Stuff

In spite of my computer crashing again today, I got some stuff done. I lost one album that I had just recorded, but since I hadn't done any actual work on it, I don't consider it a loss. Also, I'm now certain that the problem lies entirely with a failing hard drive. I removed and replaced it today just to see how hard it would be--apparently replacing hard drives is a lot easier now than it was 15 years ago--and next week I think I'll stop by Altex and talk to them about getting a new one to replace the old one. If that goes well, I think I'll also upgrade the RAM.

And you know, I knew that hard drive was going to be small--it would have to be to fit in a laptop, but I was still somewhat stunned by just how small it is. The main thing I'm wondering about is if I can use the restore discs that came with the laptop to install the OS on a new drive. I'll run this by the folks at Altex and see what they say.

Well, Bloglines is not going to cease operation after all. They're just going to be taken over by a new owner. However, I have found that Google Reader works better (for me) than Bloglines did. For one thing, it updates almost immediately when a new post is made, unlike Bloglines which updated only a few times a day, it seems. So I think I'll keep using it, but I may go back to using Bloglines just to generate a blogroll.

My son recently picked up a book at the school book fair. They have these a couple of times a year, selling donated books to raise money for new books for the library. So anyway, the book he got is titled The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda. I read some of the books they bring home just to see what's in them, although I tend to avoid the stuff my daughter likes because she reads typical girl stuff (although note: she didn't much care for Twilight). Anyway Origami Yoda is a very cool book. It's told in first-person by a kid named Tommy, who has this weird friend named Dwight who seems stupid but is mostly just socially very awkward and does strange things to put people off. Dwight doesn't get very good grades except in math, in which he makes straight "A's." He is also quite an expert in origami for some reason, and although there are many methods for creating a Yoda available on the internet, he creates one of his own design which he can use as a finger puppet. His Yoda puppet begins giving advice to several of the other kids, and often his advice doesn't seem to make sense until later. The book is a "casebook" of Tommy trying to figure out if the Yoda's advice is for real or if Dwight is just making stuff up and getting lucky. Highly recommended.