Well. Er. It Has Been A While.

My computer was actually up a couple of days ago, but I wanted to wait until I could get back to my proper schedule before posting. This is by way of being a terrible excuse, if you hadn't noticed.

So, my hard drive was fried. My father bought me a new one, but it was blank. Thus began "The Saga of the Disks." I needed certain recovery disks so as to reconstruct my computer basically from scratch. My father impressed upon me the importance and scarcity of said disks, being that I only had one copy and in fact could only legally own one copy of them. He had been sure to pack them with my stuff when I went up to Gainesville, he said, so they were certainly there. If they were not there, he insisted, I would have to order a new set from HP, and they would take over a week to arrive. So I absolutely, absolutely had to find them. I couldn't let my natural cluttered absent-mindedness screw this up for me, this much was clear.

So I arrived in my room and started tearing through my stuff. I mean, I absolutely pulled my room to pieces looking. I went through every drawer, every big plastic tub, everything I own. No disks. They were simply not to be found. Cringing at the thought, I called my father and reported that the disks were AWOL. I had to endure another haranguing, before he said, in an off-hand manner, that he would search at home for them, just in case - perish the thought! - that he had erred and left them behind. This was clearly a horribly distant situation, however, and the impression was gotten across that there aren't numbers small enough to calculate the probability of this occurrance. The only reason that it wasn't actually impossible is that given the nature of probability and the fullness of the universe, nothing is technically impossible. An infinite number of monkeys writing Shakespeare, etc.

So imagine my surprise when I called back a few minutes later, only to hear my father sheepishly tell me "Well...those disks? I have them right here." To my credit, I did not gloat, but instead expressed satisfaction at this, and we discussed plans. I would come home that weekend, and we would rebuild my computer then.

So began the really boring week that contained no computer. I swear, I don't know how I filled u my spare time. Once, I actually caught myself studying! I don't know what came over me, honest. But I persisted, and when I went down to Wellington last Friday with Victoria, I brought my computer and backup hard drive with me. As soon as we arrived, I gave my father all the necessary cables and components, and he set about running the disks for installation.

Or not. As it happened, the disks he had were in fact for my old desktop computer, not my new laptop computer. So I was still boned, with the added bonus of having to wait another week for the disks to arrive by mail. At least, so I thought. My father, being the extremely technical person that he is, apparently decided "**** it, enough is enough," and began fixing the computer himself, disks or no disks.

Let me dedicate this portion of the blog to singing my father's praises. I mean, seriously. As he later described to me, he has had the month from hell. He's had two aggravatingly difficult and fiddly projects to work on, and not to mention a four-hour presentation that he originally wanted to attend but was told he would have to write instead. Through all this, he managed to find the time and the know-how to rebuild my computer to full functionality, diskless even. I confess myself taken aback by this, as was demonstrated during one of our exchanges:

Him: "I've got most of it up, but you'll still need the disks for some things."
Me: "Like what?"
Him: "Your network connections aren't set up right."
Me: "So? I don't usually go on a network."
Him: "What about the Internet, hmm? That counts."
Me: "...er..."
Him: "Yeah."
Me: "****."
Him: "Watch your language."

A few minutes later...

Him: "I'm downloading all of the service pack updates for Windows XP onto your computer."
Me: "Wait. How? I thought you said my Internet wouldn't work..."
Him: (testily) "I fixed it."
Me: "Oh. Awesome."
Him: "It should be done in a while." *walks away*
Me: "I guess I should have expected that."

So yes, mad props to my father for pulling out all the stops and getting my computer up and running so I can do things like waste time posting in blogs (or not, as the case may be) and fervently reinstalling all the programs that I use on an everyday basis.

Besides that, we went to the fair, "we" being Victoria, Kate, Travis, and I. It was fun. I spent a pile of money this weekend, though. Doesn't much matter, as I found an extra $140 in one of my accounts, and my expenses for the weekend pretty much totaled that exactly. So, woot. I was seized by crippling stomach pains the morning of the fair and Kate had been having stomach problems already, so I didn't ride that many rides. It wasn't helped that about half of the adult rides at the fair had been removed for this year, replaced by a bunch of kiddy rides and various farm-animal-related frippery. I did manage to ride the Gravitron, though, so that's always a ray of nausea-inducing sunshine.

We were grifted by one of the booth workers, in one of the booths wherein you throw darts at colorful balloons to win fabulous prizes. I went in intending to spend two dollars to throw a single dart and get some kind of small plush animal, which I do every year. Instead, I spent seven dollars, and Kate and Victoria were both drawn in to spending money themselves. We walked away with a few more stuffed animals (I got a penguin, which I gave to my father, as he likes Linux penguins) and minus moneys. It's a good grift, though, when you know you're being grifted and it's still fun. This guy was good.

Victoria and I came to several important conclusions on our drive over and back. I built an annoying mono-black destruction deck that has yet to be defeated. (I've tweaked it some in MWS, I plan to bring the revised version back home when next I go there, I don't know when that will be.) Other stuff happened, including the playing of a new RPG called Risus, pronounced "Rees-us." As I am given to understand this, that name was the result of the open-ended nature of the game and an extremely bad "There's no wrong way to play a Risus" pun made sometime in development. It involves making up your own characters with your own skills and suchlike, and defeating whatever the GM wants to throw at you. I threw at them:

Bob Ross (Mr. Happy Trees)
Culex
Wario
And finally, Edwin Van Cleef

An esoteric assortment, but whatever. It was fun. Not Toon "I-Use-As-My-Gizmo-A-Can-Of-Powerthirst" fun, but quite fun nonetheless. I plan to try it again more in-depth, when I'm not being chivvied out the door by a quite-understandably-in-a-hurry Victoria.

What's gone on in the last few days? Not much, truly. I got a good grade for my first lab in MMC2100, an 88/100. Apparently, for that class, even for the first lab paper, that's not inconsiderable. And I turned in a paper worth 10 extra credit points, so there is that. We had a good guest speaker today, a Ms. Anne Hull, who told us all about how she became a journalist despite having no formal experience, no writing classes, and only a year and a half of college total. At FSU even, which I suppose amounts to a slow week here at UF. I thought I took copious notes, but my full page paled in comparison to Victoria's four full pages. Sigh. I either need to learn how to write much faster or learn shorthand.

Er, that's about all I can think of at the moment. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOISbaA2G18 It's from a movie I never heard of called Godzilla: Final Wars. It's the American-made synthetic Godzilla vs. the real nuclear Godzilla. I like this fight because of its abruptness, and also because the real Godzilla absolutely trounces the interloper. Hehe.

REPLIES.

Steve: If you're really going to sit here and tell me that between bases on 2fort isn't a long distance and I should be able to noscope-headshot from across the dang bridge, then I have one thing to say: You do it. Not even the pros regularly do that sort of thing, especially since noscope headshotting won't kill soldiers or heavies, the biggest threats.

You're a better cook than I am, and I have a marked distaste for a lot of vegetables. I do eat vegetables, corn and carrots are both vegetables I semi-regularly eat raw, but not to the degree you do. And I'm working on running. First, I want to become good at DDR again, so I can build up endurance. Maybe running at the same time, for double endurance-boosting? Whatever.

Jake: You did. Wasn't it neat? And Matt is, and always will be, a bum.

Vic: Yes, that's why I linked it. Kelli did not come, btw.

Michelle: Good to see you. And I'm glad they've finally shut the heck up as well. It was getting annoying, having to go back and delete their posts over and over again.

Mom: Those are neat. And as for where the energy comes from...? They're superpowers, they don't have to make sense. Say that it's cosmic rays or you get it from the sun or some such nonsense. Maybe all of your particles exist a fraction of a picosecond ahead of the rest of the universe, like the explanation for the Sentry's total brokenness. I don't know.

And to all who posted on my half-hearted breaking update: I'm baaaaaack.

Bye. For now.