Sunday 16 February 2003

Pic of the day: Useless but still decorative.

Burn, CD, BURN!

Well, not much worth writing home about. It was a nice and clear day, which I used to sleep and to burn CDs.

What with the big hard disks these days, the 250 MB zip drives simply don't cut it anymore ... especially with that price. So I got a Plextor CD burner with USB-2, which I can plug into my computers and create a CD before I delete the file. This way I can get them back if I ever need them again. Or that was the idea.

It seemed simple. Once I popped in a blank CD in the writer, there came up a question about what I wanted to do with it. One of the alternatives was a folder for burning CDs, so I chose that. Then I went to the folder where the files were, selected them, and chose "send to CD- RW station (E:)". Not much happened, but then I went back to the folder for burning CDs, and there they were in ghost outline. So I chose to burn them, and the computer worked for a little while. That was that. I put the CD in the CD drive, and it said: "Insert a CD".

Yes. The ordinary CD reader could not read the CD. The CD writer could not read the CD either. My HP laptop can read the CD quite fine, but the computer where I burned it from totally ignores it. I've made a few more of them over the evening, with some minor variations. They are all readable on the laptop, but not on the desktop. Go figure.

The sad thing is that I'm not very surprised. There is usually something with all computers I buy, so this one can't read burned CDs. Big deal. If I ever need those files back, I probably have to do something dramatic anyway. Besides, this is the perfect excuse to buy a home network ... ^_^

Now that I have a CD burner, I can also make mix CDs. I understand that this is a very soulful, personal and romantic thing to do. Not to mention that I can listen to the Morrowind in-game music at work without wearing headphones.

***

Hmm, I guess it would be kinda pointless to write anything deep and solemn after this. So I've been reading Zebra Girl, a free online comic that was recommended by Al Schroeder (my fellow daily journal writer, fellow rational believer, fellow fiction writer, cosmic triplet, all round nice guy and creator of the comic MindMistress). The two comics are really very different. Zebra Girl is in black and white (then again, most zebras are) and rather poorly drawn. It is rich in imagination, but much of the imagination is gags, as far as I have read yet. And I really don't see why Sandra is so upset. Yes, she was turned into a horned, clawed, zebra-striped pyrokinetic demon. But she kept her breasts and butt. Really, like it matters whether you have horns or not as long as you have boobs! She just needs more confidence in her femininity. And stop setting guys on fire too.

Why are you looking at me like that? The day was ruined anyway. And with the CD burner from Heck and software aptly named "Nero Burning Rom", Zebra Girl fit right in. Burn, CDs, burn!

***

(Stop the press! It wasn't the burned CDs after all! Turned out the CD reader could not read ANYTHING, not even The Sims! So I disconnected the CD burner, restarted the computer, opened and closed the DVD/CD station/cupholder, and now it reads them all fine! I just can't write and read in the same session of using the machine.)