It's been a while since I wrote anything of substance. About a week and a half ago, my hard drive took a major nosedive: critical mechanical failure; there was no saving it. Fortunately, all of my documents were backed up on my LaCie external drive (by the way, if you buy one of these for an Apple, make sure you update the firmware on LaCie's sight). Apple was awesome about it. I had about 3 months left on my extended warranty, so they paid for everything, including shipping. I mailed it off on a Friday, and I had it back on Tuesday. Amazingly quick!

I then reinstalled all the software, and copied all my important files from the hard drive, erased and reformatted the external drive, and then copied the entire boot-drive onto the external. One of the peculiar things I noticed was that right before my supercrash, my HDD had about 23 GB used on it. After getting a new drive and reinstalling everything I had on it before, the new HDD had only 8 GB on it. What in the world was all that other crap? I know Windows has a habit of laying trash all over the place on one's hard drive, but I found it odd to happen on a Unix-based system.

My laptop now runs better than it has in about a year. I think this problem was one that was slowly happening beneath the surface, and one day it just couldn't work around the file corruption form a failing read/write thingamajig (this word was in my spell-check!).

It's surprising how wiping out your hard drive and reinstalling everything can make your old computer look and feel brand new. Back-up all your important stuff, first, of course.

So now I'm back online, but I don't have much to say other than this Saturday has been one of the most relaxing I've had in a while. A few days ago I got to touch base with my friend K who I haven’t talked to a while, and we shot the breeze about Heidegger, science and technology, and how Doug Martsch can rock like he was raised on '70s 30-minute guitar jam music.

I also got to see my friend L, who is out studying birds on a military base that occasional treats him as some Arab terrorist for the purposes of training. He gets to do the work he loves and hang out outside, which in my opinion rocks pretty hard (almost as hard as Doug Martsch).

My buddy M dropped a line from the foot of the Rockies. Haven't heard from that guy in way too long. Even though our conversation was short, it was good to at least touch base.

I'm still working two jobs, barely paying my end of the expenses (I'm probably not even close, actually). Still applying for jobs all the time, but nothing has taken a bite. I honestly think I have no choice but to go back and finish my PhD or to go back and teach highschool, and I rather sleep in a cardboard box than do the latter. It's not that I don't like working with HS kids, I just don't like being responsible for 160 every day, not having any weekends or nights to myself, and getting paid crap to do it.

My next-door neighbor teaches at our local high school. his raise next year will be 2%. Figure in inflation at 3%, and he just took a pay cut. On top of it, he has to pay $400 a month out of his meager pay to cover health insurance *just for himself* (his wife pays $400 for her own through her employer). It's really shameful. Teachers shape the future of our communities, our nation, and our world, and they ought to be treated as such not only in word *but in deed*. So let's stop the bullshit lip service people and start paying our teachers instead of chasing chimeras in the deserts of the Middle East.