the danish outpost
updated when time and inspiration allow. latest and greatest always in the blog.
it's not epic, exactly, but feeling that way.

2001-04-12

feeling kinda how a girl feels

see, i went and jinxed it all. i talked about how lovely and sunny it's been, and today? i wake up to rain. bleah. if i'd just kept my mouth shut...

no, i'm not really that superstitious. well, maybe. okay, i have some superstitions. i pick up pennies and say the little verse - 'penny, penny, bring me luck, for i'm the one that picked you up.' and it bothers me a little when i see a penny and don't actually pick it up. it gives me this vague sense of impending doom. well, not doom, but badness. i also always wonder if, in fact, i should be picking the penny up, because if it's heads up it's lucky, but if it's tails up, it's bad luck. or the other way around. i don't remember which it is, perhaps because i don't think i ever knew. you can't remember what you never knew, despite the fact my sis use to start stories when she was a kid by saying 'i remember before you guys were born' (we're both older).

speaking of memory, Memento was a pretty good flick. we missed the first few minutes as mike had gotten stuck in crappy traffic on the way over, which only added to his general stress but wasn't really a big deal. first good point: you get to see Guy Pearce naked. the man is wonderful eye candy. mike actually turned to me at one point with a amused/horrified look on his face. apparently, the noises i made when Guy flashed his naked tush didn't stay inside my head. oh well. second good point: while you may be able to figure out the plot partway thru (mike did, i chose not to - for $8, i can suspend a lot of belief), there are a lot of interesting twists. third good point: even if you do guess the ending, the story is a good mix of funny, sad, and intriguing. plus the occasional observations on how we shape our worlds and our realities were interesting. anyway, i'd say go see it. at least rent it when it comes around. it'll do okay on the small screen.

oh, and the other small screen - my monitor - very nearly has DSL. i know. you'd think i'd be done with this by now, huh? what a comedy of errors. they sent all the hardware and supporting materials in one package two weeks ago. it all looks fine. i get it home and put off installing for a few days. (i choose to remain wilfully ignorant of hardware, so it always baffles me.) i finally get started, and get the modem wired. it has all the green blinky lights going, telling me it's happy.

then i break out the CD, and move on to software. CDROM drive opens, i put in CD. CD does not get sucked into the machine. i gently nudge it. it complains, but goes in and spins up. nothing. no icon on the desktop. i try a few things, and nothing. because of the crazy buzzy noises the drive on my reconditioned CPU is making, i become convinced the drive is dying. so i rip apart the CPU. it's lying all over the place, and i have no idea what i'm looking at (see above). and in any event, whatever might break on the drive is sealed inside the unit. so i wiggle some connectors in a desultory attempt to justify fucking up all the neat cabling, and close up shop. i call a friend, and she suggests a bunch of diagnostics. i try them all. nothing. i give up and go to bed.

the next morning, it occurs to me 'hey, maybe you should see if there's a smudge on the CD!' bright, eh? i flip over said CD. this thing is smashed up so badly that the paint on the label side is all that's holding it together. duh. i hadn't thought to look for that, since the shipping box was really pretty well stuffed with bubblepack.

then comes the long sorry saga of trying to get a replacement CD. let's just say that, 4 days after being assured that one was being FedEx'd, a half hour after hearing that they didn't know my shipping address, and 15 minutes after having my eardrum blown out by the hold music, i was none too happy to hear the tech person tell me that 'yup, i'm looking at the package right here, and we haven't shipped it.'

when, after intense phone negotiations with the FedEx delivery guy to determine where, exactly, my office is, the package arrived, everyone in a 40 foot radius knew how happy i was.

of course, when i went to run the registration program, it didn't work. the software installed, but i couldn't validate my account. turns out the registration server on their end crapped out last night. oh, yeah... Happy Campers all around. y'think the third time might be the charm? if there's an excessivly delirious post that appears later tonight, you'll know it was.

yesterday :: tomorrow

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