because a Reverend can't be wrong.
I finally got smart. I hooked a monitor, mouse, keyboard and REAL speakers up to my laptop, and turned off the setting that says it should shutdown when I close the lid. Now I don’t have to work on a laptop anymore, but it still very slow. Very slow.
Too bad all my MP3s are on my harddrive. I guess this is a good time to check out some Internet radio stations.
Yesterday was exhausting.
I got up, and lounged around the house until about 1:00pm, talking to Jess, doing laundry, and being generally lazy. Around 2pm I went into work, and around 3:00pm I got a call from Morgan telling me that Brad got the UHaul stuck in the parking garage and that they needed help. I left work and rushed over here to find they had gotten it out. The UHaul was too tall to fit under the concrete beams that run across the parking garage. Well, they managed to get it in, but couldn’t get it out due to the oreintation of the weight coming back out. I had an idea. We let the air out of the tires on the UHaul and managed to get it far enough inside the parking garage that we could get everything out without having to climb a very crooked set of stairs at the ground level. Then Brad got called into work by his bastard employer. So Bo (Morgan’s brother), Morgan, Morgan’s mom, and I emptied out the truck.
This provided us with a few injuries. I broke one of the earpieces on my glasses. Bo and I ended up running to fast down the hall not realizing that what we were sliding on the ground wouldn’t fit through the next opening, so when we hit it, I went flying forward and Bo flew over the thing we were pushing and landed on his face. In order to get the washer up a flight of stairs, I jumped over it, fixed something and then, in my attempt to jump back, hit a light fixture with my back shredding my shirt and causing me great pain. Bo and I also misjudged the weight of many objects causing us much more pain than was needed. I could go on with the list of injuries, but the jist of it is that it is amazing they were only injuries and not casualties.
What we didn’t really consider was the fact that, as we were removing items from the truck, the suspension was becoming less and less stressed, and therefore, raising higher and higher into the air. When we finally finished unloading it, we had gained too much height to make it back out of the garage. Bo and I let more air out of the six tires until the truck was basically riding on rims. Then Morgan, Morgan’s Mom, Zoe and I all stood on the back of it for weight, as Bo pulled it forward slowly. We made it out and Bo and I continued on to a gas station to re-air the tires.
That sounds like a simple thing to do: putting air into tires. It wasn’t. It took us over an hour to finish all six tires. While we were there, a girl in a champagne colored camaro decided she would get a car wash at the gas station. As she was yapping away on her phone she proceeded to attempt to drive into the exit side of the car wash and was a bit confused when she couldn’t find the machine to put her money into. I walked over to her car to let her know that she was going the wrong way. She said, “Thank you,” and decided that it was a good idea to pull through the car wash going the wrong way and then spin around and come back. The rails and tire guides in the car wash made that impossible and she eventually found her rear-wheel drive camaro unable to move. Bo and I told her that she would need to straighten her wheel and back straight out. She got out of the car and informed Bo and I that she doesn’t know how to drive backwards. I got in her car and backed it out for her. Then she said, “Thank you,” and drove around to the correct side of the carwash. Bo and I went back to airing the tires.
She plunked her money in the machine and drove into the carwash way too fast, passing all of the washing equipment without actually getting washed, missing the tire guides, jumping the rail guides, and ended up getting her car stuck again, bottoming out on the rail once more. Again Bo and I walked over to her car to help her straighen her wheels out. We got her to back out just a bit, and then pull forward. When the carwash didn’t turn on, she decided she didn’t really need a carwash after all. So off she drove, still on the phone. As she drove a way Bo looked at me and said, “And car insurance is cheaper for girls?”.
After finishing the tires, we drove the UHaul back to the apartment, and then went out for some much needed dinner. Then I came home, talked to Jess for a bit and went to bed early.
I don’t really have the time to screw with this machine right now. My only CD burner is on it, so I can’t download a new copy of Debian and burn it off. I don’t have a Windows XP CD because… um… the one I um… bought… was… um… accidentally placed in the Microwave. Yeah, that’s it. And even if I did… I don’t think it would fix anything. I have a few spare machines lying around that I could throw the harddrive in and boot, and, if what I’m thinking about the motherboard is true, and the harddrive hasn’t been ruined beyond repair, it’ll be just fine once I run a repair.
I hate computer hardware because I don’t know enough about it to fix my own problems. Not when they get this deep. And it gets even more annoying when I just flat out don’t have time to do it.
I’ve got the laptop for now. As much as I hate using it, it works fine, although a little on the slow side (PIII 700 with 128MB ram).
Maybe if I have time this weekend I’ll try to get my AMD K6-400 booted, if I can get someone to burn me off a Debian CD, since I don’t have a working floppy drive at all.
First my 40GB Maxtor drive goes bad. Now my 60GB Seagate drive is acting up. Windows XP is unbootable. It complains about my SYSTEM directory being screwed up and orders me to run a repair install. I’m afriad that just wont help. I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t my mother board or power supply that is causing problems. I have had Windows XP on this laptop for some time now running the same applications with roughly the same usage patterns with no problems. I really don’t want to have to buy a new motherboard right now, and I’m afriad that’s the problem. Damn ASUS K7V.
Does anyone know anything about this board being probelmatic? I’ve been running it for over a year now and, while it does run a little hot, I haven’t had any big problems until the past 2 months or so.
I’m afraid to even boot my machine because I really don’t want to lose all the data on this drive like I did on the last. I’ve been a bad computer user and have absolutely no backups.
Melissa is still one of my absolute favorite friends. Talking to her is so easy, and she always understands and relates. Regardless of how disappointed I was when things didn’t work out when I went to see her in Utah last year, I am so very glad that I did.
Thank you, Melissa. I love you.
I’m finally going to get my oil changed. I should get my tires rotated and my front-end aligned while I’m at it. I wonder if there is a place that can do all of that in a reasonable amount of time during one of the busiest oil change hours of every day — the lunch break. I will look and call before I go.
After that, I’m going home for Peanut Butter and Jelly, Cheez-Its, and, maybe, my baby, if she’s home by then.
When most people think of the Earth, they think of a rock. A solid ball of stone speckled with water, and people, and trees, and animals, and insects. Most people understand, and yet fail to think about the true nature of Earth when thoughts of the “world” cross their mind.
Yes, the core of the Earth is rock. And that rock is indeed covered with people and animals and plants, some of which have yet to be discovered. But, the atmosphere of our planet is what people don’t usually see, because, to most people, the atmosphere is invisible. Take a flight to the moon and peer back at the Earth and you still may not come to grips with the concept that this rock that we live on is covered in things like air.
It isn’t until most people actually see the atmosphere become displaced that they realize that it is there. Compared to the vast vacuum of space, the Earth’s atmosphere acts more like we would expect liquid to act. It ebbs and flows around the rock that is at the center of the earth. If something large enough were to crash into it, it would splash out into space much like water in a swimming pool does when you make a “cannonball”. It is this moving, flowing, churning outer sphere of the Earth that makes this rock inhabitable. Regardless of what’s on it, or what it’s distance from the sun is, a rock without an atmosphere is not a place we could live — at least not today.
So the next time you think of the Earth, don’t just think of the part your feet walk on, think of the layers and layers of air that go on above you, and remember just how fragile, and yet incredibly important, those layers are.
These thoughts were finalized after reading about the asteriod on a possible collision course with the Earth sometime around Feburary, 2019.
