My first video upload to YouTube.

Heavy rain in Houston had these sewer covers bouncing and rattling.

I took an old laptop with me to Virginia that hadn’t been used in about a year and a half. When I powered it on, it was unable to find my ‘profile settings’ and warned me to contact my network administrator if it persisted. I ignored that, updated Firefox from the v2 preview, and installed Trillian. I chatted with Dale online that night, then turned off the laptop. The next day when I turned it on again, I got the same profile error message. And Trillian was gone. Along with the sites I’d bookmarked before, so I reinstalled everything. This time, I didn’t turn off the laptop, I just closed the lid.

The next time I pulled out the laptop, it had shut down and the same thing had happened. The battery in this laptop won’t last more than 15 minutes, so I had it plugged into the wall continuously, but belatedly I remembered the outlet I used was controlled by the switch on the wall and it had been flipped off. I moved the plug to another outlet, made sure never to shut off the laptop, and it was fine for the rest of the week.

I didn’t just use the laptop to chat and web surf. I pulled the photos off my digital camera and stored them on the laptop because I was filling up the card. I knew the laptop was crap, but it would do until I could get home and transfer the photos to my desktop.

Unfortunately, after we got home I couldn’t boot the laptop at all. Blue screens, error messages, freezing, and not even booting completely. Dale tried reinstalling the OS but couldn’t. At this point, we’re hoping to borrow some equipment from his step-dad that’ll let us hook the laptop hard drive directly to my computer to get the files. After I have the photos, I don’t care if the laptop gets thrown away.

If I can’t get the photos, well, that will really suck. But at least I already resized and uploaded most of the ones with Olivia to her gallery.

No, it has nothing to do with the TV show. “Lost words” are words that were removed from dictionary since they were assumed to be out-dated or unfit for modern English. Take a gander at the list and become more noscible about archaic English flosculations.

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