I survived the day a little short of breath. There's a nasty phlegm build-up in my bronchial passages though I haven't started coughing yet. Decided to skip this afternoon's rehearsal to prevent weakening my body further through physical exertion. Apologies to everyone involved.

Found out that the abandoned canteen where we were to have our in-line skating lesson last evening was out-of-bounds to students AND staff because it no longer belongs to our campus and it's scheduled for demolition so it's quite dangerous to hang out in. I wonder where the lesson was moved to?

Must also confess spending another point six k again, this time on an LG 17" LCD monitor. Gave my brother my 17" CRT to save him $200+ since he is on such a tight budget. (I sound so noble, don't I?) Helped him pick his parts which the dealer assembled, and for what he paid I think he got a really good bargain. His new system can take a slew of upgrades, more than my current could ever handle, so he's quite future-proof. Between his and my purchases, he paid less for his new system than I paid on my upgrades. There is no justice!

As for me, I repaired my stupid RAM problem without having to go to the dealer's. Actually the RAM wasn't the stupid one. Now I know: RAM has to be placed in the computer in descending order, i.e., biggest chip goes in slot 1 and then downwards from there. With a lot of ham-fisted pulling out and shoving back of VGA card and installing the memory chips in different configurations, I finally figured it out. So now I'm running 1024Mb worth of memory like I paid for. Yay! Now I have to figure out why my new benchmark is lower than my previous when I was using less RAM. It's going to be a long night...