This half term has not been going well.
For the first few days we were still tidying ready for the builders to come and install our new heating. On Tuesday they came and started ripping out the radiators and boiler.
It just so happened that a couple of other things were due to happen that day.
One was the fact that the police were marking bikes down at Currock house, in an attempt to reduce bike theft, or to at least re-unite the bikes with their owners.
The other was that our broadband was changing over that day, so I’d have to install the new router.
At about 5pm, when the builders had left, Mum and Stuart went out to Currock house to get his bike marked. I didn’t go, even though I own a bike, I hardly use it as my sense of balance is bad, really bad. After they had gone I set about setting the new router up, it was quick and trouble free. But that was not to last.
After the laptop and the cupboard computer were linked to the router, I installed the Anti-virus software that came with the broadband, and updated it. This worked flawlessly on the PC, but it went catastrophically wrong on the laptop. After the update had finished the laptop needed to restart itself, when it got to the point of starting back up, it failed.
I was presented with an error message, which reads something to the tune of: “cannot boot from WINDOWS\CONFIG\SYSTEM . The file may be corrupted or missing. Boot from Windows XP disk and press ‘R’ to attempt repair” For those who didn’t understand any of that, the computer was basically saying “can’t start, shove a disk in me to help me.” The problem was I couldn’t shove said disk in, as the netbook I use lacks a CD/DVD drive.
This spurred a flurry of calls to my good friend Scud, who has helped me out when updating hardware, or sorting problems I haven’t got a clue how to sort. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get through to him at that time, so I was stuck with only one option: - buy a USB drive and attempt recovery myself. Unfortunately this wasn’t going to happen at that time as it was about 9pm at this time.
As my room was in disarray due to the heating upgrade, it meant I’d have to go and sleep at Dales. This proved good for a couple of reasons, the main one was that it gave me somewhere more comfortable to sleep; the other was that as the bottom had just dropped out my world due to the laptop failure, I had a lot of pent up aggression. It was at dales I found how soothing shooting zombies with a shotgun can be, due to trying out “Left 4 Dead”. I’m not usually into 1st person shooters, or more gory games, but I needed a let-out and didn’t care, but I found that I actually enjoyed it, and I was a little better at FPS’ than I thought (but not great).
I arrived home at around lunchtime the next day, to find that the builders had laid waste to the old fire.
The rest of the day really didn’t go my way, first, the wire in my brace come loose, and we have to make arrangements to get a temporary fix for it. At the same time, I’m looking on every computer site I know for a USB CD drive, I find one on PC world which claims to be quite good for the price and has Lightscribe. We decide to reserve it, and collect it on the way back from the orthodontists after getting my brace fixed.
After collecting the drive, I notice that there's something missing from its capabilities, the Lightscribe is missing. It appears as thought the description of the drive online is wrong. On finding this out, I go into legal mode, phoning up PC world, and stating that they violated the “trade of goods description act” meaning that a full refund or trade must happen. As I am hell bent on getting my laptop back on it’s feet tonight, we go out to PC world again to get it exchanged, but this is at 7:40pm, when PC world shuts at 8pm. Mum raced up the motorway, and reaches PC world with only a few minutes to spare. After I explain about the wrong description, the assistant is happy to change it with no extra charge even if the one I was meant to get was about £5 dearer.
On getting home, I try phoning Scud again and get through to him this time, so with his help, get my laptop back into working order, with no loss of data.
Tonight I'm back over at Dale's as there is no way I'm able to find anywhere to sleep back home. At least everything is working again, but even though I get the feeling I've just tempted fate, I can live with it for now as what lies ahead can’t be as bad as what’s happened the last two days, can it?
