Blog: Ramblings and Rants

The walls are vibrating again. No, this isn’t another earthquake. My pictures are dancing on the white apartment walls because the neighbors are watching a movie on their super-bass entertainment system.

These are the Rumbling Neighbors, who moved into the apartment behind mine recently vacated by the Showering People. The Showering People showered constantly, at all hours of the day and night. Barely two hours would go by before one of the two showers would roar to life. Often they would chain-shower: shower, five minute pause, the squeak of flesh upon wet fiberglass, shower, ten minute pause, shower.

Every morning for the last two weeks I’ve been distressed to find my primary Windows XP system blue screened when I walk into my home office. The problem, I discovered pretty quickly, was with Safety_Net, my home network’s large backup drive.

Within the folder H:\ ImaginationBox - Primary \Daily \Sunday\ Documents and Settings\ Pariah\ Local Settings\ Temporary Internet Files\ Content.IE5\ ONBR2CHP\ was one URL file with a zero byte size and an incredibly long, useless name that began with “click%20>%2>%6e…” Everyday, when the back up software tried to remove this orphaned file, it would crash the system to a BSOD (”Blue Screen Of Death,” for those non-power users).

No matter what I tried, I could not delete this file. I ran virus check on it. I tried to manually delete it through a command prompt. I tried several different file managers. I tried to rename it. I tried to move it. I tried offering it money to go away. Nothing.

Today, after calling the drive a loss and looking at prices on another external drive, I stumbled across the solution online. And now Safety_Net is back up and, uh, backing up.

If you have a file on your Windows XP or 2000 computer you can’t delete, try this method:

There’s been a lot of activity lately to the below posts. Some, like “I Shout ‘Quark Sucks!’ Loudest” have remained consistently busy since posting them.

Life Cycle of DTP
I Shout “Quark Sucks” Loudest
Rude E-mail
Avoiding Bat-Belt Syndrome
Six Months And Counting

One of these days I should add some features for most recent replies or most popular posts. I doubt I’ll be able to even think about that until after the holidays, though.

Seven days until I move in with Strawberry Blonde. Forgive me, it just makes me giddy.

MSN Women - Article: Old Wives’ Tales Exposed

Old wives say: Don’t cross your eyes; they’ll stay that way.
You may look funny when you cross your eyes, but your pupils will be just fine, says Dr. Sumers. People with perpetually crossed eyes aren’t being punished for making goofy faces. Rather, faulty messages from their brain cause these individuals’ eyes to be misaligned.
Final verdict: False

And a dozen others at the above link.

I’m spending this rainy sunday morning with Joan Jett’s punk-pop fusion reverberating off the walls of my home office. Jett’s up and down, gutteral screech melting into creamy cooing poured over electric-fire guitar chords is really doing it for me this morning.

The original Angst Queen, whether rebelling against authority in the coming-of-age girl-power anthemn “Cherry Bomb” or dripping with fuck-me-on-the-dance-floor sensuality in “Do You Wanna Touch Me”, Jett has withstood twenty-five years of Rock N’ Roll’s fads and fashions. Whether the popular music of the day has been the New York Dolls or the Goo Goo Dolls, there has always been room for Jett’s ass-kicking vocals and scathing guitar work. Who else can claim a song on a current film’s soundtrack for nearly every year from 1981 to 2002 and beyond? From Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway (1979) to Flashdance (1983) to Days of Thunder (1990) to Shrek (2001), Jett’s music has remained entrenched in American and global pop culture.

Kicking ass for twenty-eight years… Not bad for a woman whom record labels didn’t want to sign because “chicks don’t sell records”.

In 14 days, the saturday after Thanksgiving, Strawberry Blonde and I will be cohabitating.

It will be Strawberry Blonde, her two daughters, their dog, their four cats, my cat, Chloe, and me in her house.

Two weeks… It can’t come fast enough for either of us. I’m getting excited butterflies just thinking about it now!

When I turn on the news I want to trust what Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Dianne Sawyer and Katie Couric tell me. I want to know that behind these venerable voices of the news is empiracal fact based upon solid journalism and a commitment to reporting the truth at all costs.

To hell with it! I need to trust what I’m told by veteran newscasters and what I read in the newspaper. These are my windows upon the world. They are the only means by which I am informed about the things that affect my world, beyond my immediate sphere of sensory input. If I can’t trust that these sources are giving me the straight, unbiased news, that the information I’m being given is accurate, how can I respond to it? How can I make decisions based upon misinformation?

I got the below e-mail message recently. I thought I’d share it with you, my dear readers, for kicks.

From kathryn_182@hotmail.com

OMG!

I don’t mean to be rude but, GET A HAIR CUT.

That shit is so gross.

PageMaker, a true piece of history, birthed the Desktop Publishing Revolution, leading it through its infancy.

Quark was the adolesence of the burgeoning Desktop Publishing industry, rebellious and impetuous.

InDesign is the Publishing and Layout industry all grown up, mature, sophisticated, confidant, freeing.

It’s 3AM. I’m sick. Blah.