Mood: Good (quick, take a picture) Well, this past weekend has been a true test of my patience. About 17 crucial things went wrong, namely the death of my box. No, not that box; the box that connects to the internet, lets me play games, do my art, pirate music and programs, and enables me to socialize in ways I cannot whilst in person. It all began on Friday night. I drove up to Pete's, we went to Ruby Tuesdays; I drove because Pete intended on throwing down a few LIT's, and driving after this isn't the world's best idea. We eat our delicious hamburgers and drive back home. I get out of the car and my ears immediately pick up on a noise like this: *hisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss*. I demanded the noise to discontinue being what I thought it may be--a flat tire. Well, as I've come to find out, tires don't listen very well. It was petulantly flat. It was about, oh I don't know, 11pm. Pete was intoxicated, and even if he were 100% sober, he wouldn't know how to put the donut on. I pretty much knew how to, having observed it being done multiple times before, but I was nervous that I'd put the jack under the car incorrectly, and once I'd begin to hoist it, the door panel would accordian. Despite my love (heh) of accordians, I do not secretly yearn for my driver-side door to resemble one. I have AAA, so I utilized their services. They came rather promptly for a Friday night. The nice man changed it and told me to make sure I filled the donut with some air because it appeared to be a bit deflated. On my way home, I stopped at the BP on Morris Ave to get some air. Lucky me, it was my last $0.75; the exact amount required by the air machine. There's that saying "Air is free", but that must have conceived before automobiles, because it most certainly is not free, at least not at BP. Unfortunately, the air machine was out of order. No sign was posted alerting me of such things. Rock on. The night keeps getting better and better. One of the last things I'd like to do is drive around Union/Elizabeth at 2am, looking for free air machines. I was stuck between either doing that, and driving on this noticeably deflated donut, or just driving home, carefully. I opted for the latter. All was going well on my way home, via the GSP. I get a smidgeon south of exit 129 when terror strikes. The bastard donut shits the bed. I furiously throw the hazards on and try to make my way over to the shoulder, but the friendly NJ drivers decided to ride my ass and flash their highbeams behind me. I called Pete in a frenzy, I was so pissed off because this was now the 2nd flat I'd gotten in about 3 hours. He voluteered to come because he didn't want me standing there on the side of the parkway, alone. We hung up, and I proceeded to call AAA yet again. They lovingly told me that they do not take care of breakdowns and tows on the GSP; that a seperate contractor had to be spoken to, and before I could get a word in edge-wise, I was transfered to the GSP tow help desk. I explain my dilema again, they tell me someone should be there shortly. I express my concerns about having to pay for the tow even though I'm supposed to have it covered through AAA but they're not allowed to even bring a non-parkway-ok'd tow truck, and how this fascist system is bullshit. She agreed. How could she not? The political greasing of some wealthy contractor's palm is complete bullshit, but I was by the proverbial balls. The tow came about an hour later. He told me that he'd tow me, but it was going to cost some ridiculous amount. So I said, ok then, if AAA couldn't tow me off the GSP, then could he tow me to the nearest exit; so I'd technically be off the parkway and I could call AAA and they'd tow me the remainder of the way, because I refuse to pay $350.00 dollars for a tow. He said he could do such a thing, but it'd cost me $90.00. $90.00 for a quarter of a mile! But what could I do? Nothing. There was no choice. I asked him if I would be reimbersed and he assured me I would be. Thankfully Pete was there, because he put it on his card, else I'd be really, really fucked. So, that's what he did. $90.00 later, we found ourselves in a parking lot of a mini mall off Rt 9 North in Woodbridge. Long enough story short, I got the 2nd tow that ended up only costing me $30.00, which is far, FAR better than $350.00. We got home around 6:30am and Pete crashed at my house. Despite all of the mishaps, I was in a decent mood because I was looking forward to the Optimum Online installation guy coming later in the day to install the long-awaited cable connection so I can download The install guy came and everything installed without a hitch on my mom's computer. After the guy left, it was time to set up the wireless router. I had installed the pci card in my computer and everything was going swell, until we realized that my mom's computer is a piece of crap and can't handle the load of the router and my wireless connection. So back to Staples my mother and her boyfriend went. They returned the wireless router in exchange for the reular wired one. While they were gone, I installed the nic card and everyting was fine, until I noticed my sound wasn't working. I can't have my sound not working because most of the allure of cable is to download tons and tons of music, and with no sound, what's the use?? I checked my profile manager and pointlessly, my SoundBlaster card didn't show up in my sound profile. It said no device was installed. No panic, I'd just take the card out and put it back in real quick because it was possibly loose, as I have this thing where I never ever screw the pci cards into the port bay. I did so, with no luck. Now I start to get really upset and irritated. I do the above steps multiple times to no avail, until the final time when I go to power up the computer, and the monitor alerts me that there is no video input. I've had a similar problem before, and it was just the cable in back was a bit loose, so I go behind the monitor to fasten the connection, but still got the same alert. I tried a different monitor and it said the same thing. I didn't have the option of changing slots because there is only 1 video slot. I knew I had an extra nvidia card somewhere, but where?? I search feverishly, now in tears because I'm so frustrated and just want this to work. I find the card, remove the other card and replace it with the one I know for certain that it's functionable. Didn't work. I got the same message. Conclusion: it had to be the motherboard, which would also give reason to why the soundcard could not be detected, either. I had an extra Asus motherboard lying around, which was incidentally better than the one I currently had installed, but my power supply (350 watt) didn't output enough wattage to support it. But recently I had gotten my hands on a 450 watt power supply that my friend had lying around. But thinking about it, I didn't want to have to mount that and the motherboard. I wanted something new. I wanted... a laptop! Another long-enough story short, that's exactly what I did. I got me a brand spanking new HP Lappy. The specs are as follows: - AMD Turion64 Processor (I despise Intel) So that's basically it. However, the rj-45 cable I got is much too long to sustain a connection without certain filters, so I can't even use the laptop in my room yet. I need to be within 8ft of the router, because that's the only other length of cable that I have. Things have to eventually fix themselves, but I do love my lappy so very much. It's so awesome. Heart.
Rollin' in my 6-4
1:00 p.m.//05.23.06
Sound: Dr. Dre -- Let Me Rideporn music.
- 1GB PC2700 ddr dimm (expandable to 2gb)
- 17" high-def, wide screen display (1440 x 900
- ATI Radeon Xpress vid card w/128mb ddr dedicated mem (though I always prefer nvidias)
- DVD-RW / CD-RW
- Firewire i-face, four usb 2.0 ports
- Wireless Lan capable as well as your regular rj-45 connection
- 100 gig hd, 4,200 rmp
_ Win XP (though I dream of running Linux console)
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