My compy is well beyond the warranty period, and even beyond the age of the recall on the defective video processor soldering of that era. So a couple weeks ago when Humpty's video wigged out for the second time in his distinguished career, I figured that was the end. I was being forced by fate to buy a new computer. Oh well.
But then I found a company online that was reportedly able to repair such problems for $50 plus shipping. They only want the logic board though, so I disassembled Humpty (using instructions printed off the internet) and sent it in. And this week it came back to me!
Then I had to reassemble it. From this:
To this:
It worked! (Yay!) And I even had a dozen screws left over!
of 2008. And I haven't said anything for far too long. But I have been having a fairly uneventful life, with little worth commenting on. I mean besides finishing my first quarter in the new program, seeing my sister for the first time in two years, meeting her fiance, going to their wedding, doing Christmas with the whole family, flying across the ocean to see my sweetie, getting engaged, coming back to school late, getting a bad stomach flu, then having my compy die on me, and having an impromptu whole family reunion last weekend, there hasn't been much happening with me. And most of my readers already know about those things anyway.
P.S. You may have noticed that I've moved this blog to my own domain. I'm also now running a proxified version (echo.discurs.us/fieldandgarden) so friends in China can see it without a proxy setup. (Yay!)
I am clearly not doing a very good job of keeping up with my posting quota, so I am resurrecting the yellow card questions. Yay!
And we need a new theme song! I nominate "我愿意" ("I am willing") originally sung by Wang Fei (王菲, aka Faye Wong), but lots of others have done covers. I recommend you start the video playing, but don't look at it for a minute, just listen. Then listen and watch for a very different experience.
I have a translation posted on my other blog, if you're curious.
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, eagerly anticipating for the past umpteen months, willing to read, wanting to read, waiting to read: the all new 8th yellow card question! (Okay so it's not all new, since it's been there in the virtual deck this whole time, but it's the all new time it is appearing here, on this blog, in special blockquoted yellow on green background, as opposed to the black on yellow background, see. Believe me, it really is kinda all new, so be excited.)
And here it is!
If the whole world were listening, what would you say?
I honestly haven't a clue what I should say, but from the perspective of behavioral observation, I think a highly relevant data set is the corpus of blog posts I have written. Now, we must qualify this by noting that in practice, the whole world is not listening, or even reading, but in principle, any member of the world population on this side of the digital divide could wander through, and in fact a non-negligible portion of site hits come from foreign lands like Tennessee and Canada. They come looking for pictures of chickens or donkey riders, and seeking information about "umlatt" and holey jeans, and we do our best to meet their critical needs. It is for this reason (the benefit of lost internet travellers) that we have devoted so much of our time to wandering, the internet, and the world, alongside the essentials like food and underwear. Always be prepared, as they say. And I do all I can time and weather permitting, to help the whole world out.
A year and a half ago, I joined the social music revolution. World peace and harmony through sympathetic vibrations, you know? Oh wait. That's not quite right. It promised to connect me with people who like the same kind of music as me. The best part is it didn't require marching in the streets or hiding in muddy fortifications.
I've posted some more photos, of our time in Dandong. It's a really nice city, with a river (the Yalu River) that's clean enough to swim in. Angie's dad swims across the river a few times a week, and I went with him a couple times. You're apparently allowed to wade in the shallows on the North Korean side, but not get all the way out of the water.
There are lots of monuments to anti-American efforts and Sino-Korean relations in the city. There's two bridges next to each other, one complete and the other half-destroyed by American forces during the Korean war, kept up as a war memorial. There's also a big "Counter-America Assist-Korea Memorial Museum", that still has a lot of anti-American propaganda. But actual anti-American sentiment seems to have waned greatly.
Also, if your Pirate Talk is a little rusty, be sure to brush up on it today. (If you are older than 45, younger than 21, a feminist or an impressionable male, you should only watch the first half, but that first half is pretty good.)
Here are a couple nice pet pictures. They aren't exactly my pets, but I am petting some domesticated animals. Here is a camel, and then a couple little goats. Aren't they so cute?
