Remember last week when my computer started acting up? Well, today it started doing the exact same thing. Surprise, surprise. A brief talk with the manufacturer and they are now telling me it's the motherboard. So I'm back to a loaner laptop.

It is rainy and cold as the remains of Ida hit the area. I walked to work, but decided to have miome pick me up. It gets dark early and with the clouds, it's too dark to walk home after work. At least the car is nice and warm.

Otherwise, life is good. I am adjusting to the idea of not being in school by reading Terry Pratchett.

Still need to finish unpacking though. -_-

Tsaiko: I think I'll log into my computer.
Computer: I think not. *freezes while logging in*
Tsaiko: Fine. I'll just hard reboot you.
Computer: Wrong answer. *blue screens on boot up*
Tsaiko: WTF? *sends ticket*
IT Guy: What seems to be the problem?
Tsaiko: *indicates computer which is cycling through blue screening and restarting in an infinite loop of malaise* This.
IT Guy: We'll do Windows repair!
Computer: Look! I'm fine!
IT Guy: All fixed. *starts walking away*
Computer: Dumbass. *freezes*
Tsaiko: Wait! It just froze.
Computer: Damn. Should have waited a few more seconds.
IT Guy: Hmmm... This requires a few sacrificed chickens to fix. BRB. *takes computer*
Tsaiko: *twiddles thumbs until lunchtime* Oh look! It returned my computer while I was at lunch.
Computer: La la la.
Tsaiko: Did IT say what was wrong?
Coworker: They said the docking station was bad so they replaced it.
Tsaiko: ...I seriously doubt the docking station was blue screening the computer while it was booting.
Coworker: Sounds fishy to me too.
Tsaiko: Well, I need to reboot to get the license manager working.
Computer: Not in this lifetime, bitch. *blue screens*
Tsaiko: I've only had you for seven days, you stupid piece of shit!

IT has taken my week old, brand new computer and is going to reimage the thing. Personally, I don't think that will help. The only thing that will help that thing is a bullet to the case.

Today I brought in my external Maxtor hard drive to back up my school computer on. I knew that it was pretty full (even for a 92 GB drive), but figured that I could browse through what was on there, delete old stuff off, and add new stuff.

Then I came across a problem. In order to delete off the drive, you have to have permission to do so. The permissions on the external drive are set to Administrator. On my home computer, I am administrator. On this computer, not so much. Meaning I cannot delete anything off my own drive. Okay fine. I'll just zip the files, which will make them small enough that I can copy them onto the drive.

No go. It won't let me transfer a zipped file to it. I have no idea why. It keeps giving me a write disk protection error which should have absolutely nothing to do with a bloody zipped file.

Well, I can transfer the files unzipped. There's barely enough room, but I should be okay.

Nope. Drive fills up before it can completely copy over my thesis work which is the most important stuff. And of course, since I can't delete anything from the drive, I can't free up more space to make sure that the most important stuff makes it onto it.

I'm burning some DVDs right now with the information and trying to figure out how the hell to get a second back-up of this stuff on my own damn drive.

Technology sucks sometimes.

EDIT: So, one of the other students has administrative rights to the computer we use with the large screen. He logged me in as him and I was able to clean off enough space to back-up my school files.

Ridiculous, but it worked.

Well, I was going to zip up my information on my school computer, upload it to a website, and download it at home. I just looked at how large that folder is. 37.5 GB.

Yeah, that's not going to work.

Well today has been productive already. How do I know? Because I've managed to crash not one, but two pieces of software and I've only been here about an hour and a half. I also completely locked my computer in the process and had to hard reboot it because ctrl + alt + del wasn't registering.

I'm just awesome like that.

Adobe Illustrator is a product of Satan. SATAN. How in bloody hell do I turn the lock to grid feature off?

ARRRRRRGH.

EDIT: Thanks Adobe. Because of course the first place I'd look for a grid feature is under View. Not.

EDIT 2.0: OMG, this program goes down more often than a $2 whore! I didn't think any program could crash faster, harder and more often than ArcGIS.

When I was setting up my laptop, one of the things Microsoft wanted me to do was name my computer. I was eager to get this thing running and didn't really care what it was called at the time. I just typed something in and kept going. The name didn't show up anywhere and to be quite honest I'd completely forgotten about it until I went to shut it down last week.



I'm still laughing. XD

Four hours after I took my laptop out of the box, I finally have installed all the updates and can actually use it on the internet. Sweet Jesus, Lenovo, how lazy can you be? I had to update with Service Pack 3 and everything after it. FOUR HOURS. And let's not even talk about the fact that they shipped it with Office 2007 and then didn't give me a product key. Bastards.

I still haven't got all the software I need on it.

At least I finally have my own laptop again.

EDIT: Maybe the reason I'm having so much trouble is because I got it on Friday the 13th. This does not bode well.

Dear UPS,

What do you mean my new laptop is still in Louisville, KY? Are you serious? It only took you two days to get my laptop from Shenzhen China to Kentucky, but you can't be bothered to drive the extra two hours it takes to get from Louisville to Indianapolis in the past two days? Are you for real? I could have driven down there myself and picked the damn thing up by now!

ARGH!

No love,
Tsaiko

On Feb. 6th, my laptop was in Shenzhen, China. Today at 9:51am It was in Louisville, KY. I can probably expect it tomorrow.

Damn my laptop moves fast.

Which is good, because I have an idea for a story that is eating my brain. And I want to finish up the Young Avengers fic I started. And someone mentioned the Luke/Isaac/Zavier story I was working on...

I got a tracking number information for my laptop. I figured I'd check to see where it was and when I could expect it. According to UPS, it has shipped.

From Shenzhen, China.

Yeah, I think I may have a while.

MY NEW LAPTOP HAS SHIPPED.

SOON I WILL BE ABLE TO WRITE AGAIN. ON MY OWN COMPUTER.

AND MAYBE LEARN TO NOT TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

WE SHALL SEE.

The good news is the laptop is not hosed. I can get all my files off of it, and plan to do so. Yesterday was back-up day and I'm kicking myself for not doing it that morning because then there was the possibility I could have just done a restore. Sigh. Hindsight is 20/20.

The bad news is that I have picked up a fairly nasty virus that is rather difficult to get rid of. The options right now are a) wipe and reinstall or b) get a new laptop. Since I've been having problems with this laptop anyway (power connecter is loose, no wireless connection any more, throwing random hardware errors, etc.) it looks like I will be getting a new laptop. I'll be using student loan money for it, since I need the laptop to do school work/thesis work.

I was considering getting a new laptop anyway. Looks like my time-table got moved up a bit. That's all. Sigh...

This has pretty much been my entire afternoon and evening. I'm on miome's computer right now. I'll let you know if I need to shoot my computer to fix the problem. -_-

The slot for the wireless card on my laptop has died.

We know it's the slot because miome and I tried to different cards, one of which is known to work. Right now I'm using the wired connection, but the port for that is loose. So every time it jiggles a bit the wrong way (like say from my cat laying on my legs), my connection goes. Fun, fun.

Of course, the service plan we had with Dell expired on December 19th. Not that it did much good last time we needed something repaired on this thing.

I am seriously considering using some of my student loan money to buy myself a nice, new, shiny laptop. The only thing holding me back is the fact that I need one a) with XP on it to run the software I need, b) with a nice graphics card and c) not made by Dell. I'm beginning to think they don't exist anymore. -_-

So if I suddenly fall off the internet for a while, you know the laptop finally bit the dust.

I am trying to work on my thesis data, getting it into a format that I can use when I start doing analysis.

WHY? WHY IS IT NOT WORKING? IT SHOULD WORK. EVERYTHING I AM DOING IS RIGHT. WHY DO YOU HATE ME? CURSE YOU, ESRI, AND YOU CRAPPY SOFTWARE. CURSE YOU!

I'm going to go kill things in ZOMG until I feel better.

I have been fighting a sore throat for the last few days. Today I go into my office to find out that they have finally moved us down to the larger, but dirty new room. In the process of moving my stuff down there, I discovered an entire bag of Ricola throat lozenges. I have no idea why I bought them a year ago, but I'm so glad I did. For the first time in two days my throat does not feel like someone took a sander to it. The only comfort is that I know it's not strep because I am asymptomatic for strep, which means I do not exhibit a sore throat when I get it.

I also discovered that they have not managed to move the licenses for the software down to our new space. I wound up walking across campus and doing my Stats homework because I couldn't use any of the GIS software. Tomorrow I'll try again. If they don't have ArcGIS working then I hope like hell they at least have the remote sensing software working. Otherwise I'm screwed.

How my day was to go in theory:

• Finish maps for part-time job


• Complete stats homework


• Lunch


• Complete poster for presentation on Friday


• Possibly write for rest of day

How my day actually went:

• Discover that I am locked out of the computer I was using to complete maps


• Work on poster


• Give self heart attack thinking I did something wrong with my graphs


• Realize graphs are fine


• Try to explain dpi to a professor and why upping a 72dpi image to 300dpi will not automatically make the image "better"


• Complete poster


• Check three other computer before finding one with Photoshop that I'm not locked out of


• Start finishing maps


• Fire drill


• Find out that fire drill is fire actual


• I DIDN'T GRAB THE THUMB DRIVE WITH MY FINISHED POSTER ON IT. Good to know my priorities are in order.


• False alarm. Troop back into building.


• Lunch


• Finish maps


• Work on stats homework


• Curse at stats homework


• Decide I will answer last two questions tomorrow


• Play a few games


• Realize that final assignment in stats is due next week and not after Thanksgiving


• Start looking through papers I can use for the assignment trying to find one with statistics I actually understand


• Panic


• Settle on paper about AIDS, even though it has nothing to do with my thesis because it's an easy read with nicely explained statistics


• Print paper


• Nearly crash computer


• Realize I need to turn in a copy and print paper again


• Nearly crash computer... again


• Give up and read maderr's latest story


• Post about day on LJ

Now to read this paper again. I've read it before, but it's been awhile.