Words, Words, Words.

The new laptop has been very shiny so far - but oh, so hard to get used to in more ways than one. First, it has Vista, which has been a little confusing to navigate so far.

The keyboard is also very, very different than my other computer, so typing with it is *much* slower than I'm used to. I keep hitting all the wrong buttons. I'm not used to a full keyboard - with that number pad on the side. And where the heck is the delete key? It used to be right by my pinky finger! Oh, there's two of them now? Grr!

But overall, I'm pretty happy with it and, no - I haven't disappeared completely.

I'll be leaving for Philly in a few minutes. Brother, friends and I have tickets to see Kings of Leon tonight. Should be fun!

Laptop hard drive started making frightening, grindy noises yesterday. (Can barely touch it without hearing them.)

Kept getting Blue Screen Warning Messages of Doom. ("It could be nothing, or it could be an inevitable apocalyptic explosion waiting to happen. You know, either one.")

Stayed up later-than-late last night backing up everything to my external hard drive. EV. ERY. THING.

Was Bitch Queen Without Sleep to any student who crossed me today.

Oh, but I just finished ordering a lovely new laptop, which is now on the way. Shiny!

(I'm probably more than overdue - the one I'm using is currently about 7 years old.)

Boo for not being able to get online much until it arrives.

Yay for new bells and whistles!

It took me forever, but I finally managed to get my hard drive reformatted.

I do so love it when my computer is actually working up to speed. (You don't realize how much it can drag - with pop-ups and the usual accumulation of crap - until you get it fixed.) It took a long time to get all my files backed up, but it was totally worth it.

Now maybe I'll finally have time to work on some of those fiction challenges that are coming up. (Only one month left to go for one of them. Eep!)

Either way, it's nice to be back. :)

Does anyone else have a near-impossible time getting anything to download from Sendspace.Com? When I "Right Click, Save As..." all I get is an HTML page, and when I click normally I get a far too quick download (for the size of the file). The resulting file usually ends up being less than 10KB, and does not remotely resemble the download I was trying to acquire.

I checked the FAQs and don't see anyone else claiming to have that problem so there must be something *I'm* doing wrong. I just can't imagine what it could be.

Grr.

With the closure of Btefnet, my weekly Sunday night download is going a tad slower than normal. I managed to find a torrent of tonight's Family Guy - for the bro in Iraq - though I can't seem to locate a file that wants to go any faster than half a KB per second, with a completion rate of less than 5 days.

But soldier on I shall, for my favorite soldier...and his badly needed doses of crude humor! (Not to mention the fact that I got roped into watching the finale of Survivor tonight and didn't get the see the FG episode myself, either.)

Sorry to spam everybody with what is essentially a commercial, but this has got to be one of the bestest inventions ever!

If you've used it already, then you already know how great it is. But if you haven't seen it yet, definitely give it a try. It's actually a program that cleans your computer screen from the inside. I honestly didn't realize how cloudy my monitor actually was until after I'd tried it. Definitely worth it! It's compatible with nearly every model of machine . . . and it's free!

Here's the ScreenClean sales pitch, but trust me, it sells itself. You're gonna love this!

Every keystroke you make, each graphic you pull up to
view, makes your monitor screen "cloudy" because of the pixels and the
light particles moving to make your images on your screen.

This is a quick screen cleaner which aids in making your monitor clearer
and more vibrant.

Try it now!

Dear Toshiba Laptop,

Ah, how I've missed you. It's so wonderful to have you back, and please never scare me like that again. I'm sure we'll settle back into our old routine once I'm able to rearrange some of the current weirdness you seem to have returned with. I look forward to wasting some valuable time together once more.

Love,
Rummi

And now, some good news in list format: 

•  I have a new stash of authentic fake designer purses that my mom bought for me during her visit to NYC.  Some of them are too small for the stuff I apparently need to carry around with me, but they’re just so darned cute!
  


•  After covering a portion of Tricia’s chemistry class, my vice principal told me I could leave 45 minutes early.  Wheee!  (Home in time to watch an episode of Buffy for a change.  Ohh, Crush.  Spikey goodness.  I lucked out.  *G*)
  


•  BIG NEWS:  The laptop came back from the Toshiba necromancers today.  I have yet to turn it on and see if all’s right with the world again, and I hate to speak too soon, but I have a lot of confidence in those Toshiba people.  Considering how long they kept it, I hope it would be good to go.
  


•  I managed to write about a quarter chapter of OoJ last night.  Combine that with the bits and pieces I’d already had hand-written, and I’d say we’re moving right along.  Now that the laptop is back, I may just be able to pick up the pace.  Unless, of course, the return of a typing tool that I don’t have to share with others means the inevitable end of my streak of inspiration.  (No, no.  Must think positive!)
  


•  MARINE UPDATE:  I was so very happy to see new pictures of Tom in Iraq.  (After last night, I needed to see them.  Last night was one of those with the horrifyingly vivid dreams where we kept getting notices that he’d been hurt, or worse.)  He still refuses to smile for the camera (serious Marine-Guy, you know), but there are a lot of shots of him this time:  One with his sergeant (over whom everyone seems to tower!), one with his close-up funny face, and one where he’s all alone in the “chow hall,” among other piccies.  (Hee!)  Iraq looks very different than I’d pictured it.  But it’s great to see that they actually have time to unwind; it has to be very difficult just being there.
  
  His unit now has a guestbook too, so if anyone feels so inclined as to drop a supportive note to the guys over there, I'm sure they'd love it.  (Tom wouldn’t recognize any of my internet pseudonyms, - hey, I gotta have something that's mine - but if you want, you can tell him Amy sent you.)

 

 

I’m done being sad about this whole computer mess. That’s it. The end.

( Small consolations and a bit of perspective  )

As of right now, I am mopey-Rummi no more. Next update I’ll give a few happy job-related details! *VBG*

Well, ladies and gents, 'tis official. The laptop has died.

Or, at least, I had to end up using the recovery disk to wipe the entire hard drive and completely reinstall the system. According to the nice (and kindly sympathetic man) at Toshiba - after he had me try half a dozen ways to get the computer to finally load Windows - it was most definitely a software problem.

The saddest part is, there was no way to recover anything on my hard drive. Therefore, lost and gone forever are several emails I hadn't saved yet, my primary email address book on Outlook Express, any LJ icons I loved, but wasn't immediately using, and the revised editions of the three fics I've been working on. (Luckily, I still have the chapter makd helped me with in my Gmail inbox, but everything I wrote after that has gone bye-bye. I guess, in a way, I'm glad it wasn't much yet.)

There was only one story that I hadn't at least saved a rough copy to disk yet, and I'm pretty devastated about losing that. (The beginning of a Spike & Illyria fic that I'd actually been extremely proud of. Coincidentally, I've got a large chunk of it hand-written in a tablet I brought along on a long car ride, so it wasn't a complete loss, but so many of my most favorite parts are gone. There was certainly more than one tear shed over that one. It's tough to lose something you've put so much thought into.)

When I'm feeling better, I'm sure I'll make up my mind to redo it -- and to do it better than before. But for now, I'm pretty down about it.

Currently, I'm waiting for the default recovery to finish so I can start to rebuild my files. Hopefully it will turn out that there's nothing wrong with the hardware. Toshiba didn't think so, but they also said we couldn't be totally sure until the reload was complete. If there is a fault in the hardware, I'm still under warranty (the laptop is less than a year old), so they'll fix it for free. I guess that's some small consolation.


PS -- Chance, if you're reading, please send your latest chapter again. I'm just sick over the fact that I lost it and the feedback I was sending. I'm so sorry.