Well, some things worked and some didn’t. I tried to post from Alan’s and I couldn’t, just like I couldn’t send email or post on my forum (which I will do shortly). Something was wrong with the internet (not his, the internet as a whole), Alan was telling me.

     I just got back today, because my car had a check engine light. We took it to AutoZone, which is awesome because they’ll tell you what the check engine light is on your car for free (on the hopes that you’ll buy the parts to fix it yourself at the shop, although this is not necessary). They said it’s the spark plugs, but we just changed them 3 weeks ago. I don’t know what to do, but my dad told me to run it with “overdrive off” for 20 minutes on 57 (so that the RPM would be up really high, about 4k) to blow all the crap out of the engine that has built up (carbon?). The light hasn’t come back on since the guy at the Champaign AutoZone cleared it.

     The worst part of my trip by far was the drive there. It took me four hours and forty minutes, when it usually takes two and a half hours. You don’t think that’s all that bad? Well, to give you an idea, when my car broke down an hour and a half away from home and my dad had to come down with a tow dolly on his truck to pick me up, I got home faster (counting the time it took for him to get there, etc). Everything was terrible for no reason other than rush hour and an exit backed up on 57 that went all the way through interstate 80. I’d rather not remember that terrible trip, which probably caused the check engine light that happened the night after this drive.

     Alan and I went to see the Chronicles of Riddick and Lexi and I saw the Terminal. See my opinions of these in the forum. He showed me the first five episodes of Taken, the mini-series on SciFi, which is interesting. We went to a LAN party and played Warcraft III (without the expansion!). That was weird, because I hadn’t played in the longest time (maybe close to a year). I missed Alan a lot, and I’m glad I got to see him.

     I made many purchases before I left for Alan’s. I bought the first three seasons of Futurama on DVD as well as the fourth season of the Simpsons on DVD. I also bought the third Matrix movie. (I had a 20% off coupon for deepdiscountdvd.com) After all that, I bought some thumbscrews for my computer, an external hard drive case for the little drive that could (the only drive that made it safely through the power fluxuation), and a new CPU fan. I bought this huge apparatus that is mostly heatsink with “heat pipes” (look them up they’re cool) and mounts the fan on its side, so that it blows out directly to the exhaust fans in the back of the case. It’s bigger than huge. Anyway, it’s supposed to be only 21 decibles, which is MUCH MUCH quieter than my current fan setup. That was really important to me, in spite of my 3 ghz processor which needs to be kept below 120 degrees Farenheit because I said so. Making my leet box leeter by massive equipment.. aww yeah.