(no subject)
So. Found my wallet with my school ID and gym card and such tossed in a box like I'd hoped. This is good. The house looks awesome. Also good. Ianto!cat warming up to me. Good as well. I can find my way out of the house and to school by myself (right, then right, then left), which is también bueno, porque no se las calles en la ciudad de Springfield para nada.
Things that are not good.
1. I’m out of money. Paid rent, bought my lab text for a class, bought socks and salad dressing, and that’s all my cash. Scholarship money doesn’t come in until sometime in September. I’ve got my debit card, but there’s only. . . idk, less than $100 accessible (I think minimum balance is $25 or something), and I’m very, very reluctant to dip into that for anything less than dire, dire emergencies. Plus, some of the things I still have to buy include goggles for my lab classes and gloves for one of them (which I’d already gotten and had sitting on top of one of my boxes of stuff to take down here that was sitting in the front room, but I think Mom thought it was a mistake that I was taking them and took them out on a trip to load stuff into the car), and at least for the former I’m hoping to buy a used set from the chemistry department (they sold them last year) for $5, and I highly doubt they take debit cards. Oh, and possibly my poetry (blarg) teacher’s book-the biggest bullshit ever. It’s a mix of literary forms and is therefore less than 1/3 poetry. I’m begging off having it tomorrow because she just added it to the bookstore requirements in the last week, which is unfair, since I did most of my book shopping 3ish weeks ago.
2. None of my clothes fit. Dreaded, but understandable, as Stupid Metabolism Fail has continued. But I’ve still got them all down here, and not enough hangers (something else I need to buy), so my room looks horrid with boxes and such. I did not think enough about how hard getting dressed for school was going to be when I have all of 5 pants/skirts/shorts that fit, only three of which I’m positive I packed. Plus, it’s so fucking impossible to go buy clothes without wanting to, you know, kill myself when I see the sizes. (I know I’m a whiner about this and plenty of people can go “you think you’ve got it bad”, but when you’re used to yourself in one way and then a few months later you’re 40 pounds heavier, it’s a bitch.) My making my own skirts needs to be worked on more, because then there will be no size tags, XD.
3. I’m in the computer lab at the moment because my 1pm organic lab isn’t meeting because it’s the first day of school, but por supuesto, my 4pm biomol int lab is for only 15 minutes or so. I thought about just asking if I could come to the 1pm meeting of my 4pm one, just for today, so I could get out of here, but if we got seats and lab partners and such it would be awkward to come to the next one at the right time.
And the major one.
5!!!!!. After exactly a month grace period where the bizarre computer screen fritzing stopped, last night it started up again. Began slowly, just blue jaggy lines at the bottom of the screen, spread throughout the whole thing (though you could see the background beneath it), then went to the whole screen covered with thick colored lines/blocks, but when I left it alone, it’d resolve for a bit before starting back up again. It finally decided to cooperate last night, and I turned it off and went to sleep eventually. Started it back up this morning in organic chemistry to take notes and it did the same thing, but then went to the grey of it being backlit but with a totally black screen, then went totally black. Rebooted a bazillion times, gave up. Two hours later, tried it again in biomolecular interactions (sort of biochem, I think, hereby known as “biomol int”) and it booted right up with a good screen and everything. Random. Made the mistake of letting it go to screen saver (I was running out of battery and wanted to let the screen turn off so it wouldn’t die), and when the screensaver popped up, so did the blue fritzy lines, and then it went black. That was 2.5 hours ago, and the periodic rebooting I’m doing as I sit by a desktop in the computer lab hasn’t helped.
So. Last ditch, I check out the Toshiba website again, hoping that there’s some kind of magic fix that’s been posted since the last time I looked around to try to fix it. Happen to check the warranty thing, and lo and behold, it didn’t expire in May (right around when it died the first time) like I’d thought. It expires tomorrow.
Natch, the closest warranty repair center is 3 hours back to St. Louis. At this point, I’m mentally calculating time and such to see if I can get out of my last class and drive there before they close. (Answer: probably not. Plus, seriously, I’ve been here for what, not yet 48 hours?) Shipping it to the Toshiba depot won’t work either, as that obviously takes time, but I call them up (thankfully looking like a dork on the campus phone outside the computer lab rather than on my cell as I was on hold for 90% of the 25+ minute call) hoping I can plead my case and have them start a repair ticket for me today that will work under warranty even though it expires tomorrow, and lo and behold that’s exactly how it works. They’re shipping me a box, I’ve got to call UPS and get it picked up (maybe just find a UPS store and drop it off?), and it’s 7-10 day turnaround (hopefully days days and not business days).
They’re telling me to backup my important stuff, as well. I wanted to hold on to my hard drive, you know, just in case, but the guy said that they’d do some tuneup thing too. It worries me a bit-sure, I have problems with Firefox lately I figured I’d take it), and I’m not even sure how I’m going to be able to do that since I can’t see anything to do that. I tried to plug it in to the monitors on the computers here, but no such luck as they’ve got some freaky-arsed digital plug that doesn’t fit.
That’s the suckmost sucky part of it. And why I’d never sent it off to get fixed during the summer like the idiot I am. I didn’t want to be computerless for 10 days. (Plus, I did very, very little during the summer since I slept straight through normal business hours 9 days out of 10 and mostly couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. Fail, I know.) If only I’d done it then, though, because I’ve got note taking things all set up and homework to do and tests to study for (yeah, quiz in biomol int sometime this week) and one of my textbooks is actually on the computer. Also, we have no TV hooked up yet (DVD player, yes, actual broadcast TV no) and as far as I’m aware, not even an ETA on that, so boredom central.
I kind of still want to cry, I’m so frustrated. School and being in a new place and all is stressful enough without my computer dying on me.
ETA: This is what I mean by blue lines fritzing:
You can see my icons on my desktop underneath a bit on the left. That’s last night, when it would resolve on its own and then do it again, rinse and repeat.
Then it went to. . . idk, think of a shirt with different sized vertical blocks of color. Sometimes it looks like this:
Not my computer, obviously, but similar display. It jumps around between being thin lines like that and ones thick enough that only maybe 6-10 of them fit. Of course, now it’s completely black, not even the grey of it still being backlit but with no display.
Also? The bluefritzing picture was taken with my new phone (demonstration purposes being why I didn't resize it like I did with the rest). Pretty good for a $60 (with $30 of minutes included, so more like $30) Net-10 thing, huh? They fixed a lot of my issues with the last one, like actually being able to connect it to a computer (only can access the micro SD card--not included, natch, but I pulled the one from my MP3 player that I kept audiofics on--and it can only take ones up to 2gb, but you can transfer pictures to the card fairly easily and then get to them on the computer) and taking custom ringtones. (Doctor Who theme FTW. I keep getting people to call me to test it and just not picking up so as to LOLOL.) Still can't get to the internet, just the Net-10 website, and it still charges you eight bazillion dollars to even do that when you accidentally hit the button, but you can lock the browser feature so you've got to type the code to open it, so that's saved me quite a few minutes, LOL.
(It is this one:
)
Things that are not good.
1. I’m out of money. Paid rent, bought my lab text for a class, bought socks and salad dressing, and that’s all my cash. Scholarship money doesn’t come in until sometime in September. I’ve got my debit card, but there’s only. . . idk, less than $100 accessible (I think minimum balance is $25 or something), and I’m very, very reluctant to dip into that for anything less than dire, dire emergencies. Plus, some of the things I still have to buy include goggles for my lab classes and gloves for one of them (which I’d already gotten and had sitting on top of one of my boxes of stuff to take down here that was sitting in the front room, but I think Mom thought it was a mistake that I was taking them and took them out on a trip to load stuff into the car), and at least for the former I’m hoping to buy a used set from the chemistry department (they sold them last year) for $5, and I highly doubt they take debit cards. Oh, and possibly my poetry (blarg) teacher’s book-the biggest bullshit ever. It’s a mix of literary forms and is therefore less than 1/3 poetry. I’m begging off having it tomorrow because she just added it to the bookstore requirements in the last week, which is unfair, since I did most of my book shopping 3ish weeks ago.
2. None of my clothes fit. Dreaded, but understandable, as Stupid Metabolism Fail has continued. But I’ve still got them all down here, and not enough hangers (something else I need to buy), so my room looks horrid with boxes and such. I did not think enough about how hard getting dressed for school was going to be when I have all of 5 pants/skirts/shorts that fit, only three of which I’m positive I packed. Plus, it’s so fucking impossible to go buy clothes without wanting to, you know, kill myself when I see the sizes. (I know I’m a whiner about this and plenty of people can go “you think you’ve got it bad”, but when you’re used to yourself in one way and then a few months later you’re 40 pounds heavier, it’s a bitch.) My making my own skirts needs to be worked on more, because then there will be no size tags, XD.
3. I’m in the computer lab at the moment because my 1pm organic lab isn’t meeting because it’s the first day of school, but por supuesto, my 4pm biomol int lab is for only 15 minutes or so. I thought about just asking if I could come to the 1pm meeting of my 4pm one, just for today, so I could get out of here, but if we got seats and lab partners and such it would be awkward to come to the next one at the right time.
And the major one.
5!!!!!. After exactly a month grace period where the bizarre computer screen fritzing stopped, last night it started up again. Began slowly, just blue jaggy lines at the bottom of the screen, spread throughout the whole thing (though you could see the background beneath it), then went to the whole screen covered with thick colored lines/blocks, but when I left it alone, it’d resolve for a bit before starting back up again. It finally decided to cooperate last night, and I turned it off and went to sleep eventually. Started it back up this morning in organic chemistry to take notes and it did the same thing, but then went to the grey of it being backlit but with a totally black screen, then went totally black. Rebooted a bazillion times, gave up. Two hours later, tried it again in biomolecular interactions (sort of biochem, I think, hereby known as “biomol int”) and it booted right up with a good screen and everything. Random. Made the mistake of letting it go to screen saver (I was running out of battery and wanted to let the screen turn off so it wouldn’t die), and when the screensaver popped up, so did the blue fritzy lines, and then it went black. That was 2.5 hours ago, and the periodic rebooting I’m doing as I sit by a desktop in the computer lab hasn’t helped.
So. Last ditch, I check out the Toshiba website again, hoping that there’s some kind of magic fix that’s been posted since the last time I looked around to try to fix it. Happen to check the warranty thing, and lo and behold, it didn’t expire in May (right around when it died the first time) like I’d thought. It expires tomorrow.
Natch, the closest warranty repair center is 3 hours back to St. Louis. At this point, I’m mentally calculating time and such to see if I can get out of my last class and drive there before they close. (Answer: probably not. Plus, seriously, I’ve been here for what, not yet 48 hours?) Shipping it to the Toshiba depot won’t work either, as that obviously takes time, but I call them up (thankfully looking like a dork on the campus phone outside the computer lab rather than on my cell as I was on hold for 90% of the 25+ minute call) hoping I can plead my case and have them start a repair ticket for me today that will work under warranty even though it expires tomorrow, and lo and behold that’s exactly how it works. They’re shipping me a box, I’ve got to call UPS and get it picked up (maybe just find a UPS store and drop it off?), and it’s 7-10 day turnaround (hopefully days days and not business days).
They’re telling me to backup my important stuff, as well. I wanted to hold on to my hard drive, you know, just in case, but the guy said that they’d do some tuneup thing too. It worries me a bit-sure, I have problems with Firefox lately I figured I’d take it), and I’m not even sure how I’m going to be able to do that since I can’t see anything to do that. I tried to plug it in to the monitors on the computers here, but no such luck as they’ve got some freaky-arsed digital plug that doesn’t fit.
That’s the suckmost sucky part of it. And why I’d never sent it off to get fixed during the summer like the idiot I am. I didn’t want to be computerless for 10 days. (Plus, I did very, very little during the summer since I slept straight through normal business hours 9 days out of 10 and mostly couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. Fail, I know.) If only I’d done it then, though, because I’ve got note taking things all set up and homework to do and tests to study for (yeah, quiz in biomol int sometime this week) and one of my textbooks is actually on the computer. Also, we have no TV hooked up yet (DVD player, yes, actual broadcast TV no) and as far as I’m aware, not even an ETA on that, so boredom central.
I kind of still want to cry, I’m so frustrated. School and being in a new place and all is stressful enough without my computer dying on me.
ETA: This is what I mean by blue lines fritzing:
You can see my icons on my desktop underneath a bit on the left. That’s last night, when it would resolve on its own and then do it again, rinse and repeat.
Then it went to. . . idk, think of a shirt with different sized vertical blocks of color. Sometimes it looks like this:
Not my computer, obviously, but similar display. It jumps around between being thin lines like that and ones thick enough that only maybe 6-10 of them fit. Of course, now it’s completely black, not even the grey of it still being backlit but with no display.
Also? The bluefritzing picture was taken with my new phone (demonstration purposes being why I didn't resize it like I did with the rest). Pretty good for a $60 (with $30 of minutes included, so more like $30) Net-10 thing, huh? They fixed a lot of my issues with the last one, like actually being able to connect it to a computer (only can access the micro SD card--not included, natch, but I pulled the one from my MP3 player that I kept audiofics on--and it can only take ones up to 2gb, but you can transfer pictures to the card fairly easily and then get to them on the computer) and taking custom ringtones. (Doctor Who theme FTW. I keep getting people to call me to test it and just not picking up so as to LOLOL.) Still can't get to the internet, just the Net-10 website, and it still charges you eight bazillion dollars to even do that when you accidentally hit the button, but you can lock the browser feature so you've got to type the code to open it, so that's saved me quite a few minutes, LOL.
(It is this one:
)