It's been a while since I last wrote. Sometimes this means I've been on the mother of all benders (I hate that word, not for its gay connotations, but for the implication of loss of control...which, when I think about it, is entirely justified, but there you go, I still hate that word).
So have I been on a bender and thus unable to write? Well, yes.. Used every day for I don't know, three or four weeks? Tried half a dozen times to skip a day but easy access to credit and a more-than-willing partner in crime rendered my attempts vapid. So easy to blame another for ones own failings at sobriety hey?
But the real explanation for the lack of words is a technical one. I bought a flash new SSD drive - Solid State Drive a month or more ago, and decided to move to Windows 7 whilst installing it. Now being a broke junkie nine days out of eight I bought the cheapest, which equates to smallest, SSD. 30 GB. Which means that once I'd put Windows 7 Home Premium (all the flavours!) and a couple of basic 'required-to-exist-as-a-virtual-denizen' apps, I had about 3GB left. Now my CS5 iso (ahem) is about 8GB. And I didn't want to put CS4 on just to have to upgrade sooner rather than later.
Yes I know, I can choose to install CS5 to another drive, but half the problem is getting the 8GB iso home - my flashie is only 4GB, so I'll need to rar it into bits and scurry it home over a few days. Funny but the new SSD is really just a big flash drive. I still am not used to the fact it runs giving off practically no heat, is silent, and does not whirr like a 'good' drive, the whirr that tells me it's working when powered on...
I have to be honest and say I've noticed no system improvement - well, I mean W7 boots in a minute unlike this session of XP I'm running (to utilise CS5) on another drive - it takes over 15 minutes to boot to usable status...really ridiculous, time to wipe and restart, or maybe P2V,a s the physical to virtual bots say. I am really enjoying W7, and I have noticed that torrents are ripping down at 500 kb/s - not sure if that's just because I'm choosing popular TV show torrents or if it's a better TCP/IP stack in W7, but getting a full length movie in 12 minutes is quite novel.(Killer Inside Me).
The main reason for publishing today? I am about to hit 1000 shots recorded in my database. Sure there's probably the odd duplicate (note to self:task to do in spare time) but 1000 shots is a milestone both remarkable and depressing. It represents roughly $100,000 in gear. $100k wasted. But that again is nothing compared to my mid 1990s usage, when a grand a day was the price of life. Perhaps I should be proud that it's taken about five years to blow 100k compared to the 90 days it used to take?
Progress?
Reading: Michael Cobley Seeds of Earth - recommended by DQ. On to sequel Orphaned Worlds once I pay the BCC library the fines that have blocked my account! Awaiting Wares for over eight months now - Barnes and Noble are utterly hopeless at the international e-ordering system. I ordered Hylozoic two weeks ago on Amazon and here it sits on my coffee table/old 386, but Wares ordered through B&N in February still hasn't turned up. I've written to R Rucker Sr to advise of their hopelessness, and to my eternal chuffment he responded diplomatically. One cannot cut ones own throat in that industry I guess.
Building - Hawker Fury Still
Listening - Punk and New Wave collection torrent. At work CH had never heard of Adam and the Ants, her excuse being that she was born the year Ant Music hit the shops. Also Expo 86 by Wolf Parade
Starting a compost bin on my garden. Contemplating a house purchase for 600k with S. This small flat is cramped - how do my two neighbours fit into an even smaller studio apartment? That question is endlessly recursive. In Tokyo a man lives in a broom closet and wonders about his neighbour in . But I really feel I do not deserve anything as real as a house. Strange? Or just usual low esteem shite? Parents giving me help with design ideas but they say the plan is ultimately doomed as I don't have minimum critical mass to achieve thermal elimination of nasties.. Mum seemed extra pissed at me tonight - the gear? her pain? how to separate all the interwoven threads of fucked-upness in my emotional life with them.