#computers Day 9 No Molly 5 August 1998

Wanna know something neat? Well upsetting too, I guess.

On Thursday night, July 30th, the facility that hosts Merriam-Webster's Web site was burglarized and its servers were stolen. We've managed to restore limited capacity, but we need to obtain new hardware from our suppliers before we can return to full service. We hope to have the entire site active again in a few days. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you will bear with us as we deal with the situation.

Thank you for your patience.

--The Merriam-Webster Web Team

I wrote a note to my roommate and a letter to my inamorta. Sorry, I'd give a link to that word, but they are using some Dictionary scripts that were made on the fly, and I don't want to use a non Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Mail is coming late again today.

I went to see Saving Private Ryan. If you like to watch serious movies, I recommend it. It's a bit gory, but every movie that you have seen that involves gore has been preparing you for this movie. The violence and cruelty in this movie strengthens may hatred of war. It's not just the destruction of resources, but the humanity. This was a good movie, but not something that I could see another time.

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#food No Molly Day 8 4 August 1998

It's been an entire week. It's frustrating - making a meal for one. I had Macaroni and Cheese from Annie's. It was very very good. To make it required boiling. Molly's the one who boils stuff.

I went to Best Buy with Marc and looked at a notebook with his friend. She doesn't know much about computers and wanted to get other things as well, like a scanner. After Best Buy Marc and I went to Paul Loudon's for a bit. Then we went by Katie's, but Katie wasn't there.

The mail came late today. When I got it though, I was very happy. I got a letter from a friend of mine who is canoeing in Canada. I call her Molly (among other things... you know, like "dear" and "loved one" or "chosen companion"). I read it and I was happy. Included was Katie-bait (a letter for Katie). I even have an address where I can send her mail. I intend to write something.

Katie fell for the bait and showed up as Marc and I made pasta and tater tots. Katie checked her email while Marc and I ate and watched the Simpsons. Then the three of us watched Freakazoid!. It is a damn funny cartoon that is forever lost in syndication. It's on the Cartoon Network at 6PM CDT on weekdays.

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#computers No Molly Day 7 3 August 1998

I just ordered a Micron 128 MB PC100 SDRAM DIMM of Memory. I didn't need PC100, but the company who sold it to me, CSP, offered that at a lower price than other companies offered non PC100. I also ordered a NIC (3COM FastEtherlink XL). If this stuff sounds cryptic to you, I can explain it.

If any of you thing your computer is a bit sluggish, now is the time to upgrade your memory. Typically 64MB is good. The reason now is a good time, is because memory is dirt cheap, but it is slowly growing more expensive (at least the good brands).

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#friends No Molly Day 6 2 August 1998

Today I missed her.

I read a lot of Dune. I like it a lot. Today I cleaned my room further. In the early AM I was working heavily on the new site. I hope to get around to adding everything by the end of this week. I almost helped this girl get a notebook, but actually just tricked her to going to Best Buy when it was closed.

Today I went to the They Might Be Giants concert which was at the Hops festival. It was very very cool. I missed Molly. Perhaps it's because I love going to concerts with her (even though I've done so only twice). We just always have fun. This would have been especially better because we got to listen to someone for free. I am, however, home now, so I don't mind as much. We got very wet. They played a lot of songs, including new ones. I was somewhat hoping for them to play She's an Angel. No such luck.

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#friends No Molly Day 5 2 August 1998

Today (or well yesterday) I went to Best Buy with Adam and Marc. I bought volumes one and two of the Wedding Singer soundtrack. It is very very good! It's also infinitely easier than finding the MP3s for the songs.

Marc and I watched Conspiracy Theory It was an okay movie. It was pretty interesting. It featured Mel Gibson and Patrick Stewart. If you have HBO, it's worth catching.

Tomorrow I guess the plan is to stalk the band They Might be Giants at the First Annual Hops Festival. We'll attempt to listen to them for free by not going to the actual festival, but by being right outside it. This way Marc won't booze-up with a festival full of drinking buddies.

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#friends No Molly Day 4 1 August 1998

Yesterday went well. I saw Taming of the Shrew presented by Shakespeare in the Park. They are a very good crew, and they are very funny. I was surprisingly able to keep up with the play even though I don't recall reading it, although I do remember the name Bianca. Laureen, Adam, Katie, Jesse and Jesse's cousin watched it with me. Laureen and I were debating who was prettier, Bianca or Kate. I said Bianca was.

We saw other people in the audience too. We saw Jurewicz (former AP Euro teacher). We saw Katie's parents (credits to Laureen for spotting Katie's dad). We later met with Zach and his person, Dan Lavenda and Ryan Hayle (who completely missed the show somehow).

We went to D'amico's and then Sabastian Joe's for food and Ice Cream. It was a nice day.

I am looking forward to the comedy thing on 9 August.

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#friends No Molly Day 3 & 4 31 July 1998

Yesterday and today I woke up at 9:46AM. I don't know why I wake up at that time, I just do. Yesterday I did nothing useful. Well I actually mailed the last of my thank you notes. I read Dune a lot too. Suzy stopped by and gave me a CD. This is what I call human contact. I think it was neat. She showed me some shirts for her parent's company.

Today I recieved a 9.1 GB Hard Drive as mentioned earlier. I have nothing but good news to report about it. This is the first time I've ever had to install a hard drive and I am very glad I decided to get a SCSI drive because they are easier than Jell-o to install. I was going to read the online installation guide at Seagate's web site, but it was far easier to just "wing" it. Finding a home inside my computer was kinda neat. I found a nice place under my floppy. It actually took a while to figure out how it would house my drive. There is this little cradle that unscrews from under my floppy drive. It attatches onto the new hard drive by sticking two little prongs into holes on one side of the drive while on the other side of the drive, you fasten it with a screw. I was short on computer screws so this one screw mounting was pretty handy. Then the cradle slides back into the spot under the floppy drive and you screw it tight and wallah, you are back in business. Unfortunately they didn't give me jumper-dealies so I had to steal one from a network card I had lying around in order to set the SCSI ID to 1. Then I played around and attempted to not cut the pricy SCSI cable. I succeeded and I plugged in the drive. I booted, the drive registered to the controller BIOS, and then NT started. Opened up the disk administrator and played around with it and after ten minutes or so, I had a nice new NTFS partition on the new drive. Well I copied my 2GBs of MP3s to the drive and it took under 25 minutes. I think that is satisfactory.

Today some people are going to see Shakespeare with me. I think that shall be pretty fun. It's at Lake Harriet Bandshell. I love that place.

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#computers TV update 30 July 1998

I stumbled on this cool ad on television. It was from Volkswagon. What made it cool was they were playing Little Fluffy Clouds from The Orb and they had it synched in such a way that the car colors changed with each beat of the song. Once again VW has put neat music to their ads.

On another note, look at this and then look at this. Or maybe look at them the other way around. Now is it just me or do some of the Apple advertisements have the same tone as the Chick Tracts?

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#friends Day 1, No Molly 29 July 1998

Well she's gone. She left yesterday, early in the morning. I won't see her ever again until mayhaps September. I think I'll be okay though.

Monday I decided to go over to her house in the evening. Yesterday - Day 1 of no Molly went okay. I got a lot of things finished. I finished most of the remaining thank you cards (I have a few more from people who have sent me stuff but gave no card). I also did laundry for the first time by myself. It was easy. (Thank god for the Internet.)

I also ordered a very expensive hard drive. If any of you care it's an Ultra Wide SCSI (the only thing better is Ultra 2 Wide) 9.1 GB Seagate Barracuda. I have no real idea on how to install a second SCSI drive, but I assume it's quite simple.

Today I will finish the thank you cards and send them out and later I will attend some kid's birthday party.

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