There’s a new entry in the journal.

Also, I took down my bio again. I’m making a new one. It should be online sometime this weekend.

Off to bed.

This is just really neat to watch.

I love creative people who come up with things like that.

Oh my God. I just can’t stop laughing picturing this scene. Poor Dawny’s friend!

I updated the link on the left. Judy’s links are still there because I just couldn’t bear to remove them yet.

I also finally got around to checking the templates to see why the “posted on” date would only appear for the first entry of each day. The answer was the usual “I am an idiot.” But it’s fixed now.

Yay me.

Um yah. The program wasn’t working because the demo version was just that and not a full working version. The other demo I downloaded from the same company was a full version, so I just assumed that Disk Image would be too.

Paid the money. Bought the program. My hard drive is now fully backed up.

Argh. I am about to start tearing my hair out.

I’m trying to use Powequest Drive Image to back up my hard drive. First I need to create rescue diskettes. It’s supposed to prompt me to do this in the installation process. I’ve isntalled the damn thing three times and it never prompts me. I’m going crazy.

Last night I had this dream that I was wearing shorts but had forgotten to shave my legs. They were totally disgusting with about four days worth of prickly growth, and I felt like I was going to cry because I was so embarrassed. Trying to make myself as small as I could, trying to blend into the scenery, I hoped that no one would notice.

I’m scared for myself.

Yesterday afternoon around three or so TG IMd me which was good because she was one of the two people whose snail mail addresses I’d lost in the crash and I’d promised to send her something (it’s going out on Monday).

We chatted for a bit, then she noted that some of our mutual friends were online and asked if I wanted to start a chat.

“Sure,” I said, “but I probably won’t stick around very long; things to do and all.”

“I’m going soon too,” she said.

“Maybe we souldn’t start one then,” I began to type, but then the chat invite came through.

And thus the madness started.

She did leave soon after, but more people kept coming in. People left and people replaced them. Some people left then came back. Rachel came in at one point, but she left soon after to go to bed; it was one in the morning in England.

The chat nearly died at times when the numbers dropped low and the conversation lulled. During one of these lulls I went downtairs to get a snack and got distracted. When I remembered that I’d been chatting and came back an hour or so later, I found that thigns had picked up and I’d missed a bunch of people.

Lanna was in and out, Dawny and Lijdrec and Shell were there for a long time, Emcee was there for a while, Willow Much was in and out and we had a great long conversation about les movies and lit, and Katie was in toward the end, (I’m skipping many people.. too numerous to list), and then.. then.. Rachel showed up.

Rachel who had been there near the start but gone to bed because she was in England and it had been one in the morning there.

I looked at the clock. It was now three in the morning.

I was very scared.

WM, who’d been trying to go to bed for an hour or two by then, suggested that perhaps we were in an Older and Far Away situation. I asked if anyone had made a wish lately. Katie had, but I told her that wishes relating to Jack White didn’t count.

I can’t believe that I spent about half a day in a chat room.

But conversation were good, except when they lulled, and the time just seemed to fly by.

Maybe it didn’t really happen like that. Maybe there was some strange Star Treky thing going on with time.

Maybe I’m just pathetic.

In any case, thanks to all my chat partners (ooh, that sounds sort of naughty and promiscuous) yesterday. It was fun.

Eeeh. What a traumatic morning we had. Well, sort of morning. I didn’t get up until nearly eleven.

But it’s over now and what was lost has been found.

Am I being too cryptic?

Sorry about that. Come back later; there will be a journal entry about it. Promise. I don’t have time right now. Off to the farmer’s market..

My computer came home again this afternoon. It looks like everything is working well so far.

Yay!

We did get the computer back Monday night, but returned it to the shop Tuesday morning. It had an operating system again, but was still pretty messed up. They had noticed another problem with it while it was there, and so they replaced the motherboard (they’d just installed it for us a little bit ago and so it was still under warenty.)

I picked it up just before the store closed Monday night, brought it home, and plugged it in, and discovered that the graphics were all f’d up. It was stuck in 16 colors, 640*400 pixels. I felt like tearing my hair out.

So. I’m still using M’s computer.

They also had to reformat the hard drive. Fortunately I am really good about backing up my fiction, and so didn’t lose any of my writing, but I am not so good about other things. I lost whatever pictures I had taken on the digital camera since I last did a backup (I used to have a rule about burning a copy to CD-RW after every download, but I’ve been bad about it lately). I think that they were all just pictures of the garden and our cats being cute though, nothing really important.

The part that really sucks? I lost all my saved email. There were mailing addresses in there of people I needed to send stuff to through snail-mail. There were passwords and login info to various sites. There were many, many emails that I meant to reply to. If you emailed me, please do so again. Unless you are one of the few people whose email addresses I have memorised…

I do know a few email addresses by heart, and I can find many others through their sites (I did lose all sites that I’ve bookmarked since I last copied my bookmarks to disk, but fortunately that wasn’t very many) or through mailing lists, but most are probably gone for good.

This is just so damn frusterating.

And I’ve learned my lesson.

I will go back to copying pictures to CD-RW immediately, and I will start backing up my email.

Let my misfortune serve as a warning.

I’m reading Alice Walker again. Posessing the Secret of Joy this time.

From the inside flap:

Possessing the Secret of Joy is the story of Tashi, a tribal African woman who lives much of her adult life in North America. As a young woman, a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people led her to submit to the tsugna’s knife and be genitally mutilated (pharonically circumcised).

It’s hard, painful book to read. I’m a little over halfway through now, but I need to put it down for a while. I need a period of rest before I can attack it again.

I feel so much anger flowing through my veins as I read. So much hate. I want to hit something. I want to take the book and tear it in two; but my reverence for books, my love for Alice Walker, the fact that it really is a good book, and the little manner of it being a library book prevent me. Still, I have the most wonderful visions in my head of pages torn to pieces scattered in the wind.

I can hear a baby crying through my window as I write this. That makes it all the worse. I feel like screaming like that.

This is fiction; this did not happen, but the subject matter is all too real. It doesn’t seem possible. How could they?

I understand why it carries on - why men would want to do such terrible things to women, and why women would let them because it is all that they know. But how did such a thing ever start? Who in ancient times thought this up and decide that it was the way that things should be? And why did the first women allow it when their mother’s and sister’s were not already mutilated?

To go through life only knowing pain where there should be joy..

To have such a thing taken from you..

That is the true abomination.

I come across many small news stories while reading blogs that I miss in the normal news chanels.

Today while reading Live in the Delirious Cool, I learned of a group who wants to close their county libraries because they are tired of paying for them.

I agree with everything Donna says on the matter (as usual, Donna is so smart).

It’s bad enough that there are people out there who are so incredibly short sighted and stupid, but must they try to trap everyone else in ignorance too?

Nooooooo.

Judy, come back!

You will be missed horribly.

Hey, it’s Monday again, isn’t it. I completely forgot until I looked at Jess’s weblog and saw her positives.

I’ve missed the last two weeks. Last week I was out of town, and the week before I simply forgot.

Things that are positive for me right now:

• I’ve been married a year now. My anniversary was last week, unfortunately on one of the days that I was sick, but that’s okay. We were planning on celebrating a little late anyway since we were with family then. We’ve had our problems, but it’s been a pretty good year all in all.
• I had an absolutely great time with my family last weekend, other than those two days I was sick. I will write a journal entry about it just as soon as I get my computer fixed… probably later tonight.
• I’m getting really excited about starting school again in the fall. After a year of doing nothing, I’m so ready to start having a schedule and responsibilities again.
• Our garden (such as it is) is overflowing it’s box.
• Little round squash are appearing on our non-zucchini. I might just figure out what that darn thing is yet.
• There are zucchini that look just about ready to be picked on our actual zucchini plant.
• Pea pods are appearing on our peas!
• I’ve been writing fiction again today. Probably about fifteen hundred words, and I feel good about most of what I have written. I might get out of this slump yet.

Oh dear Lord. This is too funny. I need to go get me some of those now…

What happened with my computer last night…

I called my parents a few days before our family gathering last weekend and asked them to bring up a few of my old textbooks and my Linux CDs. I start school again in another couple weeks, and I’ve forgotten so much that I need to try and relearn before then.

Last night I went to install Linux (I do have Visual C++, but I really prefer working in Linux, and it’s just easier for Perl as well). I got it all done and Linux was working fine when I decided to restart and go back to Windows so I could get the information for my ADSL which I had forgotten to copy earlier..

I log out of Linux and go to restart. The initial checks run, then the screen goes blank and a blinking curser appears in the upper left corner. I sit there waiting for BootMagic to load so I can select which operating system I need to use. Nothing happens. I tap my fingers on the desk impatiently, wondering what is taking so long.

Then it hits me. I forgot to install BootMagic.

Oops. I now have two operating systems installed, but my computer is not set up to handle them.

What I need to do is re-install Windows 98, but alas, I do not have the CD-ROM I need to do so. Unfortunately I had to take the computer in today to get a reinstall, so two seconds of not paying attention to what I was doing is now going to cost me the big bucks, and I might not be able to use my computer until Monday night (they might get it done by tonight, but probably not.)

The important part for those of you who tuned out for the boring stuff above: I owe replies to many email messages that came while I was gone. I have it set up to delete email from the server just as soon as I download it, so any email that I received before my surge of stupidity is currently sitting on my computer which currently resides in the repair shop. In other words, it’s out of my reach. Sorry. I’ll get back to everyone just as soon as I can…

Resend if it is at all important that I get back to you before Monday night or so. Better yet, resend to persephone06@yahoo.com because M deleted Eudora off of this computer (grrr) and webmail is such a pain.

Fuck. My computer is screwed. So screwed that I am typing this on M’s computer, and you know how I despise this machine.

I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing while doing something that I really should have been paying attention for, and now here I am.

This is not good. This is, in fact, very bad.

Stating the obvious really does help in times of crisis.

Fuck.

This site astounds me. Welcome to the future of literature on the Internet.

I’ve been blown away.

I just can’t stop reading it/listening to it. It’s hard becaue there really is no beginning or ending or order, but I like it like that. I am determined to find every little bit of it.

If only I could…

create something even half as beautiful.

I am having way too much fun with this site. I swear, there must be a thirteen year old boy living inside my brain sometimes.

Freaking hillarious.