Pizza: about $14 originally? 
Hedgehog Ice Cream Cake: about $6
Mooching off Amanda's onion rings for once:  Priceless.

Then I was cruising around in the school from class to class and through the hallways greeting friends and fellow students.  I ended up at the gym/lunch room where we were signing up for the afternoon training exercise.  There was some sort of briefing in one classroom corner where a few of the teachers (who were the actual x-men) were leading students through the upcoming exercise - and for some reason I was trying to find one of the teachers so she could telepathically locate one of my teammates.  I then booked some time off at the end of the day in my written schedule in the gym to go practice kung fu with a few  friends.  Next, it was time to head off to the training exercise, and I scrambled to put away what I didn't need - things that could fall out of my pockets while I was flying around - in my drop-slot, and transported to the big outdoor courtyard (or did I just go through a doorway?).  Multitudes of other students were there, sitting on the grounds, waiting for their call to join the exercise.  I asked around to find my teammates among the mass of students.  My team, which like in Naruto was numbered 7, were this tall brown-haired girl in a ponytail who looked somewhat like the actress in that awful Dungeons & Dragons movie and a thin shrimpy nerdy guy who could easily be a computer programmer.  "Anyone seen Team 7?" I asked around.  I threw my backpack to one side, and was finally pointed to my teammates sitting under a tree.  The teams were being called one by one by the teachers, and would tag-team it, each individually going off to fight this gigantic almost Godzilla-like creature they'd brought in for training and then tagging their teammates in to replace them.  The X-men teachers were calling for volunteers, and one of the teams got called up.  Our team was going to volunteer next... and then I woke up.  Arrg.

You know some of those dreams where you can wake up momentarily, but then go back to sleep and end up continuing the dream?

Well, sadly this wasn't one of them.  I tried for about five minutes and then rolled over to look at my clock.  So, I got up at around 11:15.  I wanna have super-powers

Your data is important.

This cavalier attitude dismisses the very importance of the information on your computer.  We store all manners of important files on our computers.  These may include but are not limited to important financial, academic, or personal documents, work-in-progress, e-mail, programs (which we pay for), downloaded multimedia (iTunes, for instance, for which we also pay money), and other miscellaneous program information.  Granted, as responsible and prudent computer users we should be regularly backing up our data onto external storage in case of system failure, but even so, wiping the system clean means hours of lost time painstakingly reinstalling and restoring the system to its former state.  This is not to mention those system information components (such as archived e-mail folders, or system-wide "service pack" upgrades) which are either tough to back up, difficult to locate, or by some error or glitch stubbornly resist backing up.  Our system preferences - settings, or browser extensions, downloaded plugins, other program plugins - for instance are stored in files which are often hidden or otherwise time-consuming to track down.  They may not be worth backing up, but having these lost hinders our ease of access within our own computers.

All of this amounts to a loss on the computer owner's part if their data is wiped.  Even if one can back up everything on one's hard disk, this may only prevent financial loss from the deletion of purchased programs, purchased media, or important documents.  There remains the loss of time and productivity required in simply restoring that data, on top of the loss of time and productivity already incurred by the technical problem that required one to take computer in for repair in the first place.  Worker's compensation claims operate precisely on the principles of lost time and productivity.

Not to mention that when bringing a computer to a smaller computer company (unfortunately, my warranty would not cover this - as much as it is really worth, and as little as it actually covers), they have rarely in my experience suggested a system wipe.  In fact, in many cases they are able to reinstall all of your windows components and your drivers without deleting a single thing, or even asking for permission to wipe the system simply to cover their butts in case of mistakes on their part.

It becomes more and more unacceptable for any computer
service resource - service centers, warranty departments, technicians,
companies - to lack adequate respect for their customers' data.  In our age of ever-increasing digitalization, our computers and the data within become more and more a cognitive extension to our own mental capacities.  The hardware expands our abilities to affect the world around us, and their data both facilitates this affect and functions as an external memory to our own.  Just as we may forget things we no longer find useful, we may delete files or programs off our computer we no longer find useful; by the same token, a total deletion of one's digital information is almost tantamount to the induction of selective amnesia, reducing what we've accumulated to its original blank slate. 

Therefore, I decided to get a new usb hard drive from ebay, a 500GB'er that I can use to back up both my computers and still have plenty of space to back up my important files, photos, etcetera.

Woot.

Unfortunately, I have to report that Tiny - the last of the original green tank sea monkeys - passed yesterday.  I'm therefore retiring that tank, letting the water dry out, and putting it away into storage.

As I'd been reporting, she's been lingering near the bottom of the tank for the last two weeks, with less and less motion.  Yesterday morning she was still moving her little legs, but by the evening, she was motionless.  I was hoping it was part of egg-laying, but I'm not sure that the growths she had on her abdomen were actually eggs (even though they looked to be so).  I've read there's a terminal  condition where sometimes the sea monkeys are unable to fully moult their old shells and it remains stuck on them.  Perhaps that's what it was.  She was a fighter, that one, holding on for two weeks at least in her condition.

The red tank sea monkeys are doing fine.  I've still not yet decided whether I'll transfer them to the new containers I got.  Perhaps I'll set up the two new containers, put the included eggs in, and then transfer all the red tank sea monkeys in there.  We'll see.  I don't want to have too many tanks around with no place to put them.

Put up Sea Monkey photos I took last week on Facebook, in an album:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10262&l=1ea42&id=718845462

New tanks arrived yesterday in the mail.  Not sure when or whether
I'm going to transfer the existing sea monkeys into one or both of the
new "world" tanks (these are visually interesting tanks, one with an
alienscape on the bottom, the other with a cityscape in it), or whether
I'll just grow some new sea monkeys in them and keep the existing ones
in their tanks.  Don't want to end up with too many tanks around
though.  Hmm... 

Not much new to report regarding the sea monkeys themselves
though.  Tiny's still lolling about at the bottom - I put in some
of the newly arrived "sea medic" but there doesn't seem to be any
change.  I took the straws out because I ordered a "bubble pump"
and a few other supplies with the sea medic pack, which I now use to
aerate the tanks.

Hahaha... I'm such a geek.

But Frack yeah!  That was an awesome last 20 mins of a season finale!

And O.O, sweet, they followed the original series ideas!  Well,
maybe not "Ships of Light"... (but who knows about next season?), but
the Starbuck thing in general loosely follows tOS.

Well, technically, the whole "Apollo goes 'bad' " bit was also from an
original idea for an original BSG sequel series that got cancelled.

er... the other remaining plot twist, now that was totally unexpected, like I said, OM Fracking G's.  So who's the fifth?

I wonder, what is the source of the narratives in our dreams?