7:54 PM:

In more good news, I just got a new computer. Or, rather, a used one, but it's new to me.

My old system, to provide some context, evolved quite a bit over the years, but ended up as a 233mhz Pentium with 64 MB of RAM, what was probably a 15" VGA monitor, a 8.4 GB hard drive (plus a secondary hard drive that largely went unused), a Zip drive that had long ago stopped working with Win 98, and a CD-ROM drive in which Win98 believed all file names were in 8.3 format, leading to many CD-ROMs not working with the system.

The new system is a 450mhz Pentium II, which had 128 MB of RAM when I got it, but which was almost immediately upgraded to 320 MB. (Finally, a use for those DIMM chips I couldn't use with the old system!) It's got a 19" monitor, a 13.4 GB hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a CD-RW drive. Also the Zip drive mentioned in the previous paragraph, which is the one component of the old system that's being carried over to the new one. And Windows XP. $350 from eBay, about a third of which was for postage and handling.

So now I have the task of getting this system set up properly. Because Windows is Windows, I can't just copy over all my old programs; most of them need to be reinstalled from scratch. Which would be easier if I had all the relevant disks on hand... but it's going okay on the whole, so far. The big question may be whether the OpenOffice.org word processor can actually take the place of Word, or whether I'll have to find another solution to that.

I've also gotta wipe the old system, get it ready for delivery to my sister, and figure out how I'm gonna get it to her in the first place. But one crisis at a time.

Speaking of which, there's one huge freaking crisis in progress no matter how much I might want to avoid it. I still have three outstanding incompletes, and if the grades aren't in by August 15th, I can't teach next semester, and I lose my funding, and, basically, I'm utterly screwed. Whether this is already a fait accompli is open to question, as I don't know how long it will take my instructors to read my papers and file the grades once I submit them.

In the meantime, I've been failing to get anything done as regards those papers. So I bounce from blocking it out and setting up the system and stuff, to realizing that doom is impending and completely freezing.

I'm not optimistic.