I WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO DISK UTILITY! Twenty minutes on my Mac at work was all that was needed to fix my iPod. YAY!!!!!! I’m in ecstasy. *orgasm!*

Also: a new record, 97 spam comments today. And I haven’t even opened my email client today, there’s probably a hundred more.

UPDATE: The record is now 161.

Well, now that I’ve purged all the bad things that happened today, time to talk about the few rays of sunshine in this utterly crappy day.

1. On my lunch, I ran into Charley at Ray’s Food Place. I was quite tired and needed food badly, so I really wasn’t a very good conversationalist. But it was cool that he talked to me instead of just pretending I wasn’t there. I didn’t notice him, but he yelled at me. Which was cool.

2. I caught two Star Trek episodes tonight, one of them the really good one where Dr. crusher gets stuck in this subspace bubble and everybody starts disappearing. Her interactions with the computer are priceless. “Computer: what is the universe?” ” The universe is a sphere 700 meters in diameter.”

3. I found out that the Dell flat-panel widescreen monitor uses the same panel as the Apple Cinema Display, and is $150 cheaper. It’s definitely not as sexy, but I definitely won’t pay $150 for sexiness alone. And let’s face it, I don’t have that kind of cash. Its $700 for the Apple display, $550 for the Dell one. And in the review I read, they were almost exactly the same. In fact, the Dell display was a bit brighter.

Well, for the moment this is all academic. I don’t think my video card supports the advanced DVI interface that either of the displays use. I think I’m going to have to get a new computer, or at least a new video card in order to use a resolution that large (1680×1050). But still, step one is getting the monitor, step two is using it.

I probably should have told my boss that I have jury duty on Monday, but it really didn’t dawn on me that the 24th was Monday until tonight. I should probably call the number to see if it was canceled. Nah, I’m too lazy. Tomorrow.

Darn, I was checking out some of those really great displays and it doesn’t seem like my video card is capable of powering any of them. Lame. I can’t believe I need a new computer. I want to build another one from scratch, but I’m really weirded out about that new socket 775. It’s supposed to have twice as many pins as the old socket and is supposed to be near impossible to self install. And that processor is going to be at least $300. I simply can’t break it. I succeeded with my first computer building experience, but I don’t know about another one. Well, I just had an amazing thought. Oh, never mind. I was thinking about replacing my motherboard with a new one, forgetting that the processor is inextricably attached to the motherboard. I definitely need some sleep. Maybe I should see how much that North Coast electronics place will cost to build me a new system. Well, basically all a need them to do is to install the motherboard into the chassis and attach the processor and heatsink.

But it impugns my status as an ubergeek to have to have someone else put my computer together. Oh well. I should read about how difficult the installation actually is. Well, I need to go to sleep. I hope tomorrow is better.

I feel vaguely hungry, but I don’t know for what. I finished the amount of sections in my math book that it would take to not be behind (1.5 chapters), but I’m still behind a week’s worth of work. It’s not that the work is difficult at all (I just finished the lengthy and completely pointless chapter on absolute value). Let’s do some problems:

Find the opposite.

-4.

Hmm. I think I’m going to get out my calculator for this one.

Painstakingly writing out all of the pointlessly ridiculously stupid easy questions. On this one section, the question was the answer. You didn’t even have to do any work. Find the opposite of the opposite. Which is the number they give you. So for five minutes all I’m writing is:

15: 3 -> 3
16: -10 -> -10

Well, I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about how easy it is, I should have gotten a better grade on the stupid placement test.

Wednesday I will get more done, but I think I ate too much PEZ today. I kept bribing myself with it and I just couldn’t say no to the cute PEZ dispenser that my mom got me. Thomas left me a comment on my MySpace today. He didn’t say very much, but seemed interested in being friends. I sorta want to send him a message saying that I’m in Brookings every Thursday, but I’m not really sure if I want to hang out with him. He seems sort of immature. But then again, that’s just judging by his MySpace profile. And I have no idea how I come off in my profile. If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that MySpace profiles are not a clear reflection of people’s personalities. I was all into that Philip K. Dick novel yesterday, and now I barely even care how it ends. I’m about 30 pages from finishing it, and I’m also about 20 pages from finishing Frankenstein. Maybe I should do that instead of surfing the Web.

I’ve only been surfing for like 15 minutes anyway. Matt sent me another e-mail wanting to know what’s going on with the web site, and I really don’t have time. Nor do I care. What he wants are like big upgrades, things I don’t have time to do. Well, it’s not so much time as my wrists hurt and I don’t care. And my Internet leisure time has definitely been curtailed, so to fit in all that Web surfing and blog reading, I have to stop working on my web site and his web site, at least until this damn math class is over. I should go in the living room and find something to eat that will assuage my hunger. I just don’t know what I want. My dad made some sort of pork roast thing, but I know that sandwiches made out of that never taste good and are always filled with blood vessels and the like.

Apple is supposed to make some world shattering announcement tomorrow, and as soon as I wake up this morning, it’s going to be all over the Internet. At least I hope. I usually leave the house around 10:30 a.m., and the special developers conference starts at 10. I hope those people bring their damn mobile phones and laptops so they can leak out the information immediately. Or I guess I could watch the webcast, but I don’t think it’s going to be live…and for some reason the broadcasts rarely work on my connection, even though I have three megabit downstream.

Should I send Thomas a message? Eh, maybe later tonight when I’m really bored. I’m going to go into the living room to ignore Matt’s e-mail and work on my math some more until a show I want to watch comes on (probably never).

I am not going to sleep tonight. There is simply too much to do. I took a bunch of photos and a video of me and my iPod in action. Now I’m making a little video that will hopefully be posted later. I have been incredibly busy, for no reason. I guess I should catch you guys up on the last few days when I was lazy and didn’t blog. It’s funny, I blog so much when I have nothing to say but when interesting cool things do happen, I’m busy doing them and not writing them down.

The three reasons I haven’t been blogging, in picture form:

The iPod speaks for itself (it looks like it’s covered in cellophane becuase I made a homemade case for it out of an old CD-ROM sleeve until the case I want ships at the end of the month. It turns out that the Nano is INCREDIBLY prone to scratches, and as soon as I got a noticeable one on the LCD I McGuyvered a case for it. The chain mail took forever to make. That is HUNDREDS of links in those pieces. And I spent hours turning my old burned CDs into playlists for syncing to my iPod.

Thing to catch up on #1: we had a second going away party for Kat at Katie’s house on Friday, and it was really really fun. I felt very stiff and weird in the beginning, like I had somehow interrupted them and wasn’t welcome (not true). I kept thinking to myself how I always overanalyze social situations, but once I had a glass of wine I was fine. And by the end of the night, I had gotten to know the new coworker that is starting sometime soon. We both love reading, which is enough to give anybody in A+ in my book. We just got along really well to. I’m glad Kat isn’t getting replaced by some asshole. Not like anyone can replace her, but still. I was outbid on the computer I was wanting on eBay. And it happened when I was asleep too, which really pissed me off. I’m actually sort of glad. Now I have some money and a bit of a safety cushion. And it’s definitely a big enough monetary safety cushion to consider moving in with misty at the end of October.

Thing to catch up on number #2: Drunken Party:

I went over to Misty’s last night, and we had a bit of fun. First we watched The Wedding Date, which was actually not bad considering how much I was expecting it to totally suck. It was exactly as you would imagine it to be, if you haven’t seen it. It was totally cliché, but with just enough spice to entertain. I mean, it’s not like there’s going to be any sort of plot twist in any movie where Deborah Messing is playing a lead role. So we drank a bit and started playing Never Have I Ever, then Misty started talking about what she wanted in life, and I really didn’t know what to say to her. I don’t know what I want to do with my life either. And I guess it’s cool that we can both admit that. We have both unfortunately teamed up to hate Selena. It really makes me sad because I think that the Selena that I used to know was an amazing person, but when a really cool person starts totally ignoring you and rushing upstairs to fuck their boyfriend for the millionth time instead even saying hello to you then they quickly move to my shit list. Also, it didn’t help her shitlist rank at all when I was over there she was busily getting penetrated and I wanted to ask her if I could plug my iPod and one of the USB ports on the computer in her room to charge my iPod since it had died. It’s the little things that will turn me against people. I’m sure I would totally love her if she started talking to me again, but I don’t think that is going to happen. If you’re reading this Selena, I really don’t hate you. Call me or something sometime! Eh, the damage is probably done. Oh well.

That’s strange, I thought I had so much more to say. I’ve forgotten it all by now. Went too long between posts. Eh, it happens. At least I got the major bases covered.

Must show you guys pics I took of my iPod tonight. I tried to include some items to give you an idea of just how impossibly small it is.

Enjoying the sexiness of the pod.

Now I feel like my cell phone is gigantic.

Look how freaking small that is!

I’m working on this little iPod movie thingy and it just came out! Props to Intel for my 3.0GHz number-crunching sex machine, and Adobe Premiere and Flash for making bit of self-indulgence possible:

Turn up your speakers and check my self-indulgent, amusing ipod commercial out, cuz it’s going to be gone tomorrow. (fyi–the video won’t work on dial-up connections)

The rockout track is “Little L” by Jamiroquai.

I am in love with this cute little toy. I could barely tear myself away from it to take a shower. How will I sleep for 8 hours without it? My eBay bidding has gotten a bit out of control. But I haven’t bid more money than I have though. And I guess I could sell the stuff on eBay after I got it if I ended up totally broke. Hmm. But in other news,

I LOVE MY IPOD NANO SO MUCH!!!!

What is that quote? Beauty is in the details, or something like that? I can’t stress enough how apropos that is to this product. Everything has been painfully thought out. It’s the little things, like when you accidentally unplug your headphones and the iPod senses it and automatically pauses your music. Or this cool game where it plays the first five seconds of a song and you have to guess the title of it as quick as you can. It has the ability to to SO many things! I already uploaded my contact list to it, so every time I need a phone number or e-mail address it will be right with me. And speaking of email, I added the portable version of my e-mail client and web browser to the iPod, so when I’m not at my home computer (at the college or something) I can plug my I played in and check my e-mail, with no logging in, and I have all my old emails back to like 2004 and all my bookmarks for my web browser in it too. This thing had better not get stolen, just for my data’s sake. You can store your to-do list, your calendar, upload notes, and you can view the album art and lyrics for any song you’re playing. And it is SO tiny! The pictures totally don’t do it justice.

In short, it’s amazing. Everyone needs to buy one immediately.