after coming home from work (where I spent an extra two hours doing some extra work) I continued cleaning in innards of my roommates computer, slept, wrote a few dozen paragraphs about this or that, continued this newest and hopefully most personally intimate diary (what?... want more intimacy?... I'll probably get around to what you might want to know eventually, but if my rambling way of sharing is plucking on your patience, ask questions), and downloaded some software to check out... the installation process continues as I write this... being in an economical mode and having very limited computer space and a relatively slow machine, I try to find software that has as small a footprint as possible and minimal graphic and RAM memory demands and is as free as free gets... currently installing is a virus protection program that says it is free... make that currently running... the interface is wonderfully simple and minimal, which is just right for me... with one folder, one notepad, the net connection, and the scan program running, there is 76% available memory left... 32MB doesn't go very far... anyway, that is what is happening today, right now, in fact... and at an average scan speed of 7-8 files per second, that can take a while... typing here does not seem to be effecting the process, so what else is new?...

hunger... not that hunger is anything new... I experience it regularly... but I am hungry at the moment... I ate last (thinking... ... ... thinking) yesterday, I think... wait, no... I ate a big slice of chocolate cream pie when I got home from work today... so that would be about thirteen hours ago... food in house is limited at the moment... pastas, canned soups, tuna, frozen perogies and vegan patties, rice and some unpleasant-looking leftover pizza my roommate must have order while I was sleeping... that is about it...

the scan speed is up to 10 files per second, no, 11, wait, 12... ummm, 13... no, 14... I wonder if that means it is getting better... probably just dealing with smaller easier to scan files... so far it's been going on for 15 minutes and scanned 2 boot sectors, 103 archives, 124 folders, and 12,672 files... isn't this moment to moment real world daily life diary exciting?... wait, the scan speed dropped to 13 fps... but not to worry, for it continues... I wonder how long McAfee or Norton would take... or if they are any better... this one has more than 17,000 virus definitions in it's library and hopefully will serve the protection purpose... a companion program to it, which will be installed next, is a script scanner that runs in the background and notifies me if any uninitiated scripts are run... sounds like a sensible thing to do... approaching 20 minutes now, 1271 archives, 109 folders, and 16, 671 files have been scanned... no problems so far... we're maintaining 13 fps... aren't you glad you stopped by?...

it is time to consider food again... in real time (as opposed to upload time, which may or may not be different as entries go), it is approaching midnight... deliveries become limited after midnight... being that it is a few minutes to midnight, deliveries have already become limited... pizza, chicken, chinese... times like these I miss NYC...

the roommate's alarm just went off... I suppose he has to work tonight... I suppose I should introduce him and give him a name for this diary... he's known as Rasputin everywhere else, but here I think I will call him Sally... I have no idea why, but I apparently want to confuse myself at the moment... this may pass, but for now Sally is my roommate... maybe I am fantasizing about having a female roommate... maybe the desire for female companionship is growing again... I am generally a heterosexual male human, or at least I find myself in a male human body most attracted to females, particularly petite healthy secure open confident creative intelligent funny adorable comfortable playful altruistic generous wonderful females... I'm far from homophobic, just have a narrow personal libido spectrum... and lately at work, one beautiful young female has been seeking counsel about her sex life, so this may have awakened my long sleeping libido (who has a website of his own, by the way) and lead to this sudden urge to call my roommate Sally... seeing him stumble out of his room freshly awakened, he's not any more attractive to me though...

as 30 minutes approaches, 1360 archives, 214 folders, and 28, 130 files have been scanned... still no problems... and we're up to 15 fps, yay...

since I worked for 10+ hours and slept for almost 6 hours, this has not been a very wonder-filled day, but I bring you the up to the minute events as they are occurring... Eddie, the cat, it meowing a lot... probably because he knows Sally has laid back down and pushed the snooze button for the third time... Eddie is an insatiable glutton... he will almost never leave any food in the bowl and can fill a litter box in no time... the apartment has not had a pleasant odor since he moved in... and he's the dirtiest cat I've ever met... seldom grooms and usually stinks... I keep suggesting a bath to Sally, but it hasn't happened yet... Lil Bit, the other cat, is much smaller and cleaner...

closing in on 40 minutes now, at 16 fps, 1524 archives, 392 folders, and 39,542 files have been scanned... no virual problems, but the program records 1 i/o error... I wonder if that is because I am typing away in this notepad file or because there are a few bad sectors on the hard drive or there is some other reason... time may tell...

ok, after 56 minutes and 24 seconds 1571 archives, 665 folders, and 50, 647 files were scanned and no viral code was found... 3 i/o errors were found and there's no further info about then, but the last time I ran scan disk a few bad sectors were marked so that might be what that is about... anyway, the program works, the computer is clean... we hope... next up, the background script scanner...

but meanwhile, now three hours later, Sally woke and told me his computer was not working again... apparently he opened an email and it created a bunch of pop ups that he couldn't get rid of and voila, virus time... not having a virus protection program on a DSL connection is not a wise move, especially when you use hotmail as a primary email address... so I spent three hours troubleshooting and speaking to the DSL tech support people and we've come to the conclusion that it's broken...

since it's a Gateway computer from Rentway, I'll suggest once again that it be chucked into the nearest creek, but Sally will probably keep it anyway... since there's no WIN98 disk and only drive image disk to reformate the entire computer anytime something simple might need reinstalling, like a driver or DSN or IP or whatever, I'll leave it for him to do... I've spent a few hours each day this week upgrading and working on that machine instead of writing and doing for myself and it was all for naught... now I'll be spending my day off helping him with it tomorrow... get a real computer Sally...

and now, I'm heading elsewhere...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)