Kiki is good.
Tonight, she (we) discovered that she loves Laughing Cow Light Cheese wedges. I was having one for a snack, and she wouldn’t leave me alone. I doubt it will become a regular treat though. She doesn’t eat much (if any) “people food” and I’d like to keep it that way.
This idea had me pretty amused this afternoon…
Why do ducks wear dog masks? Here’s the terrifying truth. OMG.
A factor contributing to my spontaneous blogging holiday has been the on-going problems with my desktop computer. Aka “the pc”. Yes, I also have a macbook, access to computers at work, and Andrzej’s pc, but let’s just ignore that for now.
What’s the problem? I’m appealing to you to help confirm this problem, but I’m pretty sure it’s the hard drive. I think it’s on its way out.
It started about a month ago. I went to use the desktop in the morning, and it appeared to have tried to restart itself and was stuck in start-up. Well, it was stuck in a DOS screen, and it looked like this:
So I freaked, cut the power to it, and sulked for a day or two. I could not find my Windows disk, so I couldn’t do anything on my own. Requests for XP disks went unanswered. I recall being very premenstrual and had existing things bugging me, so I tried to just ignore it. I had other priorities.
I turned it on a few days later, and it was fine. Maybe ran a bit slowly, but booted and everything was working. For a few hours at least. I wouldn’t be doing anything in particular, but it would randomly drop out of Windows and give me that black screen message again.
Other messages I’ve got (when I remember to write them down) have included the following:
NO BOOT FILENAME RECEIVED
PXE-MOF: EXISTING INTEL BOOT AGENT
NO BOOTABLE DEVICE — INSERT BOOT DISK AND PRESS ANY KEY
or
WINDOWS COULD NOT START BECAUSE THE FOLLOWING FILE IS MISSING OR CORRUPT:
<WINDOWS ROOT> \system32\ntoskrnl.exe
PLEASE REINSTALL A COPY OF THE ABOVE FILE
or
WINDOWS COULD NOT START BECAUSE THE FOLLOWING FILE IS MISSING OR CORRUPT:
<WINDOWS ROOT> \system32\drivers\pci.sys
PLEASE REINSTALL A COPY OF THE ABOVE FILE
Etc etc.
There is no rhyme or reason to the crashes that I can see. I’m never doing anything weird or particularly taxing to the computer when it dies. I have an antivirus program, and it’s up to date and nothing turns up on the scans. I don’t have any other external drives or stuff hooked up. I try to stay away from dodgy websites and programs. There’s nothing on my end that can explain the crashes. It appears random. Often, I just go to use the computer and I find it’s on a DOS screen, having crashed.
Right now, it’s been up for a few days and seems to be running slow, but it’s otherwise fine. I’ve taken the important things off the drives, so I’m not concerned about having to get it fixed, I just wish it would get on with it – Die or quit giving me the business. The computer was purchased in December 2006, so it’s not that old, right? Right?
Anyhow, I do most of my blogging from here, on the pc, so this bullshit has helped to throw off my blogging mojo. It’s one of the reasons I was on vacation.
I swear I’m still alive and things are OK. I’ve just been taking one of those spontaneous blogging holidays. I am getting bored and antsy, so I’ll probably be back soon.
Haven’t done one of these in a while! Found this one online.
A – ACCENT: Canadian? I guess Ontarian… I do say “eh” once in a while.
B – BOOBS: Fine, thanks. Bigger now due to birth control pill side effects.
C – CHORE YOU HATE: Doing dishes. I have no idea why, but I really don’t like doing dishes.
D – DAD’S NAME: Stephen
E – ESSENTIAL MAKE-UP ITEMS: Sunscreen, Lip balm, mascara.
F – FAVORITE PERFUME: I’ve worn Ralph Lauren’s ‘Romance’ for a few years now.
G – GOLD OR SILVER: Silver, all the way. Or white gold.
H – HOMETOWN: Minden, ON
I – INSOMNIA: Occasionally, when I’ve got a lot on my mind. Usually not a problem.
J – JOB TITLE: Research Assistant (Extraordinaire)
K – KIDS: Not right now, thanks.
L – LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: Living with my partner (A) and my kitty Kiki, in an apartment.
M – MOM’S NAME: Elizabeth
N - NUMBER OF COMPUTERS YOU’VE OWNED: 3 – PC Desktop (2001-2006), PC Desktop (2006 – ?), MacBook (2005 – ?).
O – OVERNIGHT HOSPITAL STAYS: At least two occasions. One lasted several weeks though, for a psychiatric assessment.
P – PHOBIA: None, really. I am afraid of giant things falling out of the sky (a la Donnie Darko), but it’s not of “phobia” proportions.
Q – QUEST: Happiness. And the “perfect” handbag.
R – RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION: None anymore. Never found organized religion to be helpful.
S – SIBLINGS: Younger brother, Andrew.
T – TIME YOU WAKE UP: 5:55 AM. Every weekday.
U – UNNATURAL HAIR COLORS YOU’VE WORN: Blue-black. Red. Pretty boring.
V – VEGETABLE YOU REFUSE TO EAT: Olives & Green peppers. BLEH. They ruin everything.
W – WORST HABIT: Self-hatred. Comparing myself to others. Cracking knuckles at work.
X – X-RAYS YOU’VE HAD: Arm x 2, ankle, teeth, brain (CT scan).
Y – YUMMY FOODS YOU MAKE: Chickpea curry. Grill cheese. Need to work on cooking skills.
Z – ZANY QUIRK: My thumbs are hypermobile. I can tuck them behind behind my knuckles
Very exciting news this evening – I’ve been nominated for two 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards! In the Crafting and Health & Wellness categories!
What’s even more exciting – I didn’t nominate myself, and I have no idea who did!
This blog has never been nominated for anything before. As cliche as it sounds, it IS an honour just to be nominated, so thank you, whoever did this. I’ve seen many of my peers get these nominations, but I never thought my blog was up there with them.
Take a look at all the other nominees here at their website – The 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards.
I’ll probably be doing a bit of an overhaul of the blog over the coming days. If you happen to come here and things look wonky (or don’t work at all) that’s likely the reason. Sorry for any inconvenience this might cause.
Also, Andrzej fixed up my title graphic. Nice, no? I’m gradually adding more colour to this place! Yay.
Anyhow, talk to you all soon!
xox
This is all a big coincidence, but it makes me mad all the same.
This weekend, Tony Clement supposedly saved someone from drowning. Great – except he was just kinda there, he didn’t do much saving. His wife and father-in-law supposedly did it all, even according to his story. There’s lots of twittering about how it’s probably all been staged, by the Cons, to save Clement’s own drowning ass. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know – but it was impeccable timing on fate’s part. I wonder if we’ll ever here from “Jennifer”, the mystery woman that his family supposedly saved. Not surprisingly, no other witnesses have come forward, and most news reports don’t even list the names of the “real” heroes - Clement’s wife and father-in-law. And the story’s kinda died out already as people have started to question the details of the incident. It all leaves a bad bad taste in my mouth.
ANYHOW.
I’m ticked off about this spin job because it happened to occur on the same weekend that a real person was involved in a real incident, resulting in a real drowning death and hardly any news outlets picked it up. I know there are lots of drownings during the summer months, fuck, even in the winter months people drown going through frozen lakes and stuff, but still. It ticked me off. This person was a very good friend of a friend of ours, and now he’s dead. That link has the only story we could find online about it. He was involved in a boating collision that threw him and others into Manitou Lake, and he was unable to swim to safety. Unfortunately, there weren’t any embattled Conservative Ministers around to save him.
I don’t even know the specific circumstances of his death, but I’m sure it was preventable. The whole incident is still under investigation. Hearing Tony Clement rambling on about how water safety is important and blah blah blah just made me more angry, despite it being good advice. Ultimately, if the Conservatives are low enough to spin (or fake) near-tragedy to save their asses in the eyes of a naive few, so be it. I wouldn’t be surprised. However, Tony’s supposed incident may make people more aware of water safety issues, and that’s not a bad thing.
RIP Nevin.
Kiki’s doing well.
She had a rough night on Wednesday. We had that big thunder storm here, at least in the East end of Ottawa. It was pretty intense for a little while. We had a really close lightning strike, about 200 ft away from our building. It hit a hydro pole, and the power flashed off for a few seconds before coming back on. Firetrucks showed up shortly after, but didn’t stay very long. I guess it looked OK.
Then, about 20 minutes later (after everyone had left, of course) there was a loud BZZZZZZUT noise, and we saw a plume of smoke come up from the pole. The sound it made was so cartoonish and bizarre*. And LOUD. Never heard anything like it before. The power went out, and stayed out, until about 4:30 AM. The only reason I noticed when it came on was because the hydro guys fixing it were shouting at each other from the bucket trucks, and it woke me up. I never really got back to sleep. Thursday was rough.
ANYhow – I wanted to tell you about Kiki. She has always been pretty cool with storms. I guess this one was too close for comfort. After that huge lightning strike, she ran under the bed and wouldn’t come out. Then, when the transformer blew up, she tore out from under the bed, hammered into A in the hallway, and hid under the kitchen table. I didn’t know she could move that fast. Poor baby. I hope this experience hasn’t been too traumatic. She seems fine now, but who knows how she’ll be in the next storm. Kiki doesn’t need to be any more neurotic.
* This is a great example of the sound of a transformer blowing up. I didn’t take this video. Explosion at 1:15ish in the video.
Five Years Ago Today the Levees Failed in New Orleans