I truly don't have much time to post right now, but I thought I would mention that about a week ago, my home computer crashed. I knew this was coming and had been fairly good about backing stuff up, but then work got extremely busy and I went a bit crazy downloading stuff from Anna's Archive. This was all just sitting in my Download folder, and in fact I had bought another flashdrive and was going to copy everything the next day (famous last words) whereas that day I was making space on another hard drive in order to free up space on my phone (prior to heading out to Ottawa to see Our Lady Peace and Collective Soul*).
Anyway, Windows decided to do an unauthorized upgrade. (Given how many major issues and slow performance are attributable to Windows upgrades, I think it is probably worse than any virus I've ever dealt with.) This led to a complete hard drive failure. I am sure Bill Gates would say that if I only had left enough free space on the C drive, then it wouldn't have tried to write to corrupted sectors, etc., but it's still completely unacceptable. In fact, this all happened right before my trip to Ottawa, so I was stewing about that the whole way up and back.
On Sunday I removed the hard drive to see how much could be recovered. I took the remaining computer shell over to Staples for electronic recycling and to see if they had any computers in stock that had optical drives, specifically a CD/DVD burner, and they did not. While I knew it was a waste of time, and it was impossible to talk to anyone on the phone!, I went over to the big Best Buy at the Eaton Centre, and they didn't have anything either. They tried to sell me on an external optical drive. As it happens, I have one of those, which I have been using for quite some time since my desktop started failing (it was the second or third bad omen!), but even it is acting up a bit. So I wasn't going to start off with a computer without one! I went one more place with no success, and then I went over to Paradise to see a Seijun Suzuki film called Yumeji. Unfortunately, I didn't like it at all. Then I managed to get over to the Women from Space event on Bathurst.
It was sold out, but I thought I might as well see if they had any tickets at the door. Not only they did have a few spots left, but because I was coming in during the second act, I only paid $15 (not $20). I was there to see Myra Melford, Ingrid Laubrock and Lesley Mok play. Sadly, I found their version of free jazz to be really disappointing and frankly boring. I ended up leaving about 40 minutes in. I'm not exactly sorry I went, but generally I don't like free jazz and I probably should stop going unless it is someone that I know will be somewhat entertaining like Ken Vandermark. On the whole it was not a great day. After all that, I finally broke down and ordered a new computer. I ended up getting a pretty basic model, and I do wish I had been able to get more internal memory, but that meant it was impossible to get the optical drive for some reason. So I will probably be even more reliant on external hard drives than before, though maybe that isn't the worst thing in the world; it will force me to be more disciplined about backing up files.
I'm going to skip over the week. It was a very long week at work. I also realized I had let the deadline slip for the CTRF conference up in Ottawa in May. Technically, I was supposed to have the paper ready by Friday, as well as register. Unfortunately, due to other reasons, I cannot install estimation software like alogit or even the freeware Larch, on my work laptop, so that meant it was a waiting game until the new computer showed up and I could reinstall absolutely everything. (This is really proving to be a drag. I may make a list of everything I had added to my computer and now need to reinstall, and generally restore passwords to accounts, etc.) I did get a one week extension, though this will likely not be enough.
The one thing that I did for fun was go see Performance Review. Outside the March was putting this on in a coffee shop in the Trinity-Bellwood area. Getting there was a drag, and I nearly gave up on the streetcars to take a taxi. I'm glad I didn't as there was a very delayed opening, and the performance didn't actually start until 8:30! In the meantime, you could order coffee or tea and a cookie. It's basically a fictionalized take on the various jobs the playwright (and performer) had in her early to mid twenties, focusing on a particularly bad event in each. It was quite interesting.
Anyway, I was expecting the computer to be delivered on Mon., but it actually came in on Thurs., which was terrific. It's taken a few days to get it mostly where I need it to be, though I still have 5 or 6 key programs that still need to be migrated over. One perhaps surprising bonus is that MailStore is working again. About 4 or 5 months ago (or maybe even more) it stopped working with by Bell email account, which was super annoying. On the plus side, the version of the archive that I copied over (when I knew the computer was dying) covered everything I downloaded before the linkage was no longer supported. I am a bit concerned about merging the two, but there are ways to do it.
I think I need to get that working this afternoon to see if I can find the key to TotalRecorder (and then request a new one because you need a different version with Windows 11. (While I would have preferred to buy a computer with Windows 10, it just wasn't an option...) The other things that may be a bit trickier will be to reinstall Kindle on my new computer, since I want a slightly older version, as well as getting Calibre to work again.
I do have some bad news in that virtually all but not all of the files I copied over (when I turned the old, corrupted hard drive into an external drive) are not viable. On the positive side, I was able to generate a list of all these files, and many I can download again from Anna's archive. It's going to be annoying but at least I have a record of what is currently corrupted.
The other, more positive news is that the weather has improved, and I have started biking to work again. I was in fact going to bike to go swimming in Regent Park, but the swim times moved from 11-1 to 7-10 am. Not at all happy about that. I need to do a few tasks, including dropping off some pants and picking up something at the library, and I might stop in at Distillery to check out the galleries, but I will have to put off 401 Richmond for next weekend. I'm pretty sore, however, and I hope that I am back to my normal comfort level in a couple more weeks. At this point, I am running quite late, so I had better just do a couple of things right now (and risk the rain) and then maybe go swimming this evening at Matty Eckler. I am just going to have to skip a couple of movies I would like to see at Carlton and then hope that Mickey 17 sticks around an extra week at Market Square. (Ironically, one of the movies I am picking up at the library is Rumours that only lasted a week or two at Market Square and TIFF. Hopefully, that doesn't happen to me this time around...)
* After all the trouble I took to get up to Ottawa for this concert, they ended up adding a date at Budweiser Stage. Not too happy about that... It was a good concert, and I particularly liked Collective Soul, and I had a terrific view of the stage, but I am not sure I would have gone had I known they would indeed tour Toronto after all...
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