Words... what do they all mean?

Someone remind me not to stay away from a computer for that long again. Oy.

The Fourth was fun, fireworks were good, and dessert potluck last night was nommy (I was very gratified to note how quickly pieces from my cakes disappeared). Didn't convert Farkle-loving folks to BSG, alas, and got sunburned; the distinction between water resistant and waterproof sunblock is an important one. _But_ while my skin was toasting, my legs were getting quite a good workout from swimming against the current, so hey.

Also, LJ peeps: how do you change how many entries appear on your friends page? One of my accounts shows 30 but the other only shows 10 (which I hate).

I manned up and finally fired up the new computer (whose name is Kaylee, 'cause it's _shiny_). And wow is it fast. And quiet. I can hardly tell it's on at all. I once drove a rental car like this: its engine was so quiet that throughout the weekend I kept trying to start it _again_ because I wasn't sure if it was on or not.

It took three hours yesterday to download and install WoW, and another whole hour to download all the updates. But the background downloader actually works on this computer, so that should help speed the process up in the future. I suspect whatever was keeping Pooh from being able to update the antivirus also kept other things from updating, like WoW and chat programs and stuff. Annoying.

Oh, one of my favorite things about Windows 7 so far are the sticky notes. Hee! Very helpful and friendly, thus continuing to suit the name.

Still in the process of moving things over. I don't have an external hard drive so it's all just by thumb drives and the camera's memory card and it's slow going. I've discovered a couple worms in the process and hopefully they have been sufficiently nuked.

Tonight is both the Scots Walk in Volcano and Teri & Doug's bonfire. I took kiwifruitbat to the Walk last year but sadly it's really declined since the first time I went. There were only about half the amount of people and those who were there weren't as cheerful and talkative and friendly. The pipers were mediocre and they walked too fast; it was hard to keep up with a lit candle in one hand and Morgan in the other. The open house along Main Street in Sutter Creek afterwards, though, was awesome. Yummy cider/wassail and cookies in every store, caroling in front of the Methodist church, good times. I've never been to the bonfire before but Teri & Doug have been doing it for years and it sounds like fun.

Oh, I need to bring an appetizer. Hmm...

I bought the computer I'm writing this on back in 2002 when I came home from Cottey. At the time it was great. Not top-of-the-line but I didn't really cut any corners, either. It did what I needed it to do (surf web, write stories, play Zuma) and that's all I ever asked of it, and for a while everything was cool. But of course computers don't last forever and lately it's really started acting up. First it was the floppy drive randomly deciding to format disks instead of saving files to them, and then claiming there wasn't even a disc in the drive when there _was_, while I was living in Kansas City in 2004. Then a year or two ago suddenly I couldn't watch DVD's on it anymore because it wouldn't recognize that there was a disk there. I've picked up viruses over the years and despite having them (supposedly) purged a few times now, even afterwards the computer still wasn't what it used to be. Also it's just plain slow, and I don't dare turn it off now for fear it won't turn on again - I get a "hard disk failure is imminent" warning on my boot-up page on the rare occasions when I do have to shut down/restart). I cannot upload pictures to Photobucket or Flickr (to save them from the imminent meltdown) or update my antivirus software to find the problem. I get random "error reporting unable to connect to the server" notifications even though - to my knowledge - there was no error to report. And above all it no longer meets the minimum specs to play WoW (oh noes!). My RAM is measured in MB's here, dudes: it's a wonder it ever ran anything. I have a micro card in my _phone_ that's no bigger than the tip of my pinky finger and is 4 GB. Crazy.

So last month we ordered me up a new computer, and it came on Tuesday. It's beautiful and sleek and _light_ (I could pick up the box with one hand!). And despite the anticipation for two weeks and the excitement when it finally arrived, for some reason I'm absolutely terrified to set it up.

I don't know why, this is weird. Maybe part of it is the amount of work involved in moving everything over (files which, btw, could very well be infected with greeblies my antivirus could not be updated to catch). Maybe it's the process of learning a new OS, though I hear the learning curve for Windows 7 isn't too bad coming from XP. Maybe after reading about cleolinda's Compocalypse for the last four months I'm paranoid to plug it in and discover that it doesn't work. Actually, it was reading her computer woes that really kicked my butt into gear about replacing this one _before_ it utterly bites the dust, so I at least have something to fall back on if the new one doesn't work for some reason.

I've decided to keep this one, even if the new one does prove to work perfectly. Just strip this down, really scrub it out, unplug it from the internet and basically it will be a game computer for Morgan ('cause like hell she's ever going to touch my new one). There's not much she could do to hurt it more than it already is. Oh, and in all of this, after seven years I've finally named this old dinosaur. Pooh. A bear of very little brain, get it? Also it's short and kind of fat compared to the svelte new one I'm too intimidated to meet and learn its name.

Is anyone else having trouble with Yahoo? Lately whenever I try to check my email, it asks me to verify my password, despite that I've selected the option that saves my password for two weeks. So I log in and it sends me right back to the "please verify your password" page, time and again. When this first popped up, a couple/three weeks ago, three or four "verifications" would get me to my actual email. But it seems like it's requiring more as time goes on. A few days ago, the fifth or sixth login would be successful, but last night and today it's not working at all. I lose count once I pass twenty and eventually give up. I've emailed tech support but, of course, since I can't access my email, I have no idea if they've even responded.

Yarg. This is what I get for doing my homework at the last minute:

"The weekly WebCT maintenance period starts on Wednesdays at 12am. WebCT is unavailable while maintenance is being performed.
online.csus.edu is scheduled to return to normal operations at 6:30am, though the system might be up earlier.
Please check back occasionally."

Guess I'll be waking up at 6:30 tomorrow to listen to the audio files I need for Linguistics. Grr.

ETA @ 1 am: checking back occasionally was successful! Homework is done! God loves me.

Wheee, I just figured out how to change the language on my computer.

Now I just need to learn how to type in Russian, too....

For some reason, about a month ago, my phone went kind of blinky on me. It would tell me that I had voicemail, but when I pressed "send" to listen, like it told me to, I only got, "Your call cannot be completed as dialed." WTF? The number for voicemail is _programmed_ into my phone; it's not something I dial and thus susceptible to error. Besides, it had always worked in the past.

I find out a bit later that although I could recieve text messages, I couldn't send them. Huh.

So I went into a Verizon store this evening and told them my issues, plus I wanted to switch to a Sacramento phone number, so that when people call me, they aren't dialing a _Kansas_City_ number. The first thing they suggest I do (about the voicemail issue) is update my phone, which is an easy automated thing. But dialing *228 like they told me to got me a recording that said, "Thank you for calling Surewest's wireless update service. If you are not a Surewest customer, please hang up." So I did. Surewest WTF?! Why does my phone think it's a Surewest phone? The tech service girl behind the counter asks me a little patronizingly, "Are you sure you're a Verizon customer?" Geez.

Anyway. More technical details and issues that ended up an hour later in me getting a whole new phone (though the same model as my old one) and a California number, and life is good now.

So I am once again part of the modern world, and can now be reached at 916-764-4696.