Technical Error

YOU AT HOME:

[click] Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred. This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group.
[click] Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred. This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group.

MEANWHILE AT MYSPACE TECHNICAL GROUP HEADQUARTERS:

TECH 1: Hey, we got another 20,000 technical error messages.
TECH 2: Like I give a f***. Pass me another cocaine dipped gerbil - I need an ass fix.

And Back!

It was a good trip - the car still seems to be dependable, there was a good amount of hanging out and eating fried foods. My supply of ink has been replenished. Of course what good is a trip without some kind of mystery (this time provided by the multi-talented Maxeem)? No good at all, of course.

Minneapolis.

And so, my car was fixed as late as it could possibly be fixed yesterday meaning a late start on the road. As usual rather than stopping when I was tired I stopped when I was within shouting distance of Minneapolis - Stout, where all the hotels were booked solid thanks to some kind of start of the school year thing. Onwards to Minneapolis. I noticed as I was driving that the car was full of paint fumes from the body shop.

As per usual in the "why the hell did you do that" department, I crashed in the trunk of my car. Now here's the odd thing (to me at least) - my back feels better from sleeping in the trunk than from sleeping on my bed. SOOOO, I'm guessing that reconfiguring the bedroom is the cause for my recent back soreness. Now on to the fair and the fried food.

- Floozy Ha

Bah.

This whole Minnesota visit has been a series of unknowns and mistimings. As usual, Andrew will be in Chicago while I'm in Minnesota, so visiting him in his new home is off the list. Dave will be in Chicago Monday so I won't be sticking around to play with the Roe Family at the 331 Club. Adam is in Seattle on business? Maybe St. Louis. One of those "S" places. My Friday plans to visit Erickson's new space and cook up the boys at Big Time Attic some fresh fritters are off as well. I'll have to see Tim's new home too at some point - the pictures looked grand.

So, that leaves the State Fair with C., Sunday evening in Albert Lea with Max, Britt and Rachel, and bumming around Nordeast on Sunday with JD discussing sandwich recipes and drinking beer. A stop at Big Brain Comics to bother Mike? Possibly. If you're a fan of talented cartoonists, and who isn't, the folks up in Minneapolis have made a tribute book for Eric Lappegard who recently passed on after an unfortunate accident. The BTA folks have a blog post detailing the details.

It's kind of funny how me and my brother talk about death. I guess it's more direct than how our parents talk about it - they basically don't. "Passed on", "no longer with us". I'm sure when Lynn and Mike reproduce we'll say she's "in a family way". In the latest blight upon Has, Gene's basement flooded. We have obviously angered the Super Supreme Being in some way.

Panglossing

If nothing else these equipment breakdowns and misfortunes have made me better prepared for the road, which of course is beckoning again. New tires, AAA membership, a fresh copy of Vista installed on my macbook (which had sat unused for two months), a better digital camera (yet still reasonably priced). Thanks to my bad back I've had to take time out to stretch and exercise, how terrible. My blistered feet of course inform me that I need comfortable walking shoes, and might need to look into some socks. While back pain and the possibility of car unreliableness after being rear ended aren't thing that make me stronger, they have made me more aware of the possibility of misfortune.

And So.

A bit of early morning systems work and the Athlon X2 box is repaired. New motherboard, new heatsink... of course, with the new motherboard there's the requirement for a new copy of Windows. Perhaps the first Vista Home Premium box in the lineup? This not being a pressing concern I'll let the box sit, ready to be prepared to be ready for action.

And have you visited my flickr account lately?

Scanning Machine Set Up

Scanning printing machine set up, check. Billiard ball rear ended on Touhy Avenue by a woman who, according to a witness, "just didn't stop", yes. Even MORE stiff and achey than I had been... well, yes. Let's recap:

* Back goes out. Unable to move for a bit.
* Computer goes bad.
* Tires needed replacing.
* Rear ended.
* Ballast in kitchen has gone bad.
* Once again buried in possessions.
* Frittering technique has improved substantially.

Well, yes, this does seem like a trend. And if we were to do a regression analysis of these past couple of weeks we'd say I AM DOOMED. If this unlucky streak were to continue indefinitely that would certainly be so. All of my computers will go bad, my car will be flat as a pancake and need an infinite amount of repairs, I will be in a wheelchair in the dark because all the lights in my condo will have gone out, and I won't actually be able to wheel myself anywhere because I will have covered the place from floor to ceiling in rummage sale finds. Additionally, I will be better than God at preparing fried delicacies (fritters, french fries, fried meatballs(?)).

The thing about Donn Ha's, as noted by The Bat-Man, is that Donn Ha's are a superstitious cowardly lot who believe in things like lucky/unlucky streaks and karmic wheels. So let's review things in a more rational light and see what lessons the Super Supreme Being has actually presented us:

* Stretching and exercise are important! // Exercise more, stretch.
* Most computers can't function when the fans are encased in cat hair! // Dust my computers periodically.
* Tires wear out eventually! // Just a fact of life.
* The stretch of Touhy between Ridge and McCormick has a disproportionate amount of bad drivers and it's actually pretty amazing something hasn't happened before. // Take Howard or Pratt when heading west.
* I don't WANT fluorescent lights in my kitchen - they're practically useless for preparing food at night. // Replace the entire fixture with some incandescent lighting.
* If you thrift and rummage a lot, stuff will pile up. // I have multiples of everything I would ever want. Stop thrifting!
* I WILL be better than God at preparing fried things. // It's true.

Anyways, today was a pretty good day with much stuff gotten done, and the last two weeks have been pretty good in the helping other people doing good deeds area. Next week, off to Minnesota body shop permitting.

Hurrah

CentOS server transported into $5 dual celeron machine. Check!
Dedicated Windows XP music recording machine. Check!
Vista BootCamp on Macbook. Check!

So that leaves: setting up the scanning printing machine and rebuilding the Athlon X2 box.

The Road

My initial assumption was that my lucky streak had ended, and that I was in for an unlucky streak - things going bad of a sudden at the worst time. My front tires had developed slow leaks and needed replacing, my desktop computer had apparently given up the ghost to a quarter inch layer of cat hair clogging up the fan. But after mulling over things for a bit both of these are actually good, positive things. The Athlon X2 box had become my main computer and I had terribly neglected my MacBook, my on the road book go anywhere at the drop of a hat MacBook. And fresh tires? What could possibly be bad about having fresh tires?

So today will partly be spent reorganizing systems - getting the travel kit prepped again, turning a different under-utilized machine into a dedicated music recording/editing machine, another one into a file server/testing server/versioning server, maybe converting another one into a dedicated scanning server (possibly the tablet pc so the wacom can go in the travel kit with the macbook). And eventually I'll get some parts (motherboard, new case, new os) and reuse the Athlon parts.

Rummage Gods Bless You!

Continuing this impossibly good rummage season, I picked up an old computer on Saturday for $5 figuring it would be good for parts and it ends up having a dual processor motherboard - currently two celeron chips but I should be able to replace those and have a very, very capable server for the office, and reintegrate the 2GHz box into the windows pool.