oof, what a weekend
This weekend in Long Beach has been marked by the two standard Long Beach themes: friends-n-family on one hand, my mom's evil computer on the other.
Between 2 AM Friday night/Saturday morning and now, I've spent maybe sixteen hours on this thing. Without going into gory details, the goal was to get the sound working on my mom's PC again. To get there, I've upgraded to WinXP (don't start, Linux folks - migrating my mom to Linux is just not a viable option), wiped the hard drive and reinstalled XP from scratch, fought a nasty virus that managed to hop over to secondary HD when I wiped the first, reinstalled all her software, imported all her old preferences and settings, recreated a distribution list which somehow didn't get saved, and generally banged my head against the screen. Whoa, I guess I just did go into the gory details. But! I finally got the sound working, meaning that my mom can listen to her Blue Mountain Arts cards and I can force her to watch Strong Bad.
On the friends-n-family end, things are much better. My birthday party was Saturday evening, a generally pleasant break from explody computer fun. pasajera, moonlitcirce, niknakpadywak were there, along with Heather (of course), Roz, my mom, my aunt and uncle, and my cousin Mike. Things went pretty well, though it got old watching Roz and my aunt compete for attention (without, of course, acknowledging that they were doing so, or even really acknowledging eachother's presences). It was great to see pasajera and moonlitcirce again, though I have little doubt that my aunt will be asking my mom about pasajera because "she looks... different". Many interesting and wonderful gifts, and a few... curious choices from my aunt, but that's nothing new. It seems that every year or so she decides I'm into something new and gives gifts accordingly. One year it was M.C. Escher; right after our honeymoon, it was Egypt; after we went to Ireland it was Ireland; this year, it seems I'm into cooking.
Regarding the Ireland theme, here's a clear expression of the difference between my mom and my aunt. My mom also gave us a few Irish-themed things, but they all showed that she understood what it was we love about Ireland: one was a book of photography, another was a framed set of three beautiful photographs. My aunt gave us a leprechaun nightlight and a candle with important dates in Irish history inscribed on it. See the difference?
Enough ranting. It was a good evening. Everyone got along well, there was good food (may the gods strike me down if my mom doesn't make the best cake in the world), good fellowship, and good gifts. Special gift shout-outs to my mom, who gave me a digital camera(!), niknakpadywak who gave me my favorite movie on DVD when he needs to be saving his money, and pasajera for two framed sketches of my late cat, Killer. And to be fair, my aunt and uncle did try to get a super-cool gift, but couldn't get it shipped to California for legal reasons.
Tomorrow I'm teaching my mom's 3rd grade class about black holes, supernovae, and other cool things in space, so I should bathe and go to bed.
Between 2 AM Friday night/Saturday morning and now, I've spent maybe sixteen hours on this thing. Without going into gory details, the goal was to get the sound working on my mom's PC again. To get there, I've upgraded to WinXP (don't start, Linux folks - migrating my mom to Linux is just not a viable option), wiped the hard drive and reinstalled XP from scratch, fought a nasty virus that managed to hop over to secondary HD when I wiped the first, reinstalled all her software, imported all her old preferences and settings, recreated a distribution list which somehow didn't get saved, and generally banged my head against the screen. Whoa, I guess I just did go into the gory details. But! I finally got the sound working, meaning that my mom can listen to her Blue Mountain Arts cards and I can force her to watch Strong Bad.
On the friends-n-family end, things are much better. My birthday party was Saturday evening, a generally pleasant break from explody computer fun. pasajera, moonlitcirce, niknakpadywak were there, along with Heather (of course), Roz, my mom, my aunt and uncle, and my cousin Mike. Things went pretty well, though it got old watching Roz and my aunt compete for attention (without, of course, acknowledging that they were doing so, or even really acknowledging eachother's presences). It was great to see pasajera and moonlitcirce again, though I have little doubt that my aunt will be asking my mom about pasajera because "she looks... different". Many interesting and wonderful gifts, and a few... curious choices from my aunt, but that's nothing new. It seems that every year or so she decides I'm into something new and gives gifts accordingly. One year it was M.C. Escher; right after our honeymoon, it was Egypt; after we went to Ireland it was Ireland; this year, it seems I'm into cooking.
Regarding the Ireland theme, here's a clear expression of the difference between my mom and my aunt. My mom also gave us a few Irish-themed things, but they all showed that she understood what it was we love about Ireland: one was a book of photography, another was a framed set of three beautiful photographs. My aunt gave us a leprechaun nightlight and a candle with important dates in Irish history inscribed on it. See the difference?
Enough ranting. It was a good evening. Everyone got along well, there was good food (may the gods strike me down if my mom doesn't make the best cake in the world), good fellowship, and good gifts. Special gift shout-outs to my mom, who gave me a digital camera(!), niknakpadywak who gave me my favorite movie on DVD when he needs to be saving his money, and pasajera for two framed sketches of my late cat, Killer. And to be fair, my aunt and uncle did try to get a super-cool gift, but couldn't get it shipped to California for legal reasons.
Tomorrow I'm teaching my mom's 3rd grade class about black holes, supernovae, and other cool things in space, so I should bathe and go to bed.