mindsquirt

My computer contracted a virus last week. At first I thought he was faking it because I just saw a sniffle and a pathetic cough, but when the blue screen of death came, it was like he threw up in my lap.




Fortunately I was able to recover all of my pictures and music by using a bootable-from-CD-ROM OS called bart PE. If you are ever in this situation, please use it. It is free and works well.





Getting my OS to come back to life was about 20% of the work. Reinstalling lost drivers, applications, and settings is the real hassle. Damn you 14-year-old virus writing poindexter!





I finally got my TV tuner and DVR/media player working in the nick of time to catch an episode of Jerry Springer called "Pregnant by Your Brother", and capture this delightful character:

This is what you call a setup. Please add your own joke.

Please be aware of malaria today. If you are reading this on Tuesday, please be aware of it tomorrow.

Link to CNN article and interview with Ashley Judd, your favorite glamorous movie star and proponent of Malaria treatment/prevention in African Countries.

From what I read 90* African children die a day, and if you go here or here****, you can give only $10 and provide a bed net to a family that helps prevent infection**. That is only a little more than a Qudoba burrito with guac and a large drink that I sometimes get at lunch.

please join me in donating a small amount of money that can save lifes! WWJD?

I know for a fact that Cooper is on board of the celeb bandwagon and is going to be on Larry King on Wednesday. WWCD?

* 3x the amount of people dead in the recent VT tradgey***
**The effectiveness is not stated but I have to assume that it is signifigant.
*** I am not making light of this, like this douchebag did.
**** Please do not let the presence of Ryan Seacrest on this site dissuade you from a nobel deed.

I just came back from the break room. When I was there getting some tea, there was a stranger in there rifling through the staff refrigerator. She looked to be throwing away some food items while stealing others. She was putting our food into a giant shopping bag!

May God strike me down if I am lying. I tried to monitor her while avoiding eye contact. But it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have tried to stop her even if she was taking my own food, so I left. She should have known that stealing food is my responsiblity.

I went to Rough River Kentucky over the weekend with my parents and Alex. On the way back, I got stuck behind about 15 bikers on a 2 lane highway. They weren’t going that slow, but I thought I would pass them anyhow. They took up the length of probably 2 semi trucks and I was in my pickup truck, which is full size and only 6 cylinders. It was a bad idea for all involved.

As I accelerated into the incoming lane and hit about 80, another truck unexpectedly turned into the incoming lane, and I was forced to wimp out to avoid death. It was pretty dangerous because I was pretty close to that oncoming truck and I was going pretty fast. I slowed down to about 30 and waited for the bikers to speed pass me on the right so I could get back into my lane. While I was waiting for this, the last biker flicked me off! And it was as angry as flicking off I have ever seen. His arm was fully out-stretched and he made a shitty face and everything!

At that point I was battling the emotions of anger and confusion. Anger because I was just rudely gestured at, and confused because I wasn’t real sure what the source of injury was to the biker who did the flicking. I didn’t cut him off or in any way inconvenience him. I was pretty steamed for the rest of the day. I would have felt better about it if I cut him off in the process, or almost ran into him, but he was basically giving me a hard time about me making a mistake. He had no reason to give me the finger!

It would be like if I was in a long line at McDonalds and I went to the shorter line, but when I did that someone else got in the shorter line and I went back to the longer line. And maybe on the way back I tripped or something. And then the last guy in the long line gave me a dead-leg for it. Some people are just total assbags.

That reminds me of the time I was moving a bunch of my crap from my dorm to my apartment in Bloomington. I cut some guy off with my truck and then I gave him the finger for it. Then, at the next light, he pulls up next to me and says “What the hell are you giving me the finger for?” He was right, he should have been flicking me off. At the time, I didn’t apologize, although I wish I had. I guess I finally got my comeuppance.

Labels: assbags

We sold the POS yesterday.

It was a truly horrible car that sucked away my spirit the moment I would sit foot in it. Every feature in that car was designed to piss me off. From the J-shaped seats that permanently set my spine to the way the hood rattled and made me think it would fly open at any moment on the expressway.

I could usually count on it to make 4-5 irritating sounds at a time. Some of them were on the threshold of causing me to swerve into oncoming traffic. One of my favorites was when I closed the door, it rattled the entire car and caused a hanging piece of the muffler to scrape on something and creak like an old creaky door. I think that really impressed some people in my parking lot. I think you would be impressed too.

I was hoping that one day Satan would open the earth and suck it back into hell. Sometimes I would fantasize about blowing it up.


Instead I did the practical thing and sold it for a cool $1600. Now some other sucker has to deal with it!

Labels: POS

I was very fortunate yesterday to see someone’s wheel fall of their car while driving it.

Actually, I got to see the aftermath, I wasn’t fortunate enough to see the wheel spin off the hub and continue to go the direction the car was headed. That would have been a little too good to be true.

Here is the scene:
I came to a stop light in upper-downtown Indianapolis, and I looked to my left, and I see a car midway through a right turn and it has no driver-side front tire. The driver was looking around as though he didn’t understand why his car wasn’t moving. I see the hub and brake rotor of the driver side front spinning, as if he thought it just needed a little more gas. I then look to the right and saw the tire in the middle of a busy intersection as if it kept going straight after the rest of the car turned. Classic.

Here is an illustration of my perspective from my truck window when I pulled up.









What is not shown in the illustration is the 40 other cars that this calamity was blocking.

After I pieced-together what had happened, I had a good laugh. I wasn’t laughing at someone’s misfortune, I was just laughing at the outrageous circumstances. It reminds me of the classic shots in car-chase movies where the hubcaps roll off of the car and keep going, except this was the entire wheel, which at least a 100 times more comical.

Then things got even better! The passenger, who looked like Bubb Rubb*, slowly got out as if there was no emergency, walked around the car, looked at the wheel, and acknowledged that it indeed fell off. He showed absolutely no sign of surprise or worry. Then, he just stood there and stared at it for at least 30 seconds. It was the middle of rush-hour!

I really wished that I would have harassed him while he was standing there. I think a smartass remark like “Hey man, I think your wheel might have fallen off!” would have been so well-timed and sarcastic it might have made me pee in my pants.

I loved the part where he stood motionless the most because it was the exact opposite of what I would do. I later thought about how I would react. I think my reaction would begin with me jumping out and saying, “Holy shit! Your mother-fucking wheel came off!” Then I would frantically scramble around and try to do what I could to get the car and wheel out of the way of traffic.

That is all I got for now. This blog could have been doctored-up, so re-read it and pretend that all of the wheels came off at once, and then the steering wheel came off in the driver’s hands, which made him go cross-eyed.



* Please do yourself a favor and watch the Bubb Rubb video on YouTube.com if you haven’t already done so.

Labels: wheels falling off of cars