more raving
I don't want this blog to turn into a "woe-is-me, my life is so horrible" goth-esqe diary, but I need to rant, and that's what it's here for. I prefer to think of it as kafka-esqe, that sounds so much more...intellectual. I'll get back to politics and making fun of people later, but for right now, it's time to bitch. I was worried that I'd lose readership, and then I realized I don't exactly have a readership so it dosen't really matter anyway.
Btw, thanx to the folks who commented on the post below. I would say thanks there, but the computer won't load up my blog. more on that later.
So. I spent last week shuttling back and forth from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh to try to take care of my mother and coordinate with my family, while trying to get in a few hours at work, deal with the people there, get at least some of my past-due homework done, take care of a sick girlfriend, keep my family informed, and deal with the daily garbage that life throws out there.
Then, at the end of the week on Sunday night, while trying to eliminate some of the garbage that has collected on my home computer and made web surfing virtually impossible, my computer went down. Rebooted, went as far as the windows chimes, and froze. Stayed there. Lather, rinse, repeat, it wasn't having anything from me at all.
I gave up on it Sunday night. Last night, I made a half-hearted effort to run system restore or boot from safe mode. Nothing doing. Tonight, I took it on. Got it to boot into safe mode with a command prompt, tried running system restore from there, not happening.
My girlfriend has a computer that sits about five feet from mine. Unfortunatly, it not only dosen't have any of the stuff I want or need on it, it is a total piece of garbage. She's had it for years and has made the mistake of letting several other people use it, which has caused it to be useless beyond repair. Everything from the mouse to the OS has issues, and is incredibly difficult to work with. It refuses to load up random webpages, including anything remotely associated with Google or my blog. Actually, it's pretty advanced, because it appears to dislike any page that I actually really care to see.
So, I figured it was time to break down and contact tech support. I exhausted my knowledge of computer repair and what was covered in my A+ books, so I started running Yahoo! searches (which I hate, but no google) for things like "microsoft tech support" or "windows telephone support".
I don't particularly like online support, it's too slow. I want to talk to a real live person that can deal with me in real time, not email back and forth. Besides, I tried one email tech support place, then realized that I can't access my email account (gmail, no google allowed).
It's amazing to me how difficult it is to find decent tech support for windows. Like I said, I want telephone support. However, I don't want to pay several hundred dollars or have to sign up for some subscription. I'm willing to pay for it if need be, but let's keep it reasonable. The fact that no one has started a 24 hr. $20-per-issue telephone support system for windows, possibly the only thing every single person in America has had issues with at one point in time, simply amazes me. If I knew more about computers or anything at all about bid'ness I'd be doing it tommorow.
So eventually I find somebody that is willing to help me, for the low-low price of three bucks per minute. At first I thought it was just a scam, their page was so cheesy, but it turns out that they actually provide some service for what they charge. I'll probably have a gazillion dollars I didn't spend charged to my card tommorow, but the guy I talked to was actually helpful. I don't know what he was doing, but he seemed to want me off the phone even faster than I did. I told him what my pooter was doing, he told me my registry was uckfeyed, and to type "307545" into support.microsoft.com to find the article that would fix me.
So I did that, fighting program crashes and disgustingly long page loads all the way, and right off the bat it says not to use this fix if you have an OEM computer. Well, I built my computer myself, does that count? Figuring I didn't have any other options I started doing what they told me anyway, only to be told by the command prompt when trying to copy files that I didn't have access. I gave the adminstrator password, but I still get that damned "Access is denied" message every time I type in the command. After a multitude of combinations, I gave up and tried to call tech support again. Unfortunatly, the page I had before that I had used to reach tech support had crashed, so no getting them again. I tried yahooing everything I could think of, but no such luck.
Eventually, I realized that since I had used my cell phone to call them earlier, I could find the number in there. Call 'em back, I actually got the same guy, and told him what was going on. Turns out that not only is my registry uckfeyed, but good ole' Microsoft, via automatic updates, had taken the liberty of screwing my SID's for all my data to hell and back. The only way to fix it is to install a second hard drive as my master, install windows, and then run MS updates and port all the data into the new HD. Great.
Btw, if you ever need tech support and don't mind paying $3/min with the first two minutes free, call: 1-877-823-4000. Ask for Shawn, who apparently lives in Colorado.
I don't have a whole lot of valuable material possesions. My two babies, as far as non-living things goes, are my car and my computer. My car is putting me in the poorhouse trying to pay for, and has had the tires slashed, the stereo stolen and every cd I own stolen out of it in the past few weeks. My computer, first becoming so bogged down with crap it was pissing me off, is now officially in massive failure.
Also on the list of things stressing me out, because I feel like listing it: girlfriend's grandmother operated on for cancer; girlfriend's great grandmother dying; girlfriend's dad getting cancer; housekey exploding in my pocket; going from a 4.0 in college to wondering if I'm going to get even one passing grade this semester; specifically failing massively on the test in my programming course; my boss: drama queen (may do a post on this eventually); people at work: why do they have to be such fucking assholes?; people in my life in general: why do they know what I'm putting up with and yet insist on being such fucking assholes?; the stereo thing; my landlord taking me to court and trying to evict me for shit that is entirely their fault; my ailing and possibly dead checking account; etcetera, etcetera. And of course, my mom's accident taking precedence in both importance and stress-factor.
For about the past month or so, I haven't caught a break once. All I'm asking is a year or two with no major breaks in either direction, good or bad. I'm not asking to hit the lottery, just some time without any major joys or traumas. Just some "normal" time for a bit. But apparently I can't go a friggin' week without something, and for some reason for about the past month and a half or so it's varied from kinda-bad to really-really-bad.
I'm not normally a depressed person. Usually, I take things as they come and am very much of a "Okay, what do we need to do, let's deal with it" sorta guy. But again, Holy fuck, can it please just end soon?
Once again, normal posting to resume soon. I'm not sure exactly where I'm taking this blog, probably a combination of this and the last post with my usual ranting; all I know is that I'm not going anywhere soon.
