(no subject)

Nebraska managed to get through a Wednesday evening without sounding the tornado sirens, so I was left to make my own disasters.

Went to Best Buy and got Spore Creature Making Thingie, and one of those doodads that lets your digital camera's card talk to your computer...um...card reader! Yeah. Card reader was in a bulletproof clamshell that took toolage to open. The package yielded up the reader, instructions, and a 90s-style mini CD with drivers.

Got the reader plugged in what was supposed to be the correct hole, but no joy. "If it doesn't, like, work when you do that?" said the instruction book, "Put the CD in your disk drive and it'll totes set you up." So I put the CD in the drive, but the bit of the drive that holds the CD -- you know, the cup holder -- apparently isn't designed to hold a disk that small. When I shut the drawer, the disk crawled up into the back of the drive and wedged there.

Now the drive opens halfway, gets cross, and shuts on its own. It can't be pulled open any further. The mini disk is nowhere to be seen.

I fear I may have to open up the box to get it out.

The card reader, of course, spontaneously started working perfectly well on its own, and is pretty neat, really. No idea what Spore Creature Doodad is like.

The excitement continues.

Spoke with Windstream's tech support (HELLOOOOOOO DELHI ARE YOU READY TO ROCK!!!), who sent me to HP's tech support. HP will fix the problem for free if I send them my computer. I am reluctant to do this for the obvious not having a goddamn computer while they fix it reason, as well as the it took you fuckers three weeks just to send me the thing in the first place reason, the I don't trust you reason, and the I really hate you reason.

"You have nothing to lose now," says Sharon. "Crack that fucker open."

I chatted online with a Geek Squad guy named Travis, who said they can do it for $60, and probably much less. This means putting the fucker in my car and schlepping it over to Best Buy, which doesn't appeal in much the same way that putting a cat in the car and taking it to the vet doesn't appeal. But it's cheaper than my pshrink and they can actually produce concrete results.

So I think I'll pop the case off when I get home and see if I can do it. If not, hey, it'll already be unplugged, and can go for a ride in the car-car to a nice farm where it can chase rabbits all day.

Well, that was odd.

Came home, had dinner, looked at the computer. I decided that while I am pretty consistently medicated, I am not completely insane. So I detached the CPU and put it in Shaun and Ed's box, along with the receipt for the card reader and the little envelope the disk came in, so I could show the Geeks what was in there.

Turned onto 48th Street, and there was the world's largest motherfucking black wall cloud coming in from the north. Oh goody.

Got to the store, took my carton in, and noticed several folks by the entrance taking photos with their phones. Not of me. Somewhere in the vicinity of 40th and O Streets was...it wasn't a cyclone, but it was cone shaped. Like a giant Dairy Queen cone, upside down and pointing to the ground. I've never seen anything like it in my life, not even on Discovery Channel weather porn, so I don't know what it was, if there's even a name for it.

If there's no name for it, I hereby name it the Larimer Formation. You're welcome.

Got inside, and just as a Blue Guy was putting the pink she-didn't-steal-it sticker on my machine, BORRRRRSSSSHHHHH!!! it started raining like...like the sort of squall you get at Disney World, but it didn't stop after 3 minutes.

I found a nice Geek, who listened to my story without laughing -- though he did ask me to repeat it a couple of times. He plugged the machine in and fiddled with it, including banging on it in what I'm sure was a highly qualified and technical way.

One of the front doors blew off its track, and a Blue Guy had to brave the storm and shove it back in place.

Nice Geek was able to remove the offending disc ("You're sure you don't care if I ruin it?" "I kind of hope you do, really.") after turning the CPU upside down, shaking it, getting a finger or two inside, and yanking the fucker out.

I'm gonna let you make your own joke there.

He tested the machine again, and pronounced it fit for service. No charge. "I didn't do anything, really." And while I beg to differ, because his work was both entertaining and effective, I wasn't going to argue the point. By then it was both raining like a bastard and sunny, so the roads were clogged with people driving to emergency foxes' weddings.

"I wouldn't take that out in the rain, though," Nice Geek said.

"Oh HELL no." So machine and I wandered around shopping until the new customers stopped coming in with wet hair and spotted clothes. I bought SimCity Societies.

Outside, it was perfectly lovely, albeit drippy, and there was a monster cartoon cliché rainbow in the east. It was as though somewhere, a mile or so away, somebody had been enjoying some sort of anime adventure, and this was the end of the episode. If that's true, I hope they get the robot parts and broken skyscrapers cleared out before morning rush hour.

Okay, here it's morning rush 15 minutes, but you know what I mean.