Jiggity Jig

Apparently I've been voluntold for the Ruritan Bluegrass Jamboree thingy they're doing tomorrow. Who on Earth would possibly think it's a good idea to put ME in a kitchen and make me cook all day??? They're selling tickets for like ten dollars apiece, and they're going to try and have ME make the food? Are they insane? I can't cook! I HATE cooking! Can't I man the strobe lights or something? Sheesh!

Okay, good news bad news time. The UAF Bookstore decided they didn't like wasting the space on textbooks, so textbooks can only be bought online now. Really really stupid move. For one thing, the teachers are going to be irritated because a lot of students aren't going to bother buying the books online until classes start, often because they haven't finalized their schedules until that time. For another thing, the only reason students buy from the bookstore in the first place is because it's so easily accessible, and they don't have to wait for their books to get shipped. So now, every student is just buying their textbook from amazon or half.com or ebay or wherever else they can find the book for cheaper (which is pretty much anywhere). All so that the bookstore has more room to sell clothing.

So the good news is, buying my textbooks off of Amazon.com, I managed to get all my textbooks for only about $120.00. The bad news is... I only have two textbooks this semester. Yeah, textbooks are disgustingly expensive even when they're NOT being bought straight from the bookstore.

I got Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat working. So far, I still only have about 25% shot accuracy. I'm not a huge fan of FPS, but I have to admit, I kind of enjoy sniping. And it's also fun blowing things up. Suicide missions are fun too, if you don't die prematurely.

No, Mom, of COURSE I'm not loading violent video games on your computer!

This computer has Windows Vista on it. And I set up a second monitor on the computer, which I'm really enjoying, although I really miss my widescreen monitor.

I've decided I don't much like Vista. It's annoying in that anytime you try to do something it throws a pop-up in your face and says, "The computer's trying to do what you told it to. Are you sure you want to do that?" And you click "YES," and then it says, "Are you REALLY sure?" and you say "YES," and it says, "You do know that it could cause problems with your computer and it might be a virus and it could potentially be detrimental to your system, right?" and you say "YES," and it says, "So you're TOTALLY sure you want to do this?" and you say "YES!!!!!!" And woe betide you if it's a program that accesses the internet, because then it REALLY freaks out!

"Oh my gosh, you know this program you installed accesses the internet?" it says.
"YES."
"You know that means it could download keyloggers or viruses or spyware or trojans or worms?"
"YES."
"It's trying to access the internet now! I think it might be downloading a virus! Are you going to let it do that?"
"YES."
"Are you sure?"
"YES!"
"OH NO, now it's downloading something! I TOLD you it's going to download a virus!!! Do you want me to stop it?"
"YES! ....Wait, I meant NO!"
"No?"
"NO!"
"You're just going to let it download stuff?"
"YES."

Rawr! I appreciate the protection and all, but there's a line, I think....

And then of course, there's the problem with it sucking up all the RAM. This computer has at least as much RAM as mine in Alaska and a pretty good video card, but you wouldn't think it has half as much, from the way it behaves. I mean, World of Warcraft isn't a particularly intense game. You don't need a super-computer for it or anything. But on this machine, even with the graphics turned all the way down, the game lags like it never has on my computer, and mine has all the graphics maxed.

I can say that Vista is very pretty. And shiny. But, as Rob points out, "So is a guardrail when you run into it at 50 miles an hour."