Would you believe it, one night after praising -- or making fun of, it's your call -- Windows XP CD, it shattered on me! Shattered! As in smashed! Into pieces! My original Windows XP! My only original commercial software! Nope, I kid you not.

Here's what happened. I put the CD into the CD drive with the intention of -- and this could be what caused it -- copying it into my HD. In case I lost the CD. Or something. As in, in case I would want to install it elsewhere. So there, I inserted the CD and my Windows XP obediently changed its cursor into that revolving CD thingy. So far so good. Except that the next second I heard something break. It sounded like a jealous ex-GF smashing her ex's photo frame.

My first thought was, shoot, what happened to my CD drive. Mind you, mine was a 5-year-old drive, so I feared the worst. I pressed the eject button and was relieved to see the tray come out normally. Only what was inside -- my Windows XP CD -- didn't. Well, at least not as a whole. It was totally smashed into small pieces. Didn't even know that was even possible. Man!

Anyway. I managed to take out some of the pieces. But most of them were stuck inside. Still are. And after the tray went back in itself, as a CD drive tray tends to, I couldn't get it out anymore. Still can't. Which meant I lost not only my Windows XP CD but also my faithful, 5-year-old CD drive. Which made me even more thankful that I had suddenly been hard-working enough to do, well, my stuff -- which might've got me killed otherwise -- the night before.

Speaking of things that might've got killed, what about the Lakers? Down 0-1 in the series and by six points with less than a minute to play in Game 2 at home, they... Well, I'm not gonna tell you the whole thing, it's all over the web now. Suffice to say that the Lakers finally won it 99-91 in overtime. Had they lost, my oh-so-smart prediction would've gone out of the window. No teams in history have ever become NBA champions after losing the first two home games.

It's official now: Kobe Bryant is my all-time American Idol. Well, all right, I've actually said that two or three times before. My logic says it was a dumb thing to do, waiting until the clock showed 2.1 seconds before taking a three-pointer -- after missing all the previous. My romantic side says, hey, he's Kobe, he does these things all the time. I tell you, I stood up and stayed standing with arms raised high a full minute after that shot. Very much a copy of what I did after that point-four shot by Fish. Oh, and he's handsome, too. All right, better stop there -- I suspect my mom has begun questioning my sexual preference, with the current rates at which she asks eagerly if I have a GF.

And BTW, I always feel the Lakers are playing -- and looking -- much better at home in their gold jerseys. The white ones simply didn't cut it for me. Amazing how liking something improves its quality. Just like bubur kacang ijo at Dudung always tastes better than anywhere else. And of course familiarity plays a big part, too.

Take the new Yahoo! Messenger, for example. They have a lot of cool new features. But I've found at least three things I don't like about this new version. One, the systray icon, that smiling face. I like the original Y! much better. Two, this version doesn't allow me to enter nicknames or names while still showing the Yahoo! IDs. Or perhaps I haven't figured it out yet. Hopefully. It's just a matter of personal preferences, of course. Some prefer the nicknames to easily identify the people they're talking to. As for me, instead of Bison, I'd rather see wongiseng. It helps me remember the IDs. When you have 100 people in your list, it's much faster to type IDs than to scroll up and down until you find certain names.

Three, when I shut down Windows it waits for YM, which waits for a confirmation if I really want to exit. The older version does that only when I specifically exit YM. When Windows shuts down, it simply shuts along down. A few times already I shut down my puter only to discover the next morning that it was still waiting a response for me.

Oh, wait. There are four, actually. Four, while it's great that now we can be shown online to certain people only, unlike ICQ, it doesn't remember this setting. Say I want to be invisible to everyone but Bison -- yeah, I'm making him famous, so sue me. The next time I login to YM, I would expect it to automatically show me online to Bison -- there's another one for you. Too bad it doesn't. I mean, what's the point of showing you online only to a special few if everytime you have to redo the step? Might as well just click on those people's IDs -- or nicknames -- and send 'em messages.

Still, it's fun trying out those audibles and avatars. I've gotten better IM's from a drunken monkey. Too funny.