So the rise of the machines continued over the rest of the weekend. I found out that one of the times my PC crapped out, it was while allegedly reloading my music onto my iPod -- which had taken to showing the wrong cover art, and I had since leveled the volumes on the PC. So I now have about half of an Oasis album and 29GB of space left over. Meanwhile, my PC continues to balk, but I've got a couple of strategies I'm planning on trying tonight and maybe tomorrow if I have time.

And, just to top it off, the batteries in the smoke detector at the top of my back stairs are going dead, so it chirps every two minutes or so, and I don't have any way of reaching it. Last night I briefly considered about three or four different stacks of chairs and shelves and other furniture, only to decide that I didn't actually want to break my neck. I put in a call, and hopefully that will be fixed by the time I get home.

It's not that I don't have anything to say about anything else going on in the world, it's just that this has disrupted my routine so severely that it's hard to stay focused on anything other than the next thing that's going to go haywire. Although the "check engine" light in my car eventually shut itself off.