Contemplating a life without technology

Not really, just wanted to air my recent frustrations with computers and the like. Anywho. I'm on hiatus from the comic work (and ironically enough, from artwork in general thanks to my PC frying on me), and I just wanted to post a little something to assure anyone who may happen to stumble onto this blog (I don't kid myself, I don't have regular readers . . . yet) that I am indeed alive.

Allow me to fill you in on the ordeal this last week has been.

First my computer fries (yippee! that was fun), then my fiancee calls me in a panic because a floppy disk with her term paper has just corrupted. Yeah . . . no back up copies of the term paper anywhere. So after several hours (and a late night) of work with two of the most incredible computer geeks ever, we FINALLY managed to retreive her data. Well, in the process of finding some stuff to retrieve the data, I managed to pick up a virus. Not really sure where. I don't use warez, and I don't look at smut . . . so I'm kinda stumped as to where it came from.

Thus begins the three day virus war.

I fought with that stupid thing for three days and never managed to eradicate it from my machine. So I grabbed all my important files from my Windows partition . . . moved them into Linux, flipped Bill Gates the bird (not really, but it would have felt great), and promptly deleted my Windows partition. So now I'm on a half broken laptop with only Linux.

Hurray.

I'm just glad that my classes ended before this all happened because my school work would have been ridiculously difficult to work on.

So now, here I sit waiting for my new PC to be delivered (goodbye money . . . you will be missed), and trying not to shoot someone over the fiascos regarding the tablet pc that I'm supposed to be getting from Chris (my writer at the comic strip - check out his blog in the sidebar). It started last week when he went to ship this thing to me (now, bear in mind that at THAT time it was already late). The post office up there claimed that the person who does priority shipping wasn't present so they couldn't take the package.

Uh huh, I buy that. NOT.

I know full well that they can take it and let it sit overnight until the priority shipping guy shows up the next morning. Then when he finally gets it to them, they proceed to key in the wrong address, causing it to be returned "undeliverable" and they deposit it on his doorstep, in horrendous condition. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO QUALITY CONTROL?!?!? When I was working in a movie store, if I had dropped a box of movies, or even stored a box that was as banged up as the parcel that the post office left sitting on his doorstep, I'd have been fired! As a federal institution, you think there would be some sort of repurcussion when someone does something like screw up an address. I'll grant that most postal employees are hard working and under-appreciated; however, for a small town post office, these guys really seem to be slacking off.

The thing that really irks me is that even though they'll reship it for him for free (as well they should), I'M the one that got screwed. And recompense is a long time coming.

So yeah. Technology isn't exactly my best friend right now. I'm sure it will be in a couple of hours when I have the new PC and can play counter-strike again. But for now, I'm contemplating going out to the parking lot of my apartment, burning an old tire, making hot chocolate the way people used to, and toasting a jumbo sized bag of marshmallows on a coat hanger with a homeless guy.

Actually, that sounds kinda fun.