I'm not lost, I just don't know where I'm going.

 

Yesterday afternoon, I got a phonecall, which in itself is somewhat uncommon. lady_panda's home computer had suffered a horrible fate and would only display a cryptic error message. So I met her at her work this afternoon, and after a pitstop at Datakjeden to buy an USB flash drive, went to her apartment to have a look at it.
Wow, that thing looked old. As I soon found out, it was a P2 333MHz. Same as Secunda, only the case looked quite a bit older. In the early stages of loading windows, it tells us that (some important system file) is missing or corrupt, and some stuff about running a repair install or whatnot. I had brought my windows XP CD with me in case that was the real problem, but as I suspected, it was bad ram. Booted the memtest CD and the errors poured in. Powered down, opened it up, removed a random stick (label didn't say anything about size, just PC100), ran memtest again, and passed after almost an hour.
Running WinXP on a 333MHz computer with just 160MB ram is not for the impatient. Gods, that thing is slow. And the horrible wireless ball mouse.. ugh! That thing would not go where I wanted at all. If I had known, I'd have brought my secondary mouse. Thankfully I am well trained in keyboard usage.

Oh yeah, and I also removed various spyware and installed Mozilla Firefox. Then we just had fun going through my photos on flickr, had some good food, and watched TV some. There's this one "reality" show she's told me about, Heia Tufte, where a bunch of nerds and geeks get together and make their own football (soccer) team.. I only just realized when I saw the article in the newspaper the other day that I know one of the guys in it. It was great.. hoping it'll be released on DVD when it's over so I can watch all the episodes I've missed.

Took the last tram into town, and of course the last train up here had already left Jernbanetorget before I was on my way there.. But I got on the last departure to Sognsvann and walked home from Blindern.

So I had a great day.. got to flex my geek muscles a bit, strengthened my confidence in my abilities some. Have had to deal with the identical error once before, and that's when aetherspoon taught me it was a symptom of bad ram. If not for that time.. I might have been lost, and there'd be no way to get online to communicate with him for assistance.

 

Got a letter from the hospital today. My sterilization has been approved and they estimate I may have to wait eight months to get it.

On the second page, there is information about Essure. The third page is a form I have to sign and return to them to make sure that there is no misunderstanding and that I am aware that the procedure costs 6079 NOK. But it just says "sterilization for females," nothing about which kind of procedure. Plenty of room for misunderstanding there.

Although they don't clearly state it, it sounds like they want to give me Essure, since no other methods were even mentioned. I don't want it. I want a tubal ligation. I don't want implants, I want a scar.

::sigh::

Will talk to my doctor about this when I see her again on Friday.

And six thousand kroner for Essure? That's such a rip-off. The procedure probably doesn't even cost that much. A tubal ligation at that cost I can understand. It's surgery.

Now I'm worried that the answer I'll get is that they aren't doing non-Essure sterilizations anymore because Essure is so much more efficient and don't require overnight hospital stays and whatnot. Moneygrubbing bastards.