There's been something very suspicious going on with my Dell comp. in the last few days. It has been sluggish and even with only Kazaa and a browser window open, the cpu usage has been 90% and above. I just found out that a video file I downloaded wouldn't play and would not allow me to move or delete it. That's enough to make a man like me paranoid.

Well, I've disconnected the cable and restarted in safe mode to do a virus scan. It let me delete that file too which eases my concern a little. There's just too many tricks and hacks out there fucking with stuff, and P2P is prolly like leaving your front door unlocked. I know I shouldn't still be using the file share programs, but how else am I gonna get music, software, etc? I haven't got the cash nor the desire to pay for overpriced things such as those even if I DID have the cash.

I'd be much more inclined to make legal purchases of software and music if they were not so outragiously priced. Software is the worst offender these days with their greedy milking of people on an annual, (It seems to be moving towards a more frequent occurance than that at this point), basis when they release a newer version of the program(s) with negliable changes or improvements over the previous version. And they are not satisfied with a 10 to 20% upgrade charge for customers with a previous version, oh no. In most all the cases I've seen or noted, it's about 50% of what the original cost of the software was.

In a way, everything ABOUT computers is like a vampire with its fangs always dug into your neck. The technology on the hardware side is experiencing much the same evolution and growth rate that the computer you bought last year or the year before that is outdated, (and possibly "passe"). The depreciation of a computer system must rival that of a new car when it rolls out of the dealer lot.

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A couple of things occurred to me tonight as I was making my way down for a smoke: I feel a certain sense of resignation in me that I can do this, that I can stop drinking. And I thought "after all, I've lived twice as long sober than drunk", but really, oh, 1 thru 10 doesn't count, right? Which brought me to the second realization: I've scarcely lived my "adult" life sober. That creates some problems I bet. I mean, I entered drinking on the cusp of adulthood, but not quite out of the carefree, unresponsible "child" self, and then the next thing I know, I'm coming out the other side at an age when I should be a full-fledged, card-carrying mature person with a "career" and a "life", but what do I know about that if my primary concern had been to be deadened and oblivious? I've got catching up to do, and I may not ever get "caught up", but I can at least enjoy being out of that hellish limbo...