Super Bowl Sunday! Computers (and the IRS) will be the death of me! and, Die Hard!

A Super Bowl party is a damn lonely place if you don't care about sports. I went to Tery's bar, City Pub nee Toby Jug, for the promise of a free half-time buffet and the chance to see Ryan (which I never miss). It was loud, boring, and the only food that appealed to me from the buffet was a hotdog and nachos with toppings. In between a shouted and only partially-heard conversation with Ryan I caught myself watching the game, which was ludicrous given the fact that I understand only the bare minimum of how it's played and really absolutely could not have cared less who was playing, let alone winning. I left immediately after the half-time show to spend a much more enjoyable evening alone at home.

~*~

I heard back from the IRS once and for all. The good news is they agree that I don't owe them $2000. The bad news is the last line of the letter was something to the effect of, "You may have gotten off easy this time, but we'll be back, my pretty." Lay off, Mr. Taxman. Have you run out of Enron executives to investigate?

~*~

I hate computers. I love them, but I hate them. My ability to make any given program/hardware work falls somewhere above that of my father (at the 0 end of the scale) and below my friend Gerry, who bandies about lots of fancy terminology but doesn't by any means know enough to make a living at it (or maybe he does and just enjoys the thrilling inventory life instead).

I want to use my cheap, no-frills, secondhand laptop basically for two things only: to read Snarry at night in my bed, and to occasionally write a journal post for days like today when I'm sick and tired of sitting at this desk. I had achieved both goals handily when I got my brother-in-law's wireless modem card working for awhile. Then, stupidly, I unplugged it for some reason and when I tried to use it again weeks later it had stopped working.

I fiddled with it endlessly, tormented by the knowledge that it had worked fine at one time so should logically do so again. If it had never worked I would have stopped much, much sooner and wasted much, much less time. But nothing I did would establish a connection (well, specifically it APPEARED to have a connection, but every page I visited produced an "unable to find server" message).

Fine, I thought. I'd go back to the old days of using a floppy disk to transfer data (the laptop has a CD drive but not a burner). Until I looked more closely at my new desktop and only then noticed it didn't HAVE a floppy disk drive. It has no less than 4 different openings for presumably various sizes of memory sticks, but floppy disks, nada.

My choices then were to go back to eBay in pursuit of either an external floppy drive to retrofit my new desktop, or an external memory stick drive to upgrade my laptop. You see, this is why I HATE computers. Nothing can ever be simple. I then thought I had reached a compromise by buying a USB data transfer cable, which arrived yesterday. What the auction failed to mention was that to use this deceivingly simple tool, one needs to set up a network. I don't know what I was expecting. Probably what I always hope for with my computer and rarely get, that I could plug in a "plug-and-play" device and it would magically start working without requiring any extra effort from me.

Network. The very word makes my blood run cold, because it was a word I encountered repeatedly in my exhaustive efforts with the modem card, and I never once found a simple, straightfoward, plain English explanation on what it is, how it's used, and how one creates it. And, as far as I can tell from spending about an hour on it last night, it's not possible to establish a network between a brand new desktop running Windows XP and a laptop of indeterminate age and limited capacity running Windows 98. If it is, I don't want to know because I'm sick of playing with the damn thing. Sick to death.

Simple. I want things simple. Back to eBay I went and bought an external floppy drive for my desktop. It's also USB "plug-and-play" but claims it only needs drivers for Windows 98. (Drivers. Another word that raises my hackles.)

~*~

Speaking of computers and Snarry, when I got my backup disk from the good people at Action Computers, one of the things they saved was my own humble effort at a Snarry story. I went back and reread it, and it rekindled my interest in writing it. It wasn't as bad as I remembered, and I also forgot how fun it is to write dialogue for Snape (who is almost as snarky as me). I'm toying with the idea of eventually posting it on one of my Snarry communities (if I can ever think of an ending). The only thing preventing me is the fact that those people gush over just about everyone, regardless of talent or lack thereof. I would honestly prefer it never see the light of day to having insincere praise heaped upon it. So far the only person privileged enough to read it is my beloved Bear, who never talks to me but I love her anyway. Maybe I can entice ohdeve...I mean, yammerhead with it. He's back and he'll never admit it, but I suspect he couldn't resist the allure of the Snarry.

~*~

Finally, I keep putting off writing this because I've been trying to limit my posts to one topic, but since this is a miscellaneous dump I'm including it here.

A movie review 18 years in the making, ( ::Die Hard:: )

This movie has undoubtedly stood the test of time, especially in comparison to two movies I've reviewed in the past: The Lost Boys which came out the year before and is now hopelessly dated, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves that came out 3 years later and is retarded and dated. With its story of a terrorist attack on a skyscraper, it could be argued that it's more relevant than ever. So, Alan Rickman + Bruce Willis (not an annoyingly horrible actor like other action heroes) + still a great story + with still pretty decent effects = 4.5 out of 5