Pain in my Ass Blogger

Ok, this is a royal pain.

I write a post. I go to do spell check. Freaking XP blocks the pop-up Blogger uses. I allow the pop-up and presto, my post disappears and there is nothing but a Zen like koan left. If there are no words, is there a spellcheck?

Bah. Damn you Google.

I've been thinking of moving to TypePad for a bit now in an expansion move. This sort of crapola along with the joyous server errors that occur regularly (and it's not like I post a ton, so if it's bugging me, it's got to be bugging a lot more people. Of course, Typepad is not without their own problems from what I hear. (comment - nice to see another company is as puzzled as we are by performance issues) But at least when you pay, you feel you have more of right to bitch and demand good service.

This here blogger dealio be free, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is cheaper than wholesale...

Ok, that said, I really don't feel like re-writing my entire post. So here it is in short form:

1. We miss Jules
2. We got a new cat.
3. We miss Jules still
4. New cat is not a replacement
5. A door closes a door opens
6. Faust is pissed.
7. The new cat is named Macbeth. He's 8 months old.
8. Adoption paperwork is going in later this week. Chinese?
9. I point out that I laughed at this earlier today.
10. Introducing Macbeth:

For Juliet: 1992 - 2006

We couldn't wait till Wednesday. She was having too tough a time of it.

Clarisa and my cousin Jodi (who was up for a fun weekend) just took Jules to the emergency vet clinic. I'd go but I'm already a wreck. I don't think I could handle it. Clarisa, God bless her is going to be strong enough for the both of us this time.

No more pain. I love you and miss you Jules.

The Catch Up

To continue from my last post - my computer problems continue. I've got a new SATA HD, a GE Force 6800 and 2GB of (supposedly) compatible RAM but the same dang shit keeps happening. So, it looks like I will have to RMA the motherboard and hope a replacement fixes this weirdness.

But, that's just become the least of my problems. My best and favorite pet - Juliet, has cancer and we've decided not to prolong her death. She'll be leaving us Wednesday this week. It's a hard decision, but an easy one considering the pain she'd go through otherwise. It's her time and I don't want her to suffer.

We adopted her a long time ago -- Jules has been with us since a month or two after Clarisa got back from Korea and the Army. She was 2 - 4 years old then and we've been married over 12 years now and that puts her around 75-85 years old in human terms. A good run.

I can still remember how Clarisa waited patiently on my parents back steps and coaxed a very beautiful but skittish cat to actually come up to her and eat grilled chicken from her hand. This kept up for a few weeks until she really trusted us. My mom as a rule has not been to keen on cats on her life, but for Jules she made an exception and she let us adopt Juliet. That first night we invited her up into our bed and Jules just jumped up, curled into a ball at the foot of the bed and purred like a motorboat most of the night. She sure seemed grateful and we were just happy she'd claimed us.

Like I said, she's been with us ever since and has been an absolutely great companion. She's been in each apartment and in ritualistic fashion has decided to bolt in protest each time we moved. When we left Poughkeepsie, she took off in a rainstorm and ran across three yards and hid out under a truck. An hour later I had her in the car. Soaking wet and pissed off, but safe. When we went to move from Peekskill, both her and Little Guy made a a great escape out a kitchen window only to wind up in the cottage's basement. Again, it took about an hour and some chicken to coax her out, but I got her - and that was after Clarisa and Jennifer had combed the area for them for hours and had to leave. So there I was, in my work clothes, halfway into a crawl-space in and waving chicken at a pair of glowing eyes.

I cannot believe I have to do this again so soon after Sasha.

Again I find myself talking to someone I love with the knowledge that there is nothing I can do to save them except let them go. And again I'll be telling someone I'm sorry.

It's the right thing to do, but that doesn't stop the hurt or the frustration.

Fuck fuck fuck.

The Sound and The Fury

A little while ago I posted about my forthcoming PC upgrade(s). To say the least, it has not gone swimmingly.

For starters it looks like the screen defects from my expensive video card were not because of my old mother board, but just because the the card is hosed. Damn you to heck ATI and your crappy 800XL 256 MB AGP card and your worthless support.

On top of that I cannot boot to windows. The PC posts, the monitor goes into power saving mode for a second and then it goes to the "Windows shut down abnormally" screen and no matter what option is picked, it never boots and just goes back to the "Windows shut down abnormally" screen. I change the boot priority and cannot even get the thing to boot to CD. I've checked the wiring, the jumpers and all that shit and the BIOS seems to recognize everything, but Windows is fried and will not cooperate. Surprise surprise. At least I got my 25GB + of music off of the old HD it before it crapped out totally. Oh well. At least I got my 25GB + of music off of the old HD it before it crapped out totally. Oh well.

So, I just ordered a new hard drive. Who wants to bet a new video card is next? Hello complete re-build.

Overheard Passing By on 7th Avenue

Grizzled Black Man #1"It was like all hard and lumpy and that shit just blew the fuck up! Yes it did"

Grizzled Black Man #2 "Yeah - it's like that. It's what it does."

Groundhogs Day

It's Groundhogs Day.

Rejoice! Phil did NOT see his shadow and so we will have an early spring. Or something.

A member of the Fordham crew reminded me it's also the 15 year anniversary of our wild ass Groundhog's Day Party at Walsh Hall during our senior year. Holy crap that was a crazy night, a night which found me immortalized in film and eventually in the 1991 year book committing a Drunken Act. The photo editor, Tony, was a friend of mine at the time and I guess he thought it would be great fun to put THAT photo in the yearbook. Thanks Tony! Well, I can't get too upset -- he did talk the cops out of picking me up for trying to lob some NYC property (in the form of one metal street trash) can at a car of tough assholes that had thrown a brick at the car we were in for no reason.

It went something like this:

[brick gets thrown]
[crashing noise and the car stops on Jerome Avenue]
["MotherFuckers! Did they just do that!!?? Oh, those fucking sonsofbitches"]
[Drunken Kitch gets out of car, picks up trash can on corner and heads off toward the car full of tough assholes]
[Kitch's friends pull up and start pacing him in the car. The window comes down and they strongly encourage him to calm down. To breeze it, buzz it, ez does it play cooly cool boy because, and mainly, an NYPD patrol car was right behind them.]
[Gingerly lower trash can and put it down and pretend like nothing is going on. Facial expression tries to read "Oh? I had THAT? Oh, wow. No idea. Must have got stuck in my shoe."]
[Tony talks to cop and somehow convinces them that they would take me home]
[Of course we go to a bar full of nurses.]

Speaking of Groundhog's Day, I looove the movie. Great movie. Fantastic.

When I think about it, history is repeating itself for me as well. A year ago this month I was on the Abs Diet for a week or two and working out. Now I'm at it again. I managed to sloth my way all the way back to 218 not too long ago, dropped down to 213 and stayed there until I started AbsDiet v2. The disgusting thing was the 25% FAT reading from the scale. Argh.

Twelve days into AbsDiet v2 and I'm 210 and 20.2 % FatAss. All I can say is man - that's fat. It needs to come off before it can do any more damage than it has. This time around I'm going to NYCS for the workouts and the membership is a good deal - I can go to anyone of them anywhere. The new one here in White Plains is ginormous. Vast. Huge. Spacious. Really. Really. Nice. The ones in NYC around work are tiny and shitty in comparison. If it were not for the White Plains club, I'd feel ripped off.

We can rebuild it. We can make it stronger...

A while back my PC decided to stop being a PC and become a POS. Like so many things and people, it was electrocuted in it's sleep.

Or so I thought.

I just had a buddy from work check out the hard-drive and miracles of miracles it's intact. It turns out it was my new CPU that crapped out. Everything else is 5x5.

So rather than go ahead and blow like, 5K on a sweet-ass gaming rig, I'm content to rebuild the system around my necromanced hard-drive, existing 2.4 P4 and the ATI 800XL 256MB video card that never ever worked in my old rig with the exception of one tantalizing hour of Battlefield II. So, after an hour or so on tigerdirect.com and for about 10x less dineiro than my dream rig, I've got a pretty new system. It's not GeForce7000 dual SLI new, but whaddya gonna do.

Here's what I got -

1
ULT31368
Ultra Blue Dual 12" Cold Cathode Light Kit (trickin out the rig...)

1 ULT31048
Ultra 3.5" Hard Drive Cooler w/2 60mm LED Fans BlK

1 A455-1028E
Asus P4P800E Deluxe Socket 478 Motherboard (8x faster FSB...nice)

1 C250-1144
Cables Unlimited Blue UV System Slot Turbo Fan (to cool down the ATI pig)

1 C13-2920
Corsair Value Select 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz (brings the total to 1.5GB)

1T925-2070
Thermaltake Armor Alum Silver Full Tower w/ Window (this is a gorgeous case and I will name it something retarded for sure. Suggestions welcome)

1T925-2084
Thermaltake Silent PurePower 680W ATX PSU + EPS (you better not die on me like that weak ass Antec CPU)

And that is going to go with my 2.4 Ghz p4 and the aforementioned 256MB ATI 800XL AGP card. Is it a monster? No. It is Division I, but like Atlantic 10 Division I, not the ACC. The case is kick ass though and has plenty of room for more storage, the mobo is easily upgradeable to a 3.2 Ghz P4 and I can always throw a little more RAM at it. I'm pretty set.

Poor Clarisa... she is about to become a gaming widow for a few weekends until the buzz wears off.

Because In New York No One Can Hear You Scream

Funny, funny stuff. Go see Abe and Preston now:

alienlovespredator.com