Electronic Amnesia

So I woke up this morning and turned my PC on, walking away, only to hear that beep that traditionally means a big screaming system error. Since I have a paper due tomorrow and it's only saved on the PC cause I'm stupid, I hightailed it back to my desk, thoughtfully restraining my (not so) irrational screams of terror and frustration.
My computer sat me down gently, and said,
"CMOS battery error. Press F2 to continue."

Okay, what the hell is a CMOS battery, you damned machine?!
So I waited for it to boot and Googled it.
"Huh, that's funny, my clock says 12:24am. This better not be like the day the Playstation Network thing crashed and I lost some of my trophies," I thought as I looked for relevant information on CMOS batteries.
"Oh, I see, CMOS batteries apparently do important things like run my clock, and make sure it doesn't forget what programs it has installed, or what devices are connected."
Like...my...PRINTER that's been reinstalling itself every day since February?!
(Chris, I am disappointed that you didn't catch that!)
So after I mourned the loss of faith in my boyfriend as the end-all source of computer knowledge (and my personal Mr. Fix-it of all things electronic), I found that I just have to go buy a new one and install it. No biggie.
Except, well, that I'll be leaving town for the weekend soon. And I have a paper due. And my dog is on the downside of "happy and healthy." And Scott's birthday is next week. And, apparently, the longer the computer is off, the more stupid it gets.
Anyway, so I tried to sign on to Facebook to whine about it.

What, invalid security certificate?
"The certificate will not be valid until 4/13/2009 at 7:00 pm?"
So I double-check my clock.
"Wednesday, April 11, 2007."

Well...it still has the right month, anyway...and it hasn't fallen through a wormhole so far back into the past that electricity doesn't exist yet (I loved that about the Y2K scare and some other electronics that I've had do that)
But otherwise, it's hard to be more wrong.
So I logged on to Blogger to complain about it some more (had to accept another security certificate that's "out of date"), of course!
And then my email so that I can send my paper a million ways across the world before it becomes a random scramble of letters and numbers as my computer experiences its' own personal mental apocalypse and inevitably shuts down in unbelievable terror.












*EDIT*
The culprit?

This tiny thing.









My computer case is dusty.  As far as I could tell when I put it back together, it was working fine again.

Troglodyte

As of right now, I'm fairly positive I have the dubious distinction of knowing more about Neanderthals than anyone else you're likely to know. Just saying.
My lower back hurts something fierce, and I'm not particularly sure why. It may or may not have something to do with bending over my Neanderthal texts and daydreaming about troglodytes and cave bears and woolly mammoths and Irish elk and burial rites and hunting practices and eventually narrowly avoiding crashing over said texts and drooling all over books that I have to return to the library. I have startled Max with my sneezing, which I consider vengeance for the many times he's woken me up at three in the morning with his pathetic wheezing squeaky-toy cough. I slept with earplugs last night, not sure if it made a difference, but I woke up an hour before my alarm went off, so I sat at my desk and zoned out in the general direction of a book on Neanderthals, then realized it was almost time to go and I hadn't even gotten dressed yet. I'm sure I did something at some point. Maybe.
By the way, the pronunciation is Knee-AND-er-tall, because I'm part German and I say so. (Although apparently Knee-AND-er-thall is acceptable for non-Germans...)
Which, by the way, is the epitome of lazy naming, since "thal" means "valley" in German, and the first Neanderthal was found in Neander Valley in Germany. Nothing like the giraffe, which is named camelopardis, get it, cause it looks like a long-necked camel, right, with leopard spots? Get it?
But neanderthalensis? That's almost but not quite on par with naming your dog Perro or your dragon Draco or your lion Simba...

I do find it funny, however, that we named the horse Equus ferus, and then we domesticated it and it's not really feral anymore, so we're gonna call it Equus ferus caballus. In my mind, it should be the wild horse that should be named Equus caballus ferus, since we're calling it a feral horse, and we don't really call them domesticated horses anymore, being that there aren't that many wild horses around anymore.

3am and I'm still awake, writing this song

Okay, really not going to start singing pop alt songs in my blog, but I figured the lyrics were apt enough as a title. There was a crane fly buzzing around my room earlier, with a tendency of hovering around my head while I'm lying in bed. I named him Fred, but he was annoying and now he's dead. Fred's death was a blow to our hearts, but Max disrupted the service, coughing in fits and starts. Tomorrow (today?) somebody comes to see the apartment, my room will be clean and I've gotta pay rent. Don't know yet what Miriam will do, her room is dirty, through and through. I don't know why I'm speaking in rhyme, but I think it must be due to the time. I managed today to give a presentation; I'm sure that feat should have shocked the nation. Speaking of feet, I need to repeat, that I love walking barefoot down the street. I need to stop, though. The reason? It'll soon be too hot for bare feet meet concrete season.