From The Ashes ...

I'm Calling The Geek Squad.

If you haven't heard of them it's a roving computer repair/IT team that has branches in various cities throughout the country. They will advise you by phone, or, if you're lucky enough to live in a city where they operate, you can call and have a Geek delivered right to your home. New York being the ultimate delivery town, calling for a Geek delivery only seems natural. (When I first moved into my castle high atop Second Avenue, we used to call for a delivery of food, video and liquor to see if we could time it so they all arrived together. The best we ever achieved was two out of three.)

So I'm having some computer issues. As you know, my PC up and died in The Great (Ongoing) Room Re-do. I thought it was a faulty power source which I replaced to no avail. I was thinking that it might be as simple as a failure in the on/off switch. I do plan to check it out when I get in the mood to tinker. In the meantime I couldn't wait any longer and went ahead and found a new (refurbished) computer with a pretty good processor and a big fat hard drive (thank you, Gold Card). It came with XP Home installed and I kept my monitor so it barely feels like I've changed anything.

But I have no sound. According to the information book the motherboard supports 2,4 or 6 channel audio output. I've only got the two channel output enabled. Two channels, two speakers. It should be working. It isn't. And aside from plugging it in, I know nothing as far as sound and speakers on a computer.

I also want to install my old hard drive on my new computer. Aside from the added storage (I will probably never, ever need) I want to be able to access that drive for some of the programs I've lost copies of, particularly Photoshop. Aside from that, while I did back up my pictures at some point last year (yay me), the newest pictures were never saved. And while I always have access to the blogs listed on this site, I was actually actively or periodically following many many others. Some I could just find and bookmark again. Some, like a newly discovered gay blogger who's also a Buffalo native, I can't recall what his site was called or where I found it. Now intellectually I understand how you go about installing a hard drive. But the one time I tried it a couple of years ago I ended up fragging the whole system. I absolutely cannot afford to do that again. I am comfortable adding a firewire port, I've installed extra memory, I added a faxmodem to a cheap computer that I gave my sister as a gift. So on the surface, I should have the skill to install the drive myself. Quite frankly I'd rather pay someone to come by one afternoon and do it right the first time, make what I'm sure is a simple and obvious correction to my sound settings, and be on his/her way.

I replaced all my bathroom towels today. I had half a dozen or so that matched the colors in the bathroom. Once The Hellcat moved in, they started disappearing one by one. He has a tendency to react to (frequent) spills by grabbing the closest towel, regardless of what it's for or who it belongs to. Paper towels never seem to be an option. I've seen him use one of my bath towels to clean up a spilled liter of Pepsi. I watched, appalled, as he took one of my bathroom face towels and used it to dry his dog. Then he put it back in the bathroom on the towel rack where it hung for days. I have no idea if anybody used it to wipe their face or dry their hands. It would probably still be there if I hadn't cracked and threw it in my laundry. I'm sure he believed that his intent was to use one of the towels, or let a trick clean up with a towel, pledging in his head that he would launder and return it. The problem is he doesn't always remember his pledges and justifications that he makes to himself when he's high. So over the last few months all my bathroom towels disappeared. I plan on explaining this to The Hellcat the next time I'm sure he's sober. I will make sure he understand that the new towels don't belong to the house. They're mine. I bought them, and I'm the only one that can use them. Taking one with the intent to launder it is not an option, regardless of whether or not he's high, as he has proven that won't happen. I'm interested in whether or not he can follow a clearly stated boundary. I suspect not but maybe he'll surprise me.

I finally made it back to the gym today. Probably only the second time since starting my new job. And the first time I really wanted to since getting sick. I did a half hour of cardio and a half hour of abs. I should have time to get there again tomorrow. I'll be starting back in on the weight training. Not coincidentally, tomorrow I start the testosterone replacement therapy. It's basically steroids. The implications are obvious. My desire to document...well, everything has me wanting to get some "before" pictures. If there's time in the next couple of days I'll get it done.