Yeah, haven’t posted in awhile. Blah.

I got the new motherboard for my old system, installed it, had to reinstall Windows for some reason. Once I got Windows installed, it designated the main 30GB drive as “D”, and the 8GB drive as “C”. So, I removed the 8gb drive (since it had apparently died anyway), and the main drive is still D. I’m too lazy to reinstall AGAIN, but I might do it tomorrow. The computer runs much nicer now, so it’s all good. The wireless card works well too, and it discovered three unsecured wireless networks in addition to my secured network, so I was sending system messages to people telling them how to secure their networks.

While on the subject of computers, I finished up one of my clients’ systems and returned it to her, it needed a new power supply. Next I need to work on Randy’s brother’s girlfriend’s computer and get it back to them, I’m pretty sure it needs a new motherboard, it might need a new power supply too. The house they lived in had no ground prong on its outlets, so there appears to be some severe static buildup in the board, and possibly a nearly-dead power supply from the unstable voltage out there (they’re even more rural than me). Also, my main system has started making occasional clicking noises accompanied by extreme sluggishness in logons/logoffs, booting up, and shutting down. I hope it’s not a hard drive problem, I REALLY can’t afford a new drive right now.

My new stereo is installed, and I must say I’m damn pround of the installation job I did. Basically, an Acura Integra like mine has a double-size stereo hole, which is usually filled by a plastic coverplate that fits around the stereo head unit. I decided I wanted to keep my CB installed, so I stuck it underneath the stereo head unit, and cut a hole in the coverplate to fit around both of them. Personally, I think it’s my best installation work yet, I just haven’t gotten around to taking pictures of it. As far as the stereo itself, it’s an amazing system. I’ve fine-tuned the equalizer settings, and it sounds damn near perfect (depending on the song, of course). It has a nicer display than the old one, the faceplate is made of metal (rather than plastic), and it has a steering wheel-mounted remote control, which is quite convenient and not as ugly as I thought it’d be. Plus, it glows deep blue rather than green, so it matches my neon lights perfectly!

I got a new channel listing for XM Radio, apparently ALL of their music channels will be 100% commercial-free starting next month. Plus, they’re introducing Traffic & Weather channels focusing on certain metro areas, which will be convenient. I missed my satellite radio! With all the trips I’m taking this month and next, I’ll make up for not listening to it at all in January and most of December & February.

Nothing new at work, my job sucks as usual.

I emailed Joe just before typing this, basically asking where our relationship was going, or if it even existed to begin with. At this point, I don’t care what the answer is, I just want one. We’ve been dating for over three months and I still don’t know how he feels about me.

Yay, I’m at a LAN party at Joe’s house! I got up at 1:30 and listened to my mom bitch about how I was sleeping too much. She and my grandma went to lunch/dinner without me, so I went to work without any food. Whatever. When I got to work, there were no charts to be filed, no charts to be transported, and no records to assemble, so I left. When I got home, Joe called and said he was having a LAN party tonight (which is where I’m posting this from). Maybe I’ll get to talk to him sometime later, I can’t while people are around

Ick, I just realized I started three consecutive posts with the word “well”. Bad wannabe-author! No cold pizza!

(I really do have a point to this entry, I promise)

As I was lamenting over my deceased processor, my mom presented me with the new Lion King movie on DVD and a brand-new copy of the Armageddon soundtrack to replaced my badly scratched copy. My mom is really cool sometimes!

Well, in the course of talking about myself, I forgot to mention that my seventh-grade sister made the cheerleading team on Friday, something that I’m having mixed feeling about. On the one hand, I’m very happy for her, since this is something she’s been wanting for over a year now. On the other hand, she and I are complete personality and social opposites now, and it’s starting to really annoy me. She’s a slave to popular culture, she copies (or tries to copy) her friends in every way (to the point of wanting to lower her genius-level intelligence to be more “normal”), and she’s the stereotypical prep/cheerleader now (where I’m a label-defying semi-goth computer nerd, as most of you know). She rubs this in everyone’s face at school (her words, not mine), and then she complains because her old non-cheerleader friends can’t stand her. I mean, she’s been on the squad all of a day, and she’s already driving away her old friends in favour of her new ones, who are all extremely shallow from my observations. Hell, they didn’t even like her until she became one of them.

I guess it’s a good thing that she’s having a better time in middle school than I did, but looking back on it, I’m damn proud to have never been one of the popular kids, if I had been one of them, I highly doubt my mind would work the way it does today. I hope she doesn’t turn into one of those snobs who picked on people like me in school, but she’s so close to being like that it’s scary. Luckily, I believe in karma, and I believe/hope that justice will be served to those who wronged me in the past (see my previous post about Hagerstown). Back to my sister, I hope she develops some open-mindedness fast, for the sake of anyone in her grade who knows her and doesn’t fit her insanely narrow definition of “cool”.

Well, my network is falling apart. My servers are slow as crap, and the vast amounts of memory I just added (256mb in the Server system, 512mb in the Advanced Server system) aren’t helping. I’m not sure what exactly the problem is, but services.exe is hogging the entire processor in both systems. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they’re receiving dynamic IP addresses. Oh well, I’ll figure it out later. I think there might be some hard drive problems with those computers, since they appear to have some registry issues. I want to upgrade my gaming system from twin 40gb HDs to a single 120gb drive, and use the 40gb drives in my servers, but since I bought so much memory, I can’t afford the 120gb drive until next month at the earliest. I also need a new monitor for the servers (I’m using a 15″ monitor that came with an old 286 system, and it’s out of focus and looks like crap in general), and a KVM switch.

Oh, and remember that wireless networking issue? Well, my mom returned the Linksys card, and we decided to go to Office Max and get the new one there (since they’re closing this weekend), a Belkin 802.11g card. Got it home, installed it, and Windows wouldn’t even recognize that the card had been installed. The BIOS wouldn’t recognize it either, so I brought it downstairs and stuck it in my gaming system to see if it was a motherboard issue or a problem with the card. It worked just fine and dandy in my gaming system, so I took it back upstairs and tried it in every PCI slot in the computer…still nothing. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to find a Pentium 2-compatible motherboard anywhere, so I grabbed a P2 board with no processor cartridge from my stockpile of parts. Installed the new motherboard, powered up the system, and I then heard a loud pop and saw smoke come out of the casing of the processor. I have no clue what happened, but all of a sudden I had a fried obsolete processor, a non-functioning computer, a pissed sister who wanted to get online and talk to her friends, and an icky credit card debt that wouldn’t allow me to buy a new mobo. Fortunately, my mom said she expected that computer to die sometime soon anyway (an unfair statement, that computer is, or rather was, the most reliable system I’ve used in a LONG time), so she’d buy a brand-new motherboard & processor for me. If anyone from newegg.com is reading this, you guys absolutely rock! I got a brand-new AMD Socket A motherboard for $31, an AMD Duron 1.4GHz processor for $39, and a 256mb stick of PC2100 DDR memory for $35, which will all be here next week.

Still no word from Joe, I heard a rumour he’s hosting a LAN party Sunday night. He and I need to talk, I want to know where this is all going.

Well, today was good and bad all at the same time. It was good because I bought my new stereo and amp, but the stereo head unit won’t be delivered until Thursday, something about it being a discontinued model. I got the amp installed, and my ultra-conservative “friend” Jon (the guy who follows me around like a puppy) showed up to collect some packages he’d had sent to my address for some reason, and he helped me clean up my car in the hopes that I’d be going out tonight. I talked to Joe after he got out of school, and he said he’d call me around 6:00. Jon & I finished with the car and went out for a quick drink (non-alcoholic), where he proceeded to tell me about this book he’s writing. Booooooooring. I took him back to my house so he could pick up his truck and leave, and waited for Joe to call. 6:30 came, he still hadn’t called, so I called his cell phone and left a message, perhaps he’ll call me tomorrow. I figured he wasn’t going to be available tonight, so I called Matt to see if he still wanted to go out, but he and his girlfriend assumed I wasn’t going to call them, so they made plans for themselves.

So, I decided to put my depression energy to good use and set up my two Win2k servers. My mom decided to move our P2 desktop system up to my sister’s room (thankfully), but there’s no way to run an ethernet cable up there, so we had to go get an 802.11g PCI card (much to my dismay, but it was either that or keep that computer in the already-crowded office along with my two new systems and my nice desktop system). Tried to install the card, didn’t work. Everything I tried failed, and according to my Google search, that card has a LOT of issues, so it’ll be returned to Staples tomorrow. I got my server OSes installed, one is running Win2k Server, the other is running Win2k Advanced Server. I would have installed Win2k Datacenter, but that’s not covered in my MCSE exams, so I should probably use the OSes that’ll get me the necessary experience for those. The installations bitched a little because both systems are currently receiving dynamic IP addresses, but I’ll fix that later.

I should probably clarify that my position on toll roads has NOTHING to do with my bank account (though last month it did, but that’s a different story). Perhaps it’s because I never grew up around tolls, and the first time I ever had to drive through a toll booth was last month, but I despise the whole concept of them. I realize they need to get money from somewhere, but isn’t that what our taxes are for? And to those who say that people who use the roads should pay to maintain them, I agree with you in theory. It does make more sense than my position. But the fact that I have to pay an extra $14 to visit some friends in another state is ridiculous to me.

(This rant brought to you by the number 2:45, the letters AM, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)

I’m definitely going to Pawpets Megaplex (www.ppmp.info) in March, it’ll be fun.  As far as I know, I’m rooming with , and I’ll definitely be hooking up with   for some pre-Anthrocon fun, since he’s from around there.  More on that later, but luckily roads in the south don’t have tolls, unlike the stupid yankee highways.  Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t make the trip.

I got a nasty papercut on the tip of my middle finger at work today, it HURT! Also, I worked an extra hour tonight, and my feet aren’t going to let me forget it anytime soon. I’ll probably be sore tomorrow morning.

I got my first paycheck from the hospital today, it was about what I expected. The next check will be better.

I’m half-asleep right now, hence the short, choppy sentences.

Hopefully I’ll get my new stereo tomorrow, I’ll be able to install it before evening.

Still no word from Joe, I’m calling him tomorrow if he doesn’t call me first.

I found a new P2P program that really rocks, it’s called Shareaza. It has no adware or spyware (I’ve verified this many times over), and you can get it from www.shareaza.com. I also downloaded a bunch of free software from the MSDN site, since I get oodles of free stuff from Microsoft through their Academic Alliance program, including Win2k Pro, WinXP Pro, and Win2k3.

And, last note, toll booths SUCK! I found out that a trip to Pittsburg I’m taking in two weeks will cost me about $14 in tolls, PLUS the gas I’ll need to put in my miniscule gas tank (all ten gallons of it). I hope gas isn’t ridiculously expensive in Pittsburg. I’m also planning a trip to Orlando towards the end of March, and sadly enough, I’m more certain about my directions on that trip than this one.