Barkerburgh

So mosta y’all recall, I’m sure, how I found a Pentium III on the sidewalk along the Danforth a few months back. 650Mhz, 128 meg of RAM, since upgraded (via once forgotten RAM chips) to 320. There was a DVD reader (not much more than just that), a CD burner, a good video card (since upgraded to a Reid-supplied GEForce 3 card), a good sound card and a good (reliable, unlike its Win98 predecessor) network card.

What I don’t think I whinged about too much was that I thought my story files (novels, novel-like projects, and short stories) were on an unaccessable hard-drive, perhaps damaged by storage since the pre-Christmas total crash. I had plugged it in to the system and the system wasn’t recognizing it. Well, here’s the thing of it. It wasn’t the system or the drive. It turns out it was the IDE ribbon cable. On a whim on Thursday night, I replaced it and now I have access to all my soon-to-be-great novels and stories. Including my once long-lost NaNoWriMo novel, which I can once again work on. Huzzah.

To be honest, after I thought I’d lost them, I was seriously bummed. I felt like the stupid old universe had finally won, after all I’ve been through. But, finally, optimist that I am, inveterate mental Snoopy dancer that I am, I won. Finally.

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Simon likes to walk now, no stroller for him. Yesterday while we were out we went by the firehouse just a half a block from home. On the pretext that Simon has his own firetruck (which he does) and he likes it (which he does) I asked a firefighter if we could go in and take a close look at the firetruck (a pumper) that we could see through the closed door. The firefighter ran the lights, goosed the siren and pumped the air horn for me. Simon. Who, while a little spooked at first, nevertheless liked it just fine. So did I.

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And if you’re ever in the St. Clair and Dufferin neighbourhood and you want a tasty nosh, totally check out the Anatolian Pizza & Doner Kebab House. Have the lahmacun, pronounced approximately ‘lommajun‘. It’s this delicious Turkish pizza that smells exquisite and tastes as good as it smells.

As some of you may know, I will be turning 50 on June 26, 2007, three months from now. Which is to say I will have completed my 50th year of life.

With greatest respect to my dear friends, I don’t want a surprise party, or presents, or anything like that.

Please make a donation of any size to a children’s charity of your choice or a literacy charity of your choice. I’ve included the Google strings below for your perusal.

My preferences would be The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who do great work (here’s their donations page), and ProLiteracy Worldwide who I discovered at the first Gathering of the Fellowship back in 2003 (here’s their donations page).

Once you’ve made the donation, have them send me a note that says something like ‘ A Donation Has Been Made In Your Name To…” just so’s I know. And can feel validated.

Of course, feel free to send me a card too. But no Star Wars pyjamas for grown-ups.

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Children’s Charities Google String

Literacy Charities Google String

I knew Starbuck wasn’t dead.

Nuff said.

Tonight was truly one of the best season finales of any comedy series ever. And I can’t tell you anything about it, except that it was downright well and truly hilarious.

Just so’s ya know.

I just got over this fucking cold with chronic cough and fever for these last long eighteen weeks. Plus it gives you Time Distortion. Really, no, seriously.

Fortunately I had in my own collection, Torchwood, Hitchhikers’ Guide, Dogma, and many others, including my favourite Japanese films, such as Akira Kurosawa’s only Canadian epic, Princess Gananoque.

Now, later, here, I’m getting better, while I’m housesitting three cats, a wondrous video library (both critical modern formats), and a fridge and freezer full of food, many other different kinds of fun. Last night, because I couldn’t sleep, I watched The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. You know, I figured CS Lewis, blah, blah, blah, Christian imagery, redemption, blah blah Edmund, Aslan as Christ, you know, the whole trip. Well, spank my ass and call me chastised! The christianic movie, considering there were heathens in the credits (at least by the provenance of their surnames) worked so much better than that.

Woo hoo! Bring on the next which is what? Prince Caspian?

After that I got surreal. A Prairie Home Companion. Um. I got surreal? Wholly crap! What a delight! I wish I’d seen it at the cinema! The visual metaphors! The imagery! The songs! Did Virginia Madsen’s character not remind you, at least in some degree, of Jessica Lange’s Angel of Death character in All That Jazz? And maybe a little bit of Kevin Klein’s Guy Noir character too?

Shit.

Well, tonight, trying to adjust my sleep schedule, I’m watching as many episodes of Firefly on DVD as will make me fall asleep.

Yeah. That will work.

So a while back when I was coming home from dinner at Tim and Anneli’s, I found a Dell Dimension Pentium III on the curb on the Danforth. The case was open and the hard-drive was gone but everything else, including 128M of RAM was still there. It was very heavy, so although I normally walk home from the Wright/Pekkonen household (on a good day it’s only a 25 minute walk) , I decided to take the subway, and of course, take the risk of the machine not working at all after I hauled it halfway across the frakkin’ city. It took me a while to make room for it but I finally got it working with one of my own hard-drives and Windows 2000. And it has two working USB ports so now I can use my data-spud, (as Peter K. calls my USB jump-drive and I think it’s funny…)

I’m very relieved to have two computers again that I can waste time playing games on and not working on my PHP or writing a great F or SF novel- or series of intricately inter-related short stories.

Hurray for me. And hurray for you, too, whoever you are and whatever you’ve recently accomplished.

PS, if you haven’t seen this on Reid’s blog, take a look. It’s hilarious.