Fear the Crab

This morning at The Office, I went to the cafeteria to get breakfast.  It’s an average routine for when I neglect to bring oatmeal or my squishy bowl set, and I had a few dollars squirreled away for such occasions.

Upon receipt of my breakfast special (eggs, bacon, potatoes), I noticed that only one register was in operation, and it was at the espresso bar.  Fair enough, it’s happened before, and all it means is that I will be waiting behind people eager for their fix.

The order in front of me got mixed up in the space between the clerk and the customer, as a mocha shake was created with regular chocolate instead of white as was ordered.  Why the customer elected not to observe the preparation of her drink could be attributed to a lack of attention or caring, but she chose the moment the clerk handed her the shake to question its contents.

All that did was create a slight delay as the clerk had to make the correct mocha shake.  I figured, it’s no big deal for me; I’m only at work.  Yet in the midst of this new preparatory adventure, the clerk asked if anyone in line wanted the mistaken order.

Heck, I’ll take it. Ordinarily I’m a regular coffee guy; black, and nothing funny in it. I don’t mind an occasional espresso, and I do prefer a mocha to a caffe latte (except I’ve grown to hate when baristas feels they have to get all fancy and add stupid cinnamon/chocolate art designs in the foam). I told the clerk to pass it my way, and he seemed grateful enough to charge me half-off. Score!  Bonus!

Smug with my new and cheaply-acquired drink, I made the journey back to The Office. I took a sip with each 5th step, not out of any adherence to a set cadence, but just because that’s how long it took to savor and swallow.

I opened the door to the main hallway with my near-frozen fingers (it’s hard to hold onto a cold shake). I keyed in my security code to The Office door. I turned the handle to open the door, so that I could sit at my desk, eat my breakfast special of eggs, bacon and potatoes, and drink my mocha shake with regular chocolate instead of white.

And as the handle turned enough to open the door, I dropped the fucking shake.

The last couple of weeks have been a fucking hell. Not just any kind of hell, a fucking hell, with no protection. And it was all my fault, so that’s why I’m bitter, because I could have prevented it had I exercised a bit more caution, or more appropriately, anal retentiveness.

First it was discovered at the end of March that I had misplaced all my W-2s for the 2003 work year, plus the Form 1099-INTs that the banks send out with all the interest accumulated. I don’t know how I misplaced it, all I know is that it was all together with the Federal 1040 forms and then it disappeared. It used to be on the dining room table, but then my dad says he told me to take it back and hold onto it until he was ready to process them. Unfortunately, I don’t remember if I did take it back or if I left it on the table. So I turn my room inside out, looking through stacks of loose papers and books and other knick-knacks. I look through my old files, my old folders, the closet, my brother’s room, his closet, all the folders and files and books and binders and shelves and even under the bed. Nada.

So I had to do the next best thing. I had to call up all my employers and ask for copies of W-2s. The Office and The Lab were pretty easy, since it seems I’m not the first to lose a W-2, so they had copies readily available. DFS was a bit more stressful, because I had to call the main office in San Francisco to request a W-2, only to discover that I needed to fax my request in. So I had to wait. I didn’t know how long it would take, so I began preparations to file for an extension.

While this was happening, my laptop died. I mean it died. The hard drive failed, I think for a possible number of reasons. I’d been using the laptop every day for the past 2 years, so perhaps it was its time. Laptops are notorious for placing hard drives next to CPUs, so perhaps the high heat output negatively affected the disks. I was downloading and installing Visual Studio .NET (a legitimate copy from school), and I had forgotten to defragment my hard drive prior to that, so perhaps the disk wrote into some bad sectors, and upon boot it failed to read. So many reasons, or perhaps all of them, contributed to my laptop dying.

Ordinarily it wouldn’t be too bad. Unfortunately, the laptop crash occured at a crucial moment in my school life. I use my laptop to do my assignments, where I download applicable software to run my programming assignments. The crash meant that I no longer had a computer to program, and I wasn’t about to try to dload and possibly corrupt my desktop. So I had to scramble around trying to find someone else who either had the software I was using, or was willing to let me install it temporarily.

Needless to say, it’s been a stressful two weeks.

However, at the end of the two weeks, things worked out. The W-2s came in fast, allowing me to file in time and avoid having to submit an extension. Getting a new hard drive was simple, I just had to go to ByteWare and buy one. My professor offered his computer for me to test my programs on, so that went well.

Repairing my computer was a trial. It was the first time I had ever done something to a computer that involved the hard drive, so I didn’t know what to expect. Taking out the old hard drive was deceptively simple, so simple that at first I was trying to do it the hard way. I tried to remove the disks through the keyboard, when in fact all I had to do was open up a side panel and slide the carriage out. Pop the new disk in, and prepare to partition, format and install the OS.

Partitioning was easy. Formatting was easy, albeit long. But installing the OS was tedious. I heard from a reputable source that I couldn’t use my recovery CD that I got from Dell that came with the laptop. So I pulled a copy of WinXP from one of my friends, used the product key, and installed the OS. Then of course, I had to install all the patches, especially Service Pack 1. But after I downloaded it from the update site, it told me that the product key I had was invalid. Apparently MS put in checks to ensure that only legal copies can update their software, by comparing the product key to a known list of copies or pirated versions. So this meant I had a working copy of XP pro, but I couldn’t install any of the security patches needed to cover up the many holes.

I then discovered that my “reputable source” was an idiot. My recovery CD has a legal copy of WinXP Pro specifically for my laptop, and restores it to factory specs. I didn’t even have to enter the product key. But I had to delete the partition, reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS. I had to do this three times. The first time, I saw the message about the bad key. The second time, I figured maybe I entered the key wrong, so I reinstalled, and that didn’t work. The third time was the final, after my enlightenment by more wizened members of the computer community.

Updates were a cinch, although long, since I had a lot to catch up on. I also didn’t want to install them all at once, because sometimes that has nasty side effects. So I was downloading them one by one, installing each after I got them, and rebooting my computer. Took forever. I spent the whole day getting my laptop back on track.

And then I had to reinstall all the programs and files that I had accumulated over the past 2 years. This was a bit easy, and I cannot stress the importance of regular backups. Had I not saved many of my files to CD, I’d be lost. I suppose if there’s nothing important on the computer, backups aren’t necessary. Like I said, though, I use my laptop for my assignments, and I’ve started to make it a practice to save each one to disk for later retrieval, or as it so happened, in the event of a hard drive head crash. Even on my desktop, I’ve saved photos of friends, stuff that I wrote, even certain legal downloaded applications like ZoneAlarm and virus scanners (only because it’s a bitch to search the web to find them again). I’ve thought about saving stuff like the web pages I created, but if RoadRunner’s servers ever crash, it might be an opportunity to simply remake my web page from scratch. I don’t know. Jury’s still out on that one.

Anyway, I just finished getting my laptop back to “normal” level. It’s not quite the same as when I first got it, but that’s good, because after this reinstall, I only have the programs I want on there, not all the bundled software that usually comes out of the box. In fact, I should have done that for my desktop. It’s not too late to try, although it’d take a couple of days to backup current files and reformat/reinstall the discs. I need to check what reinstallation discs I have, though. Don’t want to start formatting and find out I don’t have that DVD player software anymore.

This morning I dreamt that I had a 10-inch fat centipede in my shoe, while my foot was still in it. I felt something inside, so I took my shoe off and emptied it, and this monster of a centipede fell out. It was dead, according to my dream, so I had no fear of being bit, but it was a disturbing sight and I felt very… uncomfortable. Chills and goosebumps, that sort of thing.

Well, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that yesterday I changed the oil in my truck, all by myself (thank you very much). Since I’m not that mechanically inclined, that was a real feat for me. I also gave my truck a bath, and later that night I went out to D&B’s with a bunch of friends for a little get-together. Maile, James, Mary, Irene, Tolkien, George, Rei, Min, and Maile’s brother Keoni all joined me there. I ate the Jack Daniel’s ribeye steak, and it was very nice. Rei bought me this drink, I think it was called a crowntini, which is like a martini except they use Crown Royal. At least, that’s what I thought I heard above the noise and my inebriated two-beer state. And I don’t know if it was just the way D&B’s made it, but it tasted really strong, like I was drinking a shot of some kind of flavored whisky.

The bad news. I just discovered that because I’m only taking one class this semester (I had dropped ICS 212, if you recall from a previous post), I am not eligible for that student programmer job I was offered. This sucks, because I had already filled out the I-9 and W-4 forms and quit DFS so I could get this one. Now they tell me I can’t have it. I replied to their email notice and explained my situation, what led me to dropping the class, and how I am now unemployed, and asked if there was anything I could do to save this opportunity. One of The Office guys suggested I talk to one of the community colleges and explain my situation, and ask if they can recommend a 3-credit course that I could take, if there is one with open enrollment. It’s already halfway through the semester, though, and I’m worried that even if I can get that extra course, if I’ll be expected to catch up on the workload for that course. People are already taking midterms, so I’d be hard-pressed to make up that much work in a short amount of time. Not to mention the possibility that I may have to attend the class; that would severely cut into the hours I’d have for jobs. Maile is going to try and ask today if there are any courses, and I’m going to call later on my own, so hopefully a clearer path will open up before me once the end of the day draws near.

Changed the oil in my truck today. What normally would have taken less than half an hour turned into a four hour ordeal. First, what I thought was the oil drain plug turned out to be the drain plug for the automatic transmission fluid. I had to go to Toyota to get some more atf, because none of the nearby auto parts stores carried my particular type. While there, I also got an oil filter wrench because the one we had at home was too big.

When I returned home, I refilled the atf to an acceptable level, and drained the correct engine oil. Then I tried to take off the filter. Unfortunately, the filter was on so tightly that no matter what wrench or how much force we used, it wouldn’t come off. Each time I tried to apply some force, I would see my truck move and not the filter. At first I was thinking that perhaps the screw was reversed, but that way didn’t help either. So I figured that perhaps if I didn’t get this filter off, I’d just go in to work and try again later. However, as luck would have it, all that force eventually broke the filter so that now I HAD to replace it.

We finally had to drive a screwdriver into the filter with a hammer and remove it that way. We got to this approach practically 3 hours after pulling and twisting and much cursing. So that came off, I was able to replace the filter and the oil, and now I’m all set.

Some of my co-workers say that the filter was on so tightly because it was factory-installed by some machine instead of a sane person. I just hope the next time I change my oil it won’t be as bad.