After lunch I went back to, you guessed it, doodling around online. I kill a lot of time there on the weekends when I'm procrastinating... and I did a lot of procrastinating this weekend. I should have been vacuuming my bedroom, or doing laundry, or getting various items of clothing ready to take over to the dry cleaners for a cleaning and pressing (medium starch). What I actually did was sort through some of the stuff that was sitting on my bedroom floor, shove it back into the closet, and try to install my digital camera's drivers into Windows XP. Don't install Samsung drivers in XP, that path leads to madness. Some sort of vile, corrupt DLL files got installed that caused XP to puke and reboot, and then almost every program I opened gave me errors that it was "not a valid library." Even my LJ client wouldn't open! Ooooooohkay. Can I do a system restore? No, I can't, because I'd never set a restore point! That's very helpful, Microsoft. Thank you for giving me a feature that does absolutely no good because I never knew I actually had to tell it to do its job! Everything else in Windows runs on its own and goes off to do its own thing without telling me... but the one thing that really needs to do it doesn't. That's so typical. I ended up going in and removing the files entirely from my hard disk. XP doesn't seem to angry about it but I'm certainly not happy, because I have no idea what impact my actions may have on the system's stability. I guess I'll check my laptop tomorrow, grab the files and mail them to myself from work if they're on the disk. Then I can copy them in and feel better about that much, at least.
I also got the rechargeable batteries for the digital camera plugged into the wall for the day. They're still charging now, even 8 hours later. I expect when I get up in the morning they'll still be charging because I'd neglected them for so long. I'm just hoping once I plug the batteries into the camera and turn the camera on with the USB cable attached that XP will do its thing, install the RIGHT software and not hose me up this time. There's nothing worse than having a botched installation residing on your hard drive. You've got registry problems, and extra unused DLLs littering your disk, and all sorts of other nastiness. Yes, UNIX can suffer from the same sickness, but at least I don't have to worry about some crazy registry getting hosed up and making my system completely unusable....
Around 2:00 PM
roho and enveri went off to the MFF staff meeting. I didn't attend, because I've decided the only thing I'd get out of attending the meetings is a massive increase in blood pressure. I care about the con, and I think some of the people working on it are great folks, I really do. But some of the stuff that goes on just makes me want to put on a pair of Hulk Hands and start smashing foreheads against walls. I don't think that my friends would be very appreciative of me participating in such antics...Right before Roho and Kes left I unwrapped a new DVD from my run to Sam's Club last week and dropped it in. Since yesterday was the viewing of Minority Report with
aureth and the group, I decided today I would follow it up with something with a bit less action and a little more suspense: M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. I was pretty intrigued by it when I heard it was coming out in 2002, but I never got around to seeing it in the theater, more's the pity. The last Shyamalan film I saw, Unbreakable was pretty good, and I figured that Signs couldn't be too much of a dog with Mel Gibson starring in it. I wasn't horribly far off... I see why the reviews for it were mixed, though. Some parts of the movie, like the dialog, were stunningly good. Other parts left a little to be desired. But I got a few good goose bumps along the way, so I won't speak too much ill of the film.Roho and Kes returned home after the meeting, bringing news that the hoped-for visit by
kristenq and hightensile had been trimmed to just Hightensile, and that he was running late due to car problems. Aureth had decided to head home after the meeting because otherwise he would have far too little sleep and be getting up far too early. A little while later we received a call and got word that while Hightensile's car had been fixed it was now so late in the day he didn't feel that driving down to Chicagoland would be worthwhile. I can't blame him, and I think he made a good call. Roho, Kestral and I really need to just take a weekend and go up to visit them and thus eliminate the possibility of things going wrong. Since our gathering plans had been trimmed we decided to head back out to the Continental for dinner. We were seated promptly and the waiter who took our orders was really amazing: he guessed Kestral's order almost as soon as she started telling him what she wanted. That boy had a heck of a memory on him, I think he's only waited on us once before! He was certainly a far cry better than the gal we'd had on Friday night. I think Kestral tipped him well, and he deserved every cent of it.We came back to the apartment and continued to marvel at the wonderful weather we're having. I can't believe how nice this weather is... it just seems like spring has gotten a jump start on us this year, especially after the mild winter we had. Roho suggested that we open all the windows in the apartment, along with the sliding glass door (leaving the screen door closed to prevent the out flux of one naughty black cat) so the apartment could air out. I decided this was a grand idea and added two candles to the equation, since we have so many stashed about the apartment. They're still burning now, three hours later... one is in a votive in my bedroom, and is supposedly "Cedar wood" in scent. The other is a big Yankee Candle in the living room, and I haven't the faintest idea what scent it is other than "good." The sliding door just got closed a minute or two ago, but I've still got both windows in my bedroom open and let me tell you the breeze feels and smells utterly fantastic. It's a bit chilly in here now, true, but that means it will feel that much cozier when I curl up under my blanket, my comforter and my fleece tonight. Ra might even try to crawl in with me if it's cool enough, and that would be rather enjoyable because it's been a long time since he got under the covers with me.
I tried to watch Three Kings, another one of the DVDs I bought at Sam's. I got maybe 40 or so minutes into the movie, where they first find the bullion... and I had to turn it off. I just couldn't watch the movie tonight for some reason, even with the irony of G. W. Bush starting his war in the same month that the Gulf War ended back in 1991. The movie is part comedy, part socio-political commentary and part action film. But the comedy is most certainly what I term "dark comedy," meaning you have to be in the right frame of mind to watch it and an even darker frame of mind to focus on only that part and ignore the biting truth of some of the other parts of the film. When I gave up I put Blue Man Group in the DVD player, switched off the TV and retreated back to my bedroom with the beats of one of the coolest performance acts ever to grace the planet echoing throughout the apartment. DVD-Audio is the thing of the future, folks. If you're an audiophile and want to hear concert performances the way you would if you were if you were in the gold circle, this is the format for you. Blue Man is in DTS and man, does it positively rock.
The other items of note for today:
masem for this impulse buy, but I've been waiting for these things to come out on DVD for the longest time, especially since I lost my first three volumes on VHS from way back in the 1990s.chebutykin? sleepingzebras? Kit? Kat? Are any of you interested? Because I am so there.She blew the boys away, was more than they've seen
