the aisle, shouting and crying. I think a "no children under 10 allowed into R movies under any circumstance" rule would be great. For the foreseeable future, I am disabling "kstraub@nightlightpress.com" as I'm on a billion spam mailing lists. If I didn't know any better (and I don't), I'd say it was purposeful. If you need to write me, use airsick_moth at yahoo.com. I'll reinstate kstraub after a while, once all the spam vendors receive delivery failure messages. I'm all right, still in Texas, now in Houston. July 4th was great. I'll have pictures up sometime soon. I kinda lost my voice here, which was bad, but on the plus side... well, there was no plus side. |
