Sure, sometimes those things are severely-charred zombies from the beginnings of some sci-fi Apocalypse, but just work with me on this one. It’s been a hectic day, and spending two hours in my car on the way home. The slightly snowy Pittsburgh roads weren’t the issues so much as the other drivers, but that’s another topic for another time. Continue reading
Tag Archives: computers
One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Twenty-Seven
My laptop returned home today, and the actual problems were far worse than initially thought. Instead of my graphics card being dead, it was apparently a bad motherboard and hard drive disk. The BestBuy employee asked if I had an unexpected power outage or something, but it was just my laptop very suddenly and violently shitting the bed. Yikes.
Thanatos has been renamed Wheatley because 1) it better fits the Portal and Portal 2 themed names I have for my Surface 2 (Aperture Surface) and my desktop (GLADESKTOP) and 2) it’s a more fitting name given how derp my laptop has been so soon. I’m not looking forward to resurrecting all of the files from my external hard drive, and I’m fairly certain I lost a couple short stories and other projects forever. Like my forever-backburnered first episode of the Misadventures in Podcasting podcast.
As a quick aside: it’s very difficult to type when a small kitten keeps hopping onto the couch and dancing across my laptop keyboard. She wandered back into the living room just as I was typing that and did it again. Precious little bundle of mischief.
Anyway, time to get moving on this. I’ve got my standard Monday headache, like clockwork. Continue reading
One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Twenty-Two
The day before a day off of work always goes a million times slower, like the Universe has set life on bullet-time. Except (hopefully) no one is shooting at you.
Today will be the calm before the storm, and so I present this installment in my Hundred Days of Blogging.
One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Nineteen
Just for funsies, and because the computer is in use, I’m hastening the onset of carpal tunnel a bit by typing this on my phone. There will be typos. Not even prepared to read this on another device because it will probably make my soul hurt.
Right.
So there were some crazy-intense thunderstorms last night. The kind that produce lightning as bright as momentary flashes of daylight and thunder rumbles that shake a person to their bones. I love a good summer storm, perhaps more than most, but there were a few moments where I wondered if there were any smoking craters in the yard from some of those lightning strikes.
Anyway, to the real post topic!
One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Sixteen
Let it be known that I started this before midnight, and will consider this a slight cheat-day, if only because the whole evening was a magnificent series of problems and frustrations.
Thanatos, my new-ish laptop, died. Take a moment to appreciate the humor in something named after the God of Death kicking the proverbial bucket. The entire process of figuring this out took about two hours, and one trip to BestBuy. The diagnosis: one very dead graphics card.
Suffice it to say, I was not happy. However, some good came from that, and so I’m going to postpone my post I’d planned for today in favor of another. It seems more appropriate, given the circumstances.
Day Sixteen – The best laid plans, the way they crumble, and the good that can come of it
It’s been said I have a little black cloud that floats over me, and there are days I’m inclined to agree with that. My history of dental problems that could have been avoided if procedures had been done correctly speaks to this end quite loudly, and with many expletives. It helps no one that I am quick to find myself in a bit of a down in the dumps state. I dare say I’m a bit of a high-maintenance person at times (that is not a happy self-assessment to make).
One thing I have been is a planner. I’m not very good at spur-of-the-moment, and my whim decisions are usually a bit expensive or end poorly (see also: my purchasing a Surface 2 or the time I decided to test the flammability of hand sanitizer). I may not always plan a great deal ahead, but I like to have a general idea of what I’m doing (except in writing, for some reason, which is generally drafting like mad and then calculated editing). Suffice it to say, I usually get pretty frustrated when things go ass-over-elbows on me.
There’s an unsung good side to when the best plans go to shit, though. Tonight is a very good example of that. My very good friend, and brother-from-another-mother (I went there because he’s called me that before, but I think it sounds ridiculous), Jason was so kind as to build me a desktop for Christmas. It’s a decked-out behemoth of a gaming PC, and I got plenty of use of it before I moved to Hollidaysburg.
Somehow, along the journey to my new home, my screen got scratched up a good deal. I had it wrapped in two microfiber fleece covers, with a pillow pressed against it for support, and so I have no idea what the hell happened. I do know that particular monitor isn’t very good at being functional now, which is kind of what matters. And so my desktop just sort of sat around. I could, and should, have replaced the monitor and used my desktop, but I had plenty of excuses instead. I didn’t have a desk here. I have my laptop to use (and now my Surface 2). And so on.
When my laptop of less than six months bit the dust tonight, that was enough of a wrench in my usual writing and gaming routines to force me into some action. After leaving Thanatos in the capable hands of the Geek Squad, I bought a monitor for my desktop. And then I bought a desk, which ended up half-assembled because no one in their right mind assembles a desk after 10:30 at night. I am prone to some very stupid decisions occasionally, but we’ll not dwell on that.
Most importantly from this all: my evening was going to be spent getting some work done on a short story (which is presently in Limbo, unless its last upload to my OneDrive worked), and relaxing to some WoW. Thanks to that unhappy incident, I am now most of the way towards having set up a much-needed space for writing (and PC gaming, yes).
Beyond that, I am very ready to make my trip home to Carnegie, see my family, and just decompress for the weekend. It’s a much-needed vacation, I think. Eighty-four days remaining.
A rather sad changing of the guard
Or “I have a dozen other things to be doing, but this is a mental health day and I’m making my way through it on my own damn terms.”
Yesterday was not a particularly good day for me, and I’ll spare the details because this is where I write about writing, and sometimes other artsy things that catch my eye. Maybe other odds and ends here and there. I will say that I am woefully behind where I’d like to be with Warpt Factor, and I largely blame the dreary gloom that’s settled in both in terms of weather and my moods. I apologize for that much because it’s been fun to write, and I certainly hope it’s been fun to read so far.
My Dell Studio laptop, named Satellite 5 (because Doctor Who, of course), blue-screened on me a couple times recently. Upon rebooting my nearly four-year-old laptop, it gave a different reason for the fatal errors, but none of them were particularly good or easily fixable. This is all particularly upsetting because Satellite 5 has been my trusty companion through much of my most difficult academic writing, as well as some of the hardest, best work I’ve done on my fiction. It’s what I used to make many–most, in fact–of the posts on Misadventures In Fiction, and it’s the computer from which this site was started. Needless to say, it’s with a heavy heart that I’ve decided it’s time to give Satellite 5 some much-needed rest. It’ll certainly see use, still, but not so much with its nearly useless battery, its replaced charger, and so on. Continue reading
Phil's Misadventures In Fiction 