Car insurance just isn't good enough

So a close friend of mine, who unfortunately lives on the west coast (I'm east coast), was in a really bad car accident. Luckily for him, he made it out a-okay with just minor injuries and has been having constant aches and pains. (at least he has pain medication...yummy!) That'd the good thing about accidents...the medication is AMAZING.

But in all seriousness, car accidents suck, whether it's your fault or not. Generally speaking, it just sucks more if it's your fault. For my friend here...it wasn't his...clearly.

Deadly Crash on Highway 41 (California)

Now I admit, I'm a reckless driver at times. I've never been in an accident, I've only gotten one speeding ticket (and I knock on my wooden desk as I type this). I guess I'm recklessly careful? I use my blinker when I should instead of leaving it on in hopes I EVENTUALLY make the turn. I stop at stop lights and red lights. I speed up at yellow lights because to me it's screaming "Hurry! Speed up before the red light kicks my ass!" But this is besides the point...driving into oncoming traffic? That's just...plain...DUH! I don't know how else to put it. Maybe an epic facepalm would explain my point of view better.

Having a car accident can have only one benefit: if you had a shitty car, and it wasn't your fault and you have insurance...hellooooooo new car! (I'm not calling my friend's car shitty by any means...it was actually a really nice car)

Unfortunately...my friend won't be getting the car...well, vehicle that he wants.

No pewpew tank for you. Better luck next time!

Five Stages of Computer Loss

The hard drive is slowly failing of my now old Dell XPS, and if my little scanner thingy is correct, it still has a couple of weeks of life left on it. It's not a very good laptop, seeing as I've always had problems with it. I play games through it, and its graphics are barely enough to make playing them tolerable. The game I play the most, and I'm sad to admit that I'm one of those addicts, is World of Warcraft. (FOR THE HORDE!) I was in a raid with my guildies doing the Cho'gall fight, which is the last boss of Bastion of Twilight. We haven't downed him yet at that point...sadly, but you know one of the reasons why?

My laptop crashed.

We were about to start another attempt and then all of a sudden, my WoW screen froze (I play in Windowed Mode). Next, my internet window froze...and last, my Ventrilo froze. Lucky for me, I have my raid leader's phone and let him know of my current inability to move my character, and apologize if she happened to run into the boss and randomly pull, thus killing everyone. (Although...that would be rather funny. It's not like I haven't done it before)

It took twelve restarts to get the sucker to work. At that point, the raid was called, so I just went to bed. The events of the repeated restarts went similar to how one may grieve the lost of a loved one...my computer, to me, is considered a loved one. I'm sure any computer user can identify with this if they've had a computer suddenly crash on them.

My night went a little something like this:

It started by having my computer's life flash before my eyes as the windows lock up one by one. I started to click everything to see if I could get any little ounce of life to bounce back on my screen...but alas, it did not work. In fact, it probably made the problem worse. I began muttering, "No no no no no no!" and pressing every button imaginable on my keyboard hoping something will work to the same effect of jumper cables.

Instead of the pressing of keys to try to get something to pop up...this pressing turns into bashing the keys in a violent rage...which of course, never helps. I started getting impatient and began yelling  at my computer, as if it could hear me and would react to what I was saying to it...but all I kept getting was this:

Since my efforts of screaming at it were to no avail, I began trying to work out an agreement with my  computer. I managed to get it running long enough to transfer all of my files to my portable hard drive before it crashed again. So the bargaining worked to some extent I guess. At that point, I really didn't care about it...until I realized I needed my laptop to work on classwork for the remaining of this semester...so it was back to the bargaining.

I was then depressed, because I've had so many memories with this laptop. It's been to my conventions with me, I take it with me to my classes all of the time. Ah, the glorious days of playing a lagfest Starcraft II during Modern Art History...those were the days. I started thinking, "What am I going to do without my laptop?" I loved it so, even with my 20 frames per second with WoW on the lowest settings possible...it was at least manageable!

I fell asleep then that night with horrible nightmares of my laptop not being there, as if it were a human being. I woke up, and saw my laptop staring at me from my desk, blankly...literally, it was turned off. My dad came into the room asking me what I was upset over last night because I was cursing and he could hear me from his bedroom.

I explained to him that my laptop was dying and I didn't know what to do. Then my dad reminds me he's a computer tech and gets discounted computer parts so we can build me a brand new PC with all the bells and whistles.

So I quickly got over the loss of my laptop and accepted the fact that it was dead...because I was getting something shiny and new! Hell yeah!

Then I came to this realization: I have no money to afford the parts even at a dealer discount. DRAT!

Currently, I have my beautiful new PC -AND- a netbook to take with me to my classes. It's been wonderful...and now I can begin to update my blogs again. OH HAPPY DAY!