No, my house hasn’t been invaded by ghoulies & ghosties in honor of Halloween – instead my main PC’s power supply went kaput yesterday. And college is overwhelming me this week.

But before I go there, I shall post a photo of me in my Halloween costume this year. (Yesterday was dress up day at school.)

The Good Grade Fairy (she’s on strike, so earn your own good grades!)

I had fun making that costume (the shirt says “The Good Grade Fairy”). Most people got it, too. Heh. The A-wand was something dad & I made together. He soldered the A and drilled the hole into the wood dowel that was the wand. I wrapped the A in red yarn and glued it into the wand. Then covered the wand base with purple duct tape. Basically, I wanted an excuse to buy fairy wings and The Good Grade Fairy was that excuse. 🙂

So, yesterday I get home from work and when I get into my den, I notice my main PC wasn’t on. In fact, my music server isn’t on either. I power up the music server and it starts just fine, however powering up my main PC gets nada. I did all the tricks I could think of, but no go on the PSU. Well, bummer.

I headed next door & asked the parentals if the power was off at our end of town today (it wasn’t off at the school any). Dad said that they had replaced a telephone pole and the power was indeed out for an hour & a half. That’s when my PCs went off unexpectedly. “So, anyone up for an emergency run to Staples?” I asked. (No nearby PC repair shops, but thankfully the Staples in Troy has PSUs and some other useful computer parts.)

Dad thought that sounded like a good idea. He said he should look at PC prices and maybe laptops for mom. Mom of course perked up and asked to come along too. We didn’t have long to be out & about however since it was after 4pm and Beggar’s Night began at 6pm.

I found a 500W Antec PSU that’s supposedly “cooler, quieter, greener” (than what, I dunno – it didn’t say). After I bought it, mom was standing in the aisle looking dejected. Didn’t we come to look at laptops for her? Heh. So we returned to the laptop area where she saw a purty HP for $700. It’s a 17″ widescreen which has a proper number pad on it. She also found a case that would fit it. (It’s probably no heavier than the 6 year old Dell she’s been using.)

We returned home where I straightened up the house a bit before my vast numbers of Trick or Treaters would start showing up. Then I nuked some soup and put Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on while I waited for the hordes.

I thought that I might actually get a few more kids this year than last because one of the main streets in town was torn up due to road work. However, I only got about 15 kids! I usually get 40-some kids (though one year got over 70 kids). I asked around at work today (only a teacher work-day, so no kids) and I wasn’t the only one getting few kids last night.

After 8pm, I returned to mom & dad’s to help them with a few Vista issues. I wound up staying past 10pm working on the thing. It’s very purty and the only thing it’s being truly stubborn on is in installing the Minolta printers. That particular printer is a few years old now so dad’s thinking maybe getting the $100 Brother wireless laser one of these days.

So I never got around to installing my power supply last night. Work today, as I mentioned already, was just us teachers. I had two groups of chemistry kids in my lab filming their Periodic Table Videos (one group putting alkali metals into water and the other group using the lab to be a mad scientists lair. They got every beaker, flask, and test tube out of their chemistry drawers, put colored water in all, then added dry ice that they’d brought with ’em. I think these videos are going to be a blast this year). I went to Indian’s Pizza for lunch and tried their spaghetti & meatball. Tasty! I didn’t get the quarter exams graded, but I got a lot of other stuff accomplished.

Our teacher’s association has a social committee this year and they have come up with several social events. Today we had such an event – after work, going to Applebee’s for half-price appetizers (and booze) and fellowship. It was quite fun – we were there a good two hours.

When I got home, I FINALLY put my new PSU into my PC. It wasn’t easy at first, but when I finally got it jiggled in properly, it worked just fine. Indeed, I am typing this from my main PC. Yay!

After I finished that, I returned to mom & dad’s to work more on mom’s laptop. And now I’m home to play on my own computer. 🙂

In other news, this weekend I’m going to have to batten down the hatches on my college work. What I really need this week is a “spring break.” I haven’t worked one jot on one course this week (the one which requires near daily output) and haven’t read any of the material for the other course. With the quarter exams to grade this weekend as well, I’m going to be a very busy trina. Blech. Still, it will start out nice cuz it’s pancake day at the UCC tomorrow and the folks are buying my pancakes. Here’s hoping that gets me nicely productive for the weekend.