All done :)...or not?

I've got everything I wanted re-installed now, and pretty much everything I didn't want kicking around anymore is gone. It is nice to have a lean, mean, clean-running machine again. I am now back in business as my e-mail, instant messengers, Quicken and even World of Warcraft are back to a usable state.

Mind you, I'm now becoming somewhat more of a geek because when trying to figure out (for example) how to back up my Palm stuff pre-wipe so that I'd be able to keep what information from there I wanted to keep, or (for another example) how to get the tabs in my new Firefox browser to behave with bookmarks the same way I had them behaving with Netscape pre-wipe (yes, I now see Netscape as a yucky browser, but I was a little cheesed when I thought I wouldn't be able to get my bookmarks to work the way I wanted them to in Firefox...problem solved now, though), I was browsing some forums here and there and came across advice on things like how to get a better music player for my Palm or how to configure Firefox with an amazing amount of functionality and customization. Honestly, I don't think I will be doing much in terms of customizing/"souping up" Firefox, but the idea of getting a different music player for my Palm is very tempting as I don't like the way my current one (the Palm version of RealPlayer) organizes music files. Looks like my project to clean up my hard drive, while (pretty much) finished, has led to creating some more work for me, but it shouldn't be too much so that's okay.

I've also finalized my decision to take down my old web site. That site was really more or less created as a cry for a kind of attention that I no longer feel the need for. Also, while it was nice to get the odd e-mail from other researchers (and "lay people" interested in the subjects of my research) in response to stuff that I posted on the "My chemistry research" part of my site, it turns out that I'm really not that interested in answering a lot of questions about that research because answering such questions is a lot of work (and requires a kind of thinking that I'm not up for right now). I will still likely put up the odd web site for particular occasions (for example, I will likely continue the tradition I've had the last few years of sending an e-mail out around Christmastime to family and very close friends containing a link to a web page on which I outline my wish list), but lately my reaction to the fact that I have my very own Google-able website has turned from being one of "Cool, my site pops up on Google!" to one of "Oh, great, someone is e-mailing me about my paper on triclosan [a controversial anti-bacterial agent that my paper more or less says should be avoided] again...I really don't have the energy to join them in their fight against triclosan [or explain to them that I was just a third-year undergraduate when I wrote that and that they should probably look at the sources I cite rather than my paper for reliable information--though I could be wrong on that score; maybe I don't give myself enough credit :P], so I'm just going to ignore this e-mail for now and maybe I'll get back to them about it later [yes, later...]." So, for now, the website is coming down...though I will consider publishing that paper in a student science journal as my professor suggested, if only to give the masses a copy of it to use in their continuing fight...just as long as that's the last bit of input I have to give on the subject for the time being. I do want to save the environment, I really do; I just don't want to have to be the science geek who does all the hard research on it at the moment. Man, that feels like a big cop-out, especially when I really did enjoy the air quality research I did the past three summers. I guess this is one area where I don't really want to be the leader, though I would gladly stand behind (and/or work for) the geek who is willing to be that leader (and tell me what to do to get the data to support them so I don't have to figure it out for myself).

Well, don't I feel pathetic now :P. Pardon me while I either go contemplate this new revelation of this aspect of myself to myself or go keep myself busy with other things so I don't have to think about that for a while. Perhaps I need to rethink this or maybe I just need to come to an acceptance of it, I don't know, but it coming to mind at a time in my life when I am thinking "what's my calling of the now"-type thoughts means that I don't really want to just brush it off quite yet.

What, you thought a post starting off with my continued report on my wiping of my hard drive couldn't be deep ;)?