Batting 1000

So, today went much much worse than I had expected, even taking the previous several days as an example.

It all started off innocently enough, I woke late -- around 2:30 pm since I slept through my noon alarm. I guess I needed the sleep what with all of the insomnia I've had lately. Anyway, as expected, once I was fully awake and not so frustrated with the state of my upgrade project, I managed to remove the stuck CD drive from taxlady's machine. I quickly put in the old CD player that I was going to be put into the server I'm building and which originally came with taxlady's machine in the first place. I connected it all up and... nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. The CD had power and was correctly identified by windows, but I couldn't read anything. No matter what I put into the drive, the computer complained that there was nothing there. Great. Just Great.

I Fiddled with the CD a bit, to no avail, and then my wife mentioned that the drive had gotten a bit wonky before we replaced it. Sometimes she had to open and shut the CD tray several times before the unit would recognize a CD. So, it looks like the disk change sensor in the CD player is busted.

Suddenly it dawns on me that the 7 hours I spent on Thursday trying to get the server machine to boot were attempts to get it to boot from a CD using the very player that I now know is broken. So, one mystery solved, and it means that I have TWO optical drives to attempt to repair or, more likely, throw out. It also means that my wife's machine will spend yet another night in pieces on the kitchen table.

Anyway, by this point I had used up enough time that we had to head out to friend Sandy's place for supper, as I was damned if I wanted to cancel two nights in a row, and both taxlady and I figured we needed some unwinding time to reduce our stress levels.

Supper was simple but very yummy. Even when she's not inspired Sandy is a great cook. We had pork roast with whipped potatos and gravy along with peas. Now, I ADORE whipped potatos, but they're a pain to make so we never have them. I especially love them with gravy but even though I think my wife is a wonderful cook, she's not real successful at making gravy or soup. Thus this simple meal was a delight. Along with two bottles of wine and some fun company, that was all it took to make the stress start to melt away.

Around 1:00 am we took our leave of our wonderful hostess, and I told her I'd make an effort to get her invited to the next Red Dwarf viewing, as she said she really missed the show. We got into our car and headed home, with me looking forward to the first restful night's sleep in days.

As you can tell by the hour this was posted, it didn't happen. Instead, two blocks after heading out, we were in a car accident. The details can be found in taxdragon's post here. Suffice it to say that we are both uninjured but Steve the towtruck man thinks the car is a write-off.

The other things that have gone wrong this last week were all things that I ended up blaming myself for because of percieved bad decisions on my part or ineptitude with tools or the like. This time I'm just numb. We both had our seat-belts on. taxlady had made sure four or five hours had passed since her last glass of wine so she could drive safely, and we were complimented by the towtruck guy about how calmly and rationally we went about handling the situation, both immediately after the impact and as the consequences had time to sink in. It even happened with a pair of police as direct witnesses who had absolutely no doubt that we had done everything right, and the drunk idiot who rear-ended us was in the wrong. There is nothing reasonable that either of us could have or should have done differently that would have avoided the problem. It just happened.

kidlicious73 starts all of his posts with the question "What's good?", as a reminder (I think) to try to always look on the good side of things. I've always agreed with this point of view, but lately I've had real trouble applying it, today more so than most. In fact, it wasn't until I wrote the previous paragraph that I saw anything positive at all. Its a small thing, but its an important one. I think that if I believed in God, I would take this as the message: "Shit happens. Don't blame yourself."

Maybe I've been too hard on myself for the economic problems I've been having, and the fact that all of the old hardware we have all decided to die at once. I've been thinking that Sandy was doing so much better than me. Shes a successfull enterpreneur after all, with her own computer training company. This evening she told me that last year was exceedingly rough on her company and she and her partner only avoided bankruptcy by the narrowest of margins, and things are still looking grim. It might take her years to grow her company back to the success it was two years ago. What was her reaction to this? She's decided to go back to school and finish her BSc. After all, once work picks up again, she won't have the time.

I think there's a lesson there for me.