Continental Drift

Just spent about an hour crawling around on all fours under mum's desk, untangling the awful mess of cables and reconnecting everything (and finding about five loose ones belonging to things we don't have any more) and removing a huge pile of dust while at it... I did try and not breathe too much, so I'm hoping it won't trigger a sneeze and cough fest. My poor knees are rather annoyed with me though.

On the plus side, mum now has a working computer and a new monitor - ordered it yesterday, arrived today. A lovely (I hope, it got good reviews) 22'' Dell 2009WA. It looks very sleek and shiny and all black. For some reason, it came with a wrong power cable (three-pronged; we only use two-pronged ones) but it seems that whatever the old monitor's fault was, it wasn't with its power cable, so we could just use that.

Tired now. If there's any configuring needed, it'll have to wait until tomorrow, together with whatever updates mum's computer needs after having been offline for a couple of weeks. Did about 6000+ words of work earlier, and also went out for a two hour walk by the river - found a surprisingly large amount of different spring flowers blooming, although they're hard to spot among all the old grey grass. Busy day!

My monitor at home seems to have died this morning, so I will be around even less.

Still have the laptop, but I might just be taking more breaks from the computer at home anyway, until I can go and get a decent new monitor. Which will probably be a problem, since it looks like there aren't any decent 19'' 4:3 ratio monitors available any more.

Picked up my shiny new computer yesterday, so today was spent setting it up. Especially as I wasn't in the mood to go out - managed to stub my toe on the sofa yesterday, so it's all bloody and bruised. Not broken though from what I can tell, just hurts a bit if I try to put full weight on it.

( Cut for boring computer stuff. )

All this computer stuff (and dust flowing around) has given me a rather nasty headache. And I haven't written a word today (not really worried about it, but still). And I just watched Estonia getting beaten by Belgium in the World Cup qualifiers ... 3:2 doesn't look too bad as the result, I guess, especially for an away game, but Belgium really was so much stronger. Grrr.

Oddly enough I'm almost missing the laptop now. And I hated using it when I had to switch to it last week. *sheds a single tear*

Well, at least I know now that it wasn't the power supply or the dust causing the random restarts.

New desktop shopping tomorrow, I suppose. Although I'm not sure the timing's the best, what with the start of the school year and all - they're probably going to be busy. Well, won't get it any sooner if I put it off longer.

Bleh. Will need to see if I've forgotten to back up anything I need, although I hope it'll last long enough to let me transfer everything properly.

And I have had a fever for most of the weekend, including right now. I suspect the cold and moist air and no heating aren't helping, as I'm also quite sneezy. I do hope I get better by tomorrow though as I'd rather not work on the laptop (and don't know if I can risk actually doing work on the desktop now).

And I spent half the day scrubbing the kitchen walls high up and part of the ceiling, too, as Pätsu (who likes to sleep on top of a cupboard, right under the ceiling) seems to have scratched her ear bloody in the night ... it's amazing how far and wide blood drops can splatter when a cat shakes her head. It looked like someone had been butchered in the kitchen in the morning. Pätsu seems quite fine now though.

I've been idly speculating for a while that I might at some point need a new desktop computer as the current one is getting rather too slow for my liking and is prone to freezing up whenever I've had Firefox open for more than half a day. Sadly it's at an age where upgrading isn't possible really - would have to get a new motherboard, CPU, compatible RAM and graphics card, as compatible parts don't seem to be around any more - so it's basically getting a whole new computer.

( Computer rant. )

In more positive news, I got my Doctor Who: The War Machines DVD on Tuesday (stuck, barely, in the mailbox - where it just doesn't fit. am so glad I got there before anyone else did) - and today I received the notice from Sendit telling me they've dispatched it. *raises eyebrow*

In even more positive news, I actually had a few ideas for the possible more challenging exchange prompt today when on my way home on the bus. Perhaps I will actually manage to make a start on it today.

I got my new toy yesterday. I named her Tibu. She's pretty!! And I like the fingerprint reader. It's like a toy within a toy.

Now, to figure out how to get the new router to cooperate... I have a feeling I should just give up though, for the sake of my nerves (getting too stressed out is not good for me), and call for an Elion technician or someone to set it up. Since it kept asking me for various data which Elion's tech support told me I won't need, and doesn't let me ignore that. Bleh. At least after all that struggling with it yesterday, and giving up after the dismal failure to get things running, I managed to put the old switch back as it was and the LAN works as nicely as it used to. Which doesn't really solve my "want WLAN!! want internet for Tibu!!" problem, but I can live with that for a little longer.

I should just get a LAN cable for it for the time being...

Friday is nearly over and done with, and my new toy is nowhere to be seen.



On the other hand, The Time Warrior is finally going to be released... in September. Woo! So there's at least been some good news today.

Today was such an entirely pointless day. *sighs*

Well... busy with everything but work, really. At least I had something to do at work, even if it was relatively little.

On the other hand, little work meant more time for other important things. Such as shopping. (Note to self: maybe it is not that good to work in an office situated within five minutes walking distance from a photography store, a computer store and a Kalev store.)

So now I have a new ID card reader (old one didn't seem to work... but after some hassling with the new one, and finding out that things work marvellously even though I get a "card error" icon, I'm beginning to think that maybe it was one of those problems situated between the chair and the keyboard, and not a reader problem... hmm, in any case, even if it does work, an extra one won't hurt, surely). And a very pretty external hard drive (Western Digital MyBook Pro, 500 GB), which I'm not going to install today. And a not very pretty (but that hardly matters) new 400W power supply, for the inevitable event of the current one in either mine or mum's computer failing at some point.

And then I had time to go to Priisle, where I got strawberries and picked up my recent Amazon order at the post-office... yes, I finally have Doctor Who: The Complete First Series now. A very pretty, relatively slim box, which has unfortunately got a little banged up in one corner, but oh well. And I also got State of Play which I know absolutely nothing about, except that it has a good cast, is directed by David Yates and is supposed to be good.

And when I finally got home, I found out I've become a Perfect Imagination accredited beta reader, yay! Took the test just for fun last night... didn't bother to think all that much (and knew I didn't get everything but decided to err on the side of caution) and got 85%, which is quite sufficient for accreditation. So if anyone has any Harry Potter fics and wants a beta reader, I have the certificate to show I'm capable and can be trusted with the grammar, spelling and canon knowledge. Apparently.

Technological achievements today:

Light bulbs replaced: 1.
Computer power supplies replaced: 1.

I'm getting scarily proficient at replacing power supplies. I'm not sure I like it.

No idea what happened - weather probably - but both computers, one in each room, switched themselves off very suddenly a little while ago (everything else electrical seemed okay, lights stayed on, TV stayed on, so must have been a fairly minor surge or one especially bad for computers?). Mum's came back to life without any complaints, mine stayed dead. It's very fortunate mum's old computer was still lying around, with its brand new power supply... decided to give it a try before succumbing to tears and wailing and yes, it did the trick.

I ought to go buy a new power supply soon now... first, it seems that it's good to have one at hand (one learns, after the third or fourth replacement in a relatively short time), and second, the one in this computer now is a 350W one instead of the 400W it had before, so I'd rather have a more powerful one around. Just in case.

Blegh, in any case.

Why do I have to have a headache ruining the little there's left of weekend? Pah! I'm blaming the switch to winter time, and the almost shockingly early darkness. Most annoying. Under usual circumstances, I would convince myself that ice cream would help, but I've already tried that today and it apparently hasn't.

I'm also a little annoyed with Firefox 2.0... It's nice in many ways, but it tends to crash every other time I'm exiting. And if the 1.5.x.x version was a memory hungry monster, then this is even worse. Seems to be eating up at least 120 MB of RAM steadily, even when minimised. And people complain about IE being a resource hog... of course, I haven't tried IE 7 yet, perhaps that will manage to compare with Firefox in that sense.

And I want more LJ userpics. *pouts* I feel I'm lacking a good selection of Third Doctor pics for every situation. I don't quite feel like getting a paid account just for that yet though... maybe eventually. I would like more than six pics I can use... *pouts some more*