Do you ever find that, when one aspect of your life feels horribly out of control, you demand other aspects of your life to be more stable and sure?

I feel sort of guilty for spazzing this morning like that. I even bought a spookie to try and compensate [spooky cookie]. Ah well.

I do finally feel like celebrating Halloween now that my exam is over. Because it feels SOOOO good. Amazingly, I didn't leave this exam feeling like I'd failed.

Was it hard? Sure, yes. It was very hard. I went through the whole exam, systematically, and triaged the problems I saw. If I knew the formula that would relate to the problem, I wrote it down. If I saw the answer right away, I wrote that down too. I probably spent a good 30 minutes just doing that and going through the equations on the back of the exam and assigning them to the various principles and processes.

In typical sneaky fashion, 9/10ths of the equations were not even necessary for any of the problems. Assmonkies.

But overall, I felt like, after proper thought and deliberation, I knew what equation to apply. And, when I computed my answers, they were actually options in the multiple choice. You have NO idea how exciting this was to me. Last exam, nearly none of the answers I got for various problems were listed as choices at all.

It doesn't help either that my professor often asks for the "closest answer" so you won't actually get something that's listed. It's one of his more obnoxious characteristics.

I am relatively sure that I got at least a 15 out of 24. When I had 15 minutes left, I'd only left 4 problems blank. When I had 5 minutes left, there were just two problems that I had NO idea how to do (photons of light measured in nanometers? erg? that is, erg, the sound, and not the unit of measurement). So those problems, in my last five minutes, I made educated guesses about.


...So I feel really good now. I don't know if its the slow, comfortable numb of blinding insanity, the adrenaline of being finished, or the confidence in my knowledge, but I think, at this point, that I'm comfortable with any of the above or a combination of sorts.

Wednesday 11:41 pm

Last night at the Chateau Chimpanzee, I wasn't sure why, but I lay in my bed and I cried. I'd been having such a good week, well, at least Sunday was good, but I found myself so suddenly annoyed and upset and lonely and unhappy.

Yes, okay, I was also hormonal -- another reminder that I've been here for more than 2 months... but I think now, in retrospect, that I was somehow tuned in to what a bad day today would be.

It started off alright, and I went and played with the chimpanzees while I tried the iPhoto Library restore that had been suggested in macosx.

I came back, and it had finally finished. I opened up iPhoto and it told me I had only 4,667 photos.

Uuuh.. what? I'd previously had 9-thousand something.

So I check... and the latest DATE showing is JULY 1st, 2005.

Uhhh... again, whhhat!?

I manually open the iPhoto Library folder and drag the stuff I want into iPhoto, and it gives me some weird error.

I open one of the subfolders, and as I open it, I notice photos disappearing. Like, I can see it happening.

I start to panic, but am somewhat reassured that, right after my iPhoto library died, I backed everything up to my external harddrive that I got for Christmas.

I look to the side of my bed for the harddrive and it's not there. I look a few more places, and well, I still can't find it.

The short story is that I can't find it. There are only a few explanations to this conundrum:

1. Although I can't remember doing it, I brought it with me to Gisenyi on Sunday, put it into my basket and it got stolen as I walked there. Of course, if I *did* bring it, it would have been deep in my big basket and someone would have had to dig in there to find it, something I think I would have felt...
   
   Additionally, I carried the bag with two arms in front of me for the last 3-4ths of the walk because it was damned heavy and my arms were getting tired holding it just by the handles. So, it could have only been stolen at the first roundabout.
   
   
2. I brought it with me to Gisenyi and left it in the hotel? I always check my stuff before I leave, I didn't see it, and I can't imagine doing this either. I'll check with the hotel regardless.
   
   
3. I left it here and someone stole it, even though my room is locked, I have the only keys and they were with me.
   
   
4. It's actually here, although I have looked on every surface, every shelf, taken my bed apart, moved everything and checked everywhere.
   
   
5. I'd left it by the door and the chimpanzees reached under it and snatched it.
   
   
6. The boogeyman is trying to RUIN my life.

I'll admit that it's so lame and pathetic but I cried and hyperventilated. Essentially it means that every photo I've ever taken in Africa is (sort of) gone. Of course, all my Flickr pictures are there, but to be honest, they were only maybe 30% of the photos I took each week.

Additionally, all of the photos that were taken during July -- the goodbye bowling, the going-away party -- they're all gone too.

The kicker? The thumbnails are all still there. I still have the high-res version of the life poster, so I could get those photos. Along with the prints I've had already made. But I have these little 180 x 240 mini-sized memories of the last 9 months of my life. Which really just isn't acceptable.

What's so frustrating is that I don't remember taking the hard drive with me. Like, I never take it anywhere because I keep it and the computer separated in case someone were to steal the computer. I might have taken it BECAUSE of the iPhoto library problem and because I might have thought I'd need the backup.

I really want to believe the drive is somewhere here, or at the hotel, and that it's not just a totally absolutely hopeless cause. Not only was the drive (I'm sure) expensive, but the photos on it are irreplaceable. I'm also frustrated because I specifically asked in the macosx community if doing an iPhoto library restore would put the photos in the folder currently at risk. They told me IT WOULD BE OKAY. Why didn't iPhoto take the 2005-2006 photos? You've got me. It certainly leads me to believe that perhaps #6 is not such a ridiculous option -- I mean, who but the boogeyman could be this spiteful?

Especially since before I came to Entebbe I wouldn't have even filtered albums before uploading them, cause I was just zipping up to Petridish. But since Flickr has a bandwidth limit per month, I'd go through and just select the "best" photos.

I live in a 4' x 5' room, I mean there just AREN'T that many places it could hide. Plus, my fucking laptop lid won't shut, it's dirty, the keys squeak when I type now and man, just CAN"T ANYTHING WORK?!?!

To focus on the bright side, having Flickr there is really comforting, or else everything really *would* be gone. Add in that I was smart enough to export *some* of the videos I'd taken into a non-iPhoto folder so that all the video I took isn't gone either.

Secretly, I'd been taking photos of my little green Yoshi in every place I'd been. I had photos of Yoshi with chimpanzees, and really, all over Africa.

I hadn't uploaded any of those photos because it was going to be an end-of-journey "surprise". Now, all those photos are gone.

I sort of feel like crying, or, possibly, dying. I haven't decided yet, but anyone who knows me knows how important my digital packratting memories are to me. Also, if my harddrive really is gone then I have no way to back up my current hard drive and I'm back at square one, worrying that my laptop will get stolen along with everything in it, gone forever.

Either way, today isn't a great day, and I'm not feeling particularly in love with technology whatsoever. In fact, I'm contemplating writing a very angry email to apple the first chance I get.

Would any of my Mac-savvy friends at home be willing to give poor Allure a look-over when I get home? Make sure no other bombs will go off inside him when I get back to Uganda? I'd really appreciate it. Oh, and some help fixing the &*(*&^*^ latch. I've got cleaner back in Entebbe, thankfully. Ohh! And recommendations of a photo program other than iPhoto. That'd be great.

I'm just feeling so tired and discouraged right now... Thankfully, tomorrow will be better.