The end of my Thinkpad?

I am on a public computer right now, because my trusty old Thinkpad is not doing too well. On Friday it gave the blue screen of death, then restarted, and proceeded to go through a nasty disk check. Lots of unrecoverable bad sectors.

At this point my only thought was, “Oh sh** I have porn on my machine.” And I needed to delete as much as I can, before I ask someone to fix my computer (you know those tech people can always dig up traces of teh pr0n).

When I tried to log in, my profile was “corrupted,” and the computer logged me in under a temporary profile. And I did all my deleting, and emailing important files to my Gmail.

Then I updated Symantec Antivirus and ran a virus scan, which found — nothing!

Ok, I thought, maybe it’s contained, somehow. But after using it for about a day, the blue screen of death showed up again, like a poltergeist. And so I shut the damn thing off and put it away so that I can have someone look at it on Tuesday.

On the bright side, it has increased my productivity tremendously.

I guess this is also my long-winded apology for the relative lack of posts in the next few days.

Ending therapy

I met with my psychologist again today. Our last session was last Friday, but since our schedules were so packed, we had to meet earlier this week.

I don’t know if it’s the short time in between our last session and this one, but I’ve been finding that I don’t have much to talk about anymore with her. I’m getting along better with my parents, and I’ve worked out for myself a lot of what I’ve been feeling. As a result, I’ve been thinking for a while about ending my sessions.

The therapy has been helpful: it helped me be more aware of unproductive ways of thinking, helped me express my suppressed feelings of anger (along with guilt at being angry), and most of all helped me make sense of my feelings and frustrations in terms of my personality and life experiences. (There are pages and pages of backstory that I won’t go into here.)

But today I was really struggling to find things to talk about. Not that I’m completely happy with my life, but I feel like I can handle it from here, and everything I tried to bring up seemed so insignificant it was barely worth mentioning.

So I told her that I’d like to wrap up our therapy in the next session or two — perhaps spend the last session summarizing what I’ve learned and how I’ve changed. And thinking about how I can use this experience to become a better doctor.

William Topaz McGonagall - worst poet ever?

(Blogging tip: By inserting a “?” I can get away with making over-the-top claims in my headlines! Brilliant.)

If you haven’t read the poetry of William Topaz McGonagall, you must. He was celebrated in his day (as in ours) as one of the worst poets in the English language — but in the “so bad it’s good” sort of way.

Anyway, here’s a bit of his most famous work, “The Tay Bridge Disaster”:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

His body of work is actually pretty impressive for someone with so little talent. He wrote over 200 poems, frequently using the same rhymes from poem to poem (”lay”/”dismay”), and with the same disregard for meter (”And which no one dare gainsay,/But that you are the grandest city in Scotland at the present day!”) and atmosphere (”For God He turned the ball aside/Maclean aimed at her head;/And he felt very angry/Because he didn’t shoot her dead.”).

New favorite poet.

Yahoo Music sucks

I had previously raved about Yahoo music. But now, to quote Snoop Dogg, “I take it all back.”

Their music player hogs RAM, is buggy, and basically takes over your music collection, relabeling all your mp3 files as “Yahoo Music Jukebox files.” Excuse me, did I ask you to do that?

And the list of songs available for subscription members keeps shrinking. A lot of my library consists of songs that I can no longer listen to, because they are either purchase-only or not even available for purchase.

I feel cheated because I paid $72 to be able to listen to those songs for a whole year. What the hell?

And don’t get me started on iTunes. It’s enough to make me not want to buy music ever again.

The greatest desktop wallpaper site ever

Not to mention a great place to find excellent photography.

http://www.caedes.net

It’s where I found my current header image, as well as my desktop wallpaper, which is:

UPDATE: Changed my wallpaper again. The lion was a little too big and distracting. Now I’m using:

Fasting and feeling better

I tried just eating white rice last night, to see if it made me feel better. It was okay, but after a few hours I still had intestinal pain and had to go to the bathroom.

This morning I went to the bathroom again, and after that I decided that I’d better not eat anything for a while, since eating seems to make it worse.

I had a few crackers, and I’m drinking water and tea. Surprisingly, I’m not that hungry, and I feel much better. That is, after a few hours of feeling weird and having a headache (I’m guessing from my dehydration).

Now, I don’t really believe in mumbo-jumbo like “detoxification,” but I think there may be something to fasting in this situation. Perhaps it has to do with minimizing the irritation to the intestinal epithelium. Perhaps food particle uptake also enhances the spread of the bacteria. This would be a great learning issue, if I had the time.

Omelet of death

I’ve been having this gastrointestinal thing since two days ago, and it’s not going away. I feel somewhat nauseous, and have gone to the bathroom every few hours. And I think I know what caused it.

So I had bought these eggs, mustard greens, and bean sprouts from a Vietnamese supermarket in Garden Grove, and I wanted to use them up. So I decided to make an omelet.

Well, for one thing, the eggs had, well, funny stuff in them. Streaks of red (blood islands?) and an unusual mass on the yolk. Gross. I tried to pick them out, but eventually I decided to just beat them into the eggs and hope they cook evenly.

I also tried to wash the mustard greens, but it was pretty difficult because I didn’t have a basin or basket, and the leaves were too big to fit into my pot.

The next thing I did was just put the eggs in the pan and turn on the stove. When the egg looked like it was cooking okay, I started putting the chopped vegetables in. This turned out to be a bad idea, as their bulk was too much for my pan, and their coldness was keeping my eggs from cooking through.

And I got impatient so I dumped it out on a plate and ate it. Oops.

So basically, I could be suffering from Salmonella from the eggs, or E. coli from the mustard greens.

The good news is that, with all the time I’ve spent in the bathroom, I finished books 4 and 5 of Harry Potter. That’s the Goblet of Fire and the Order of the Phoenix (soon to be a major motion picture!). This means I’ve accomplished my goal of finishing book 5 before the movie.

Photos from AIDS Walk - 5/12/07

Who’s Angela, and why does she have her own stadium?

People enjoying the pre-walk interfaith festivities. The white lady in the turban is a Sikh, and she and the Native American woman beside her were clapping and swaying while the Christian band on the right played some U2.

I’m ready to get started!

And the band played on. (jk guys)

The streets of Anaheim. The route wasn’t particularly scenic from this point onward, so I don’t have any photos until…

The infield! Notice the big screen display of all the walkers as they passed the camera near home plate.

Still going strong. This walk is not very physically challenging

And our triumphant finish! Bowling pin man was there to greet us, as well as volunteers handing out goodie bags — mine had coupons (good ones) for Togo’s, Chipotle, and Daphne’s, and a bottle of a “botanical water” called Carpe Diem.

Not bad for a Saturday morning.

Awkward social situations and me go together like peas and carrots

I’ve had three experiences in the past couple of weeks (two of them being yesterday) where I’m in a social situation and I don’t know anyone, while everyone else seems to be acquainted. They all have to do with me trying to get involved with the gay community.

Now, I’m not trying to imply that gay people are cliquish. This could just as well have happened with a group of straight people (plenty of awkward memories from college parties, clubs, certain seminar classes).

It just so happens that, since I’m trying to get involved with the gays right now, this is where I’m encountering it.

So you probably want details:

1. Watching Shortbus with the Queer Graduate Caucus. I chatted briefly with a few people, but I couldn’t get a good conversation going. Plus, most of the people knew each other, so it was more of them chatting. I left after a few minutes.

2. Orange County AIDS Walk (yesterday). I got there really early, and I had signed up with a team whose members I haven’t met. Yeah, real smart of me. So, I really spent the first hour or so wandering the booths looking for their team sign (and feeling really stupid).

   The walk was cool, but I didn’t have the guts to go up to some stranger and say, “Hey, stop your conversation for a moment and let me introduce myself!”

3. The Center OC Gala (also yesterday). I was one of the earliest people to show up, and the person I knew who invited me was nowhere to be seen. Again, everyone was chatting with each other. Most of the crowd was older. I did have brief conversations with a few people, but it seemed like, past the formality stage, they were eager to talk to someone else. So mostly I drank my beer and wandered awkwardly through the crowd.

   Now, later on, I met several cool people. At the blackjack table I met a loud drunk lady — she was a lot of fun — and her friend, who was not drunk but who I had a good time chatting with.

   I also met a man who proceeded to introduce me to all of the doctors he knew in the crowd, and sent them over to say hi during the dinner. After that I talked to a lot more people. But still.

Now you can say “I told you so” from the afterlife!

An incredibly good business idea. Harness the irrational faith of others — for profit!

It’s called the Post-Rapture Post, and it’s run by an atheist who will deliver letters to recipients after the rapture. So that, you know, if you’ve got an unbelieving brother, you can reach out to him after the rapture happens (I think he can still be saved, right?).

Or just send off a quick, “I told you so. See you in hell (from heaven).”