Barkerburgh

Sometimes a great notion…

As Porky Pig once said, “That’s all, folks.”

And now for something completely different.

And now for something completely the same.

“Yo! Yo!”

“It is a silly place…”

And now for something else almost completely different…

“It’s worse than that; he’s dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead…”

So I pretty much fixed the problems plaguing my fast machine, the one I use to view DVDs.

Basically, I had to remove the physical hard-drive, put it in my good machine, run diagnostics and correctives on it there, then put it back. Then I had to run a W2K repair routine and fiddle with the BIOS. Yarg narg. Seriously.

Now not only are my story files and MP3s safe, they are usable. And since the hard-drive was on the other machine temporarily, I took the opportunity to back some of them up.

I can now view DVDs and movies on the machine God intended, and Life, as it should be, is Good. Did I tell you I bought a bridge in NYC?

* Bill Gates

Last night was the best night of my life this week! (Except for last night with an episode of ‘Veronica Mars’ and an episode of ‘Hustle’.)

Had a nice little lunch at the Miller/Beaton home, where I’d left my baseball cap and cool shades after the annual bbq on Sunday. Luisa was there too, picking up Ronnie’s left-behind ‘Ender’s Shadow’ - Card should have stopped at ‘Dune:Nerd’ or ‘Battlefield:Whatever’.

Later it was a ripping episode of ‘Coronation Street’. Sunita found out that Dev has kids by pretty much all the other women who manage his corner shops all over northern England and live rent-free in the upstairs flat. Besides the fact that she’s married to him, she’s also pregnant with his twins. Now I knew this was coming because I get a newsletter from the future (here in Canadia we’re 7-8 months behind the UK, Corrie timelinewise…) but I didn’t know the set-up.

Then it was “Veronica Mars” and a satisfyingly creepy “Criminal Minds”, (but the Star TV magazine said there was supposed to be an episode of “Huslte” (sic), but it was some dumb rom-com about Tuscany), then it was the splendid thunderstorm.

At one point, I was standing on the back fire escape and counting the lightning flashes. For a little over five minutes there was a flash about every two seconds, with attendant dramatic rumblings. Highly satisfying.

The temperature and humidity dropped dramatically, of course, and that’s the story of how, with blessed Science’s help, I slept better than I have in a week or more.

Coffee even hurts right now.

I have big wide windows that I love. I have them open all the time year round because I crave the fresh air, and I can’t control the heat in the wintertime; it’s forced water and it’s either on or off.

I have a big oscillating floor fan, that is neither oscillating nor on the floor, stuck in one side of the window blowing out, so that there is a nice wide flow of outside air coming in the the other side. Usually this is highly pleasant. Now it is not.

I also have a small desktop fan blowing at me when I sleep, which seized up last night. It probably only needs a little generic WD40, so no real worries - it’s happened before.

I lost a hard-drive (logical not physical) on one of my computers the other night and I thought I’d lost a bunch of important files (including story files and MP3s), but they’re okay - I just can’t use them right now. However, I need to spend a lot of time restoring the OS on that machine and it’s too goddamn hot to do it now. And seriously, Microsoft, what the fuck is wrong with you people? The COPY command in the Recovery Console won’t handle wildcards or directory copies, even if you use the fucking SET command to tell it to? It’s called the Recovery Console, not the “Fuck You, Fuck Your Files And Fuck The Horse You Rode In On Console”. Not “A Recovery Console for Windows 2000, Mr Gates? ‘Fast, Cheap, or Right, Pick Two’ Console”! It’s enough to make a body want to switch to a Mac or Linux. Jesus Christ on a fucking crutch.

Thank all the saints and angels for television. Cable television. And sudoku. And Freecell.

Anyhoo, I hope you’re all having a nice day. Drink plenty of water and don’t leave your children in a parked car with the windows rolled up, unless you really want to encourage Good Samaritans who have hammers and an urge to use them.