Brettia

I’ve rid myself of McAfee Privacy Service. For now, at least. There’s a pretty good chance my dad will reinstall it. And I had to reformat the hard drive, delete everything, and reinstall not only Windows XP, but also Windows 98 SE and all the Hewlett-Packard useless bundled programs first. The Beast of Redmond likes to taunt customers with its licensing practices, it seems, because you can’t install the WinXP “Upgrade” without having a previous version of Windows already installed. Instead, you have to fork over another $100 to get the full version, which is stupid because it is exactly the same as the upgrade, except that it doesn’t search for a previous Windows installation. Urf.

Tonight my friend Tyler may come over to play Magi-Nation, a collectible card game kind of like Pokemon, but better. I can’t judge because I had the fortitude and self-control to not participate in the Poke-your-mom madness. (I nearly had a nervous breakdown because of it, though.) I couldn’t understand the point of collecting pieces of paper. Then I realized that there was more to it, that these seemingly useless scraps of cardboard could be used to have some sort of fun, which I never grasped, either. The GameBoy game wasn’t bad, though. (I played it for nine hours on my friends GB color on the way home from Britain two years ago.)

I still struggle with what kind of PC I want to buy, when I have the money. Things got grimmer when I got an email saying that I would need $300-$500 spending money for my Europe trip…and I had estimated about half that much. Thanks for telling me nine days in advance, that really helps. I hope to come back to the U.S. (after buying minimal souvenirs, being a complete cheapskate, and tipping badly) with around $150-$200. This would require spending less than $10 a day…not likely. I’ll try. But every $20 or so I spend sets getting a new computer back another week or two, so it’s starting to look hopeless.

The one bright spot in my situation is that my dad seems to be behind the whole thing, so I can forgive him for privacy servicing me. There’s always a possibility I’ll be able to negotiate some sort of agreement with my parents on this, so I’ll have to get over it. The problem with my parents is that my dad is indifferent and my mom opposes buying a new system because the one we have is only two years, four months, and twenty-two days old. True, most computers last twice that long, but it’s not my fault they bought a crappy one in the first place. She did say once that I should save up and buy myself a Dell, so I might be able to hold her to that. Urf.

To top off this horrible technology crisis I’m having, my best friend has informed me that he’s getting a new computer AND cable internet access when he moves to another neighborhood next month. It took me half a YEAR and a lot of busy signals to convince my parents that we needed Cox, and now he gets it without doing anything! That’s really frustrating. And he gets a new computer. Sure, his parents’ll probably do the “financially aware” thing and get some discount Dell or something (that’s what mine would do), so he’ll end up in my boat eventually. It still sucks though.

Hope you enjoyed reading this piece of junk…I’m more disillusioned now than I am when I write at 1 AM. Urf.