If I Didn't Know Better, I'd Think this Post Was About Computers

'...What's the difference between Protestants and Christians?'

-sebastian

Everything is breaking all the time.

My winter coat's zipper is completely jammed, so I've had to improvise every morning for two weeks. My clarinet has a bad cold, possibly pneumonia, and barely wheezes through the clarion register. My guitar -- my beautiful Ambrosine -- is in the hospital being repaired. And, of course, my own mental health is at stake, for my computer has taken ill as well.

Worms. Nasty ones, too; desert makers forty feet long. When I first noticed something was going wrong, it was just a matter of sluggishness, pop-ups, no pictures loading in explorer, and impromptu shutdowns. Also, none of my antivirus software worked, and system restore was blocked. Unsurprisingly. Later on, it was more a question of the cpu slowing to a complete halt as soon as the desktop loaded. I must have restarted fifty times in the last three days.

Our techie friend is out of town, and I know very little about anything computer-related, but I've been doing my best to get everything back in shape. Sort of. The fact that I am typing this on my own computer is a testimony to my many hours of lost sleep. The fact that I am typing this in Chrome is a testimony to the fact that the worm is smarter than I am.

In the process of the fighting of the good fight against computer viruses, I backed up all my files and some of my music, erased all the minor programs I could think of, and combed the internet hunting for new bug-killing freeware. Thanks to above techie friend, I was able to find a trial version of Kaspersky, a Russian scanner. It saved my worthless ass, but it's hard to take its language seriously:

Most antivirus programs: usually do stuff to viruses like 'quarantine', 'clear', 'delete'
Kaspersky: NEUTRALIZE.

I suppose it's a genius. It restarts the computer so it can eliminate viruses before they kick in. Still, the war has not yet been won. It could be awhile longer before I'm back with a real post, although I may have something small up here soon.

Lucky for you I don't act on all my impulses.

Grade Trip, 2009

Farewell, my friends. February and March are useless for blogging. I have six tests next week and a ridiculous science project to attempt, so it will be awhile before I am back with anything of substance. I close for now with a busride excerpt.

...

Every morning was colder than any other. Every day in the city began in a cacophonic explosion of sunlight, grit, breakfast cereal. The needle on the record player looked the grooves on the disc over, felt them, stuck. The roads carved left-right-left in brisk lines between the buildings that were little by little pushing the sky away. All was white-and-grey, brown, water dripping off air conditioners, and rickety iron fire escapes snaking down from towers where the paint peeled. The cars would not stop when told to.

The dragon slept in the basement, its fiery snuffles floating up from the skylights of its apartment. It slept but watched, eyes throughout the grid of the streets and pavement, and also in a children’s store with foxes and baby elephants. Now and then its tail would swish.

Where we stayed there was a park where pigeons (black, white, black-white, speckled brown) bobbed along and sat together atop the street-lights. The buildings were very tall and would not fit inside a camera. One became small looking at them.

There were men and women walking dogs, but no strays, no cats in the great downtown. There was a time for cheesecake, and too many cups of coffee. There was also a time for waiting in the underground, and running through turnstiles, and (most of all) for poetry. In poetry we find life and the reason for sticking
to it.

Find myself a city to live in.