…or how I’ve managed to procrastinate all flippin’ day and now find there’s more behind-the-scenes work to be done before I can get this article off the ground? With the tele-top misbehaving over the past couple days, I’m loathe to even attempt this back-end work on it. That leaves me the trusty Mac, which I can’t use at the moment because I’m working on something else that’s hogging my only disk drive.

You might be interested to know exactly how I’ve dragged my feet and fucked around since about half past six this morning; really, it’s not even fucking around-well, some of it isn’t. I mean, paying bills and balancing bank accounts and grocery shopping shouldn’t be seen as such. Neither should doing laundry and the dishes, nor eating lunch.

But perhaps some other stuff falls into the feet-dragging category: working on new pages at strange cousin susan, but only after creating them once and deleting them purposely; uploading sound files for one of the new pages here; trying to figure out why HandBrake wasn’t doing what it said it would do; Twittering; getting lost at Flickr, wikipedia, and boingboing; reading Azumanga Daioh; organizing files on the computer, even though it wasn’t really a pressing need; tweaking Adium’s appearance ad nauseum; looking for new system icons; and watching two parts of a Doctor Who serial having absolutely nothing to do with my article. At all. Oh, and let me not forget this: plucking my eyebrows. Yes, that absolutely had. to. be. done. today.

Thank God I didn’t paint the toy box. It was far too warm and might have taken away precious time from fine-tuning Adium. Again.

…not to mention somewhat of a saboteur. You just won’t play certain disks correctly, will you? Oh, you’ll play Scarlet Street, Justice League Unlimited, and random Peter Davison serials of Doctor Who…with Tegan as a companion. What the fuck is up with that?

For Christ’s sake, Tegan? Tegan?

You’ve turned traitor on me.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt and popped in a Tom Baker disk, just to see if it was he with whom you had the problem. Apparently, you like him just fine…and Romana II, as well. You probably like everyone but you-know-who and Harry Sullivan.

Why just within the last two days have you decided to adopt this dislike…and only on the tele-laptop? Is it because I really need more screen caps for the Fashionista Fever! project? Or are you still punishing me on some level for Tammy?

Even with a fresh install of an updated version, you’re still acting out.

Don’t get me wrong, friend VLC. I love you. I really do. You’re a great little program and you (normally) work like a dream. The Mac and you haven’t had a row. What did Windows XP do to make you hate you-know-who and Harry Sullivan so much? How can anyone hate you-know-who, even you, you inanimate thing, you who are nothing more than a pile of 1s and 0s?

I’m going to try tricking you, oh, yes I am. I’ve tried once by copying a file from the disk to the tele-laptop hard drive, thinking maybe you would like that more. You didn’t, so my next plan of attack is to reburn the same file onto a new disk on a Mac and then see what happens when I pop it into the tele-top.

Here it is…the post I hope will cover the myriad observations, conversations, and situations over the past couple of weeks. Although it will be far from complete, here’s to remembering most of them, at least those not having to do with the factory proper. That may be tomorrow’s post.

By far the most noteworthy and exciting conversation took place just two days ago, at the factory, no less. A customer called to teasingly yank my chain about some pieces he’d picked up and then segued into an almost one-sided monologue about wanting to take me to lunch…to meet his sister. Yes, you read that correctly. He wants us to meet because, and since I expressed it so wonderfully in a recently sent email, I will shamelessly quote myself now and hope I don’t break any copyright laws:

…I nearly dropped the phone. “We’ll go to lunch one day!” he exclaimed. “She’s a really neat girl, Mickey Glitter and I think you’ll really like each other…you do know what I’m talking about, right?” I noised some sort of affirmative sound in the back of my throat and he continued, “I figure, if she’s going to go down the road she’s going down…well, never mind. I just want to make sure she knows some good people. And you don’t know how much I care for you and blah blah blah…” That’s about when my ears turned off and I just kept the phone to my ear. It might just be talk, but it might not be. Even if it is, it’s the most exciting thing to happen to me in a long time.

Maybe I should have left that bit for the end of the post, seeing that it really is the biggest event in my life over the past fourteen days. Isn’t it traditional to leave the best to last? Onto other happenings, Home Improvements for Amusement continues: I broke down and bought a real. grown-up. coffee maker. today. It has a clock and can be set to brew so a nice, fresh pot of coffee is ready when I wake up. This may be more difficult than I’d like it to be, since I’m waking up anywhere between half past one and three every morning. I’m glad to have the extra time back, since my over-all productivity is increased, but I really wish I knew how to sleep until at least eight or nine on the weekends…

The Library File Fiasco has been corrected (this is my oh, so clever name for the recent digital clusterfuck I got myself into) and I’ve got about 95% of my computer back to the way it was, albeit with a hell of a lot more disk space available at the end of the day. There’s still a backup program I need to download, plus a firewall utility, but as far as software, that’s all I’ve left to address. It’s another story completely with iTunes, though. Thankfully, my music is all on an external hard drive; my many playlists, though are not and right now are only available on my iPod. I spent some time this morning importing my more popular playlists to iTunes, but I haven’t gotten them all quite yet. I’ve decided to go this route to keep iTunes a little less cluttered than it has been. When one has over three thousand songs on file, it can be a bit painful even just to look at the list.

I’m continuing to work through quite a few movies I’ve downloaded over the last couple of years. So far, the sweetest find in my collection was Swing High, Swing Low - and only because of my recent discovery of and subsequent semi-obsession with Carole Lombard. I went through the same thing very recently with Merle Oberon and Myrna Loy, but my obsession with Merle Oberon lasted only long enough to get me through The Scarlet Pimpernel and Wuthering Heights. On the other hand, my DVD collection now contains almost as many Myrna Loy movies as it does Honor Blackman.

And while I’m on the subject of movies, I have absolutely fallen for Buster Keaton, hook, line, and sinker and no mistake. There are quite a few of his films in my collection, as well and I’ve watched all of them, or at least most of them. Is it fair to call Limelight a Buster Keaton movie, when his was such a small role, so small you’d miss it if you went to get more popcorn? After I read his name in the credits (do you think I would study the DVD packaging and figure it out long before I even put the DVD in the player?), I watched impatiently for the precious few scenes he shared with Charlie Chaplin. And although there were two, maybe three, seeing those two legends of Hollywood perform together for what I’ve read was the first time…ever…made even struggling to find something redeeming about Claire Bloom’s character worth the Herculean effort.

More to follow on the morrow, an hour later now that daylight savings time is kicking into gear. God, I detest this government regulated time change. Maybe I should move to Arizona so I can free myself of it.

And do Daleks dream of pink striped socks? And camouflage pants with tie-ties at the ankles?

Or is that just me?

I finally received my DSL install disk two days ago…it took three days to get from Winnetka to me. I had hoped it would appear the next day and then the next day…but not until the next next next day did I see it. And just as well, since I’ve really had neither the energy nor the desire to start pimpin’ out my computer again. When I woke up at three this morning, I contemplated the following scenarios:

1. Stay in bed until four.
2. Get up and start the pimping, then start getting ready for work.
3. Get up and get ready for work, then start the pimiping.

I opted for the last scenario and am happy to report I’ve got access back into the digital world. Nothing else yet, except NeoOffice, which I downloaded at work one day last week, since it was much more important to be able to access my check register than anything.

Have I done that yet, since it was so flippin’ important?

Of course not. I only managed to get the software installed yesterday morning, multi-tasking as I brushed my teeth. And now I’m off to check one of my Gmail accounts, since it’s not forwarded to my main email account and therefore, has not been checked since…well, for quite a few days.

I’ve got so much to blog about - hell, I had a lot before the computer rebelled against its mistress’s assinine actions. Let me get the machine pimped out before I start in on that, eh?

And here, I thought I’d gotten the computer back to normal over the weekend. Apparently I didn’t and I’ve lost all the work I did. It’s come to this: reinstalling OS X tonight to get a jump on this arduous task before this weekend. I’ve lost all my email…again. All my customizations…again. Luckily, I finally smartened up and printed out the various registration codes this time, instead of simply storing them in my email.

The refusal of Neo Office to open this morning (and it was a brand new install from this weekend) should have tipped me off something was terribly amiss. So should have the fact I had to pry a disk from the disk drive this morning and the fact the machine wouldn’t boot up if all my periphrials were attached. Oh, and tonight, when my iPod wasn’t recognized as being registered to this particular computer, I got that sick feeling in my gut. But when I opened up Apple Mail and was prompted to enter my email account information, I knew the gig was up and I’d have to bite the bullet.

Seriously. I didn’t buy a Mac for this. Macs are supposed to be stable. Stable. Stable. Not like Windows. I should stop my bitching, though and be thankful all my important files have been backed up (namely my address book, my banking spreadsheet, and my resume, although none does fuck all now, and won’t until I get this fixed…oh, and of course, my ever-growing and extensive picture collection of classic movie actresses).

Believe it or not, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, a clean install of OS X.

But I wanted to do it on my terms. Not the computer’s.

Disco dog
Dribble on your shirt
Never mind the tin dog
Not Croyden
The Loch Ness Monster (my favorite)

There were a few more to offer, but in light of my digitally-challenged weekend, it’s no surprise I lost them, is it? For some reason, the wee program I’m using for this latest bit of entertainment will only record the first thirty minutes, which precludes me from snagging the line about K-9 being a daft tin dog and the Doctor claiming ownership of “(his) Sarah Jane,” naturally. But no matter. I’m quite pleased with what I’ve got.

As for an update on the Great Computer Fuck-Up 2008, I’ve got it all back to rights, including my numerous playlists in iTunes; for a while, I feared I’d lose them all because I couldn’t keep my iPod visible to iTunes for some reason. I’ve got a handy program called iPod Rip that has saved the day, again. I’ve only used it less than a handful of times since I bought it three days before my first trip to London, but it’s been worth every single penny nonetheless. And again, it’s proven its worth because there was no way I could have recreated all those playlists.

After all this unscheduled excitement this weekend, I’m quite pleased to announce the completion of my taxes, the one task I’d wanted to accomplish. Both federal and state are ready to be mailed tomorrow and then all I have to do is sit back and wait for my refunds. Sadly, my combined federal and state refunds this year are less than my federal refund alone was last year, but that’s the price one pays for cashing in a crapload of Series EE savings bonds.

When push came to shove, I didn’t need to reinstall OS X - or should I say I chose not to? That being said, though, I think I’ve probably spent almost as much time fixing the computer, i.e. setting up Apple Mail, Camino, re-registering some of my most-used and much-loved little programs. The only thing left now is to figure out how to salvage the playlists from my iPod and get them back into iTunes; I’ve got a wee program that should let me do that, as it has done in the past, but for some reason, it’s giving me fits and starts this morning and so I’m going to put it up for a while and work on other things.

Interested to know how I’ve come to that conclusion?

My computer’s gone downright wiggy on me…well, operator stupidity has its own role to play here…and it looks like I’m going to spend the rest of the day reinstalling OS X and all my super-neat open source programs.

I’ve lost all the customization on Firefox. I’ve lost everything in Thunderbird. And I do mean everything. At least the last time this happened, my email wasn’t touched. This time is another story. Addresses. Irreplaceable email from my dad. Registrations. Passwords. All that happy horseshit.

But I do take all responsibility for it this time around. One should not play with files one doesn’t understand. One shouldn’t try organizing one’s hard drive when those types of system files are involved. In fact, I’ve come to realize one shouldn’t even THINK about those system files at all. Ever.