BrockLi Soup

I have about 240 screen names in my AIM buddy list. Ya know how many of those people I actually talk to on a regular basis? Probably about a dozen, and that’s counting people I talk to for work. I’ve got a “Friends” group with 30 people in it, all of whom were friends over three years ago and probably haven’t been heard from since. There’s even a “Never Talk To” group (seven people).

Obviously, I don’t need all these people hanging about, but I can’t bring myself to delete them. What if I need to get in touch with them? What if I never manage to find their contact info ever again? What if I don’t recognize a third of the screen names in the list (whoops)?

I was going to clean it out and copy any deleted names into some kind of address book, just in case, but that never happened. Remind me to do that one of these days.

And if you’re in the Never Talk To group…well, maybe YOU should get in touch with ME! How bout them apples!

Eric: research papers suck ass

Me: yup

Me: thankfully, I haven’t had to do one since high school

Me: “This is good practice!” they said.

Eric: really

Me: “You’ll have to do a lot of these in college!” they warned.

Eric: why havent you

Me: “Bullshit!” said I!

Me: And I was right and there was sunshine and puppies

Eric: oooh

Eric: puppies

I hadn’t re-installed Windows on my desktop since I got it last September, putting me just shy of the typical 18-month Windows life expectancy. It had been acting up lately, and I found out the other day that Automatic Updates is going to force Service Pack 2 down sometime in April, so I figured I’d be safer installing it with a clean slate. As I mentioned the other night, I made an SP 2 boot CD for exactly this reason. If you’d like to do the same, instructions are available at Information Week, or I can send you the ISO, as long as you promise you’ve got a license for XP Pro.

Rebuilding a Windows machine is always a pain, but this was probably the easiest I’ve ever had it. I’m really glad I planned ahead and partitioned my drive when I got the machine last September - C: for program files, D: for data. I just had to back up a few things on the D: drive - my Firefox bookmarks were about the most important thing - and have at it. The toughest part is getting everything setup the way you like it, because stupid little things crop up for weeks until you manage to get it all configured just right. Everything feels so clean and sterile, it’s like I’m using someone else’s computer.

The part that really pisses me off is that I can’t find an old version of AIM, so I can’t use DeadAIM. I’m using Gaim at the moment, but I’ve never liked it. I had a lot of problems with it the last time I tried it. If I remember right, the windows were blank when I came back to the machine after using Remote Desktop Connection while I was gone. I imagine it’s a problem between RDC and GTK; maybe I’ll even look for a fix one of these days. If I’m not mistaken, Adium is built on Gaim; someone should do a Windows port, methinks.

Aside from AIM, the rest of my day-to-day stuff is set up. I’ve saved passwords on the sites I frequent and started recreating the shortcuts I had. I’m really glad I didn’t have to go through a time-consuming backup sequence this time around, but it’s still a pain in the neck.