Fall of the Machines

For anyone like myself who relies strongly on their computer for social networking and survival in the face of boredom, there are two words that can instantly make a person feel overcome with dread and fear: reformatting Windows.

This weekend was pretty much dominated by my computer woes. It all started on Friday, when a commute absent of traffic and a pleasant day ofwork got me suspicious that I was in for a nice karma kick (remember in Seinfeld when Jerry said his life always breaks even, well I'm the same way). After getting sat in Felicia's section at Ruby Tuesday's later that night, I knew I was doomed.

I have to tip my hat to fate; having my computer die as retribution for good times really didn't cross my mind and I was taken completely by surprise. What happened was I tried to download a helpful UI for Warcraft and was actually playing for a bit before I decided to take a break and restart my computer so the installation could take effect. As Windows tried to shut down, my screen turned black and then the "physical memory dump" window popped up. I figured I would just wait for it to finish, restart my computer, and remove what I figured to be a corrupt UI. But the memory dump never started, and after about five minutes of watching nothing happen, I perhaps sealed my fate and held down the power button for a manual shutdown.

Whether one of the UI's corrupted my files, the installment went terribly wrong, or a manual restart messed up my computer, I'll never know. When I tried to restart to assess the damage, my computer couldn't even load Windows in safe mode. After shooting some pool and getting advice from Jay on Saturday, I transported my dead computer to Kent's to try and repair. That failed, as did reinstalling Windows components. So with no options left to me, I was forced to wipe my harddrive and reformat.

If you've never had the pleasure of reformatting, I highly recommend you fuck your computer up one day just to give it a go. All things considered, the process went relatively fast. Over a span of "just" six hours, I was able to do the following:
- update all my drivers (video, sound, etc) since reformatting leaves you with the absolute basic
- download and install over fifty Windows updates
- reinstall Service pack 2 (long as hell)
- download Mozilla, AIM, Symantec and MSOffice from online
- reinstall Warcraft (4 discs, 6 gigs) and the subsequent 7 patches
***I probably restarted my computer a grand total of 17 times***

Sunday, I went to Jersey to make sure my Mom's computer was working fine and to install the RAM I took out of my computer into my sister's computer (one man's junk is another person's upgrade).

Since I didn't even play well during my Saturday pool session, the only real highlight of the weekend was eating this little Italian place my Mom works at on Haddon Ave. in Collingswood. The brick oven looked like it could turn out a mean pizza or calzone, and the bread was incredible enough to back up those expectations, but I went with the Lobster Ravioli and did not regret it. Plus, I got a few pretzel-filled chocolates from this candy shoppe across the street. It's like a solid chocolate with a pretzel in the middle, and the lady covers them with a wide array of toppings. I got 3 with mini Reeces Peices and 1 with mini Snow Caps. Fucking good.