Boy, it’s been a while since I’ve just had a regular post, huh? Well I’ve been busy, so get off my back. Last week I was in Muncie for a few days, which is always a fun time. One of the more memorable random moments came when I was in the reception area of the center, where there are two TVs. One TV was playing Dr. Phil, and the other was playing Jerry Springer. That was kind of…ironic, I guess. I really can’t even stand to have Jerry Springer on in the background anymore. I used to be able to stare at the train wreck for a few minutes and get a few laughs, but I can’t even handle that anymore. I suppose that’s a good thing.
It was pretty busy down in Muncie, and I didn’t have much computer access, so there wasn’t any running diary a la “The Athens Diaries”. Maybe next time. I don’t like to talk about work too much around here, especially in specifics, but let me just say this: if any of the employees down there were to talk to me the way they talk to some of the managers there, they would no longer be employees. If there’s one thing that will make a center fall apart, it’s a rift between management and the staff. It’s not to the point where it affects operations, but that’s the kind of thing that could really mess things up if it were to go unchecked. Luckily the new center manager that I’m helping to train is of the same mindset. He’ll clean things up down there.
Anyway, it’s been one of those spans where it feels like I’ve really been busy, but I couldn’t tell you what I’ve been doing. Also I should clarify something. My definition of “busy” may not quite jive with someone else’s. If my TiVo queue gets long, I’m like, “Man, I’ve got a lot of TV to watch!” So yeah. I keep pretty busy outside my hobbies, but that’s not to say I don’t spend a significant amount of time on them too. It’s just mostly late at night.
So on Friday, I hopped on the computer to take care of some bidness, and none of my programs would launch. I couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t the best thing. I kept getting some random error. So I thought, “Alright, I’ll just run my anti-virus program”. Of course, as I mentioned before, nothing outside of Firefox that could be defined as a “program” was working. So when I tried to launch AVG (the anti-virus software) and got the same error message, I felt pretty intelligent. After a while of fiddling around and searching the internet for a fix to this particular error message, I got up from my desk, yelled quietly for a little bit (yelling quietly is a skill I’ve acquired over the years), thought about throwing or hitting some inanimate object, remembered my sleeping son, went upstairs and tried to ignore the problem for a while, failed, came back downstairs, and stared at the monitor. I figured I’d try to restart the computer and see if that did anything. In doing so, I kept my string of missteps intact. Restarting the computer started a loop of restarts without actually booting Windows. This, of course, made me exceedingly angry.
Eventually I was able to boot the computer into a recovery mode, where it would restore the factory default system files without screwing up any of my data. I was really hoping this would work, because there were a few pictures on the hard drive that I hadn’t yet backed up on my external hard drive. (Let me just take a second here and throw in an endorsement for external hard drives. They’re awesome. It’s a very easy way to back up your computer.) Well, after I ran the recover, it seemed to work, because Windows booted up and I went through the whole setup thing. Unfortunately, when I got to the end of the setup, it froze. I turned off the computer and went back upstairs, because I was too mad to even see straight by this point, let alone troubleshoot.
The next time I started the computer, it said I was missing a system file. This posed a problem because I didn’t have a Windows disk. Bad things. Luckily I was able to get a hold of one (thanks for the assist, Zimm), and now everything’s back to normal. I don’t know what virus I had, but it was somewhere in Java. So run your anti-virus software and make sure you don’t have it. The result was actually showing up on my scans, but I didn’t know it because the window never stayed open after the automatic virus scans that I run nightly. I didn’t know I had to manually go in and check the results. I won’t be making that mistake again. Seriously though, keep an eye out. My computer is locked up like a vault and this one got through somehow.
After all this, let me just throw in that my wife is the most patient person in the world. When these kinds of things happen, I become pretty much insufferable. She puts up with me instead of yelling at me, so I’ll say thanks here publicly. Thanks, baby. You’re the best.
It figures that I mentioned something about Eight Cents being updated daily, and then I didn’t post another review for a week. I’ve watched a bunch of new shows, but I don’t know how many reviews I’ll actually get to. Hopefully there’ll be another update coming in the next couple of days.
Once again the Phillies have given me hope, only to dash it against the rocks. They finished one game out of the wild card spot. One game! That’s especially disappointing, when you consider that if they had won just one of the 74 games they lost they’d be tied. There sure are a lot of games in a baseball season.
I’ve got all sorts of thoughts about football this week, so stay tuned for that column. In case you missed it, the Eagles made an absolutely ridiculous comeback to beat the Chiefs on Sunday (I’m sure Shoeless Joel and Karpy weren’t too pleased about that one, but hey). Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now.
Song of the Day: “Home”, by Marc Broussard. I haven’t been terribly impressed with his other material, but this one is definitely a foot-stompin’ delight. Check it out.
9 years ago
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