a good sign

This ain’t the sign I mean, but I am gonna make a tape tonight to listen to as I drop the Friday papers off.  The tape will have the essential elements of the Pre-Trip I am testing for tomorrow morning.

I used to have a Very good memory for details – in fact, I still remember lots of now useless stuff.  I lost some of that with the brain injury I got when I crashed my car in 98 (which I have not told the bus people – it’s a need to know item, and they don’t need to know that) and I am 44 now, so some edge loss is to be expected anyway, what with age and all..

I have a small tape recorder that I bought to take to school with me after the wreck when I returned to college to finish my bachelors degree, and I got a lot of use out of it then.  It’s been "resting" in a desk drawer for years now, but I will put it to use and record the steps I seem to have trouble with and I will listen to it over and over while I drive around tonight, then go and do my best on the test tomorrow.

I am not worried at all about the drive test.  I will remember to make conspicuous mirror checks, so that the examiner clearly sees those, but hey, I can drive, and very well, thank you, so no worries there.

The Good Sign:

In January, my old computer, an HP Pavilion Celeron machine, lost a file that I couldn’t restore (because I changed the BIOS and forgot about it) so I bought this new machine, an inexpensive Great Quality machine from Frys, made up of their parts and an AMD processor.  The old machine was/is a Windows 98SE machine, so it’s out of date by a couple operating systems, and the new machine is a fully updated Windows XP machine with LOTS of memory – 768 Megs of RAM.  The old one has 256 Megs in it, 4 times what it came with originally.  Needless to say, the new machine is much faster than the old one was, and it is the one I am using now.  I plan to fill it with memory, 2 gigs worth, when I can, and it’ll be FAST then, by golly.

However, I have fixed the old one.  Just now, while watching the evening news, I plugged in everything and got into the BIOS and reset it, so that I could run the recovery disk, and it is now fully functional.  It is sitting on my other desk, defragmenting as I  write.

If I had a long enough USB cable, I could hook it up to my cable modem and really really check to see that it works, because the file it lost (which I am 90% sure is now restored) was one that told it it was connected to the internet.

That’s the good sign, the sign that things "are going my way".

In just about 12 hours, I will be tested on my Pre-Trip knowledge and ability.  I will pass it.

I will.

Then, the driving test.  I’ll pass it too, and the paperwork will be signed, and I can go to DMV and get my CDL.

Unfortunately, lol, I paid all my bills this week, and don’t have enough cash left to pay for the CDL and eat and drive and smoke.  (yeah, I hear ya, but not buying smokes won’t leave enough left to buy the CDL)  DMV does not take Visa – cash or check only, so I have to wait for it.

I get paid Monday afternoon for the paper gig, and will make a beeline downtown (or shoot, I can do that at Lloyd Center Mall too, at the DMV express, I think!  Closer… but that cute Hispanic clerk works at the downtown DMV, so maybe I’ll go there.  Hmmm) so by Monday afternoon, I will have in my sweaty little hands a brand new Commercial Drivers License (CDL).

And ya know what?

Wireless routers and antennas have gotten so cheap that I could possibly network my two computers – I paid all the bills, so will have some extra money ("extra"- ha ha) and could network them together.

Why?  Because I can.  Do I need to?  Noooo – but I could, might, am thinking of it….

Things are coming together in good ways.

I like this life.  It’s looking good.

*****