Today, I made a friend. He’s been a friend for a couple of weeks, but we actually went to see a movie today. (The new Coen brothers’ movie is fantastic.) It’s nice to have someone to hang out with occasionally. Lady friend likes to tease me that we’ve started a “bromance.” But I thought one of the reasons you go to college is to meet people and make friends (and drink lots of beer and make fun of the dirty sluts). I’m just doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Sure it’s harder for me than most, because I don’t talk to people very much. And I’m a bit skeptical that there are any people still out there who are worth trusting with my awesomeness. So when I find someone who is as awesome as I am, I can’t let him get away. Maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful thing.

Yesterday, I turned on my computer and got the blue screen of death (the error message seemed to be about some sort of BIOS hardware issue). I restarted and everything was fine. I ran some spyware and virus detection software, and both found nothing. The previous evening, I was at a site that did some weird stuff and I thought maybe they installed something malicious. Then today, my computer wouldn’t start again. Same blue screen error. I tried removing some hardware components, but got nothing.

We decided to go to Best Buy to see what they had for computers. I had seen some laptops online for under $500. We got there and I was less than impressed by everything they had at any price. They all seemed like junk. Then we were looking at the Macs and I started to think that maybe I would just get one of the lowest priced MacBooks. We went to get lunch and then headed up to the Apple Store. I bought the MacBook Pro and got $100 off for being a student.

I’ve been enjoying every minute with this thing. It’s such a better computing experience. I will admit, I was a bit skeptical and unsure about moving away from Windows. But now that I have, I’m really quite happy. I feel like Apple has produced a superb product that is worthy of praise. I’ve been trying to recover my old computer, since there are some files that I hadn’t backed up. I got it working for a little while, but as Windows Update was updating a gazillion files and needing to restart over and over, it started having errors again. It’s dead, Jim.

I think the best part was when I needed to print a document for tomorrow and at first, I didn’t think that 10 year-old HP printer would ever work with my new MacBook. But since I like to try stuff, I connected the printer and when I tried to print the document, it found the printer without any problems.

Our Mr. B has been having some health issues lately. He regurgitates saliva and hasn’t been eating. We took him to the vet and they said it could be a number of different things. They ruled out parasites by extracting a fecal sample (fun job). His blood work didn’t indicate anything serious, but a slightly elevated protein could indicate some sort of infection. They gave him a shot to combat nausea in hopes of getting him to eat again and they told us to try giving him Pepcid AC to calm his stomach acids. Since then he’s been eating chicken and treats, so that’s a good sign. We’re going to monitor him over the weekend and if he goes back to regurgitating and not eating we’ll have to take him to get a chest x-ray. Why don’t they have doggy health insurance? Why isn’t Obama making that happen? How many dogs are uninsured right now? Millions.

On a side note, I decided to say “phucket” and do something I know I will regret and kind of already do. You know what I mean.

Here’s a small list of things I have observed recently while going to school:

• Abandoned car keys near some stairs.
• Abandoned cell phone on a bench.
• Guy on bicycle almost eats it when his front tire dips into the rails in the ground for a trolley. His rear tire flew up into the air behind him. He held it together, though, and I didn’t have to perform CPR.
• Bicycle goes flying by and seconds later I here a snap. I look over and see the guy still pedaling and his chain flapping behind him. Then he looks down and back and tries to figure out what’s going on as his bike is slowing down while he’s pedaling faster.
• At work, all my co-workers communicate on this program called Breeze. It has a whiteboard and someone drew a smiley face vampire. Then someone said a three-year-old could draw better “then” that. I wanted to correct it, but I didn’t. After 30 minutes, someone corrected it, then someone else sarcastically wrote that a three-year-old would be able to discern between the homophones of “then” and “than.” Then I replied that they aren’t homophones. Then someone else replied that they are pronounced the same way if you are AMERICAN. I was pwn3d.
• On my way to school this morning, I drove through a flooded street. As I got closer to campus, I saw a geyser shooting straight up. The construction crew working on a new dorm building apparently broke a water line to create Old Faithful.