Lets have a good ol' rant

I'll open the rant tag right now.

<rant>
OK don't like to be one of those whiney emo moody crap crap depression bloggers, but this is about as low as I get. I cannot remember the last time all the planets lined up with little laser sights all pointing at me, but right now I have one really big problem and a little annoying problem too and it feels like a whole lot of little naggly ones too.

Yeah I know, there are starving kids in Africa.

So, I've spent the past month or so finally preparing for the "big wipe." My computer has been chugging along like a snail's ass for some months, no doubt infected with countless viruses, spyware, windows bloat, registry mounds and endless crap. So, time to do a wipe. My first reformat ever.

Having found out a week and a half ago that the company who sold us our computer (under warranty still) was under liquidation... (serves the bastards right...) (by the way don't buy from e@pc no matter how many smiley faces there are on the guy's tie... they will cut your warranty)... I took it upon myself to clean up both of our hard drives and reinstall Windows XP myself.

I was worried I might run into trouble formatting a RAID-array hard drive. But no, surprisingly, that was completely smooth sailing and after an hour of hard-formatting, I had a fresh new 160GB hard drive to play with. That was the secondary drive.

Move on to the C drive, the main one with Windows and all the important stuff. That's all backed up, so I go ahead and reinstall Windows XP, which automatically wipes C drive and starts again.

Ahh the smell of a fresh new desktop in the morning. Wait a minute.... NO D DRIVE???? WTF??
After a bit of investigation I find out that, in fact, despite the fact that I (luckily) backed up all my sound drivers, network drivers, modem drivers and all that other stuff, the one thing I didn't know about was that my RAID ARRAY NEEDED A WINDOWS DRIVER... so now I have a brand new computer setup, everything's fine, except I'm missing a 160GB RAID hard drive. Have downloaded drivers from company website. Didn't work. Sent angry email. Waiting...

</rant>
<rant id="2">
Yes I bloody know you can only have one top-level element!

So abut 2 months ago, I bought a mouse. From a shop at uni. I don't think its against the law to name places that piss me off. SmartShop, bottom floor of Union at Melbourne Uni. Don't go there unless it's to return something.

Anyway, bought this mouse. $20. Nice and cheap. Pisses me off to no end, because when you click once, it double-clicks. Long story short, had to take it back because it simply was defective. The guy at the store gave me such a nerve.. "oohh what, you want me to take YOUR word for it??! I'm going to have to get the "engineer" to test it!" "Well do that then, you snooty bastard!"
"Engineer" comes back, yes indeed it is defective. Not a word of apology, just grudgingly accepts my receipt. I guess it was pretty stupid to buy a new mouse from him, especially since I upped my price range to $50.

Now I've got a Logitech cordless mouse. Pretty much the best name you can get in mouses... so wtf happend was it smuggled from Taiwan? The mouse button squeaks (perhaps adding realism?) but more anoyingly, the "long life" batteries... I've had the mouse for 3 weeks now and am on my third set of batteries!!!
Stupid thing just stops working. Yeah I guess I could get rechargable batteries but.... eurhghghh!

</rant>
<rant id="3">

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE.... WOOT. Hopefully I'll do a non-ranty blog about the upcoming movie soon. But right now, I am once again pissed.

Village Cinemas are offering a promotion, if you are in the first 1000 people to book, you win a free towel. That's right, a TOWEL! Sounds very cool.

So first thing I do is, (this is Monday Monday, 18 April) send an email asking a bunch of questions (to Village) because they didn't really make it clear, will it be the first 1000 to book, or will there be a raffle? No response.

But undeterred, me and Mel (who's been a real good sport about this whole thing) raced up to the computer lab, at uni, with our parents credit cards, just especially so we could be in the first 1000 and secure towels. We booked 11 seats too, for the whole group. It was 2pm, one hour after the ordering opened, but we thought we were in.

As I was ordering the screen just went white. So... I called Village up. "Oh yeah, that's been happening a bit lately. Not to worry mate, I got your order here, I'll just send you the details via email."
"I want to order some more, should I do this?"
"Yes, just keep going, and I'll put them all through"
So I book 3 lots of seats, all 3 of them crash to this white screen. Not to worry, eventually, an email comes through with my booking information.

No towels came though. In fact, I don't recall even giving my address. Last night, however, I talked with my friend MagooChris, another HHG fan, who told me a) he got a towel in the mail, b) he booked at 4pm. That's odd, I booked at 2pm and didnt get one.
Two theories here: either a) it was a raffle after all and we just weren't lucky. or b) as I feared, the fact that the stupid machine screwed up means we missed out on a chance to enter the competition.

Now, do recall that I sent an email asking a bunch of questions about the competition on MONDAY, 18 APRIL... Today I got an email. TODAY IS TUESDAY, 26 APRIL... OVER A WEEK LATER.

Thankyou for your inquiry on the Village Cinemas website.

The first 1000 people to make a booking will win one of the towels.

OK so there you have it... stupid computer screws up. We lose again. I'll just add for anyone readin this who has a stake in the towels that its one towel per booking not person. So that's 3 bookings we made, we're owed 3 towels. Therefore if justice is eventually done (which I doubt, but I will be making enquiries), there will only be 3 towels to go around. I got dibs on one, god dammit!

</rant>

Oh and umm, check out this comic Andrew and his friend Luc did.... its hilarious if you go for random:
the neither here not there

"Honey, if you're angry, just squeeze up all your rage into a little ball and release it at an appropriate time. Like when Daddy hit the referee. Do you remember? When Daddy hit the ref?"
- Homer Simpson

Bart: "I know you Homer. You're an emotional guy. Just because you were made last night doesn't mean you'll be mad in the morning."
Homer: "I'LL SHOW YOU MAD IN THE MORNING!"