time and relative dimension in space

I JUST ORDERED A NEW LAPTOP AND IT WAS INSANELY EXPENSIVE AND I AM MAYBE HAVING A SMALL ANXIETY ATTACK ABOUT SPENDING THAT MUCH MONEY. I mean I very carefully saved up enough for it before buying it and it was a well-considered purchase and I need a new laptop, poor Shanne is five years old, all five of those years have involved very heavy use, and she's on her last legs, my poor bb. She needs a relief pitcher. (Um, is that the right metaphor? I know nothing about sportsball.) But still, spending that kind of money all at once freaks me out something awful.

(According to Google the average lifespan of a Sony VAIO is closer to two years. I'm so sorry, Shanne, thank you for putting up with me and struggling through.)

I bought the HP Star Wars Special Edition notebook, because it's super cool and I'm a geek. It's going to be my first touch screen computer, and it's got pretty great stats, too; I went for the best available options on almost every feature, which is one of the reasons it's so expensive. But I would like it to last like Shanne has.

HOWEVER. This presents a new dilemma. All of my previous laptops have been named after Pogues songs (Shanne Bradley, Sally MacLennane, Lorelai). Originally I was planning to name my next laptop either Victoria or Aisling (neither of which is technically on a Pogues album, but they're both on the unreleased box set so IT TOTALLY COUNTS), but it feels weird to name a Star Wars themed laptop after a Pogues song. So. Straw poll!

[Poll #2036747]

My computer mouse appears to be possessed.

Ugh, I really don't want to spend money to get a new one right now, but I want to rely on my laptop's touchpad even less.

(Curse you, ghost in the computer mouse. :/ )

So I've kind of failed at LJ lately, haven't I? I'M SORRY. D: I blame work. Between being too tired to post, having no time to post, and having nothing but work to talk about in a post, I've sort of let journaling fall by the wayside. BECAUSE I SUCK.

Anyway, here's what's going on with teh Chica outside of work:

- Most notably, I just spent wayyy too much money ordering a Sony VAIO laptop + accessories. On the "well, this is a reasonable expense" side, it was all money I'd been setting aside all summer for the express purpose of eventually buying a nice computer, and while Sally is still good to me and I have no intention of permanently retiring her just yet, I do really want a new laptop. One that's actually portable; it is sort of a ridiculous production trying to take Sally anywhere.
On the other side, SHIT $1,600 ON ONE PURCHASE and I'm going to be unemployed two weeks from now and oh God I finalized the purchase less than twenty minutes ago and shopper's remorse is already setting in. Fail, self.

- Currently airing shows I am watching:

Merlin - technically caught up on; not actually paying terribly much attention to what's going on this season. IDK, it's not holding me anymore. This may be because of the hack job the writers did to ALL OF THEIR CHARACTERS (but especially Morgana dammit).

Psych - Woo, Psych is back! The heavy-handed Shawn/Juliet isn't making me enthuse but EVERYTHING ELSE IS. I can even excuse the awful polygraph "I love her" scene where everyone looks SHOCKED AND STUNNED BECAUSE OMG SHAWN LOVES JULES, because the whole plot was kicked off by Shawn and Gus trying to get a kid's Darth Vader action figure back. Oh yes.

Sarah Jane Adventures - I can't believe it's almost over. :/ I keep getting caught up in plots and character-glee and then all of a sudden Sarah will say something and my brain will stop dead and go "LIS :( :( :(". Yes, just like that.
In actual story-related reactions, I have no strong feelings about Sky except that her intro story is entirely too much like Luke's -- it's awkward and weird to do it that way. But CLYDE. Clyde, you are lovely and you should be the next Doctor Who Companion Doctor anything you want to be, Clyde my boy.

...is that all the currently-airing stuff I'm watching right now? That's kind of depressing.

- I have recently and unexpectedly fallen in love with the movie Ondine. There may be some form of pimp post in the future. Probably picspam because it is such a ridiculously pretty movie. So keep an eye out for that.

- NaNoWriMo is coming up! And because I have no willpower and teh Niki is an enabler, I'm evidently going to be trying to do two novels simultaneously this year. WHAT THE HELL, ME. One's a time-travel story about a guy who loses his memory, the other's a mythpunk story about a selkie and the half-evil sorcerer who steals her skin. Yeah. I don't know either.

What have I missed while I was away, LJ? I PROMISE TO LOVE YOU BETTER NOW.

THIS IS MY EXCITED CAPSLOCK

So our Internet was down basically all yesterday, but that is completely secondary to the fact that when my brother came home from work he brought a copy of Windows 7 with him and installed it on Sally, my beloved laptop. !!!! I forgive him every bad thing he's ever done to me.

Windows 7 is basically amazing and I am already in love.

I'm still replacing a bunch of programs, mourning the loss of a couple others, and copying files from my EHD backup back onto my internal drive. But this is a necessary part of moving on to a new step in my operating-system life. And it is an awesome new step.

My brother decided that I needed to learn how to use Ubuntu so he installed it so I could dual-boot it.

Running it caused my computer to shut off.

Twice.

After the second time, trying to restart my computer resulted in a loop where it would get to a certain point in the startup sequence and then go back to the beginning.

We shut down for a while, until the processor had cooled some, and then were allowed to startup in Windows and uninstall Ubuntu.

But then my Internet wouldn't connect.

Some time later, we discovered that my brother had accidentally hit the wireless switch and turned off my card. :|

WAY TO FREAK ME OUT, SALLY.

Anyway, all problems have been fixed now, but I'm thinking it's going to be a while longer before I try to learn Linux again. OR MAYBE I will just steal my brother's computer and learn it on his and let Sally stay safe just running Windows.



30 Days Of TV Meme:

Day 12 ♥ An episode you’ve watched more than 5 times

There's a lot of possible answers to that. *should probably be ashamed of her TV rewatching habit*

However, I'm going to offer up a M*A*S*H episode. Because I watched it today.

Specifically, the M*A*S*H episode "A Night At Rosie's".

This might be my favorite M*A*S*H episode. And that's saying a good bit, because I grew up on M*A*S*H, my dad owned 90% of the series on VHS tapes (I'm still trying to transition his collection into DVDs, which will take up much less space). But "A Night At Rosie's" ranks, if not first, then in the top 5.

It's the episode where Hawkeye and BJ decide, in a fit of drunkenness, to secede from the union to get out of the war. And then they get most of the camp in on it. And it's fantastic.

( the rest )


30 Days Of Who Meme:

Day 05 ♥ Your Favorite Companion

This is another one of those where if you're surprised by the answer you haven't been paying very close attention.

I firmly believe that sometimes, to this day, the Doctor stops and asks himself, "What Would Barbara Wright Do?"

She's kickass, tough, compassionate, handles things that would wreck most people, calls the Doctor out... She runs over Daleks with a truck. She impersonates an Aztec goddess and pulls it off through sheer attitude. She bluffs the hell out of the Dalek overlords with her leet history skillz and a mishmash of every historical reference she happens to think of. She stalks a student to a junkyard because she's worried (and madly curious!). She wears cardigans and sensible shoes.

She cares about people even when it's not the most sensible thing to do. Even when she knows better.

And quite honestly the first two seasons of the show are really "The Barbara Wright Show", with supporting characters The Mentor (The Doctor), The Love Interest (Ian), and The Student (Susan).


(Runners-up: Martha, Amy, Mickey, Romana, Peri, Liz. Listed in no particular order.)

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Anyone have any experience with USB hubs?

Mine has glitched* three times so far today and I'm afraid this is a sign it's starting to fail for good. Recommendations for good (preferably cheap) replacements?

*In case the problem is not actually irredeemable failure of hardware: by 'glitched' I mean that without warning my computer will act like I just plugged in the hub and will reboot my EHDs (which are what I run off the thing). This doesn't seem to be affecting the drives in a negative way so far but it is still not a positive state of affairs.

...also, it has never done this before today.

Er, help?

Sally has died without explanation five times since Saturday. So far. Five times in less than a week. During activities as varied as burning a CD in iTunes, writing an e-mail in Firefox, playing a computer game, watching a DVD, and doing nothing but having a Notepad document open. WTF. This is Not Acceptable. Current plan: Backing everything the hell up right now, dropping her off with Genesis on Saturday, looking in to renting a laptop to get me through until she's fixed.

Blah.

At least she's still under warranty.

...I swear I have things to say that aren't Laptop Woe, but...yeah.

That meme that's going around:

In a nutshell: I list 15 of my pairings and you all tell me if you see reoccurring trends/similarities/parallels/cliches in any of them.

1. Charlie/Claire - LOST
2. Harper/Beka - Andromeda
3. Ian/Barbara - Doctor Who
4. Kyle/Tess - Roswell
5. Jack/Tosh - Torchwood
6. Jimmy/Joanie - The Black Donnellys
7. Rembrandt/Wade - Sliders
8. Jack/Joseph - Kings
9. Olive/Alfredo - Pushing Daisies
10. Tobias/Rachel - Animorphs
11. Carlos/Molly - The Dresden Files
12. Kit/Dairine - Young Wizards
13. Spot/Racetrack - Newsies
14. Walter/Molokov - Chess
15. Roger/Collins - RENT

It's ridiculously hard to narrow down my pairings to fifteen, let me tell you.



Spent the last two days with my Niki. ♥ I LOVE YOU NIKI I MISS YOU ALREADY. We need to live closer to one another. Or she needs to come get me more often. Whichever.

Problems with Sally continue. In negotiations with Genesis to get her fixed. Cannot survive without my laptop, guys, but don't want problems to continue and/or get worse.

I have a new external hard drive! Thank you, eBay. This one's 500GB (in theory, 465GB in practice), so it should last me a good while (in theory).

It does however raise two questions, which I am thus passing on to you guys. Because I'm lazy that way.

1) New EHD needs a name. Previous EHDs are named Barbara and Toshiko, if that provides a guide. (iPod is named Martha. Laptop is named Sally. Sally is not named after Sally Sparrow, but aside from that, yes, it's probably the naming scheme you're thinking of.) Any suggestions?

2) What's the easiest way to transfer my iTunes library from internal hard drive to external without losing things like play counts? Anyone know?

But aside from that, I'm just excited to have storage space again. <3 <3 <3

I know there's some computer gurus on my flist (yes, ninja_headcrab, I'm looking at you) so I'm appealing to you for help.

My laptop's having the problem described here. I have no clear idea how to fix it, it's incredibly annoying, and I would like it to stop. Any advice? :/