Sooo.

My week without my computer. Certainly was exciting!
Just to elaborate on what I did wrong – I probably didn’t properly ground myself whilst installing the motherboard into my new case. PROBABLY. I’m thinking that I just shorted something out… because when I plugged it in, the little status light on the motherboard that was usually green was yellow… and there’s actually no documentation for what the hell that means. After trying to start it up and getting no signal from the video card, eventually the light started blinking and then completely turned off. So… eh. I’m a little anxious about what will happen once I get my new motherboard on Monday… I think I might take the motherboard and my case over to Baskin Engineering for supervision in installing it. I might be able to borrow a grounding strap. Another possibility someone gave me, though, is that the power supply I have maybe shorted the thing out, since when I start it up with my OLD power supply, the fans still move and everything, but with the new one, it simply turns on and turns off really fast. Ugh, I have no idea. I should probably test the output on the power supply to make sure that that’s not screwing up as well.
In other news. I’m doing extremely well in my Intro to Unix class, as expected. As of now, I’m getting over 100% in the class. And it’s really helping with my job, too. I can actually do stuff on a terminal without having to email one of my coworkers and waiting a day for a reply. That used to be so embarrassing.
And of course I couldn’t really log in to work at all this week, due to lack of computer… I could sign in on a public computer and check my mail, but that’s about it.
Speaking about public computers, well, since I have no computer I have to complete work some way. And Porter has a Mac lab that’s open every day… and it’s got G5s. My god are these things sexy. Deathly quiet, too. And I can open up about 50 windows and then use Exposé to bounce ’em around, with no delay or drop in framerate. OH SEXY.
Speaking about good graphics, I’ve had my share of fun this week by playing through Jak 3. A year ago I sorta “reviewed” Jak II and everything basically still applies… but like… twice. Graphics are even better, as is animation (holy god I can’t believe how fucking awesome the facial architecture is)… and everything’s more fun. Nothing’s INSANELY difficult anymore, making minigames really fun. Yeah. Good use of my free time. As an unlockable secret in the game, you can even listen to animators’ commentary for the game’s cutscenes. But now that I’m finished with it, this weekend will have to be slightly different…
Hoping that my friends won’t head downtown without me. I dunno, it’s just a suspicion in the back of my mind that they could do something like that; forget about inviting me to something I helped plan. Everyone forgot about me in going to dinner yesterday. It’s not really their fault, and of course it’s nothing too big, but still, it’s stuff like that that makes me want to stay in my room all day and not come out until someone asks me… and chances are it’d be days until anyone decides to do anything like that. I’m not trying hard enough to make new friends.
And tomorrow will be study day. Got a few Music midterms coming up… yeah… a few. For the same class. Theory, sight-singing, keyboarding… and last Friday I just had an ear-training quiz. That class is so engulfing you have no idea.
Also, for big-ish news, I’m planning on taking a trip to North Carolina at the beginning of Spring break to go visit my grandpa Joe, who I’ve never spent time with before. It’ll just be me and him for a few days. I’m certainly anxious since I basically grew up hearing nothing but bad things about him, but I really feel as if I have to find that out by myself. We’ve had correspondence by mail in the past few months, and to me it feels like he completely acknowledges what everyone thinks of him and how he acted in the past, and that he’s a changed person and he really wants me to find out about him myself. I think it’ll be an awesome opportunity. All I really need to do is schedule a plane trip… Expedia’s got a round-trip for $500. Is that normal? I know nothing about plane fares.
In contrast to what I was saying earlier about my friends, Ron just IMed me up and said we’re leaving to go to a performance in about an hour. Yay. So I should get some things done before we go, like calling my mom and getting back to my grandpa about making concrete plans.
Goodbye LiveJournal!!!