2002-02-12 - 4:03 p.m.
#105: No Need for Chestnuts Roasting in an Open Fire: Part 2!
Note to Self: errrrrrrg.... So many online personality tests in blogs and other places.... Gyarh. Results are back here. I've decided to put whatever personality tests I've taken onto that page, with the newest entries up the top. Makes it easier than making a new page everytime I want to point out what results I got. I think that page is going to get very large with the passing of time. Oh dear.
And now we return to my life.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! My heart is bent!!!"
That is the scream you would have read had I decided to press on with my journal entry several Monday afternoons to evenings ago. Which I didn't. But now that I'm all refreshed and revitalised, I feel confident I can finally finish this woeful tale of misery and intrigue! Though probably not too much of the latter, since the fact that I typed up the previous entry and managed to upload it to diaryland.com not-so-subtlely implied that all the problems I'd encountered with WinXP and its installation had been rectified. Or at least smoothed over to the point that I could actually use the computer without developing a nervous eye-twitch. But in any case! Now continues the tale of woe! The tale of misery! The tale which I shall tell right now because I've run out of suitable adjectives! So let's get to it, shall we?
So there I was, it was a dark and stormy 13th January Sunday evening. Kunfei was sick and I certainly couldn't ask him to run around with a fever to help fix up my computer. Well I could, but that would be mean and unhelpful to his condition. So I decided to wait a day before I would call him up again to ask for help. Maybe two. Aren't *I* a spectacularly generous fellow? So I was stuck with a broken computer a little while longer. Fortunately, upon that evening was sprung a surprise outting to see Mononoke Hime (showing at the Rialto Cinema in Newmarket) with a couple of other members of the AAC as well as our guest Yoshe from Australia and Helen who had left for Japan but came back again *waves waves*. This was the fourth time I'd seen the film, and the second time with full comprehension and knowledge of the story in hand, so there weren't any massive surprises this time round. It was just a way of easing my computer-broken soreness, and to ignore that little voice in my head that went, "As soon as you step out of this theatre.... You will be DOOMED to exist for at least one or two days with a half functional new computer, or a fully functional old computer that runs like an obese man with lead weights tied to his feet! Doomed! DOOMED!". It was an annoying little voice. But it would not go away, for it spoke truth. And truth is very hard to squash sometimes. Though I suppose that would all depend upon the size of the hammer and the density of the skull. Hmmm. I must make a note of that particular cure.
So Sunday the 13th passed with me collapsing in bed immediately after the evening of cinema viewing was over, hoping that by the time I woke up, the nightmare about my computers demise would be over too. But lo! Monday the 14th crept over that ridge of dawn, gently tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "I can smell your brains." Mondays have an unusual habit of telling me that. But more importantly, my GHz processor computer remained broken, so in order to get my.... "fix", if you will (not that I'm addicted to being on the computer or anything! Certainly not that! Why, what would make you think of such a thing of me? It's simply prepostorous! And you will proceed to ignore the previous entry, this entry and all other entries pertaining to my insatiable need for computer related products, NOW.) I decided that playing around with my old Cyrix system was a better alternative to nothing at all. How wrong I was. How dearly wrong I was. Playing around with that old system in order to fulfill ones no life computer-geekiness quotient for the day was like getting a geriatric granny with a boiled cow leather fetish and no arms and legs to help you lose your virginity. UNWHOLESOME. That's what it was. I'd go into all the details, but I'm hoping that particular image I've conjured up just then would spotaneously cause everybody to skip this paragraph and move on to the next one, wherein I'll describe the events of the next day. Really, there's nothing I can say about Monday other than I waited around for Kunfei to get better and was resorting to a most heinous and wretched excuse of an option to get by it. Well that and television, but that was a given. Spent a lot of time playing Fallout, too. Nothing like therapeutic turn based combat with targeted eyeball shots and gratuitously blood-splattery death animations to ease ones soul.
Monday 14th passed. Tuesday 15th came and did not whisper sweet nothings into my ear. It could tell I wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing right now. I rang Kunfei up in the early afternoon, to see if I couldn't get him to come over and help clean up the destruction my hands had wrought with insufficient knowledge of WinXP. Fortunately for all involved, he was well enough to come over and help me sort things out. And he did. And then we watched a bit of Initial D while eating whole Nandos Chickens, and then he went home. The end. Well that's it! Y'all can go home now!
.... Well okay, I'll expand a LITTLE. But keep in mind that I'm recounting events from several weeks ago, so memories of my chagrin and irrational vivid fear of everything coming down crashing on top of me has kinda dissapated in that time.... Leaving me with naught but the happy, warm, diffuse glow of success. And maybe monkeys. I'm not sure, my mind is kinda hazy on that point. The WinXP installation basically went off without a hitch (using his CD and the key that I got) after I moved all the important studd off the C drive and formatted the entire thing to do a clean install of Win98 and then WinXP upgrade. Basically, all the things that could have gone wrong didn't (which is a GOOD thing, as much as you lot out there enjoy reading about the various events that bring about pain to my well being and threaten my continued existence as a member of the human species. You know who you are. O.o) and everything cam off without a hitch. Except for the adjustment period. Which I will talk about now.
For someone who was using Win98 before making the changeover to WinXP, the results are.... Rather dramatic, to say the least. For one thing, WinXP looks.... a whole lot nicer. Friendlier. More rounded. More alive, even. I never realised how gray, taciturn and sqaured-off the previous versions of Windows looked (well, after Win95) until I saw the default colour scheme for WinXP. It's blue. I like blue. It used to be my favourite colour, so a whole lotta blue on my desktop is no problem for me as long as I could modify my background. Which I could, and did. Next up on the features possessed by WinXP but not available in Win98, was the sheer number of files supported by completely first party developed programs. No longer do I have to use Winamp for mp3s, or winzip for zip files, are look for different programs to open different image files. EVen the burning of CDs can be entirely done without the help of third party developed software. This total lack of fiddling about in terms of downloading or reinstalling a whole bunch of programs to open the simplest of documents was most intriguing. Extremelt user firendly indeed! Though rather scary if thought about carefully. And that thought that was thunk (errrr... thought) most carefully was, "Why with WinXP, I don't need anything else anymore! Every commonly used file can be run from a clean install of WinXP without having to search for updates on the internet! I don't need anything else except for Microsoft marked and approved software!"
Needless to say, that made my skin crawl, so I started installing all the old programs I used in Windows 98 to make me feel safer. And it did. There's no feeling like seeing a program opening WITHOUT the Windows Logo on it. I would go on about the many other problems with WinXP, but I don't want to write about this subject anymore, so I'm just going to put it out on my diary as it is. Next time: I will talk about my strong spiritual affinity with muffins and other bread related foods. Bye bye!
