Computer News and Blogging Previews, etc...

(Erm....Yeah. I'm vying for dullest blog in the world today but figure things can only get better from here!)

The lap top has been showing signs of advanced senility of late, so it's back to the desktop dinosaur up in my office. Here's some background to the desk top's recent tribulations: While Doug and Barri were visiting back in October, Doug's attempt to install software for a new printer and set up to print wirelessly backfired terribly, resulting in the desktop's virtual demise.

I assumed that the old girl was gone for good (along with several years of scribblings that I hadn't backed up anywhere) but decided that stoicism rather than hysterics was the only sanity-sparing response I could muster (D and B had flown thousands of miles to be here after all!). Doug felt terrible about what had happened, but I reminded him that the desktop had been old and was actually more of a Frankencomputer than a single integrated object, having been cobbled together with bits of hardware over the past 7 years.

Fortunately, D is not only a computer er...whiz...but also (similar to Neo in the Matrix) not one to accept digital death as virtual death, and so several hours of hacking and cursing and a day or so later, Doug was somehow able to restore Windows XP.

Other than going online occasionally, I'd attempted no word processing on the desktop -- renamed Zombie computer -- since the miracle of its revival, so it was a bit of a disappointment to discover recently that MS Word and all documents written in Word have mysteriously vanished from its hard drive, presumably to that great literary recycle bin in the sky.... Somehow, despite the fact that there was probably a lot of rubbish in those files anyway, I'm feeling a bit less than stoic about this turn of events. Happily though, something called WordPad seems to have chosen to stick it out to the end; it seems quite willing to indulge my occasional desire to scatter a few random thoughts.

In other news, my ipod's usb port has gone the way of the dodo bird, though I think I'll be able to get it replaced since the little black box of boogie woogie is less than a year old. Uhhmmm...
Yes, this post quite the opposite of the rapier sharp witty little bon mots I usually throw up! Gag! Heh Heh Heh Heh.

Most of my students have decided to take an extended break over the New Year, leaving me with scandalous amounts of free time in which to think and to write. Am working through the ramifications of recognizing that while writing about writing is a form of writing, I actually aspire to something a bit loftier than just sitting around and going on about how hard it is to write. I've got so many beginnings and middles to work with that it's hard to choose where to start, but have promised myself the dubious luxury of committing to something soon.

I'll continue to doodle on the blog for fun. I view blogging as a kind of warm up exercise (okay, mostly am just venting), so there'll probably be some more entries related to booger snacks and hentai (perverts) as well as excursions in and around Japan. Thanks to a cluster of experiences on the train towards year's end, am thinking of adding "lunatics" to the shortlist of subjects for the blog. And then there's that one time when--in response to a staccato pitter patter heard while lolling around at my desk on a wintry afternoon--I looked out of the window and saw a stark naked boy of about 10(well he was wearing shoes)running furtively up the street on which I live....