Monday, July 16, 2007

Better living through technology


Sometimes you have to love modern technology. I went out and bought a new printer this weekend. Not because I had an issue with my old one, which was a ten year old HP that simply would never fail. I’ll still hold on to it just because it is such a workhorse. No, what happened is that my new laptop for some reason doesn’t have a parallel port so I literally could not connect my old printer to my new laptop. So I went out and bought a new HP printer (which also doubles as a copier and a scanner) and when I went to hook it up yesterday I discovered that HP in its infinite wisdom decided to sell it without a USB cable. Which means that I replaced one printer that I couldn’t connect with my laptop with another printer that I couldn’t attach to my laptop. Would it be that much of a challenge to include the cable in the packaging?

Oh well, one trip to Best Buy later and it is up and running. I’m looking forward to actually having a scanner. This means that I can post all of these pictures of myself from back in the days before digital cameras. Not sure if that would be a good thing or not. Plus, I could probably break down and just scan the magazine articles that I like and not have half of my closets filled with back issues. Seriously, I found copies of Writer’s Digest from 1993 last night during another ill-fated attempt to organize my life.

In other news, I found out the results of the Notre Dame ticket lottery and as opposed to last year I actually won tickets to a game. Of the five games I asked for I only one ticket for one, which is the Duke-Notre Dame game. Because when I think of epic football rivalries I think of Duke-Notre Dame. Plus, it’s the last home game of the season so I’ll get to relive the experience of freezing my ass off during the Rutgers game while wondering why several of my classmates had disappeared.

To be honest, the Duke-Notre Dame game is going to be a rather awkward experience for me. I’ve never been to a Duke game where I wasn’t cheering for Duke. Not even during a Duke-Illinois game when I was technically an Illinois senior. Everyone knows that I did not take a single exam at ND without wearing something that said Duke on it, often several layers if I felt that I needed some additional luck. But that said, those bastards have rejected me from every school up to and including the college of divinity so I hope ND crushes them. Not that it should be a major challenge.

(Note to the usual suspects: as always I have two tickets and there is only one of me so if anyone wants to join me at the game, or the Backer, which is probably more likely, let me know.)

One last note for the night. In this month’s issue of Esquire, featuring a cover story on John Edwards and a rather sub-par essay by Chuck Klosterman, Julie Delpy is featured with a piece on 8 Things You Do Not Know About Women. This makes me happy for two very different reasons. The first is that I consider her to be the most beautiful and amazing woman in the world and she still tops my list of Perfect Mates so anything that brings her more publicity is a good thing. The other reason is her 2nd point in her essay “We only want to date guys who can troubleshoot computers. The broken laptop is the leaky faucet of the twenty-first century.” This means that I have a skill that Julie Delpy finds attractive. I might just have a chance after all.

(Ok three reasons. It gives me a chance to post a picture of her to my blog. It classes the place up a little.)

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