nice weekends, other news

[netmouse]

So since I last posted a newsy sort of post, I went to Las Vegas and spent a very nice weekend visiting friends and family and attending Human-Computer-Interaction international. Then I came home and found that in the meantime my laptop had gone from poorly to bad. By the end of last week, it wouldn't start: Operating System not found. It's a Dell Inspiron (2500 I think) running XP that we bought in 2001. Bill points out it's an old computer and I should get a new one. It worked pretty well, aside from a rattly fan and the whole crashing problem. I'd like to try to rescue some files off it, especially some pictures from Bill's June road trip.

I might try booting it up from a system disk, and I might try calling Dell. I haven't really tried anything yet.

In the main, since I got back, I've been focusing on getting caught up on work, spending time with Bill and friends, unpacking and catching up on laundry and such, and exercising. I've gained ten pounds since I sprained my ankle in June and with the other weight gain I've experienced since taking this desk job I'm back to the weight I was at last January. Frustrating. I feel like I'm in slightly better shape than then, though, I just need to get back into regular exercise. I'm off sweets now (please if it occurs to you, don't offer me any. thanks.) and trying to improve my diet, learn better foods to deal with the hypoglycemia. I've been doing dance workouts and the physical therapy exercises for my shoulder and knee which I had slacked on, slowly increasing the mobility and strength of my ankle. I'm taking my vitamins. I'm trying to make a habit of these things. Yesterday I rode a bike for the first time since I injured my shoulder last year in February. That felt good.

This weekend was pleasant in general, though quiet. hung out with friends, read books (!) had lunch with mom and dad on Sunday and told them all about going to see the Cirque Du Soliel show Zumanity in Vegas. It was lovely weather. murphyw hung out with thatguychuck Sunday morning and worked on his motorcycle. We went to see The Island in the evening and though it wasn't a terrifically good movie (kind of predictable, with lots of loose ends vis-a-vis explaining sf anomalies, and tons of ad placement) it had pretty people in it and an interesting visual design, and the nearly endless shots of people running made me want to exercise more. :)

It was nice having dinner with markeyisapunk and entourage beforehand, too. I was sorry we didn't get around to helping rikhei move in to her new place, but based on a really lovely message she left on our answering machine, it sounded like she got settled in okay, so that's good.

While in Vegas I got hooked on Firefly, and I've only seen 3 episodes, so I'm hoping to borrow the rest from someone.

I guess that's it for now.

Comments

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

FYI - Sci-Fi channel is showing all of the Firefly episodes in order on Fridays, starting with Serenity last Friday.

And scottij has the DVD set and might be inclined to loan it out.

[metalfatigue]

If you pull the hard drive out of the deceased laptop, I have an adapter that will connect a standard 2.5" laptop IDE drive to a USB port. You can copy off whatever files you want. If the hard drive is dying from bad sectors, use SpinRite first.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Cirque du Soleil *and* Firefly in one weekend? Now, *that's* entertainment :-).

Good luck with the computer. Don't skimp on data recovery, even if it is a pain. I really need a computer that *isn'* up on the shelf, that I can easily get at the guts of, to use for things like temporary drive hookups for testing and recovery.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

While in Vegas I got hooked on Firefly

So this means you'll accompany me to the showing of Serenity when it debuts? (It should be coming out this year, if I recall the previews I saw recently correctly.)

[tshaile.livejournal.com]

I too have the dvd set if you can't score it elsewhere.