Two sad, sad stories.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got a new computer. Yay?

No.

Vista is a sack of poop. Bloated poop. I couldn't tell which apps were necessary and which were just nice ones--what if I deleted Mediacenter and lost my sole opportunity to use the spiffy remote that came with the computer?

I also decided to prepare for my education at a school widely acknowledged as a geek haven and install ubuntu--more specifically, Jaunty. Yes, I picked ubuntu because of its trove of delightful flavor names. Jaunty Jackalope, Dapper Drake, Intrepid Ibex? These people should be naming cars. Or pro wrestlers. Or strippers. Wouldn't you handsomely tip someone called Gutsy Gibbon?

Anyhow, I installed ubuntu. Then, since the disk I was using was made by my old, decrepit computer, there was some kind of error. So I removed ubuntu. Then something went insanely wrong and I couldn't access either system of my dual boot setup. So0oo I installed ubuntu over the Vista partition, booted up vista from the recovery partition--and vista failed. So I was so fed up that I just installed ubuntu over the whole thing and called it a good day.

Unfortunately, ubuntu has its errors, chief among which are a failure to support internal microphones and initial errors with audio output. Besides, I couldn't use the fingerprint scanner anymore. So I spent three days playing with config files and flaying my computer alive with a redonkulous amount of reboots. And..now I am awaiting the delivery of my Vista recovery CD from HP tech support.

Yes, I know what I said in my last post, but I didn't have to pay since my computer is..5 days old and about as chipper as a dentureless octogenarian.

Well, I'll just wait for that CD, then attempt a dual boot again so I can record facebook videos (and piano videos) without wanting to pull my hair out. Stay posted.


Story #2
I celebrated my 18th birthday with the most terrifying experience of my life*.

I gotta admit, I don't put much stock by birthdays. I haven't had a party in four years and I really don't mind. It's just another day.

Still, I have to admit that I do harbor this secret desire for everything to go perfectly that day. Unfortunately for me, that didn't happen.

I planned to catch a bus to see one of my friends. I took careful precautions to look up the directions on Google and even wrote down the times and everything. But when I started to look for a bus stop, I realized that at the intersection Google told me about had four bus stops.

This was my first brush with public transportation in the US. In Japan, I'd had Quail and two other experienced international travelers with me. But I figured I was an adult and could do it myself.

Then I realized that the bus stops had signs with numbers on them. Duh. The one across the street from me had a "62" sign. Success! I looked no further.

Big, big mistake.

I sat down and awaited my 12:42 (isn't that great? Google had it down to exact minutes) bus, but I figured that nothing would ever be exactly on time. Still, I kept pulling out my phone to check, nervous about this whole "taking the bus" idea actually working.

I pulled out my phone exactly as it ticked from 12:41 to 12:42, looked to the left, and saw a bus approaching. Ecstatic, I hopped on the bus, now fully convinced that Google was, in fact, God. I looked up after the estimated 7 minutes but realized that I was nowhere near my destination. Figuring that something could have added to the travel time (such as the 10 stops the driver made to let other people off), I went back to reading my book. Or I tried. I was so nervous that something was going wrong that I gave up and stared out the window.

I'm not very good with directions. I'm a "turn right here, turn left there" kind of person. I don't do all the "left on Murphy and right on Oak" stuff. But I did know that I was definitely not where I needed to be. The bus was going deeper and deeper into the seedy area of downtown.

I summoned my courage and asked the bus driver about my stop. He laughed.

Uh oh.

I had gotten on bus 62 at 12:42 exactly as my written directions had said--but somehow it was the opposite direction.

I got off the bus into a blistering hot day on an unshaded residential area. I made a call for a rescue, but had to wait 20 minutes before I could be picked up. I walked around the street, trying to look like I had a place to go. I couldn't find a store to go into or a side street close enough to the main street that didn't look like a haven for unsavories. I sat down at the bus stop and tried to read, but the hot sun cracked down on me like a baseball bat on a squishy watermelon. So I resumed walking around.

Let's just say the attention of some passerby made me EXTREMELY nervous. And scared out of my mind. Maybe someone more used to the grittiness of east side wouldn't have cared at all, or at least been as sensitive to it as I was. But in the end, I got out of downtown without mishap. And I definitely learned a valuable life lesson.

Don't trust a ho. Even if it's named Gutsy Google.

(I still can't figure out how the times and the buses matched up so PERFECTLY WRONG. Well, it'll be better next time. Btw, no offense intended to Google with the closing statement, but I couldn't figure out a nicely alliterative stripper name for "my own foolishness").

*yeah, not really.