What's yer excuse now?

 

It all started Sunday morning.

The computer- mind you, this was an 11-year-old Gateway- decided it needed to run CHKDSK.  Something wasn't jiving right, and every so often it asks me to run this.  Normally a long, drawn out affair, it seemed to finish quite quickly.  When it got done, it had me sign in with the same password I've used all this time.  Everything was fine, until... Norton (my AV) told me something wasn't QUITE right, and asked me to do a restart to hopefully fix it.  "I just restarted you!" I shouted at it but complied.  And it restarted, I typed in that same ol' password...

...and it told me it was WRONG.  Several times.

I got in on "guest", which is basically like going to someone else's device because nothing you have built so meticulously is there.  I contacted a really quite good chatline helper, who told me that with an older model such as my doddering Gateway, the basic procedure involved pulling stuff out, putting it onto another machine (yeah, I have another desktop right here in my pocket), and somehow making a copy of EVERYTHING and then deleting my machine and putting in the copy...

"So I'm basically screwed," I said.  He disagreed.  "There are many ways to fix this."

"No easy ones, though..."

"That would be correct."

After thanking him and trying various other means- all of which required that password that no longer worked- I finally said, let's see if Best Buy can get the good stuff out of this electronic trash can and put it in a new one"

They could, and did a damn fine job.  It did, however, involve taking the old one in on Monday, and them working on it until Thursday.  But Thursday night, our new, momentarily state-of-the-art device was home, hooked up amazingly fast considering who was putting it together, and after an hour and a half of searching around, changing settings, verification codes on top of verification codes, an education in when and when not to pin something to the taskbar, I had things about 70% back where they were...

After work today, another hour or so of making sure I could open various things, reconnecting Norton, and making sure I plugged the speaker cord into the right hole- followed by updating 5 days of international hockey scores, standings, and scorers, I am down to "whatever else I haven't thought of yet".  It was a pleasant cap off to a week which started with a rousing game of, "Let's see how close we can come to surpassing your car's value in repairs", followed by stress to a level that we were at a point of leaving purchased items in the trunk, trying to open seat belts from the wrong end, wondering why I ever disconnected the cable from the modem when it wasn't necessary, and how about leaving the engine of the rental SUV on because it was just so darn quiet... oh, and let me throw in a Tuesday spent trapped in the most disorganized, incorrect inventory of all time...

But now, all is right with the world.  God is good once again, all the time.  And I'm ready to go buy some beer.