The past 48 (or so)

Thursday, I spent the day in bed with a potpourri of symptoms ranging from fever, nausea, lethargy, muscle aches, double vision and general blah (can that even be considered a symptom??). I don't think I was out of bed for more than a total of 3 hours, and that was to visit the bathroom frequently (frequently, hell, it seemed like I was up more than I was down). Anyway, come Friday, I was like a new man. I had not a single symptom left over from the day before.

Work was uneventful, which is surprising, considering the crap that's been going on for the past couple of months. But, I can feel things coming to a head.

I finally "backed up" my first DVD. Only took me two attempts and three hours, too! Yippee! Actually, the first attempt failed because the program I was using didn't support the drive. Turns out, I needed the newest version, so, after I downloaded it, installed it and tried again (with a time out for dinner), I had my first copy in my hands. To add insult to injury, when I put the disc in my player, the machine kept saying 'No Disc Loaded' and made a painful grinding sound. I tried the disc out on my PC, as well as various other DVD players throughout the house, and it played flawlessly. So, now I get to dump more cash into a new DVD player (I have an S-video cable connected to my TV from the PC's video card, but the picture quality is about the same as watching a video tape that's 10 years old - horrible). Needless to say, guess what I'll be doing this afternoon?

Anyway, that's about it. Maybe I'll write more this evening, but most likely, not.

Blah blah blah

Okay, so a couple of days have passed and nothing new has been happening. I did, however, get my new NEC DVD+R/RW dual layer drive this afternoon, so I spent the evening putting it into my Dell. It took some finessing, what with having to remove the front accent piece (the drive slides out from the front and the plastic molding just barely covers the edges of the drives), so rather than use brute force, I had to play around for a while. After a little while, I got it in, got all the cables connected and away I went. It works pretty nice, too. Fast open/close and speed up time was really quick. Not bad for $50 on Amazon. Now all I need to do is wait for the dual layer discs to get here and I'll be set (on the down side, the order was sent to two different vendors, so the delivery times didn't sync up).

If it seems like I'm rambling, I've got a serious cramp in my neck, so I took a couple of oxycotins to help ease my suffering. Monday and Tuesday I was painting the kitchen and it took me that long to put several coats on the textured ceiling (who in their right mind puts a textured ceiling up in the kitchen, let alone anywhere anymore?!?). So, with all the looking up, my neck is not quite right.

I think I'll pop in a movie and call it a night.