Everyday Stupidities

I've been pretty busy with work and home improvements so I have been tardy with a post, plus decided that I wanted to wait to write something on my fourtieth birthday because I didn't get anything out over last weekend. You'd never know my age by looking at me, that's one thing that God has blessed me with, and people are always surprised -- even demanding to see my driver's license -- when I let them in on the fact. My youthful look has seldom gotten me anywhere with the female of the species (my beautiful eyes have though), which made getting married to the person who stuck around the longest waiting for me to grow up that much easier once I'd reached age 30. It's a strange place to me, I can't "act my age" and I can't act the age people think I am (I'd have to completely forfeit having any taste in music at all to fit in with that crowd)... I feel 25, but with more direction and income than I had when I was 25. And let me tell ya, I'm sitting at home alone in the suburbs with the cat right now -- that's a far cry from what I was doing on my 25th birthday, when I was living in a mobile home on a lake mostly alone, but the statute of limitations has not passed yet so I can't talk about that all-day dyonesian event; however one nice difference is that I had to work for six hours at Pizza Hut that day, where today was one of my scheduled days off. (Though the interruption of work was welcome that day so I could catch my breath!) I took this photo especially for you ten minutes before I started writing this. The white mark on my left cheek, which I didn't know about until I was adding the text, is from sanding the ceiling plaster an hour ago (see third paragraph).

I haven't opened or received any gifts yet, so there's nothing to report except to name the people who have emailed me without prompting or sent me Hallmark cards. My fellow blogger and longtime rainbow Ariel, my old buddy Wayne, my northern light Bertie, my mother (who made with a check), and my wife's Aunt Janet all gave me greeting. Coworkers are oblivious as far as I know (I'll find out tomorrow), which is fine by me but it is on the calendar. My circle on Flickr have it listed in the "our birthdays" discussion thread in the private group we hang in, but have said nothing thusfar. And I'm sure that girl back home who I'm shunning remembered, she always does. Don't feel bad for forgetting, Illiterate, you recall what happened at my last birthday... and I still have that unopened pint of vodka you gave me last year as a birthday sudden going away gift. :) Jamie and Indie, I don't think I ever mentioned the date to you so it's not an issue. Anyone else reading... uh, AFAIK there isn't anyone else reading, but if so now you know too.

A few seconds of home improvement notes: This week's project was to patch the hole in the diningroom ceiling, and that's almost complete. The square of drywall is in place, taped up, and a shortly ago the third coat of plaster was put over it. Pictures next entry, I suppose, or whenever it's totally complete with texture and primer and paint so it will be like it never happened.

For this week's stupidity, we turn to the computer. Note: It gets geeky here. I can't help it in this case, but anyone should be able to understand the basics. Okay, a coworker gave me this metal case so that a notebook computer's hard drive can be used as a portable storage device. [This is NOT the same story as a few weeks ago, when I bought my own case and salvaged the drive out of a dead Windows Millenium notebook.] So I needed a notebook hard drive to put in it, preferably of larger volume than the 6 gigabyte one I used the last time I did this. I went to the local computer recycler and they said the next largest drive after 6 gigs is 30 gigs, and after a check they said they didn't have any so offered me a 40 gig. I brought that home and... hmm, not powering up in the case, not powering up when plugged into my computer using an adaptor, and (after much screw-pulling) isn't powering in my laptop. It's dead, Jim. So I headed back to the store in the 5 p.m. traffic, explained the situation, and they exchanged it for a 30 gigabyte drive -- wait, an hour or two ago you didn't have one, so huh? -- and a ten dollar credit. Go home, put it into my laptop since it was already open, boot into Windows 98 off floppy, and prepare the drive with FDISK and Format. But I wasn't babysitting the process because I had housework to do and the format should have taken half an hour. Anyhow, so when I got back to the computer, I pulled the drive out of the laptop and put it into the case, the computer recognised it, and I start copying music over from the other portable drive and walk away because it's going to take ten minutes. I come back right before I'm going out to dinner and... there's a dialog onscreen saying that I'm out of room. How does copying 5 gigabytes of music fill a 30 gigabyte drive? Because the notebook only set it up as a 3 gig drive, not 30 gig. Fine, okay, I use the FDISK utility built into Windows 2000 under System Management, and it recognises it as a 30 gig drive and sets it up accordingly... er, no, scratch that, it FDISK'd the drive but doesn't give me the option of either formatting it OR doing another FDISK. It's just there. Okay, off with the gloves. I disconnected one of my storage hard drives inside my computer, plugged the 30 gig drive in, booted off the Windows 98 CD, did an FDISK and made absolutely sure the decimal point was after five digits not four, rebooted into Windows 2000, it sees the drive and offers to format it, it does the job, and then I was free to put it back into the external case and it works correctly. The end. There is one bonus stupidity that isn't too geeky to this business... The case I was given is of a weird design. Not only are there no brackets or anything inside to keep the hard drive from flopping around (I've got it cushioned by using some Post-It Notes on the far end), and there's no power switch like my other USB external drives have, but the indicator light which tells you when it's powered on and when it is transferring data is on the same end of the case as the cable. That's not the end of the beast you normally have facing you. But anyhow, it's all good. So thank you, my friends and strangers, for serreptitiously enjoying my birthday bash, even if you didn't get any cake. (I haven't yet either.)