So anyway, that thing about normal service having been resumed…

What an impeccable sense of timing.

I went onto Radiohead’s website a couple of weeks ago – they’re releasing a new album, entitled “In Rainbows”. Since they are no longer under contract to any record label, the Oxfordshire miserablists have decided to release it themselves. The CD will be available in all good record stores later this year, but in the meantime they have made it available to download from their website. People are free to decide for themselves how much they would like to pay for it, and if they want to pay nothing at all then that’s fine.

So naturally, I was there like a shot – and ended up paying forty quid for a pretentious boxed set that comes with vinyl seven-inches and a CD and a fancy booklet and so on. Plus, I still get to download the album from their website, just as soon as it is made available. Hurrah!

Anyway, about that impeccable sense of timing. I switch on my computer one morning to check my emails, and hey presto there’s one from the good people at Radiohead telling me that I can now download their spiffing new album. Great, except I’m kind of in a hurry to get to school, so I’ll do it later. Two hours of Design Embodiment and Material Selection and one hour of Engineering Mathematics later, I get home, switch on my computer, and have the following conversation (sort of).

Computer: Hey, how’s it going? You know that thing? That window thing?
Me: You mean Windows?
Computer: Yeah, that Windows thing. Well anyway, I can’t make it work. You should, like, I dunno, restart me or something?...
Me: Err… okay.

(---click--- whuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur…)

Computer: Yeah, no, that kinda didn’t work. Maybe you could restart me in safe mode, or in safe mode with networking, or some other thing.
Me: Nope. Nothing works.
Computer: Well, I’m all out of ideas. I guess you could use me to weigh down paper, or hold a door open, or something. Kinda sucks that you can’t download that Radiohead album now too, huh? Hey! How cool would I look if I was flying out of your window right now?
Me: …………

Stupid machines. It’s tricky to get to a computer at school at the moment, as it’s still only a few weeks into the new semester and the place is full of eager young first years; so I had to resort to using The Boy’s Mac a couple of times.

Good things about Macs:

1. They look like boiled sweets. Well, hers does anyway.
2. Mac users tend to be quite fanatical about Macs, and as such are quite easy to wind up in a classic Amiga vs. Atari sort of way (or SNES vs. Mega Drive, if you don't want to go completely retro).

Bad things about Macs:

1. When your 'proper' computer breaks down and you have to borrow a Mac, you can be sure that the owner won't let you forget about it in a hurry.
2. All the buttons are in the wrong place.
3. The mouse doesn't work very well. Well, hers doesn't anyway.
4. They live in rooms that smell like girls. Well, hers does anyway.
   

Thankfully, I live with Mr Dozer; and whilst he may not know what the dishwasher does, and doesn’t fully understand how all our bins keep magically emptying themselves, he does know how to fix computers.

He successfully diagnosed the problem as Windows being “a bunch of gay” – possibly caused by gay electricity, or interference from a gay weather balloon. The only solution was to completely reinstall Windows.

It’s pretty much all fixed now, apart from the fact that my computer seems to think that it is now American; and as such, disagrees with my keyboard on a number of key issues, such as the location of the @ symbol and the existence of a pound sign.

Nothing a hammer won’t fix.