tigris

I have at least two friends who are massively depressed now, and a few more than have become totally silent around me and I don't know why.

To depressed friends, remember this: "caring knows not distance" (said by me). I depend on the fact that you - my friends - are out there, and that you care, no matter the distances between us.

Feeling drained a lot and sleeping a lot. Though without that infection keeping me down I'm a lot more mobile, able to walk around a lot more and do stuff. Chairs are my enemies though. I hate chairs. All chairs should be torn out and replaced with beds. The world needs more beds. :)

Not sleeping well. Finally got rid of the itch by shaving all of the regrowth of hair from the surgery site. Despite all this it appears to be healing up well. Since over-the-counter pain drugs are cheaper and my prescription ones are all gone, I've been slowly stepping up the interval between taking the over-the-counter pain meds in the hopes of no longer having periods of the day laying in bed writhing in pain beating my head and fists into the walls. But the itch was the worst part. So far shaving the area seems to have solved that.

Gonna try reaching my regular MD again today, but so far not a single one of my messages has gotten a reply from them. Not like I have the money to pay her for an office visit anyway since I'm out of work, but hey - there's the phone right?

Aayirck gave me a surprise get-well cake! I wow floored! Wow! :) Ice cream and everything....

I'm at an internet cafe in a small burb of Montreal. While I have been keeping a journal of my trip, I can't upload my file of my journal, so here's a quick summary for now.

I'm doing fine at the moment, but I have no access to the Internet at all from the residence or at the hospital, so I won't be able to do this again until I get home. No net, no wireless, and barred from using the phone line for data. The schedule goes a little like this - I met the doctor yesterday, was touristy today, get all prepped and go into the hospital tomorrow, and then get operated on monday. I get home on the 26th. Operation will probably be in the morning on Monday, and should take 2-3 hours.

The information I gave in my last entry is accurate for the residence I'm staying at, and so it is the best way to get ahold of me. Also, I have my cell phone for those that have that number. So far I have heard nothing from the gargcon folks. They are supposed to be about and some said they wanted to see me, but so far I haven't heard or seen a thing from them. Not sure if that's this weekend or next. I hope to hear from them at some point, since Tanan and Lisa are the only ones here I know, and I'll be pretty bored once I'm in recovery. :)

In the meantime... I'm doing fine. How's Montreal? Uh... it's like Omaha... only in french. This whole machine is in french. I thought Canada was a province of England.... but it's Quebec. Who understands Quebecois? Not I. :)

If I don't hear from you sooner, see ya on the 26th. :)

How do I make phone posts to livejournal if I'm in Montreal?

Well, busy week - been getting stuff together for Thursday. Still gots lotsa stuff to do, but took yesterday off to visit friends in Berkeley. Saw Lisa and Laura, which is great because I haven't spent time really like this with Laura in a couple years. Everyone was in good spirits, we had Thai food, and went to two different bookstores. Bought some stuff for perrrfect_angel. I will try and be on AIM/ICQ when I can this week, or at least today-wens.

More to follow for the Horizons folks, in the protected HZ entry.

Okay, the job I've been with since before Christmas has let me know that today is my last day here. Which is too bad because I was just getting to like it here and it was paying as well as UMC. The story goes a little like this.

Last week I mentioned that a whole bunch of people got let go - aparently it was the whole finance department, except for one lady who is the finance data-entry drone. Well, since there is no more finance department, the 'General Manager' comes down from on high on friday and says 'You! Lowly ex-finance data entry drove! You will now do data entry for the ENTIRE Redwood City offices!'

Obviously, she's going to be swamped and overloaded. My boss realized that. He dresses and smells like a hobo, but he's a nice guy.

My Boss: "But, Mr. General Manager, we need this lady here doing our data entry, she's gotten us out of a really bad hole!"

But the General Manager had spoken. So I'm cleaning off my IM and MU* apps from this machine, and putting all my files on my little USB flashdisk. This could be a blessing in disguise, considering next week.

My boss gave me his contact info (including his home phone number) to use as a reference, and let me know that Globalware's IT department is hiring, forwarded my resume to them, and feels confident they will be giving me a call in the next couple weeks.

However, I'm upset that this did not last all they way up to next week. That's a week and a few days pay I won't get. As a result, tonight will be dedicated to taking out frustrations on a computer game.

Oooooooookay.... what's this little popup thing at the bottom of the screen saying I need to activate my copy of WindowsXP? Pardon me if I'm a little new to XP, but if a person bought this and it came in a sealed package, then once it's installed, it's activated, right? Well I click on it, and it says to call or try it online. Tried it online. It says I've exceeded the 25-or-whatever uses for this CD key, and need to purchase a new CD key.

WTF?!!!! So now your copy of windows is only good for 25 reinstalls? And this one comes with ZERO? And I have to give Microsoft MORE MONEY than what was paid at purchase, within 30 days, or else what happens? My copy of XP will stop working? WTF?!!! And Microsoft wonders WHY it has customer service problems! When I got this from revar, he said it was a free and clear CD key, never been used, as good as fresh out of the packaging, and I'm inclined to believe him. Now what do I do?

I put in two DDR400 RAM sticks of the same size, and the startup screen tells me they are DDR266. I try DDR333 - still insists it's DDR266. I've looked through the bios and can't figure out where to tell it that it's actually a faster speed of DDR manually. In frustration, I slapped in three sticks of actual DDR266 since that's the fastest it'll give me.

Beyond those two problems, it seems to run fine. One thing that really impressed me was how easy it was to update drivers and things. I got the nForce2 drivers and the GeForceFX drivers for Windows XP from the Nvidia website, and then started with the nForce drivers. The nForce drivers not only installed almost all the motherboard resource controller drivers, but it also saw 'Hey! You have an NVidia Video card! Here's the drivers for that too!' and so I never needed to put in the video card drivers - it took care of almost all the driver installation for me in one file - one reboot. A driver installer that is intelligent, and only requires ONE FILE to do everything. Sweet Goddess I love them NVidia folks.

I also had amazingly good luck with the Creative drivers. Creative makes great cards, but it's drivers are PAIN. The drivers work real well, but you have to install the drivers from the CD, and then three seperate patch files IN A CERTAIN ORDER from the website and with the CD in the drive.

I installed iTunes for Windows, and it crashed five times within the 30 minutes I tried to use it. Typical Windows. Some things never change.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! I FOUND GATHERING 2004 FLYERS ON THE FC FLYER TABLE! And I didn't even put them there! YAAAAAY!!! I picked one up just as a souvenir, even though I'm already prereged for Gargcon.

Oi gevalt! Now that the dealer's room is all over and done with, Yarf did pretty well, and alendria's DVDs sold great. She came with like 20 of them, and 16 sold. I didn't really see that much this year at the dealer's room I wanted. I sat on the Horizons radio stream the whole time and worked on my Horizons fanfics, and occasionally chatted with folks on instant messenging. Had a GREAT dinner with Alendria, Crissa, Nynevae, Aayrick, Tanan, and they learned what a whore I am for chocolate. :) But Chip Unicorn let me have one of his chocolate mint truffles. :) I probably won't be back for day five, since I have to work all day today.

Never got painted, even though I had all this costume stuff ready. Oh was I miffed. They couldn't get their act together and get organized, and one of that group spent half an hour ranting at me about how much they HATE Further Confusion because we insisted on seeing ID when reg'ing and how he'd never help out on FC staff ever again and that we treated him horribly. I pointed out that he got treated the same way I was treated last year when I was running an event track, and felt the same way. "OH I'LL NEVER COME BACK! I'LL NEVER DO AN FC EVER AGAIN!" Left a sour taste in my mouth for the costuming group.

Sorry if I seem grumpy - I'm off meds prior to surgery next month. It's like a two-week long PMS. So I appologize to folks iRL in advance. Or whatever.

On to funner stuff: HORIZONS NEWS

I logged on for a few minutes saturday night and that was about it this weekend, but I did hear back from the folks at the Istarian Times - a new monthly online newsletter that the folks at Tazoon.Com want to put on, and I was named Herald of the Spirit Shard. So I get to write and print monthly columns about life and community on the Spirit Shard.

Teusday night after my dentist appointment is when I plan to tear out the new ABIT motherboard and run back to frys, exchange it, and try and find something that actually WORKS. All I need is a socket A motherboard that'll run DDR RAM, and my 1.2 and 1.6 GHz processors. I don't need onboard sound. I don't need onboard LAN. I don't need onboard video. All I want is a motherboard that WORKS and works WELL. Am I asking too much of PCs in this? All through this I have been doing email, playing Warcraft3, and playing music on my mac, and haven't had a single problem with it. Why do I have so many problems with PCs? Why do PCs hate me so? *grump* I'd buy another copy of Horizons if they'd come out with a Mac OS X version. It would run better too without all that DirectX bugginess, running on pure OpenGL. I mean we have American McGee's Alice for OSX, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Halo, Shadowbane, Warcraft III, C&C Generals in development... why not Horizons?