‘Twas the night before – Thanksgiving?

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on November 21, 2001). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Well, it is. Lots of creatures stirring, though — and since they’re not content with just stirring, apparently shooting bottle rockets off outside my window is the next best alternative. Hrmpf.


So, let’s see…we’ve made it to Wednesday. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, and while it won’t be the first one I’ve spent without family, it is my first outside of Alaska. I’ve got two different posts planned to go up tomorrow, both serious, though in very different veins. You’ll understand when you see them. Or you won’t. Either way, they’ll be up here for your viewing pleasure, I suppose. :)

Most of the past couple days have been distinguished by battles with my PC. Apparently it figured out that I’m about to gut it and give it a full transfusion — and the fool thing is pissed at me. Ever since I placed the orders for my new hardware on Sunday, this beast has given me nothing but trouble. Internet Exploder is exploding left and right. I can’t install any update to IE, because as soon as it gets to the 96% point the installer tells me that, “The following items were not successfully installed,” and proceeds to list the entire IE installation package. Then it restarts my machine, and if I try to restart the installation, the same thing happens again. Yahoo! Messenger is completely pfutzed — it started by popping up errors whenever I opened a window to talk to someone, and now it craps out with an error message every time I try to launch it. Combined with all the other problems I’ve had with this machine since I built it (freezes, crashes, and the Blue Screen of Death are common, the system time and date resets to 12:00 AM 1/1/88 every time I restart [and yes, I’ve already tried putting a brand new battery on the motherboard], and no sound card has worked for more than about 20 minutes before disappearing into the great bit bucket in the sky), I’m really looking forward to putting decent hardware in this thing.

Incidentally, for the curious, here’s what I’ve got on the way: an ECS K7S5A motherboard with AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.2Ghz processor from BZBoyz, a 256Mb DDR DIMM from Coast to Coast Memory, a Windows 2000 Professional installation CD from Direct Deals, and a Linksys EtherFast® Cable/DSL Router from EMS Computing. My DSL line (Sysadmin radsl/usr/pro package: max 1.5 Mbps downstream, 128 kbps upstream, 2 static IP addresses) from Speakeasy should be installed in roughly two weeks, and then I’ll be completely upgraded and up and running. Woohoo!

Let’s see…what else has gone on? There’s got to be something to appeal to the non-geeks out there. Candice and I went out to dinner on Monday night at an Indian restaurant on Broadway that she recommended. Quite good — I hadn’t had Indian food in a while, that may be something I need to change in the future. I may be going down to Portland with her on Saturday, too — she’s planning on going down to visit a friend, and asked if I’d like to keep her company on the drive down. Sounds good to me, I haven’t been down to Portland since I’ve been here (to be honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever been to Portland), so it could be a fun trip.

Heather and I were supposed to go to a show by DJ Krush at the I-Spy, but seeing as how Heather got herself all twitterpated over a guy (amusingly enough, another ex-Alaskan) over last weekend and forgot to get the tickets — well, looks like I’m missing it. A mild bummer, but at the same time, I’ve missed a lot so far, but there’s always a lot coming down the pike, so I’m sure I’ll get around to catching a good show one of these days.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading over to Tim and Rick’s apartment for Thanksgiving dinner there. That and the possible road trip on Saturday are about my only plans so far for the weekend…just have to see what happens as it happens I guess.

Not that I ever do anything other than that, you understand…I just felt like actually stating it that time.