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Thanks for Nothing, Thanksgiving!

Well, I’m back.

It was quite the Thanksgiving trip and ensuing weekend. There was fun. There was a parade. There was food — good lord, there was food. I ate enough food to choke a hippo, with leftovers available to stuff it from the other end, too. And there was booze, too. Sweet delicious holiday booze.

But in the end, after all that was over, there was just one thing left: a dead computer. I arrived back home to find my PC crippled and limp. Sometime during my out-of-town festivities, it looked around at the empty office and said:

‘C drive? We don’t need no steenking C drive!‘

Problem is, my hotwired metal friend was wrong. It does need a C drive, if it wants to live. And why wouldn’t it want to live? Why, it’s non-stop excitement — the emails, the blogging, the Googling… and all the pixellated porn a CPU could want. Why, oh computer? Why hast thou forsaken me?

Anyway, I was able to rig up a new C drive. The old one was clearly dead; I found it clicking and beeping sadly to itself in a corner of the computer case. Luckily for me, the good shit — or what passes as ‘good’ on my machine, anyway — was on the extra drives. All my ripped CDs — one hundred percent personally owned, of course; nothing to see here, RIAA goon squads! — and video clips were on secondary drives, which seem to spin up just fine.

Unfortunately, those tasty drives aren’t recognized in the new configuration, and I have no idea why. So instead of one teeny fragile drive and two huge muscular data beasts — or, more recently, one teeny broken drive and two huge beasts — I’ve got only one teeny fragile replacement drive. No beasts. No music. No video. And can I play Madden on this ass-backwards ancient thing? Honky, please. I’m pretty sure there’s a tiny little dinosaur inside that drive case, spinning the thing up when I turn it on. When the dino chow runs out, I’m fucked again. I am not looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, I’m fiddling. I figure I’ll either get things back to just about where they were — in time for the replacement drive to smoke and kick out — or I’ll accidentally erase every tiny shred of data that was ever on any of the drives I’ve owned. Which wouldn’t be a horrible crime, even if one believed my standup clips and Best of Big Country CD tracks were somehow worth anything — and I’m pretty sure they’re not. I have no delusions of coolness here, let me assure you.

But even so, I’ve still got the original videotapes, and all the CDs.

(See, I told you I owned all this shit; now bugger off, music industry vulture bastards! It’s ‘personal use’, goddamn you! ‘Personal use!!!)

The issue, of course, is time. Life is short and hectic enough, without futzing with a snarky ‘puter for a week or more, begging and pleading for the damned thing to simply see the same RAID drives that it picked up oh-so-clearly before Thanksgiving. Not to mention re-ripping dozens of CDs — and retaping standup clips and re-installing a handful of video games — just because a crappy, Mickey Mouse piece of electronic detritus finally met its maker. I knew I shouldn’t have bought hard drives with ‘Fisher-Price’ on the label.

(Nah, it wasn’t really Fisher-Price. It was an IBM Deskstar.

So, worse, then. Bitches!)

At any rate, we’ll see how this plays out over the next few days. Without taking a couple of ‘personal days’ at work — or feigning some sort of ‘turkey flu’ or ‘bubonic asthma’ or flesh-eating something-or-other — I’m running short on free time to nurse this bitch back to any semblence of health. And with Christmas looming, is there a bundle of spare cash lying around with which to ‘punt’ and buy a new one? Emphatically, no. Don’t make me ‘honky, please’ you again.

So for now, it’s off to bed. I’m gonna need some rest, if I’m going to tackle this faceless metallic monster. I feel as though it’d be easier, if I only had my Men at Work compilation to listen to while I worked. It seems irony is a cruel mistress. A cruel, Aussie-blocking, vegemite-hating, eighties-music-no-listening haughty bitch of a mistress, indeed. Bah.

Turkey Time in the Big Apple

Hey, kids. Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be AWOL for a couple of days, what with the Thanksgiving holiday and all. The missus and I are driving to New York City tomorrow evening, and will be spending most of the weekend there. There’s no telling what adventures and merriment she has planned, but if there’s any hilarity to be had, you’ll be the first to know.

(Or second. Third, really, since she and I will both be present. Still, ‘sloppy thirds’ is better than… well, than no thirds, at least.

Sorry. These didn’t turn out to be the ‘helpful’ sort of parentheses, so much, did they? Better luck next aside.)

All I know for certain is that we’re due to watch the Macy’s parade while we’re there. My wife has caught at least part of the festivities on TV every year since I’ve known her. Often, she’ll watch the bulk of it, sappy floats, marching bands, Katie Couric, and all. But she refuses to miss the appearance of Santa Claus near the end of the parade. I honestly believe that she could be showering at ten-till-parade-end-time, and she’d come streaking into the living room, naked and wet and shivering, and stand there until Santa did his thing. I’ve even tried coaxing her into the shower just before — only to test the theory, you understand — but to no avail. She’s too wily for that.

So, now we’ll see the parade live, and in person, with seventeen million of our closest friends. It’s not exactly my preferred way to spend a Thursday morning, but at least now I can cross ‘Attend Macy’s Parade’ off my list of ‘Things to Do Before I Die‘. And frankly, it was way the hell down that list — just below ‘Pee on Four States at Once at Four Corners National Monument’ and just above ‘Kick Six Flags Mascot Guy in the Balls for Being So Goddamned Creepy’. Yes, it’s a very long list. Why do you ask?

Anyway, I’ll be bloggera non grata for a few days, so feel free to entertain yourselves around here while I’m gone. Check out yesterday’s post, from a few hours ago, or go digging into the archives. Or keep the good times a-rolling in the comments; whatever shivers your timbers. I’ll see you on Saturday, when I get back, or Sunday, after I’ve had time to sleep off the images of giant Funky Winkerbean and Garfield floats burned onto my retinas. I’ll say ‘hi’ to Santa Claus for you. Cheers.