So it’s happened again. Got the BSOD this afternoon, and even with my recovery CD it’s not letting me repair the installation so I can get everything off of my hard drive and onto my portable. I’m just glad I managed to save Defying Gravity and November Rain to my portable last night, because I’ve lost the copies I have on my laptop. Most of my things are on my portable, though, and anything that isn’t is either online or on my mum’s desktop.

I think I am definitely going to have to ask my parents how willing they would be to get me a new laptop for my birthday (on the provision that I can pick it out – I’m not getting another Compaq as long as I live) and let me pay them back later – this can’t keep happening. It’s the second time in less than six months that I’ve had this happen. It’s so far beyond a joke by now that it’s not funny anymore.

I HATE MY COMPUTER!

I’m starting to have exactly the same problems I had with my laptop last November. The damn thing is slow as shit again – it only started within the last week. It was the worst yesterday after I got home from my grandparents’ – I literally have not been able to do a thing with it. I was actually able to run it fine at my grandparents’ house, but about ten minutes before Mum told me to pack it away it froze. I tried to defrag last night, but my defragger froze when I tried to start it up. Tried to run CCleaner – nothing. I can’t run Firefox (hell, I had to reinstall it last weekend because it kept crashing – thankfully I didn’t lose any of my bookmarks or settings), any program I execute takes what seems like hours to fire up, the cursor moves in fits and starts, and it’s been freezing for half an hour at a time. I did a virus scan and a spyware check last week and it came back clean, so unless I’ve gotten a virus in the last few days I don’t think that’s what’s happened. I’m typing this out on my mum’s computer because mine keeps freezing on the startup screen.

I guess it was only a matter of time, really – formatting the hard drive caused more problems than I thought it would, it seems. It’s utterly ridiculous – on top of all this, I can’t even watch DVDs or download photos from my camera’s card anymore (even thought I reinstalled the drivers). I need a working computer that I have unlimited access to for university, but when my laptop’s like this it’s impossible. I have an essay and a learning log due next Friday for uni, and unless I can take over Mum’s computer for the full fortnight (which is very doubtful) I’m going to have severe difficulties getting them done and submitted on time.

I think I’m going to have to make a deal with my parents. I estimate that if I start saving this week, if I put away $150 every two weeks, I’ll have enough money to buy a new laptop in the middle of August. That gives me five months to save the $1500 I estimate I’ll need. My birthday is in just under two-and-a-half months, and by that time I’ll probably have $750 or so saved. I think that, in the morning (or whenever it is I manage to drag myself out of bed), I’m going to ask them how willing they would be by that point to take what I have saved, match it, and buy me a new laptop for my birthday like they did in 2005. That’s all I want for my birthday, and I’m only going to ask for it because it’s something I need. That was the whole reason I asked for a portable hard drive – it was something I needed in order to be able to salvage from my laptop everything I needed or wanted to keep. I need a functioning computer to be able to complete my studies.

Well, either that, or I’ll see how willing they’ll be to let me pick out and buy me a new computer this week. To sweeten the deal somewhat, I’ll choose the least expensive one possible that still has a good level of power under the lid, assure them that I won’t ask for a thing for my birthday, and I’ll reimburse them fully when I have enough money saved to match the laptop’s selling price. They both know how important a working computer (and the Internet for that matter) is to me in terms of my education – hell, when our Internet was on the fritz last weekend Mum told my father to tell our phone company/ISP that aside from the home business, I needed it for uni, so that a sense of urgency would be attached to fixing the lines. They know I’m able to save money and resist the temptation to dig into it until I’ve reached my goal – that’s the whole reason I was able to save as much as did for the Easter Show – so I don’t see why they wouldn’t do this. But I’ll have to see what they say about it. If I use university as the main reason why I want a new computer as soon as possible, that should be reason enough…

ETA (4:02 am Monday): I think I’ve figured out why my computer is acting up. And all it took was a quick poke around on Google.

I downloaded ljArchive last week so I could backup my LiveJournal, in preparation for importing it into this blog. In order to install it, I had to download and install one of the Microsoft NET frameworks – the documentation for ljArchive specified version 1.1, so I went on a hunt for it, found it and installed it. I can pretty much pinpoint installing that damn thing as the point where things started slowing down. Not only that, but it caused the login screen to start showing up, as it creates an invisible user profile. I only have one desktop, so I thought it strange when the login screen started displaying every time I booted up. When CCleaner decides it wants to work properly, I’m going to uninstall the framework and ljArchive (because I don’t need it anymore), restart, and then take everything back to the restore point I created last Sunday. Problem (hopefully) solved. 🙂

2008 Sydney Royal Easter Show

My feet are killing me, I have a sore ankle and a sore knee, I think I’m getting a blister on my left foot, and I’ve been up since 4:45 this morning so I’m damn near exhausted.

But I had fun today. Olympic Park was packed as per usual, and it rained this morning. And I spent a fuckload of money – out of the $350 I took with me, I have somewhere in the region of $120 left. I have $110 in notes and a handful of gold and silver coins left in my wallet. The $110 is going in my laptop fund, and I’m going to use my shrapnel as pocket change.

I am GOOD. 😀

My first two assessments were due last Friday – I have another two (an essay and what’s called a learning log, and idiot me hasn’t started either) due in two weeks’ time. I got the first of those two introductory assessments back today. Each one is marked out of five – and I got four! 😀 That’s equivalent to 80%. I keep this up, and I’ll be well on my way to a Distinction or High Distinction by the end of this unit.

I am very slowly going through all of my migrated entries in an attempt to tidy things up, but because I have over one thousand posts here it might take me a little while. I’ll likely have a shitload of time to do it tomorrow, being as I’m a participant in the LiveJournal strike and won’t be posting there (if I ever do again). But we shall see.

Just a quick note…

Obviously I am currently in the middle of migrating every single journal entry (sans private entries and my friends-only banner) from my LiveJournal to here, in case I decide to give LJ and SUP the finger. So until I A. get every entry imported (and that’s going to take me a fucking age, because I had to split my journal entries into years), and B. figure out the WP equivalent of an LJ-cut, this blog is going to look very untidy. My advice? Deal with it. *sweet smile*

Oh, this is ridiculous.

I’ve never had much reason to leave LiveJournal. I like it here, more so than other blogging services.

Now I think I have a damn good reason to.

It’s making me think even more about setting a blog up on Walking Contradiction. I wanted to wait until I’d bought my own domain before trying to figure out WordPress and setting up over there. But I don’t think I want to be using a service that has an owner that treats its users with little more than contempt. Strikethrough, anyone?

I’m going to give myself a week to decide whether or not I want to remain on LiveJournal. In the meantime, I’m going to start downloading my journal to my hard drive – I found a synchronising tool that I’m going to install – in preparation for creating an archive on my site. And I’m going to be participating in Friday’s boycott. It may or may not make much of an impact, but hopefully it’ll let SUP know that we as users aren’t going to take this lying down.

ETA (18:19): In case I do end up leaving LiveJournal, I’ve signed up at WordPress.com and am migrating the entries from this journal (and possibly my NaNo journals too) over to it in preparation for a possible shift in residence. My new blog can be found here: https://mydecember84.wordpress.com. I will retain this journal, just in case ownership changes hands for the better, but should I choose to move my base of operations this journal will no longer be updated.

1147

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don’t blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don’t blog about, but you’d like to hear about, and I’ll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, life experiences etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

1146

I love having money to spend. 😀

Mum and I went up to Warrawong on Friday, because I wanted to go shopping to pick up a few things. I was able to buy precisely what I wanted (and more):

• Supernatural S2 on DVD ($38.72 – it was $64.44)
• Black three-quarter pants (mostly so I have something reasonably cool to wear to the Easter Show on Saturday – $19.99)
• New bag ($10)
• New sandals ($20)
• New hat ($14.88)
• New watch ($49.98)

All up I spent $153.55, out of the $330 I had once I took the rest of my money from my bank account. I have $168 left, and if I don’t end up spending it all before I get paid tomorrow it’s going in my Easter Show fund. That’ll give me a nice bit of money to blow on my showbags and any jewellery I happen to buy.

And before anyone accuses me of forgetting what Friday marked (my Internet’s been on the fritz, and there aren’t any other wireless networks in my street I can hook into, which is why I didn’t post this on the actual day), aside from being Pi Day and the beginning of the 2008 footy season (speaking of the latter, the Roosters beat the snot out of the Bunnies as usual – final score was 34-20) – happy 25th to Taylor Hanson 😀 There was a note made of it in the Mercury, of all the newspapers to be in – the only celebrity birthday in the paper, actually. Heh. I was reading through the paper and saw it on the Opinion page. Bit of a shitty picture, but meh.

That actually does scare me a little bit. Mostly because in two and a half months I’ll be 24. Now that is scary.

1144

It took me a fucking age, but chapter 2 of Defying Gravity is done. 🙂 Leave some love.

1143

This is bullshit.

I can no longer make voice posts. I was planning on making a couple next Saturday, before and after the Easter Show. But because I don’t know if I can ring international numbers or not (I know I can’t text them), it’s not going to happen because LIVEJOURNAL DELETED THE FUCKING AUSTRALIAN NUMBER! Seems that only American, Canadian, Japanese and British LJ users are privileged enough to be able to call numbers in their own fucking countries.

NOT. HAPPY. JAN!