Category Archives: Teh Internets

I wonder what Squeaky Fromme will do now that she’s ‘free.’ Apparently she was granted parole for good conduct or whatever the hell they call it, but the AP rundown of her prison career doesn’t read like that of a model inmate. Weirdness.

All that Manson Family stuff happened six years before I was born, but I have always found the story fascinating. That kind of killing is always fascinating in a morbid way, but the circus that surrounded it all is where my attention has always gone. From the protests outside the courtroom to the protests INSIDE the courtroom, all of that is just so amazing to me.


Especially now, where the news cycle is soooo short – I wonder how it would have all played out had it happened in 2009 and not 1969. We would have had live feeds from Sharon Tate’s house, leaked cell-phone images of the crime scene, up-to-the-second Twitter feeds, the whole mess. Would that make it more or less horrible?

Sooooooooo….. that catastrophic data loss I had last week? Where my user profile appeared to be deleted and I proceeded to LOSE MY FREAKING MIND because I thought I’d lost all my music and pictures?

Apparently it didn’t actually happen.

After five full days of freaking right out and then restoring the data (twice!) and MANUALLY deleting 18,000 song files that were copied somehow by the restore, I finally felt confident enough to take the computer out of backup mode and re-start it.

So I held my breath, crossed my fingers, and hit ‘restart.’

Since I am superstitious and computer fuck-ups tend to make me a wee bit homicidal, I didn’t sit around to watch the beeping and booping and whirring and whatnot of the restart. I went into another room altogether to wait a few minutes. I might have prayed a little bit. Maybe.

I gathered up whatever remained of my wits and tiptoed cautiously back to the table.

And.

It was all back. ALL OF IT. My old desktop photo, all the crap bookmarks/shortcuts on the desktop… all of it. As if nothing had ever happened.

I am so confused. Grateful, sure. But confused as all get-out because WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED in the first place? I went through five full days of losing my shit for NO GOOD REASON? I like to at least have a reason when I lose my mind, you know?

SO confused. And now I’m going to constantly be worried that this will happen again. I know it’s not a tragedy, since I do have backup, but I don’t need this kind of anxiety! I create enough on my own, dammit!

My internet service is not the greatest. It comes and goes, usually without reason or pattern. This is not a good thing.

It went out again today. Told me there was a problem with the DNS, and… the error message directed me to a website for more info. When I couldn’t access the internet. Well played, Microsoft Vista. Well played, indeed.

Shut UP, Microsoft Vista.

So… the internet was out and so was the phone (VoIP), which meant I had to not only locate, but use my cell phone. This is a challenge in many ways: once the phone is located, I have to hope it’s charged. Otherwise, I am tethered to the nearest plug while it charges. The Deafness factor does not help this, nor does the Toddler Factor.

Phone was found, was medium-charged, and because I’m stupid, I called the cable company and opted to allow it to walk me through the troubleshooting steps with the automated system. DON’T EVER TRY THIS if you cannot handle stupidity.

Eventually, I gave up trying to make the thing understand me when I said “continue” and I got a human on the phone. Who could not hear me because the phone was breaking up. I suppose this is what one can expect when one has a $7 cell phone.

I gave up. Had some lunch. Decided to give it another shot and here we are. But for how long?

As much as I love and adore my computer and my Imaginary Internet Friends who live inside it, I could probably be perfectly happy living without this shiny machine. But I don’t want to find out for sure.