I think I managed to get to sleep at around six. Then, fifteen minutes later, Zombi made that noise. I'm sure you know the noise, if you've ever owned a cat. The 'I'm in pain. I'm in a lot of pain. I'd really like it to stop now. Oh, the pain I'm in. Why am I in pain?' noise that's much, much worse than the 'You've stepped on me. Please don't do that.' noise.

Zombi likes to sleep on the pillows with us. That...may not be the safest place in the world for a cat, and that was kinda demonstrated this morning. She'd been sleeping with her left front leg under one of the pillows, and that pillow suddenly became 'in use'.

So, that was upsetting. I pulled her out from under the pillow, and she took off...then...promptly didn't move from in front of the bathroom door for a bit. And she kept making the noise every time I tried to touch that leg.

Gremlin was up and downstairs having the first soda of the day by that point, so I picked Zombi up and took her down to him, to have him check and see if anything felt broken. Because she wouldn't stop making that damn noise. And she was purring -- that awful, harsh purr that means 'something hurts'.

Nothing seemed to be broken. She was limping a bit, hesitant to lay down...but she happily ate treats, drank water, and made it to the litterbox by herself, so I figured she might be okay. Ish. Just a little hurt and scared by being hurt. I set up food and water for her in Gremlin's office, so she wouldn't be forced to take the stairs before she was ready, and decided to handle a few things while I was up.

Then, I stayed up until Zombi came upstairs.

When I woke up, I found her curled up next to my head again. She's getting around fine again. A few hours ago, she climbed up onto the back of the comfy seat here, latched onto my face with her claws, and rammed her head into my neck. I've officially declared it a 'kitteh hug'. I got a good five minutes of that, complete with happy purring.

So...it wasn't all bad.

And, I was playing around with Gremlin's camera, since Zombi was looking all cute.

After I figured out how to adjust the white balance, I found the 'night' setting that let me shoot it in interesting night-visioney stuff, or whatever -- instead of setting off the flash. Then, this happened....

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the kitteh.

Back on April 2nd, I got a box. An expected box, containing computer parts. A box that rattled in an unsettling manner....

It was packed well enough, though. Of course it was. Because my parents packed it, and they both know how to send computer parts so that they don't get broken.

The source of the rattling. My mom [or possibly my dad] thought to include some screws. Thoughtful...but some warning would've been nice. Unless it was my mom's idea to scare me, since the 'Regular' thing didn't really work last Christmas....

My new motherboard. Except it's kinda old. But new to me, and that's what counts, right? It's not much, by today's standards, but it beats the hell out of my old one. It's a Socket 939, and my old one is a Socket A. The difference may not seem like much [I was at 1.9ghz before, and now I'm at...2.1, I think], but it's...enough.

The videocard my parents sent along. Not as good as the videocard that's in my old machine, but, well, I'll get to that later....

The book for the motherboard, and the CD that goes with it.

...it's been a while since I cleaned it. But, hey, I'm about to take it apart, right? So, I can do that now....

The old board.

And the new one.

And the fan's nice and...well, okay, it's only kinda clean. But that's okay. It's time to get this thing up and running.

But, it's not that easy. Oh no, it's never that easy. Because, first, I go through this whole 'oh, what the fuck?' thing where I'm looking for the right bit of the power supply to plug into the special part of the motherboard that my old board didn't have -- and, of course, it takes me half an hour to find it, because I'd tucked it away so it wouldn't get in the way. I was about to swap everything out because I had myself convinced that this one didn't have the right bits....

I found it, though, and got everything plugged in.

Then came the really fun part. The part where it wouldn't power on. At all. Until, after an hour of experimenting, I unplugged the DVI cable, and it magically powered on.

Another WTF moment. It's on, though. So I can't complain too much.

Which, of course leads to 'oh, hey, I'm an idiot. I have to reformat this thing to get it running right again'. Which I knew. But...I kinda forgot to back everything up, and, since I haven't got any other computer up and running so I can do that [not counting Gremlin's], and my rescue gadgets are all dead...so, I get to back everything up in 800x600 hell.

I did find something neat while I was doing all that, though.

Somehow, I have spam from 1970! I discovered this because, while backing up my email, I happened to notice that the largest file was actually the junk folder. I kinda never cleaned that out. Oops.

Once all that was done, I managed to get it reformatted. And I ran into another problem.

My videocard -- my good one -- just didn't want to work in this machine. I don't know why, but it's a good thing my parents sent that old videocard with it. I'm currently stuck with a 128mb videocard, but it's better than nothing.

The 256mb card that I had is now living in the TV tower...on my old motherboard. Wasting all its power just playing videos for me.

Zombi was helpful cat throughout the entire process, of course.

After all that, I started having some stability problems. One of my drives was dying. Not good.

I ordered a new drive, and a new rescue gadget. Which arrived broken. So I'm debating whether or not to bother Newegg about it, or just use the power supply with the old USB connector I have that still works. I...didn't manage to rescue everything from that drive, either. Not fun.

My computer seems stable enough now, though. And Photoshop opens way faster....

She's annoyed.

She was actually being much cuter before I got the camera. Also, she hates the flash.

I always miss the really cute stuff. It's unfortunate. I'm just not lucky.

It's really too bad, too, because somewhere in all that dark [toward the end], she gets up realy close to the camera, sniffs it, then headbutts it and does that cute kitty rubbing-up-against-it thing.

So I converted it to an mp3. It's three minutes of me trying to get Zombi to meow.

And she does. Just...not as much as she usually meows.

When I wasn't posting about spam and pedophiles or chatting, I've mostly been reading about Scientology [still]. Except for those few surprisingly warm days when we went wandering around the local stores.

Except...it wasn't all that warm, and I was noticing that something very important was absent from my coat collection. Something for those transitional seasons, when it was windy and often wet, that wouldn't keep me too warm, but would keep me warm enough.

So, after checking out the new Play-n-Trade, we went over to Kohls. And after trying on every athletic sneaker in the shoe department in the quest for the perfect shoe, [Nike is comfortable, but...not quite perfect. Close, though.] we went digging through the rest of the store looking for coats that weren't entirely useless or completely ugly.

It turns out that coats that are both 'not entirely useless' and 'not completely ugly' are generally kept in the male-gender sections.

I found this in the boy's section, on the clearance rack.

I'm not too thrilled about the colour, but it's not the worst thing in the world. Obviously, I was okay enough with it to buy it.

I'm glad I did, too. I've been wearing it on every trip out since, usually only the outer shell. See, it's got this zip-out liner that's also a fleece that can be worn on its own. The shell then becomes a slightly-warmer-than-expected lightweight springish jacket. With an MP3 pocket. And a hideaway hood that I haven't even tried yet.

The fleece compresses down nicely, and can fit into one of the smaller compartments of my backpack [which I also never leave home without at this point], so when it gets too cold for just the jacket, I can zip the fleece back into it, and be...less cold. Except 'less cold' isn't really the word for it. Depending on what else I'm wearing, 'too fucking warm' might be a better representation.

On Tuesday, we made a nighttime store trip to get a few more cases of soda before the sale ended. Knowing it was below freezing, I wore one of my hoodies along with this Coat of Warm, thus becoming 'Too Fucking Warm.'

Which isn't always a bad thing, I guess.

Backtracking a bit, to pre-coat days, one of our trips to get soda brought us to this very weird scene:

What appears to have happened is that someone [probably a drunk someone] ended up driving on the sidewalk, flattened the speed limit sign [that would be the object opposite the snow], and then continued to drive down the sidewalk until reaching the grocery store parking lot.

The speed limit there is 25, by the way. Just so you know. So you can be the one person aware of it, because nobody else coming around the corner and trying to hit everyone who crosses there seems to be aware of it.

The last time I was down there during the day time, the tracks weren't quite as obvious. I don't know if they've replaced the sign yet, though.

That would be the 'last time I was down there and paid attention', that is. Which, unfortunately, was probably 'when I took those pictures'. Usually, it's night, although there were two day trips very recently.

The first was where I found out that carrying soda back on my bike hurts my delicate female bottom, and the second was when I bought a nice new bike seat, and found out that the bike store near here is actually pretty competitive in its pricing.

This was my old bike seat -- the one that came with the bike. It'd hurt you, too, I'm sure.

This is the new one. I haven't tried it yet, because it's been too cold.

So cold, the aliens are stopping by and leaving funny patterns in the snow.

Also, I'm wary of riding my bike at night. I wouldn't want to end up a smear on the sidewalk between two wheel ruts on my way to the store to get some more soda, or Yan Yan.

I couldn't help myself. They were just sitting there, looking like a chocolatey dipping sauce/cookie stick kids snack that I used to enjoy. And then I found out that there were entertaining engrishey phrases on the cookie sticks....

Which is almost as entertaining as:

Good home my for my gray ferrel cat, must keep indoors, have vet.

Overlooking the 'my for my' thing as much as possible, 'ferrel'? That's one of two things, a typo for feral, or a typo for Ferrell. The cat's either wild, or Will Ferrell.

I wouldn't keep either of them in my house. The feral one would be upset, and the Ferrell might upset Zombi.

I wouldn't want to upset Zombi.

Wouldn't even want to keep her from stuffing her head so far into Gremlin's [empty] cup of milk that she gets it kinda stuck....

I think that's all the images I wanted to use, except for one.

That'd be the size tag of my new coat.

Maybe I'll get better. I just have to find things I actually want to do, first.

You have my parents to blame for this. Or thank. Whichever you want.