Grrrrrr. w00t!

For the first time since Monday or Tuesday, I actually found time to sit down and work on my dissertation. I've been struggling with a two page section on postmodern rhetorical criticism. How do you describe a methodology for a philosophical position that has "question everything" as its primary tenet? Maybe I'll post the section when I finally work it out.

Getting frustrated over that particular section yet again, I turned to wrapping up the rest of Chapter One. Just as I'd finished laying out the content of Chapter Four, my computer crashed. As the PC rebooted, I offered words of great praise to the academic Gods and Goddesses: please let there be a backup file. My pleas fell on deaf ears. The existing backup file didn't include a significant portion of my recent work. Looks like I'll be reworking that entire section tomorrow. Grrrrr. How I resisted the temptation to throw my PC out the office window is beyond me.

If anything, this recent problem has motivated me to increase my timetable for a new PC. I'm looking at a system with the following configuration:

AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton Core
512 DDR 333 RAM
80 GB 7200 RPM HD
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro 128 MB DDR Video Card

I'll probably order the PC through ABS Computer. I priced all the components and I'd only save a few bucks if I built the system myself. It's not a top-of-the-line machine, but the motherboard will allow for future upgrades of the CPU. It's a definite improvement over my almost three-year-old system (1 GB, 256 RAM, 20 GB HD, Radeon 7200 32 MB). I'll sleep on it a couple days and make a decision. As Kathleen reminded me tonight, "We've known for some time that you'd need a new computer. Now is as good a time as any." With any luck, the new machine will arrive in time for the release of Jedi Academy! w00t!