*swears* My PHP project is broken. Damn free hosting. I should know better by now. I could stick it on the Proelium servers and it wouldn't even suck up bandwidth, since the project doesn't involve any images (yet, heh, but that's getting way ahead of myself). I don't want people finding it though. I don't have an index page up on my space at Pro, preferring to shove random junk in there and just let whoever likes explore the stuff. This, though, is special. I don't want to get anybody's hope up. Hence the semi-secret hosting. The server apparently upgraded their version of PHP after having some problems. My stuff still shows. Kinda. It's wiggy and I can't explain it. I barely understand it myself.
I don't want to go back to my house, dammit. That would mean having to move burn the same CD-RW many times to move all that's left of my files to my laptop. Again. I don't want to put more work into that and then have it all just go boom again. It keeps happening. I hate it hate it HATE IT and I want it to stop. What the hell?
I have it just fine for a year (according to my mom, anyway). I finally decide that I have gone far too long without my beloved DOS games and fire one up. It's all good until I have to exit the program. Then problems ensue and my hard drive is dead. It actually rattled afterward! The repair guy (for whom I shall bear children if he asks me, because he is the neurosurgeon for my second brain) gave me the old drive when I picked up the fixed laptop. Having the old broken parts it always cool.
Repair Shop Guy (like the Comic Book Guy from Simpsons, only tr�s better) says it must have suffered some hit or fall. I'm dumbfounded. When the laptop travels with me, it goes into the ample foam padding in which I got it. I never just shove it in a padded bag and swing it around -- after I accidently killed my first laptop, I knew better. So how the hell did I break this laptop's guts if I don't let it take damage?
Anyway. This has sent me into major protective mode. This puppy is getting a firewall and alternative browser (because I hate IE and I hate the popups it allows) burned to CD so they can be installed without connecting to the Internet whatsoever. Padded sleeve for even carrying it carefully downstairs, no going outdoors without a jacket, and I don't really care that I sound like a psycho mother on that last one. Shush. Mine and 'twill be safe, as safe as I can keep it.
I need an old desktop box of some kind so I can play DOS games. All my Infocom and Inform stuff is okay because I can run it in WinFrotz, which is made for Windows. I've never had problems with that. Woot. However, no Paganitzu (which is still the best $3 I ever spent in an electronics store), no Knight Orc (which is great, but might have killed the last hard drive), no Gnome Ranger, no -- aw crap, if I want to play MYST again, I'm going to have to look up help online and install three versions of Quicktime over each other in the right order, aren't I? Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck flying fucking fucks.
I feel better. Profanity, the miracle mental health cure! Although that doesn't explain Tourette's at all. Oops. The theory has flaws. Damn.
That was a 40 gig drive, perhaps barely over 1/4 full. That -- grr. The hard drive rattles, so even if the DOS game didn't hurt the software, that rattle means something shook my baby all night up. Er. Something like that, anyway. What did that? I mean, I used to have it on a TV tray when I would be online while watching television, but I don't think I left it there. I think I was always spooked that the tray would get bumped, and so would leave it on an end table or the back of the sofa cushion, and even then when I knew I was alone, so nobody would sit on it by mistake. I would sometimes carry it to the kitchen with me so I could put it on the counter while I got a glass of water, then go right back to the living room. Its usual home was a desk in my room, shored up to make it sturdier by somewhat wedging a heavy dresser (with full bookshelf on top of it) right next to it. That wouldn't shake. On my lap sometimes, sitting on my futon. When did it get damaged? I never dropped it to the floor that I can recall. Even when I got upset with it not working that day, I gently laid it down and waited for it to cool off while I rather savagely pummeled the pile of laundry on the floor nearby.
Grrr. I don't like this at all. It suddenly bit the dust and I don't know why. If I don't know the cause, I can't prevent it from happening all over again and incurring another repair bill. Dammit!
...later...
Well crap. My PHP project is broken because of the upgraded version of PHP on the server, as I suspected. I went to the site I initially got the script from in order to find a cure. It was actually a forum, so I figured somebody might have had similar problems and reported them, and that person or somebody else might also have posted a fix. Went there, changed the code like they said, and now it's an error message. The script's creator gave the fix herself, and also said that there's a better way to do the thing I wanted now, but she didn't explain how that's done.
And my head is swimmy. I think I'll try to watch Futurama and then call it a night. I'm supposed to get up early and go visit my great-aunt Elaine, who is in a wheelchair and drools horribly. I really hope I don't have to eat there. Aunt Elaine tries to be a cool old lady and she mostly is, but I can't stand to hear her eat. It's just revolting. Good for curbing my appetite for junk food though.
Okay, I am just not an intelligent human being right now. I should quickly tap in that bit I was going to post elsewhere and then let the TV babysit me.