Personal: Technical Difficulties

As previously mentioned, I’ve been performing a number of upgrades to my machines recently. All of my server ones went without a hitch (and the upgrade to Movable Type 2.6 went perfectly: I even took the time to update few other things in the config, move a few files around, implement ‘close comments’ in my templates and fix a small number of things that have been bugging me: amendment: I’ve just discovered I failed to make updates to a couple of custom MT scripts I’ve created – now fixed) – but the upgrades I performed on my home machine (from OS patches to BIOS upgrades) didn’t quite have the desired affect.

Basically, all this week I’ve been trying to watch series 2 episode 9 (A Bicyclops Built for Two) of Futurama, but every time I tried to do so my computer totally crashed (4 times). Blarg – luckily I only lost unsaved work once. I ended up downloading a copy of the episode of the episode off the computer and playing it through WinAmp3 (which I was using for the original episode) and it worked.

I then tried to watch a movie I’ve been meaning to watch for ages (I can’t name it at the moment as it’s the current “Guess That Movie” I’m not naming it) – and I got to within 15 minutes of the end and guess what? Yep, the d-mn machine crashed yet again. Re-try and crashed at a slightly different section. Uninstalled and reinstalled WinAmp and Windows Media Player – no difference 🙁 Rebooted again and this time Windows freezes on startup. By freezes I don’t mean the usual “just halt” problem I seem to have, but the “Windows Flag” screen becoming corrupted – I do my usually “hack” of going into the BIOS, changing something minor and rebooting – with no affect. Boot into safe mode, and it all works – but obversely no ADSL modem or network drivers 🙁 Reboot yet again and things seem to be back in motion.

However, I’m planning on burning everything to CD and then maybe either doing a total reinstall of Windows 2000 Professional (hey – it’s been 6months, it must be time for a reinstall 😉 ) or install Linux in a dual-boot mode. Few snags: I’ve got around 80Gb of data to back up (Windows may have actually been experiencing problems with my less than 500Mb total freespace – sometimes slipping down to just 2.5Mb!) – that’s around 160 CDs. Luckily, I’m going shopping tomorrow so I’ll buy a bulk load, but it’s still going to take some time to backup.

Now for some more slightly personal stuff…

Oh – before I do though, I really really need to go shopping tomorrow. Current contents of fridge: Enough milk for a SINGLE cup of tea, bottle of salad cream, half a block of month old cheese that goes out of date on Monday, 6 eggs (brought this week), half a loaf of bread (brought this week) and some “probably too old to eat” tomatoes and quarter of cucumber. That’s it. My freezer is nearly empty as well. Looks like tomorrow/today’s shopping is going to be quite expensive for me 🙁

Number of Valentines cards received by myself: 0. Number of Valentines cards received by my mother, father and my co-worker: 0. Number of Valentines cards/presents received by my 2 sisters: 4. Number of Valentines cards sent BY me: 1.

Yep, I did decide to send my GESF a V. card (and I hope she’s not reading this for reasons that are about to become clear). I wasn’t going to, but I was prompted to by a text message from my mobile phone company (who says advertising doesn’t work?). The card I decided to order (shown on the left) is from MoonPig who offer “real cards” to purchase and send (this one cost £2.99) – which has the benefit of ensuring the recipient can’t be 100% sure who it was sent to! Ideal if you include text such as:

**** found that the day after a hot date was a bad time to start believing you are what you eat

Happy Valentines Day *****!

In the words of the great prophet R.Harris, can you guess who this is from yet?

Whilst we may not love each other, I do have a bit of a crush on you and I just haven’t found a way to let you know.
Love from a hopefully secret admirer,
?

I received a text message this morning (ok, around one pm) asking if I had sent her a card and if so “cheers”. I’m not sure if she was being sarcastic or not (I was asleep when the message woke me up), so I just responded with “Eh? What card?” (hence feigning innocence without actually saying yes or no). I then fell back to sleep. After waking up, messing around with the computer, cleaning the house (3 bin bags filled) and having a bath, I gave her a call. I asked her what card and then she said “well, if you didn’t send it it doesn’t matter”. During our hour long chat, I did manage to wheedle out of her that since it was postmarked London she wasn’t sure who it could be from (“but the envelope did say something about ‘online’ so if it was sent via the internet it could be from anywhere) and it was from someone who did know her – mainly because of the usage of one of her nick-names inside the card. It was fun hearing her describe the card though (I found it difficult to try and forget that I knew exactly what the card looked like and said 🙂 )

The reason she thought it was me: Because I’m one of the few males she knows (in her words “only man I know” – quite sweet really). I asked, mainly to confuse her a bit more, if she could think of anyone else and what makes her think it was a man (evil ain’t I? 😉 ). She could think of a couple of possible suspects, but for various reasons she doubts it could be any of them – all she knows for certain is that someone does really like her, but just doesn’t know how to let her know. How and (more importantly) if I take things a step further by sending her another card or something or letting her know it was me will require some thinking. Other than that, Valentine’s Day this year was a pretty mediocre affair which practically passed me by unnoticed (like last year then!).

We chatted about a few other things (and I apologised for not calling her on Wednesday, but I explained that I had fallen asleep practically as soon as I got home) and then said bye as she was watching something on TV and was getting peckish (I decided to have a curry and chicken Kiev’s to watch Baddiel+Skinner Unplanned with: mainly to try and finish emptying my freezer).

I just wonder what to do about the situation vis a vie my GESF. I do really like her, but she does live a fair distance away (I did, in fact, tried but failed in getting this years ODP UK editors meetup arranged for near where she lived so I could pop in and see her) and I know she just sees me as a friend at the moment so… What to do…

On the plus side – at least I know my bracket keys work (kinda of) 🙂