Things I overheard while talking to myself

So I was walking home through the park after I got off the T tonight when I saw a searchlight over Fenway Park.

My first thought was "Batman?" Yeah.

Incidentally the new Wonder Woman comic came out a few days ago, so tomorrow when I have to replenish our groceries I need to swing by Kenmore and the shop there. This week has been mostly defined by me being a complete and utter scatterbrain about a whole variety of things, so I'll try to make this weekend better on that count.

Speaking of me being a scatterbrain, if anyone sent me a private message here on LJ and didn't receive a response... it was because the email notifications for those got turned off and I never bother to check the mailbox on LJ's site. Oops. It should be fixed now, but I think that happened when I was having trouble getting comments and had to mess with the settings, so we can add technology to the list of things I fail at this week.

Oh well, I'll just try to start the next week off better.

Technology hates me this week, though at least not my laptop (which I installed Windows 7 on and have had no problems with other than needing to reinstall my touchpad driver, which took all of five minutes).

On Monday I discovered two things: One, that my work phone is messed up and that the voicemail will not pick up if I'm not there to answer the phone and will just keep ringing and ringing and ringing, meaning that I've possibly pissed off an untold number of people who I've told to call me back as part of my job. D'oh! Two, that the database I needed to work with was not showing what I needed. The second one was easy enough to fix after I found the person in charge of it, while the first...

Well, I have one day of this work week left and it's still not fixed despite the fact that the tech people have known about it since Monday thanks to a call I made and were reminded again yesterday by email. My boss was out of the office until today and I let her know about this, and should it not be fixed by tomorrow I should CC her on the email to the tech people, since having her name attached to things seems to get them up to us faster than you can say "accountability."

I also had a mini battle with the digital time card system today to get my hours in, but I eventually won. The urge to chuck the PC out the window and down 28 floors was great, I admit, but nothing a few good whacks and threatening gestures didn't fix.

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Funny you should mention that, since just the other day the (one) ex girlfriend I have from high school found me on Facebook. I've yet to respond and I'm probably just going to ignore the request, since I don't need the knowledge that she's following everything I do hovering over me.

Not to mention that she was the one who broke it off in the first place (after only a week and one date, I might add) and rebounded with someone else at the speed of light, so I don't get the sense that she never gave a damn about me then and probably doesn't now (if she even remembers who I am). And to reiterate the point of this, I just don't need that sort of thing now that I have a better life and a committed relationship, the last thing I want is to dig up old crap that I buried a long time ago.

Facebook: Allowing people you never thought you'd have to think about again bug you with a click of a button.

*thud* *thud* *thud*

Fuck RCN. This is day four of this internet "outage" and no sign of it ending. Were it financially feasible we would drop these guys ASAP, but we just forked over a lot of money for installation and Nadia's broke at the moment. Goddamn it I hate these people!

The most rage inducing part was that we called tech support again yesterday making it the third time we'd called them and had the guy walk us through resetting the router, resetting the modem, trying to change the IP address, lather, rinse, repeat and only after an hour did he look on his computer and see that we had an "outage" in our area, essentially meaning that we wasted an hour doing something that would not work anyway! At least I had the sense to call from Jen's phone which has unlimited talk minutes or I would have wasted even more of my own money (I'm too cheap and don't talk enough on my cell phone to justify an expensive plan). I did snap at the guy on the phone because I was very upset and was almost crying at the end of that (which I feel bad about because I try not to take stuff like that out on low level people just doing their job) but Jen did send them a very angry email since for some reason her computer still gets internet access while my laptop and Nadia's two computers do not. So we have some internet, but three people fighting over it. We got on long enough to post messages to the effect of "FUCK RCN!" on Facebook at least, which admittedly didn't do much besides help vent our spleens.

At least I can get on at school (and it's coffee hour at Diversity Services so I don't have any actual work for now) but this is irritating me beyond belief. However, Sara invited me to come up to New Hampshire for the weekend to visit her parents and I'm probably going to say yes. I probably need some kitty therapy and Sara therapy to undo the rage of the past few days.

Transferring emails from one computer to another is a pain. More so when one doesn't have any working USB ports. But I figured it out after 3 or four tries, basically using every trick they recommended until one worked. It was aggravating to have uploads and downloads to my online server not work 3 times when the uploads alone took about an hour each, but I think I finally have it.

So we're more or less up and running, and Ambrose here is still amazing me with his speed. I was amazed when the restart took less than a minute to get fully booted, a world of difference from my old one. I still need to tweak some settings on Windows though most of the annoying parts were already disabled. I was also researching freeware virus programs since I'm not sure I want to shell out my (or more likely my dad's) money for something that I can get for free that's just as good and has the benefit of open source. I think I found a decent one that I cross referenced in a few different places, and so far it's working well.

I still keep hitting the Fn button when I mean to hit ctrl on the left side, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I'm already getting used to the keyboard, but there was an adjustment period where I kept hitting the wrong things and could barely type. Now going back to Leto's keyboard feels a bit awkward. This keyboard is also unusual in that it also has a full number pad on the right hand side, but I have a few games that will come in handy with and save me from having to hook up a controller. Overall I like the keyboard, it's halfway between a regular keyboard like Leto's, which always has things getting stuck under the keys, and what's called an island keyboard that shows up on more expensive machines. I also seem to be making fewer mistakes while typing, though that may just be because I'm paying more attention to where my hands are.

The mouse is also a bit hard to get used to, and the main complaint I saw about this model was people saying that the touchpad was very sensitive. Apparently these people don't know that you can turn down the sensitivity, which I did as well as making the double click more sensitive, since that's how I tend to operate. Coloring with this mouse is probably going to be interesting, but one thing at a time. It also has what's called rolling scroll like on an iPod screen, meaning that if you want to go down you make a circle and go the other way to go up. It took a little bit to get used to but I like it.

*stares at mailbox*

*stares a while longer*

SHOW UP, DAMN IT!

So yeah, still waiting on the new laptop to show up. Not today, but hopefully tomorrow. Leto meanwhile is still chugging along, though it had major trouble earlier today and even ctrl+alt+del failed to fix it (failure to initialize security options, dead serious), so I had to leave it alone for a while until it worked itself out.

Oh the processor on this thing sucks, but the new one should work exponentially better. Sara's dad said that it might not be able to play next gen games, but guess what? I don't play next gen games (at least not on PC) so it's a moot point.

Now if it would just show up... and I should figure out how to transfer Firefox favorites, since favoriting everything again is a pain. Edit: And I figured it out. Turns out that when you click "Organize Bookmarks" on the Bookmarks menu you can choose to export them in a file, which I chucked up on my internet storage. I knew the Firefox developers would have thought of something like that.

Ugh, I did not need that. Earlier today after I got back from lunch into Diversity Services I saw that my computer, which I'd left unplugged, was shut down. Figuring we'd had a power surge or something I started it back up, and after a few minutes it suddenly shut down on me again without warning. I eventually figured out that the male power input on the back of the computer was bent, almost at a 30 degree angle, and that the computer would start and then shut down because it wasn't getting enough power to start the hard disk.

This whole thing pissed me off because it means that someone must have tripped over the cord and pulled it while I was gone, even though I've explicitly warned the people in that office about it multiple times and put my computer out of the way precisely so this didn't happen. Someone missed the memo and was not paying attention so I almost lost everything. It worked out and I don't have to kill anyone, but still.

So as soon as I realized what was wrong I took it to the computer service people, and eventually I just used my swiss army knife to bend the input back into place. The computer is working fine now, it's getting enough power, and the input seems to be back to normal and it apparently didn't take any damage, though I'm going to keep an eye on it. This majorly stressed me out since I have that 15 page paper due tomorrow, so this could not have come at a worse time. Luckily it worked out, but my heart didn't need the stress over the possibility of having no computer and no way to start it and get it off onto another computer with that huge project due tomorrow. It's like something out of a nightmare.

I am, however, done with said paper, so I just need to print it out. Whew.

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Cell. Phones. See my rant from the other day for a perfect example. Long story short, I'm in line in the bathroom, woman is talking on cell phone in a stall taking up the stall for minutes on end while I'm waiting. That and the TMI discussions I so often overhear living on campus. Really, people, wait until you get home to talk about that.

After church Mom and I went to Clay's, a local store that Dad had given us certificates for at Christmas. I ended up getting a silk scarf that I think is very pretty and... socks. Nice socks. What? I like socks.

Afterwards I went off on my own, and after going several places looking for a chair pad for my desk chair at school I ended up at GameStop, where it turns out they're having a used game sale (buy 2 get the 3rd free) so I took advantage of that and got Tomb Raider: Legend, Killer 7 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for $20 total. I tend to be about 2 years behind everyone else game wise (mostly due to lack of funds and unwillingness to shell out $400 for a new system while my PS2 still works), but I've heard good things about these ones.

I put in Tomb Raider a few minutes ago just to check it out, especially since my grandmother gave us her old TV since she got a new one, continuing the familial tradition of always giving the old stuff to the children (my grandfather was especially notorious for this). Out old TV was from 1992, and though we had to adjust the color a bit this new one looks pretty good, and is probably higher resolution, not to mention that the screen is flat as opposed to rounded like the old one.

Well, in terms of Tomb Raider, I used to play the original on PC so I pretty much knew what to except. Lara handles like a cow in supermarket cart, the camera is not a team player and often points in the exact opposite direction you need it to, and she does lots of shamefully fanservice-y stuff that seems very self aware to the point of possibly being a parody. I can see where the accusations that they borrowed from Prince of Persia come from, since when I messed up on a puzzle I instinctively pressed the L1 button, which is the time rewind button in PoP.

So those should keep me occupied for a while. I haven't done any extended gaming sessions since Metal Gear Solid 3, not counting getting whooped by my roommates on her Guitar Hero back at school.