The funny thing about Miss Bimbo is that I would not have known a thing about it if it weren't for the great hue and cry raised by the media and hyperactive parent groups. It wouldn't have even registered as a blip in my sometimes overzealous search for crappy interactive games online where I can have a pet or dress up a pretty avatar, and essentially waste time. But as soon as I heard about Miss Bimbo, I knew I had to have one. This curvy little creature is totally dependent on me to find her good boyfriends, cute clothes, food and boob jobs. As a 23-year-old woman with a hefty sense of reality, I think I can handle it. And don't get me wrong, I understand why some people are upset. Certainly, the French creator of the site (ironically, nobody really cared until it was translated into English-- I really wonder what the French parents think) hasn't been handling it in the best way:

"Nicolas Jacquart, the 23-year-old Web designer from Tooting, south London, who created it was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying: "It is not a bad influence for young children. They learn to take care of their bimbos. The missions and goals are morally sound and teach children about the real world." (CNN)

Nic, dear, you're not getting the heart of the issue. Don't defend your crappy game, because it's just as silly an image of womanhood as Barbie. I'll give him slack for not being any older than I am and being French, but really, good PR would be to state that since he's not aggressively marketing the game towards little girls, it's really not his responsibility to try and give it a moral message. Because, well, it's not.

This is one of those things in gaming that really gets me annoyed. This idea that it's objectionable games that are destroying our younglings. It's the content of what they're playing, on consoles or computers, that is the gnawing evil at the heart of our youth culture. Give me a break already. I like GTA. I like my Bimbo. I watch Dexter on television, and let's not get started on what ideologies that might promote. The thing is, I have long been able to distinguish reality from fantasy, and in my upbringing, was exposed to things my parents thought were age and maturity-appropriate. Did I always follow their rules? Of course not. I found things to look at that I knew they wouldn't approve of. I read racy books sometimes far before I was "allowed" to. But my parents gave me the tools to make good decisions regarding what I was exposed to. A dialog throughout my childhood about appropriateness, morals, and reality is what shaped me, and made me able to look at a gory, realistic first-person shooter or a Barbie doll, and understand where that image was in relation to the objective reality that I lived in. What I'm saying, in short, is that I was very actively parented. And wow. What a concept.

As a feminist, or even just a concerned woman, I'm supposed to be shocked and appalled by Miss Bimbo. But I'm not, any more than I'm shocked and appalled by GTA, Hot Coffee mod and all. I can't read the news without a large and unhealthy dose of shlock that I don't need, but we don't get on the news media for hyping up the gory, the brutal, or the ironically tragic. We don't say that a culture which normalizes the gruesome and distressing parts of reality by giving them news hype whether or not they deserve it is damaging our children. The news tells us what things are bad, so it's okay to show them then, I guess.

I understand that it isn't black and white. But I don't think my Bimbo is really any more off-putting than my Barbie dolls were. I don't think that needing to feed and take care of her makes her easier to self-identify with. My Bimbo can't even do half the twisted things I came up with for my dolls to try. I'd love it if, when an objectionable game takes the limelight, we'd stop blaming the game and start blaming the media outcry that makes it popular (I bet a bunch of the girls they're so concerned about would, like me, have never have joined the site if the news hadn't covered it as a Big Deal) and start asking the parents to take an active role in discussing content with their children.

Send your kiddies to play Neopets, since you probably aren't concerned about them getting flooded with ad-driven consumer whore messages. Or something else. But let me and my Bimbo Little Shorty sit in our escapist, irony-driven corner of the interwebz, where I can play dress-up and try to land a sugar daddy.

I so rarely talk about newer games because I can so rarely afford newer games. I always wanted to do reviews, but they just don't have much point after a game's been released for over a year.

"Oh, that game was awesome!"

"Yeah, Rowan, we knew about that since last May."

But when one has friends who can afford multiple game systems and purchase or rental of newer games (I heart you guys so very much), I can at least get a glimpse of some things, like Cooking Mama for the Wii. In all her glorious insanity.

To be fair, I was already in love with the DS version (I do not yet own a DS myself, but over the holidays I stole my younger cousin's DS for most of the time we visited) and the concept, however silly and simple, totally appealed to me. Then, in preparation for getting our own copy on the Wii, when we can find a Wii, oh for the love of all that's holy where did all the Wiis go-- tangent. Anyway, I read some reviews. I heard a ton of complaining on how simplistic it was, and a ton of complaining about the sound. The people complaining about the style I can only imagine were not its target audience. Cooking Mama is all about short, sometimes incredibly stupid, minigames. If you don't like those to begin with, why the hell are you playing? As to the sound... also, clearly some confused people. The bitching was about how unintelligible Mama is during her running commentaries on your progress. The naysayers spoke bitterly of the crappy, confusing Engrish mishmash she uses. I knew from those reviews I was going to love this new, speaking version of Mama.

And I was not disappointed. I will note, however, that I played Cooking Mama the day after gallbladder surgery while on pain pills. I'd like to think I still understood largely what was going on, I was just a little slow on the uptake. Whenever you screw up, Mama says "Do not mind!" At first, it's kind of comforting. How sweet, Mama, you don't want me to worry about my mistakes. But then if you suck, it becomes a litany: "Do not mind! Do not mind! Do not mind!" And you start to wonder if maybe Mama does mind. She minds very much.

Some of the games require very little effort. Chopping: Move your controller up and down a bunch. Some require a surprising amount of finesse. Crack the egg: Swing your controller. Not too hard. Whoops, you screwed up. DO NOT MIND! Whoops, too hard again. Not hard enough. Okay, too hard again. There, a good crack. Now hold it over the bowl. Crap.

I adore Mama, and I adore her silly little game. The ability to play head to head on the Wii makes it that much more fun. Not for everyone, I'll grant that, but then again, what is?

I grew up playing computer games, mostly. I was an avid Maxis fan, especially of the titles that weren't so popular, like SimFarm (I lived in Minnesota, okay?) and El-Fish. I played DOS games like Digger and spent hours trying to make the perfect journey in Oregon Trail. Commander Keene was my homeboy. It wasn't until I was in the fifth grade that console gaming really opened up to me. A friend of ours got a Nintendo 64. I had only played very occasional games with friends on the NES, and my computer gaming was of the low-budget we-can't-afford-a-new-graphics-card kind. The N64 was like magic to me. I'd always loved computer games, but our computer was getting older and slower with no signs of upgrade on the horizon, and console gaming was my brave new frontier.

And I still love it. I still find a good game to be magic, to make me squeal like a little girl, but now there's this growing list, like back in the dark old days when I was distraught to find that Windows 3.1 would no longer cut it, of games I am simply too poor to play.

That bites.

The sirensong of console gaming was a promise of opening up a world usually reserved for those with the most expensive computers or the money to blow on hours in a good arcade. The console made gaming accessible. I know I'm dramatizing here, but that rosy vision of it was what sold me in the first place. But now, I feel like non-wealthy casual gamers like me have been given the finger by companies who decided they don't need us. And maybe it's right. Maybe the avid fans and people who can afford it (or, as our middle class does more and more now, fooling themselves into thinking they can afford it) will carry them just fine. But I'm thrifty, or more accurately, a cheap bastard. Shiny new games I'm desperate to play will at most be accessible to me in a few hours on someone else's console. Because I can't keep up. Maybe it'll change, and there's always the Wii, I know. But maybe it's time for the pendulum to swing back towards the computer.

Spore is looking mighty tasty about now.

As at least two of you may have noticed from the previous entry, I'm changing things up a bit. I am really tired of whining about my life. It used to be a great way to vent, now it just makes me feel pathetic and useless. So this is now a blog for snarking, largely about geek things. I am hoping it will be vastly more enjoyable that way.

I was having a conversation with a dear friend today, regarding FFXII, and the gambit system. I will be the first to admit that I probably just suck at it. But I'm also a control freak, and I also love precision of language. Simple "if--then" statements really don't do it for me. I want exciting boolean operators like "and" in there, as well as "then not." I think I deserve them.

But really, what it all comes down to is my deep-seated loathing of video game AI, which makes foes unrelenting but stupid and makes allies, well... stupid and dead. It's just a function of limited programming, I know. I'm not angry with designers for being unable to match my human intelligence with their lines of programming.

I'm just saying that if I have to spend more hours leading some dumb bitch around who invariably gets killed because she's too stupid to find her artificial ass with both programmed hands, I may have a problem. And in FFXII, it just makes me feel bad, since it's theoretically my programming leading them into their doom.

"Penelo, honey don't go over there, it's... it's fucking asleep, Penelo, and it looks like a big rig with fangs. Oh, yeah, poke it. Great idea. Now you're dead. Basch, can we focus on the crisis at hand before you run over that hill? No? Okay, fine. Just great."

On the one hand, it's my fault. On the other hand... there's no common sense gambit in any of the shops I visited.

So here's the rundown, since I haven't updated in forever and those of you who still read this may not know all of it.

I have graduated. Shock. With an English degree. Yeah, liberal arts, bitches. No, I'm not going to serve french fries.

I'm looking for a job. Hopefully an editing one, but I may do more tech support. Not because I want to, but because I'm quite qualified and have excellent references for it, those jobs exist, and it pays well.

I am hopefully going to be sharing a house with friends. It's a really good thing overall, I think, but there's some anxiety about it, naturally. Never done something like it, among other little worries and such.

I am currently self-absorbed. Sorry. I haven't been in touch with people well, I haven't been very social, and really, in the interests of trying to get the rest of my life in order, I'm just trying to take things at a pace I can handle. Doesn't mean I don't want to see anyone, just that I'm not making the calls or pushing for activity.

I need a driver's license. I need to drive. I know this, and because of my particular phobias, knowing it doesn't make it seem any easier. Being behind the wheel of a car scares me shitless. Consistently. I can do it when there aren't a lot of other cars around, but other cars in the equation make me fairly certain I will die.

Life isn't terrible. I'm certainly not unhappy with it, but right now, it's just a lot of anxiety. There's the family, the friends, the inability to juggle time. I'll be a lot happier when I have a better idea of what's going on. I just hope that at some point I will have that better idea.

I know it's finals and I have a paper due. I know I have to move all my belongings to an undetermined location in less than two weeks. I know that I am graduating, and I have other things to worry about. I also know that I read far too much future-based fiction and therefore have a vivid imagination for doom. I know all that.

Still, the honey bee thing really worries me. It sucked when a whole hive of our bees died last winter. Having it on a large scale is scary. I don't want to start fearmongering, this is not the first time bees have died en masse. But I can't help but wonder. So, fellow fiction readers, say the worst happens. Say that the honey bee population dwindles down to next to nothing, our crops stop being pollinated for the most part, and we are reduced to what we don't rely on the bees for- which isn't a whole lot, considering that we even feed our livestock alfalfa, which needs pollination.

Do we adapt to a new diet and deal with the food shortages?

One reason we have these mass bee die-offs is that honey bees are so damn fragile. So do we cyberpunk it and try to genetically engineer new bees, bees resistant to toxins? Or would we be, by making honey bees at least as resistant to toxins as fruit flies or mosquitoes, doing something biologically dangerous? Bees take over the world?

Do we go the other science fiction route and start manufacturing crops that need no silly bee fertilization? What kind of GM supercrops would spring from this, and would they all be something we want in our bodies?

Really, if we lose the bees, what happens next? What's the least dangerous solution?

Holy shit, I'm about to graduate. I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going and I'm about to be out in the world trying to behave like the real adult I'm not sure I am.

It feels frightening, but in a sort of anticlimactic way. My romantic life has flatlined for four years and I've done nothing but write until I have repetitive motion problems for... this anxiety? Mmm, tasty.

Anyway, that said, if anyone wants to come to either one of the ceremonies (due to family, I'm probably going to two) or the party afterwards, just let me know. It's not really that exciting and I'm not sure why anybody would want to, but I'm extending the invite just in case.

((Also, I love reading books where I feel an affinity the creepiest character because it makes me think of my best friend. I heart you, Crake-- er... Tori.))

Okay, I should so be finishing a paper right now, but I just have to get this out there. This isn't even entirely the right crowd for it, but whatever.

No bones about it, I love the internet. I love technology. I would even go so far as to say that if we were able to create virtual interactive worlds with photorealism, a la a Star Trek holodeck, you can bet I'd be there. I love fantasy fulfillment. And I'm equal-opportunity, I believe that people who can engage in safe fulfillment of whatever fantasies they have, even bizarre, morbid, twisted, and sexual ones, probably should be able to. In the privacy of their own home, or in groups of like-minded consenting adults, if it's something racy. I'm not big into eroticising balloon popping or anthropomorphic animals, but hey, whatever gets you off. As long as nobody's hurt, I'm not going to throw stones. Usually.

But here's where technology stops being this shining pretty thing, and starts to develop a nasty, brutal, and whorish side. Anybody who's read enough cyberpunk has seen the fictionalized revolution. The online community where you are your avatar, where plugging in becomes a whole new reality, not just surfing pages on a browser, but truly interacting. Enter Second Life, created by the company Linden Labs. If you haven't heard about it, you should go look it up, or you can trust me and my snarkiness. Second Life is what would happen if you took the Sims, put every aspect of it online, and made it infinitely customizable. And then you put it in the hands of every code-writing or cash-wielding freak out there. Then you pimped it out to corporations as a great way to advertise, to businesses as a means of conducting virtual meetings, to individuals as a way of generating personal income. Second Life is the ugly side of the already ugly cyberpunk futures.

Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash comes close, and predictively so, since it was written before Sims or Second Life. The metaverse described there is nearly as garish and whored out as the face of Second Life. But although Stephenson recognized that a customizable virtual medium would pave the way for avatars that are ten-foot-tall talking penises, he still left the metaverse with some possibilities for dignity. I can't say for certain since I don't play, but I don't think there really are any in Second Life. A lot of pretended dignity, and a few communities who take it all as the big joke it is, but mostly a bunch of wild pornographic imagery that is not well-built and just sort of serves to show how... pathetically sad it all really is. What worries me is that supporters think this should be the new face of the internet, that eventually the pages will be obsolete. I'm not saying the internet as a whole isn't filled with filth, stupidity, or advertising. It is. But Second Life brings that to a whole new level and presents us with one of the nightmares of cyberpunk. And something about that just strikes me as wrong, especially in the way Linden Labs tries to prettify their product and present their largely unmoderated world as something apart from the cesspool that is the internet.

From the Linden Labs mission statement: "Or in other words, we are working to create an online world having the exceptional property that it advances the capabilities of the many people that use it, and by doing so affects and transforms them in a positive way."

Welcome to hell, kiddies. Pray it never becomes the new face of your online interaction.

The title quote is TS Eliot. The next quote is from a short story called "Safe" by an author whose name I can't remember and the anthology is elsewhere so I can't check. It's from Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, but the point really stands on its own:

"Violence never really ends, no more than a symphony ceases to exist once the orchestra has stopped playing; bloodstains and bullet holes, fragments of shattered glass, knife wounds that never heal properly, nightmarish memories that thrash the heart… all fasten themselves like a leech to a person's core and suck away the spirit bit by bit until there's nothing left but a shell that looks like it might once have been a human being.

Drop a pebble in a pool of water, and the vibrations ripple outward in concentric circles. Some physicists claim that the ripples continue even after they can no longer be seen.

Ripples continue.

A symphony does not cease.

And violence never really ends."

I made a post to a journal nearly identical to this some years back. It's time for another one, because I don't like to try and talk out what I can't explain out loud. I don't like to have to say face to face to anyone that the world is a scary place. I like to make morbid jokes, because the joking makes it easier. I like to try for a shell between me and what I know I could feel.

April has a superstitious stigma for me. I know that tragedy happens, time and again, in other months. I know that. But I've seen such clusters of everything from the slightly sad to the truly terrible center around April, and always hanging over the month is, for me, a sense of dread. The day of the Columbine shooting, I sobbed the entire day. I didn't know a single person in Littleton Colorado, and people were confused as to why it hit me so hard. I was embarrassed, myself, because I got the feeling that people thought I was silly for empathizing that way. I have since learned to wear my heart on my sleeve less, and I have learned to close myself to tragedy. But I feel the need to note that I do still feel it, and as much as I love trying hard to be a cold bitch, there are things we ought to feel. Mainly because it proves us human, not because it helps us make any sense of the world. There is no making sense of what happened at Virginia Tech. We can try to understand its elements, try to prevent it from happening again, but when something breaks so badly inside a person, it may not be any particular combination of things that we could pinpoint. I'm not sure that even if we knew what made this particular person shatter inside that we could ever apply the lesson again precisely.

I don't know a single person who is close to the event, but if I think about it for too long, I'll be sobbing. I'm writing about it because I can't really come at it directly. I'm posting it public because it's the only way I'm probably going to share anything meaningful about this. The only thing I can think to take away that isn't complete tragedy is that assurance that as long as we can feel something when this happens, it is still an abnormality and a tragedy. If we have an emotional response and if we grieve, maybe we can help to slow the way that violence seems to breed itself over and over again.

It isn't fair. It doesn't make sense. My heart goes out to the people involved, and that sounds trite enough on its own without me trying to say anything else about them.

It is embarrassing to feel this uncreative. Whine, bitch, moan, I know. But for a good week and a half here, I have been stressed and in a rut. I have plenty I should be doing, but the idea of doing any of it just paralyzes me.

The stress is inevitable. It's not coming from any one source, some of it is my fault and some of it isn't, but that isn't want I want to talk about here. What I want is to try and understand what it is that stifles all desire to do things I want and need to do. I have been trying hard to cut down distractions. I don't watch so much TV these days, I've been making a concerted effort to turn it off. I am not going out and gallivanting all over, I'm not having bunches of friends over to distract me. But I still end up physically and mentally exhausted, and I can't show up at the page to write or draw. I can't conceive of actually pulling out my beading materials and making a necklace, or painting one of the figures I've promised to, or... much of anything, really. I've tried just relaxing in an attempt to recharge, but that doesn't manifest in suddenly having energy or inspiration.

Also, something about April just blows. April makes for flat out badness for reasons I don't comprehend.

Anyway. Suggestions on regaining clarity, focus, and creative juices are welcome.

So I felt like updating, opened this window, and then got slammed by work. I now have a migraine and no longer feel like updating, but I figure I should. I'm alive, just so y'all know. There.

I have to share this. I'm at work, and I got a call today, and had to, in all seriousness, enter the following ticket:

"User is a professor in dept. of physics and astronomy, is involved in a program involving the company Raydiance, who are bringing a high-powered laser to campus for demonstration, and this laser will need to connect directly to the internet. Jack McIver is in charge of the program at UNM. They want to set up a conference call involving this professor, Jack McIver, the company, and someone from our technical staff to discuss issues of firewalls and other security that might prevent this laser from interfacing with the internet."

That's right: high-power internet lasers, coming to a campus near you.

There was a TICK in my keyboard. A TICK. I visited my mom earlier, and the dogs sometimes bring them in. It must have hitched a ride. AHHHH! It did not look like it had fed, thank goodness, but that means it was ON me or my belongings. Then, it crawled over the edge of my computer, and before I could do anything, it went into my laptop keyboard. I spent half an hour trying frantically to get the bugger out because I couldn't stand the thought of that creepy crawly nasty bloodsucking monster inside my computer and in my room and ALIVE... *shiver* So finally I decided to use a pin to just clean out in between the keys, since there's an accumulation of pet hair and crud there anyway, and made so much commotion in there he crawled out and I had tissue paper waiting and I caught the bugger! And now he's dead and gone.

I felt like I just slayed the dragon.

I am unnecessarily giddy. I think it has more to do with sleep dep than anything. I am spending time not thinking about my future at all because every time I do I get this sick sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'm in the support center and I swear I smell burning brakes. Someone's car must be real unhappy outside. An hour and a half, and hour and a half... then freedom. Then a nap, maybe so I can reassemble sanity. Not that any of this is important or relevant or even entertaining. Just half-awake rambling and I'm SOOO going to stop now.

Today has not been good. In fact, I've hated today. It's just barely half-over, and really, it needs to be done. I'm writing this now, at work, in order to try and keep some semblance of sanity by talking things out, as it were, so I don't have a meltdown right here in the support center.

The first thing is that everything is amplified right now, since apparently I'm hormonal as all hell and super-PMSy. Great. Whatever, right? So I cry over Hallmark commercials, I'm more tired, and I'm breaking out. Used to it. But that makes everything feel ten times worse.

Second, I am in pain. I'm taking tumbling because I want to and it's good for me, but I really, really suck at it. Like, developmentally delayed suck at it. I've been limping all day because yesterday I jammed my toe really bad. Not to mention the crunching of my neck enough to make it super super sore.

So, hormonal, tired, in pain. And what am I greeted with in both email accounts when I get back to work after class and lunch? A message saying I didn't even make it to the interview process for the JET program. It's their policy not to give specific reasons. I won't ever know why I wasn't good enough, just that I wasn't. I wanted this more than I've wanted to do just about anything, and I failed. I was rejected outright. I can sit and imagine reasons; none of them are comforting. I know I've talked about other options, but right now, I feel like too much of a failure to think about them rationally. I just need a bit to sulk, and then I'll try to think about other plans.

I want to bawl right now, and I have to cheerfully answer phone calls. Two and a half more hours. I hate today.

So here I am in Colorado. We outraced a storm to get here, and boy is it good we did. Today it snowed and snowed and snowed. Man, I love snow. So I played in the snow today, fine and dandy. I also went sledding. Note: No matter how awesome the snow is, sleds are still thin pieces of plastic and rocks on hills are not ass-friendly.

Then I started feeling icky, which then meant feeling grouchy. So there I am with an upset stomach, a bruised rear, and to cap it off I'm tired, and then it just went downhill from there, snarkiness ensued. I should be doing something that isn't just sitting in front of the computer, but I'm not really feeling up to it.

I'm overall happy, just currently more prickly than usual.

School: I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have two things to do for finals and then I have my freedom. It is glorious. After all the severe stress and all the issues, I can sit back and do something else for a while. I never have to do Old English again if I don't choose to. Next semester is looking good. Not easy, but more full of things I actually give a shit about doing. I have to prepare some things for it yet, but I feel optimistic about it already, which is a supernice feeling.

Work: I don't have to go for my entire break. That's the good thing. The rest of it, well... eh. It's work. A while back, we had our little evaluations. We were supposed to receive summaries of them afterwards. During mine, I was offered the chance for promotion with a dollar raise. I haven't gotten the writeup yet and the promotion hasn't even been mentioned. I had the carrot dangled and I started doing things to prove it was a good idea to promote me and everything. And that's as far as it has gone, so I'm a little bummed.

Romance: Haha. Stress and hormones make me feel more inclined to just go tackle someone I vaguely like for the pure fun of it. Like suddenly the whorish switch goes on in my brain. That said, outside of flirting, very occasionally, nothing really happens any more. My romantic life has flatlined. Nobody's pursuing me, I don't have anyone to pursue. Gonna be alone and generically virginal forever.

Holidays: I hate making choices about how to spend time with one set of parents or the other. I wonder what a cohesive family unit is like. Grrg.

Life: I'm doing okay. Could be slightly better, but could be lots worse. This semester has been hell, and from here I think things are looking up.

I am not really a hacker. I've actually had to explain this a fair amount recently for various reasons. If anything, I'm hacker ultra-lite, low calorie, etc. I like the concepts, I have a very limited set of the skillz and I have about the right mentality. That's it. I don't actively hack much of anything. This said, I'm getting the distinct impression that those of us on the fringe and a little more towards the white hat end of the spectrum are better off. Hackers and the Cult of Caffeine go hand in hand. That's fine. It's the same with students. Caffeine is good, it makes for productivity. But, you know, most of us don't go insane with it. I've never thought "gee, if I brew my coffee with VODKA, it'll pack a better punch."

That said, I really would like to learn more. That would, of course, require having time. Hahaahahaha. Which brings me to my next topic: I hate school. Hate hate hate with hate sauce. Soooo much stress right now. Aaaaagghhhhh.

My ethernet port has gone bad. This means that an important component of my motherboard has gone bad. This means that I am using one of the rogue wireless connections to get online. So I could spend over an hour on Dell tech support chat doing something that should have been done in fifteen minutes.

To Dell: Really, guys, I'm not a fucking retard. In fact, I can prove to you I'm not a fucking retard by doing every single bit of the troubleshooting on your nice little script, telling you about it, and then performing some steps you don't even have on there. When I tell you I have performed a step and can describe precisely what happened, please don't make me do it a third time. It's lucky I had a third goddamn known good network cable around to try because hell, we know that testing two extensively can't be good enough. I understand what it's like to make someone go through the motions again. I even know how to do it in a way that makes them feel better and doesn't insult their intelligence. That's why the tech support I give is good, and yours is painful.

Thank goodness for warranty, anyway. It means they have to send someone to me with a new motherboard and put it in. I'm gonna be glued to my cell phone, since I'm terrified I'll miss the call. Because of further retardedness, I have to have them meet me in the building I work in to fix it, which is kind of funny and sad to me all at once.

This is so not what I need right now. I have so much work to do, and now I gotta back all my shit up just in case and pray I can get a new motherboard without severe issues.