Dell Dimension Deceased
A moment of silence, please, for my Dell 486.
While my new copy of Vampire – The Masquerade: Bloodlines was installing last night (thanks Pooch!), I decided to slap the old Dell 486 back together, plug it in and see what would happen. I disconnected Phobos and moved it out of the way, then brought in the lidless Dell Dimension 486 DX/2-66, which has no name. (Somehow, it seems pointless to name machines that can’t be networked.) Reassembled the drive bays, hooked up all the ribbon cables, plugged in the peripherals, and pressed the magic power button…er, stud, since the button had broken off.
WOOOOO…BOO BOO BOOOO…CHRISTMAS MORRR-NING!
God, you knew I couldn’t resist using that as the title of today’s post, right? I mean, it’s just tailor-made for the wackiness that naturally ensues when one gets out of bed at 3:30 a.m. on Christmas morning, goes to his computer and starts blogging quotes from a story he wrote about ten years ago. Yeah, I couldn’t really sleep tonight—I feel wide awake. It’s not like I’m expecting to wake up to a boatload of presents tomorrow—I’m not even opening any until Tuesday—but I think I’ve figured out what’s going on. I’m just genetically hard-wired to be…well, wired…each Christmas Eve, to the point where sleeping really becomes an exercise in futility. But it’s all fun and games anyway. Might as well enjoy y’self.
So I’m playing beach volleyball earlier tonight, finished my 14-day vacation as Lei Fang, and decided to play my next trip as Tina, the blonde bimbo wrestler from America. I’m not very fond of Tina, but I’ve only played the game as her once so I decided to try again. Besides, I’m on this kick lately of trying to mix up the swimsuit inventory a bit by giving them away to other girls in the game, so they’ll have them in their inventories later. Anyway, I like Kasumi, and she needs some new swimwear bad, so I decide to partner up with her. Now, the personalities of these two are diametrically opposed, so I had to butter her up with gifts before she would accept. Shortly thereafter she had mucho music notes floating above her head, which indicates she’s fond of you. Okay! Let’s team up. “We’ll be the best team ever!” Tina shouts boorishly, waving her boobs around as usual. “I hope I’m good enough for you,” mumbles fragile Kasumi meekly. Ohhhh boy. This will be a vacation to remember.
Okay, so we get out on the…court…er, beach…and start PLAYING to WIN! Aw yeah! …Except we’re barely winning. In the very first game of the vacation, in which the opposing team is always easy to beat so new players don’t get frustrated, we allow the enemy team to score 4 points. WTF is this? We finally come out in the lead and take the trophy. Or the ZackBucks, as the case may be. Fine, fine. I buy Kasumi some kind of pink thing to cheer her up. Pink canvas sneakers, I think. She loves them. (“Waah—! Arigato!”) However, during our second game, she starts acting like she’d rather be off clipping her toenails. She won’t pass to me. She keeps trying to return the ball from stupid places on the court, oftentimes hitting the net. She’s standing right in the ball’s path as the opposing team spikes it toward us, and she just stands there and lets it hit the sand while I come diving in, trying desperately to save it. OKAY, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, KASUMI?
Lah De Dah Delightful…
Last night was my company’s Christmas party. I usually attend every year, although I am not really a party guy. (Okay, let’s face it. I just plain don’t “do” parties.) But we have a pretty small company and there are a number of people here I get along with pretty well, so there’s almost always somebody I can hang around and chat with for the evening. I don’t partake in alcohol, not so much by choice but more because I can’t stand the taste of any of it, so usually I’ll hang around with somebody else from Michigan or another car buff who I can talk shop with.
Anyway, this year we had our party at the fancy-schmancy La Playa resort right on the beach. I decided to really outdo myself so I put on a black button-down shirt, black pants and a pewter jacket. Normally I don’t do formal, either, but I thought I’d try something different. So anyway I drove down to the club at 7:00, bumping Knight Rider tunes in the ol’ Pontiac, and promptly discovered that if I wanted to go to this shindig, I would have to valet my car. Okay, six and a half years of ownership and I have never let a valet touch the Trans Am. Worse yet, I had no cash to tip the guy with. But I left it in the kid’s “capable” hands (praying to God he’d remember to release the parking brake before driving off) and went on in.
The setting was really quite nice, I must say. The evening began with drinks on the terrace, which faced a small inlet from the gulf. Across the water you could see these multimillion-dollar houses all lit up. It was pretty cool. During drinks one of the waitstaff knocked a table over, spilling drinks all over my friend’s feet and breaking about three wine glasses. Yeah, okay. Shortly after that the food was served, so we went inside.
