So today was my last official day of radio station training. So I brought the laptop in my backpack for one last heist, which sadly was not to be.

Come back to my dorm, turn on the computer. Now I find that sometimes when I play music, it has this kind of distorted skipping.

Also: computer takes a while to boot up. Sometimes blue screens come up that talk about Windows... I don't know what. Let's just say "smoking crack with Satan". And that I can fix this by uninstalling any new hardware or software. There is no new hardware or software.

I went to the college sound and image library, as I am writing a paper on 1950s American cinema. (probably going to be focused on the idea of auteur theory being put forth in Cahiers Du Cinema at this point, overseas) But I don't know shit about 1950s American cinema. I watched North By Northwest once. So I decided to see what the library had in the way of selection. Because I like movies and the research thing was a flimsy premise, I picked up All About My Mother. I also picked up Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, which is from the fifties, but Swedish. My uselessness knows no bounds.

So, I start to wonder if the audio troubles will effect the DVD. But then I look in My Computer and see that my CD-rom/DVD/CD-RW drive is no longer showing up, as if it had been uninstalled.

So I call technical support. Lots of shit later, they realize I need to physically remove the CD drive, then put it back.

I find a phillips-head screwdriver, courtesy of a guy who overheard me talking after he had gone to bed, but before he fell asleep.

I get one screw out. Turns out it was the wrong screw, this one was for the modem. I get out the other screw, for the CD. There's a second screw to be dealt with, marked with an O. If you have an Inspiron 5100, turn your computer upside down and see that which is labeled with an O. It's a hole. A hole which apparently leads to a screw, but I couldn't reach, even with THE SMALLEST PHILLIPS-HEAD EVER.

So it's been put on hold. I guess I'm going to watch these movies somewhere else tomorrow. Should be fun times. But the distorted audio is a bitch.

I can still get online and use AIM, and write papers and stuff. I'm thinking that the reason for the computer taking so long to boot up is due to the CD fuckups, and maybe the CD part that's fucking up is close to the soundcard, which maybe makes sense. I don't know anything.

Actually, no, there are things I know, and these things make me feel insecure and shitty. Like that technical support/customer service people HATE YOU. I've heard this so many times- all they want is for you to get off the phone.

So there's that bit of insecurity, and that's on top of me talking about how I have a crazy screwdriver and don't know where anything is.

There's also the part- this is racist- that is worried by the accent on the phone. Sorry. I think I just want Technical Support people to be TERRIBLE. Like voices you can hear that they're overweight. Where they make bad awkward jokes and are the worst people ever. That's what I want out of technical support. It's a white male stereotype. I totally prefer the person I was talking to as a human being. But for confidence? There is nothing like Technical Support that seems like the most socially-inept human being on the planet.