Satellite transmits my voice

I came up with the most creative LJ title ever

My new laptop came. Dell Inspiron 15 running Vista, yeah~ Her name is Fermata.

The dogs got in a fight. This resulted in a trip to the vet and three staples in Finn's head.

I did no tagging for the first day in ever.

I just realized my first shift is tomorrow at 5. I'm a biiiiit worried about that one.

The season finale of Lost made me lawl.

That is all, I suppose. Further bulletins as events warrant...tomorrow.

Or, Moose and Squirrel Panic for Six Hours

Yeah. It was that kind of day.

So, as you can tell from my last post, my laptop decided not to work right in the middle of my Poe class. I opened it, and while the power and battery lights were on, the screen was black. It had been flickering depending on how wide I opened it, but I thought it would hold. Evidently not. This is at about three.

I take it to Tech Central and they tell me the backlight's out. Since my laptop is custom made, they can't do anything about it: they don't have the parts, and even if they did, they aren't certified to work on anything that isn't a Dell - otherwise, they void the warrantee. Despite having no warrantee, my laptop is evidently included in this. Ohhhhhhkay. The techie suggests an external screen, which I do not own. I rent a laptop from them (at ten bucks a day, ouch) and head back to my dorm. This is at about four.

For the next four hours, I'm online and on the phone by turns, talking with my mom and with my friend who works at Tech Central and trying to get my hands on a new laptop or something to get me through the last few weeks of school. About an hour of this included going through the schematics of a new laptop on Dell.com, chatting back and forth between Mom and Canon to figure out if it's right for me, nearly going through with it...and then finding the earliest ship date wouldn't be until the final week of April or the first of May. That was an epic bust.

The long and short of it was, I finally went back down to Tech Central at 7:45. The guy there had promised me I could use the external screen, and my roommate had told me I could use her external hard drive (1.5 terrabytes, man), so I copied my whole 55 gigs of stuff to my roomie's hard drive.

Thing is, halfway through the copying, my laptop screen (which is open at about a 30-degree angle to allow me to use the mouse pad) comes back on.

What the everloving hell.

So I call the techie over, and he investigates. Turns out the constant opening and closing of the laptop screen for three years has worn through one of the wires. The backlight isn't burnt out; it's a wiring problem. I tell him to screw the nonexistent warrantee I have money and see if he can fix it, since he thought he could. He tried to open the screen and could not - even after the screws were removed, it was impossible to open, which is weird. It was stuck.

So then the problem was, he could fix my laptop if he could open the screen, but in the process of opening the screen he might break it.

My mom tells me she's going to send me her laptop, which is this little thing that can't be more than seven inches across. She told me to get a keyboard to plug into it (because that keyboard is stupidly difficult to use) and that it would last me until semester's end so I don't have to pay an arm and a leg to keep this rental laptop until then.

The long and short of this story is, I can use old lappy enough to update iPod and such (since the screen blacks out if you open it wider than about thirty degrees), and I will use rental laptop (i.e. the Behemoth) until Mom's laptop (which needs a fittingly diminutive name) comes in the mail and I get a plug in keyboard to go with it. Mom's also getting me my own external so I can take my 55 gigs off my roomie's external.

I got back from Tech Central at 9:30 pm. My paper has not yet been written and will likely not get written.

I think I'll sleep soon. That would be nice.

Wow, what a day. o_o

I started it off sleep deprived, mostly because I stayed up to finish Death Masks. Of all the Harry Dresden books I've read so far, this has been the only one I haven't been able to call. Most books, with a given series of events, I can give a reasonable estimate of what's going to happen. With Death Masks, there was one point where Harry was given a choice and not only did I have no idea how he'd react, I was genuinely freaked out that he'd make the wrong choice.

Another fantastic work by Mister Butcher and I'm already into the next one.

I went with Andy, Emu, and tafkae to lunch at the Elephant Bar. Our conversation changed subject faster than a radio station changes songs, we had the biggest cookie ice cream sandwich I've ever seen, and it was fantastic. :D

And Kae? Did you know the fudge you gave me came with a plastic knife? I thought that was interesting.

...so I ignored the knife and went for it anyways. It is awesooooooome thank you so much!

ggmoonycrisco and atoyna_lilsnip came down from Denver and we watched Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I have never seen a group of people enjoy that so thoroughly, and every time I watch it I notice something new. For example, this time around, it was song lyrics. In Penny's Song, she ends with "keep your head up Billy buddy," as a means of encouragement. Later on, in Slipping, Billy quotes that line: "It's gonna be bloody / head up Billy buddy / there's no time for mercy."

So yes, Doctor Horrible is vast amounts of creepy amazing awesome and I still love it lots. The DVD was a worthwhile investment.

And finally, tonight's basketball game: Air Force versus San Diego State. The gameplay on both sides was pretty stable. We had a slight problem with other aspects of the game, to the point where I've drafted an email to the people who run the Mountain West Conference:

( This was more fun to write than it should have been )

Once I figure out who to send that to, off it goes. The refs were so bad my dad was yelling at them, and it takes a good bit to get my dad to do that. It was just terrible tonight.

And finally, my lappy has been acting up. Kaspersky's taking up anywhere between 70%-90% of my processing capabilities, I can't for the life of me figure out why, and it's making my lappy run incredibly slowly. I figure I'll have Canon take a look at it once I get back to Pepperdine on Tuesday. He's an IT guy. He can help. :3

...so yes. On to my metric flipton of tags. |D