Computer Yuckiness

21 June 2001

Today has got to be better than yesterday. It's in the rules.

The good stuff that happened yesterday: I started feeling majorly better. I sent Fortress out. (I got gawked at by the postal employees because I'm only "23" -- so I lied a little -- and have written a whole novel, all by my little self.) I sent out a short story, read Michelle's thesis, and revised another short story. I got the interview with Garth Nix set up and got the editor's contact information so that I can get the details hammered out with him. Mark, Timprov, and I went to Zachary's up in Berkeley. Good pizza. It's no Frankie's, but then, what is? (Frankie's, that's what. I sigh.) It was spinachy, mushroomy goodness. My godfather would say that spinach has no business on a pizza. But it had business on this pizza. Ohhh, good.

And I was very, very silly. Everything was hysterically funny. Some of it really was hysterically funny. Some of it was that after the bad stuff that happened yesterday (more on which in a minute), I desperately needed to laugh. And some of it was that it was evidently the Bad Restaurant Hour for M'rissas.

See, there's one certain time of day when you can't take me to a restaurant. It's at night, sometime after 8:00, when I should have already had my dinner (but in this case had not -- fruit leather will get you through a multitude of situations). I get tired. I get hungry. And when I'm no longer hungry, I get giggly. Laugh-until-I-can't-breathe level of giggly. Other-diners-staring-at-the-red-faced-M'ris level of giggly.

I was going to tell you-all about the hilarious Alice's Restaurant/Jesus Christ Superstar combo I was up to. But unless you know both JC Superstar and Alice's Restaurant more or less by heart, I'm guessing it's not that hilarious, and I'm guessing the market for that combination is pretty small (and mostly older than my guess of the median age of journal reader). Suffice it to say that I amused myself. Until I couldn't breathe.

But the bad stuff that happened yesterday: connectivity problems. See yesterday's entry for the morning component of them. The evening component was just as bad. And then -- here's the really bad part -- Timprov's computer died. Just died. I was showing him something in the newspaper, I think, and neither of us was near it, and it just died. Turns out (with much tinkering last night) that the power supply, motherboard, and processor are now No Good. The hard drive, thankfully, we could plug into Agacante (my computer), so all of the writing stuff I'd been working on, all of the writing stuff he'd been working on, and all of the Speculon stuff he'd been working on, is all fine. And accessible right at this very minute.

So. A new computer is in Timprov's future. How near a future is not yet certain. Not this week, certainly! He can do everything work-related he needs to do on Agacante except for graphics. Luckily, he finished the redesign graphics (whew!) yesterday morning. This could have been much worse in a lot of ways.

But it really could have been much better as well.

Addendum: the cable modem guy came. Late. Of course. He looked at our box and said, "Your modem is working?" I said, "Yes, and I told the customer service lady that." He sighed and rolled his eyes. We commiserated about how stupid the customer service people are. He told me the real problem (that there's a line they've been replacing in the area, and when they do work on it, things go kaput as far as routing goes), we commiserated some more, and he left. So now I'm going to hang out with David, give Mary Anne books, and generally try to have a good day. You'd better, too, okay? I mean it.

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