Adventures of a Tofu Slut

I REALLY HATE COMPUTERS.

So, my DVD drive hasn't worked in ages, since they had to send me a new thingy that I've forgotten the name of. Which meant that I couldn't use it (the DVD drive) for back-up, like I'd been doing before. Because of that, and because I was running out of room on my hard drive, I bought an external hard drive. Great, fine, I backed everything up, everything was good.

Now I decide that I really need to get the DVD drive fixed, so in preparation for taking the laptop in, I go to back everything up on the external, and...it doesn't register on my computer at all. It's not the USB port, because other thing work there, so maybe it's the cord? I don't know. All I know is that I was berating myself for putting things off (like getting the DVD drive fixed) and now I know why - because something goes wrong every time I try to do anything around electronics. So frustrating!

Argh.

I'm going to bed.

Now is the time when I get really tense while watching SYTYCD, because I start having Opinions, and I do not trust other people to agree with me. ( More blathering )

***

On a completely different note, I'm trying once again to not spend hours and hours every night on the computer. Tonight I didn't turn it on until 7:30! Go me. Because seriously, it's not like I *do* anything for all those hours on the computer. And I think it's diminishing my ability to focus on anything. (Of course, I'm *still* on the computer, as you can see. Turning it off again is the next challenge.) Also, I randomly decided to walk partway home in the 33 degree heat. I don't *think* I've lost my mind. But maybe it'll tire me out enough that I'll actually sleep tonight.

Right! I have to get dressed and go buy cereal, otherwise I will have no breakfast and be very, very sad. (Pretend you can see me mock pouting.)

I HATE TECHNOLOGY.

I could have sworn I posted yesterday with the computer update (which I know you are all DYING to hear...heh). But, nothing. Ooo, phantom LJ posts! Creeeepy!

...sorry, wrong season.

This morning I had an email from someone saying (among other things) she missed my LJ posts (and my tea reminders, amazingly enough). I FEEL TOTALLY LOVED. Therefore I am going to attempt to update more regularly. Which means I will have to leave the house more often in order to have something to say. Oh the pain.

Anyway, computer update! It's all good. Isn't that exciting? There was a second disk I needed to install, with drivers and settings and the like, which fixed any number of problems including the display, and then thanks to the amazing magical wizardry of sanity_clause, I have all my files back. Seriously. I am still amazed - I had totally found a place of zen about losing everything since June and then! He somehow dragged them all off the dead hard drive! s_c, there is a prize for you coming at some point when I have enough time to actually get it.

Here are my ruminations about safety for the day. Car alarms and fire alarms have both kind of hit that point where people don't pay all that much attention to them, except to be annoyed about the noise. I personally think car alarms are ridiculous, unless the owner of the car is within hearing range and is willing to go sprinting out to the car to deal with whatever is happening. Otherwise? People assume that either a) someone walked too close to the car (and oh, this is why car alarms should not be allowed in cities, because if your car is parked beside the sidewalk, someone is going to walk too close to it!), or b) someone (aka the driver) accidentally set the alarm off and can't figure out how to shut it up. Which is what I assumed on Friday when I passed a car with the alarm going off and someone sitting inside. It didn't even OCCUR to me until three blocks later that there might be some other reason, because car alarms go off all the damn time, for no good point.

Fire alarms are kind of the same way. At work, we assume it's a fire drill. And it always has been. At home, only once out of all the times the fire alarm has gone off in any of my apartment buildings has it been an actual fire. Last night the fire alarm went off, and half the people I saw just looked out their doors, and then went back to what they were doing. Of course, we couldn't smell any smoke. Personally, I went for coffee. I figure if it is a real fire, it's going to burn down whether I'm there or not. But no-one ever rushes anymore. No-one ever panics (which is probably a good thing). Everyone takes the time to put on shoes and coats and scarves (which is also a good thing, because it was crazy cold last night).

I was going to end this with a carefully thought-out and detailed moral, but then realized that it's really just the boy who cried wolf as applied to inanimate objects. All the good morals are taken, yo.

Question: if I have a funky t-shirt that I totally love but it's too small now (like all my funky t-shirts), how lame is it of me to buy the exact same one again in a larger size?

Finally, mystery_diva's birthday brunch this weekend reminded me of how awesome brunch is and how it's really one of my all-favourite socializing venues. Something about the combination of breakfast foods, being early in the day so no-one is cranky or exhausted from work, a recognition of the weekend, good venues for talking, no clean-up after. Whatever it is, it totally works.

Okay, for real. What did I do?

My computer is dead. I spent Friday night with a bottle of wine and the Compaq tech support guy on the other end of the phone, attempting to get my computer to load up Windows. But no luck. Luckily I'm still on warranty, so they're sending me a new hard drive. I still don't know why this happened.

The ironic thing is that last weekend I attempted to back up all my files to DVD, but the DVD part of my burner/drive wasn't working. I was going to call them this weekend anyway. Instead, the whole thing is dead and I have potentially lost everything (although I'm going to take it somewhere after work today and see if my information can be magically retrieved).

On the plus side, I read A LOT this weekend.

Not having internet access at home is interesting. I have to write myself little notes about things I need to do on the computer at work the next day (instead of doing it right then or emailing myself reminders), which I invariably forget about until I'm leaving work again. And I have so much work that I don't really have time for regular internet abuse. So it's like jumping back 5 years. Yesterday I took the Yellow Pages off the top of the bookshelf! I don't think I've used them since I moved in. And now, when I'm home alone, I don't automatically know what everyone else is doing. Eerie.

I have learned the important lesson, though, that no internet means I will go to bed earlier. That's one to remember. Heh. Oh, and also that I will go stir crazy after a couple of days of not talking to anyone, even virtually, and will actually make plans. Shocking, I know.

Aaaaand it's the weekend, so therefore I must be having computer problems. This time my wireless doesn't seem to be working anymore - it's all good if I'm connected directly into the cable modem, but not when I'm connected throught the wireless, despite my wireless connection being all "you're good, you're great!"

I bet I screwed it up when I was trying to protect the connection. That would be so very me.

I'm totally giving up on technology. All y'all will come visit me in my cabin in the woods, right?

Has anyone found a session saver-type add-on for Firefox 2.0? I'm hoping I'm just blind in not being able to find one.

Ages ago (like, last year), I decided to join the 21st century, so I poked and questioned and finally figured out this whole "downloading" thing that people keep talking about. And through the magic of torrents, I found the missing episode of Kitchen Confidential, the one with Michael Vartan that never aired. Except when I tried to play it, I only got sound and swirly things. No chefs. Sad!

All that keeping up with the times nearly killed me. I had failed, so I gave up. But then a random comment last week led me to realize that I could probably make things better. Woo! So I searched around and found that I needed a codec, and then found the codec that I needed, downloaded that, and la la la, picture!

And then I had to remind myself how to use uTorrent so that I could download Torchwood. Which took all night. But now I have tv on my computer. It's a little exciting.

At my "real" email address (aka the one with my real name) I've been getting a lot of mail that is clearly intended for people other than me -- people with my same name. I am so not unique *sob*. The first few I responded back to the person, letting them know that I was not the Rachel they were looking for, and they were all very thankful, but it's getting kind of boring. Especially because of the family in Texas, who originally included me in a group email, and now I'm getting random other emails from all the other people included in that email, included an evite to a barbeque, which I politely declined.

It's just-- I'd like to ignore them, but I know what a pain it is when someone doesn't answer an email and you don't know whether they're ignoring you or whether the email got lost in the ether somewhere.

Or maybe I could just start to steal their lives! This latest email had flight information for a trip to Bulgaria and Austria. I could totally take that. Of course, I'd have to get to Dublin first, but still. Ski trip! Nevermind that I don't know how to ski.