Funny Thought for the Day

I was reading BYU's Daily Universe as usual and I happened upon a funny quote on the front page. In one of the marriage articles, it says, "And even if you're not [motivated to get married], it's everywhere around you, so the peer pressure is there." Well, there you have it. Because I see people around me getting married, I too must succumb to the pressure and get married. Yeah, right. Not so fast.

P.S. I like how it also mentions that lots of people are "motivated" to getting married. That's BYU for ya.

A Weekend with Family

I've been spending the last few days in Houston and it has been quite enjoyable. It's not often that I get to spend time with the family, especially extended family. Most importantly, I got to see my baby niece, Sophia. She's adorable. It's so much fun to hold her in my arms.

I came to Houston with the expectation of enjoying beautiful sunny weather. Sadly, this hasn't really happened. The first day, it was sunny and humid. I was surprised that Texas had humidity in late November. It didn't last more than a half a day. By the late afternoon, a thunderstorm storm came through; it rained a lot and dropped the temperature about 20 degrees. I was bummed because I had planned to go swimming. I then started looking at the Black Friday sales and got disheartened when there wasn't anything exciting. The Best Buy guy also didn't help the situation. He said that people would start camping a full 18 hours in advance. I wasn't going to miss Thanksgiving dinner to camp out in front of Best Buy! That's crazy.

Anyway, even though I'm on vacation, school is still lingering in the back of my mind. So far, things have gone well. I finished one of my finals and I am finishing my part of various group projects. I hope to have a few of my major school projects taken care of by next week. Now that I think about it, I have one major project that I have not even started on! Oh boy, it's going to be rough. Gotta go!

I'm Sorry, We're Closed

I was going to visit Circuit City Online this morning, but I was greeted with a simple notice telling me that the store was closed. It's funny, with the advent of the Internet, you would think that stores are open 24/7, but I guess this is not true. Oh well, maybe only in heaven will all things be open 24/7.

Laptop Woes

Update (6 Nov)
So, I thought I was close to fixing my laptop. I installed Acronis TrueImage 7.0 on the fresh install of Windows XP Pro. I tried recovering my image (saved on an external hard drive), but Acronis could not recognize my SATA hard drive. Seriously, I've begun to hate this hard drive. Needless to say, I borrowed Diane's laptop (because my drivers weren't installed), downloaded Acronis TrueImage 11.0, burned it to a CD, and then installed it on my computer. Only then was I able to recover my laptop. Actually, I had the backup images from my external hard drive to two DVDs because I couldn't get Acronis to talk with my hard drive. That said, it took me a little while to get Acronis to recover the data (not very intuitive). It was annoying to switch back and forth between the DVDs. So, after another 3 hours, I had my laptop working. Yay!

OK, so I really hate my Gateway Tablet PC (not Gateway's fault, but Microsoft's). Alright, I don't hate it; although, this probably was true about 30 minutes ago. I am getting a new laptop tomorrow and I decided to reformat my Gateway in preparation for the file transfer. Well, I ran into difficulties because I am running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. I installed Acronis TrueImage to try and restore my laptop to my old hard drive settings (Windows XP Tablet Edition). That didn't work. I tried using my Windows XP Pro w/ SP2 CD to reinstall Windows. That didn't work. It said that "setup could not find the hard drive" yada, yada, yada.

My first inclination was that Acronis TrueImage messed up the MBR (master boot record) because the version that I happen to own isn't compatible with Vista. I freak out thinking that I just deleted the partition and no can't install Windows. I spend a really long time (probably an hour or so) trying to figure out why Windows won't install.

I blame Vista, thinking that it's not liking the "downgrade." I conclude that I must pull out my hard drive, enclose it, and then format/partition it on another laptop/desktop. I call up my old roommate, Chris, because he has every piece of hardware known to man. I check out his new apartment (he's married now) and grab the enclosure. I go back to Diane's place to try and put the hard drive in the enclosure.

It doesn't work! The hard drive has a different connector on it. I think to myself, why is Gateway annoying that crap out of me. I don't understand why they have to use their own, proprietary connector for the hard drive. I think to myself, I just need to unscrew a few star screws and then I can pull the connector out. The problem is that I don't have star screws. I call Chris up and tell him that I'm coming back to pick up some screws. This time, I bring my hard drive to show him the problem. Chris wisely points out that I have a SATA hard drive. It uses a different connector (versus the old EIDE connector).

Sadly, I had read something about this on the Internet earlier this evening. However, I discounted it because I didn't believe that my laptop had a SATA drive. Needless to say, I google the SATA drivers and find them on Gateway's website (not Hitachi, the maker of the hard drive). The reason that I couldn't install Windows is because it doesn't natively support SATA hard drives.

After 5 hours, I have now successfully installed Windows XP Pro w/ SP 2. Now, I have to install Acronis TrueImage and see if I can restore the original computer configuration.

Why Does It Smell?

So, I walked upstairs to the 5^th floor restroom to wash my hands. Without fail, as I open the first of two doors, I get a nasty whiff of noxious odors coming from the men's bathroom. I ask myself, "The bathroom has an automatic air freshener. So, why does this bathroom always smell?" Please tell me your thoughts because I'm dying to know. Oh, and while we're on the subject, how does a women's bathroom compare? I know that somebody has to drop the bomb every now and then.

Reselling

Update: I took back the HD-DVD player and bought the next revision up (came with 2 movies).

So, I have recently gotten back into reselling on Craigslist and eBay. It's something that I try and do every now and then. Last winter, I was successful at reselling Nintendo Wiis. I made enough profit to pay for my Wii, 4 WiiMotes, and 2 nunchuks. Right now, I'm selling my iPhone on eBay and it's going to sell for a fair amount. Not bad for the prize I won the other week.

I am also posting on Craigslist a 50" Sanyo Plasma TV, a Toshiba HD-DVD player, and an Acer Laptop. I got a good deal on the TV, but the deal on the HD-DVD player and laptop wasn't as good. I guess Utah has a state law forbidding sales for under cost. So, I may have to return those items because I had to pay extra money for them. :-(

What If This Were True?

Did you ever wonder why websites went down? Now we know.

BYU's Police Beat

You can't beat BYU's Police Beat. Seriously, what other university has such hilarious incidents? Here's a few from today's paper:

Read the Rules

OK, so I've been playing (at least attempting, at times) Scrabble on Facebook (it's called Scrabulous) for the past two weeks or so. Anyway, it's kinda fun, if moves are made every few hours. Otherwise, the game gets pretty slow and I lose interest. The point of this post is to inform you of the "challenge" game that you can play. Basically, you can put down any combination of letters and it's legit so long as the other player(s) doesn't challenge you. If you do get challenged and the word is indeed invalid, you lose your turn. Well, my friend Michele hasn't read the rules (they're available on the board as you play the game), so she thinks I'm totally making up words (which I definitely am) and therefore cheating. If she would only read the rules...


zyruqurj is too a word!

P.S. I played the same trick on Diane, but she wasn't too happy about the fact that I had 70 points on the first play and was going to refuse to play, so I let her in on the "secret." Needless to say, I lost my first turn of play and now will struggle to catch up.