Catalyst.

On Thursday, I had plans to come home from work and make some juicy, delicious hamburgers. To play on Second Life. To finish uploading all the backup data from before my computer reformat. Twas going to be a delightful evening.

But the apartment got struck by lightening. :/

Initially, I thought I was going to be out two computer sound systems, one computer, a television, a DVD player, and two Wii-motes. I wasn't happy. But I was able to get one sound system back up and running. Diagnostics found nothing wrong with my computers USB ports (I'm guessing the mouse and keyboard just didn't want to work that afternoon?). The two Wii-motes were fine after popping the batteries out. That left the TV and DVD player...

Kerry and I have really wanted a new TV for a while, now. Our old one did have decent resolution, but it was small. So...we bought a 42" widescreen plasma Samsung. It is very, very nice. We also got a nice DVD/VCR combo with an HD upconverter. So boo on the lightening for ruining our stuff. But yay for new stuff that we wanted to buy anyway. :) Now I can see how all the explosions along the Galactica force Cylon raiders that weren't even visible before out of their flight vectors. :D

Owning land in Second Life seems to be going well, too. Alas, I don't think it will have much of an influence on the Honors community because too many students just don't have the hardware to run it. But I had nearly twenty participants at my first coffeehouse discussion, which is a pretty decent crowd. Next time I'll be brave enough to put my tip jar in the middle of the discussion instead of against a side wall, though. :/