I’m in the living room right now mostly because I just purchased a subscription for V’s antivirus software. I noticed that I could share the wealth on this subscription so I figured I’d do the courteous thing and extend LSW4′s subscription as well.

You’re probably wondering why in the hell I am bothering to even have that piece of crap turned on (some of you remember how slow that thing has been for years). Well, you see, Shaunelle’s hard drive crashed. I otherwise wouldn’t wish LSW4 on my worst enemy but it’s better than nothing till she gets a new computer. Since the subscription is about to end, I didn’t want to leave her high and dry if she still needed it when it ran out.

Anyway, since it is still &#8220operational&#8221 and has my only copy of Photoshop on it, I’ve figured I should hold on to it for the time being.

That said, let’s recap what I’ve done since I initiated the renewal and update process:
* I finished eating a $12 fish dinner from a new restaurant around the corner (there’s a bar/restaurant and two restaurants, four if you count Subway and a pizza joint downhill) within a 15-minute walk of here.; that’s low for this city but still amazing)
* I went upstairs to get V and my audio cable
* I played half of the Mumford and Sons album on my stereo
* I turned LSW5 on, read an entry by phoenixashies and started this entry
* I checked out some for the antivirus software for LSW5

LSW4 is still updating.

Still.

I don’t understand how I dealt with that computer all this time. I didn’t complain a lot about it here but it has been a pain. About two years ago, I downloaded something at a friend’s house and I was there possibly half an hour longer than the &#8220time to go&#8221 moment because it was still running. The battery died rather quickly. As in I had to put it on sleep and, most recently, hibernate to unplug it.

It could have been worse though. I’ve seen some crap-tastic laptops and I’m glad I didn’t own them.

It’s finally rebooting. And that, of course, is taking forever. And now it’s scanning the hard drive. I guess that’s good because it found some errors. That’s a first for it. Piece of crap.

I wonder how long before I start calling this one a piece of crap. At least, for the record, this one is great and fast and does what I tell it when I tell it. If that changes, it’s either my fault or Microsoft has a new OS and this is just getting left in the dust.

Less than an hour ago, I got a new laptop. This is LSW5, V for short. Although I have a lot to figure out, a lot to transfer over from LSW4/install when I get back to Richmond and I’m using a stolen Internet, this thing is pretty awesome and fast. I kinda wish I could go home early so I can play around with it without this whole pesky work thing getting in the way.

Anyway, I’m about to be off to bed. I decided to stay up all night to make it to all of this Black Friday mess with my mom. My reward was a computer with a 2.2-gig processor, 3 gigs of ram and a 320 gig hard drive. Can’t beat that with a stick, especially when LSW4 is running on a 2 gig processor, 512 megs of memory and an 80-gig hard drive.

Part of the reason for my hiatus from posting (beyond the general frequency of my posts dropping) was that my computer has been acting funny. Like taking 20 minutes to start up funny. It had been since June 28 but it got REALLY bad lately (like the 20-minute thing started last week). I thought I would have to get a new laptop early because it was so bad.

Of course, since I never give up on anything easily, I had to try my hand at fixing it once I was home for more than enough time to cook dinner and sleep and had energy to do something else. That probably won’t come until NEXT weekend (guess who’s working Saturday morning and plans on not getting out of bed Sunday?) so, in my lack of better judgment said, fuck it and set out to work on it last night.

I had to at least be definitely out of bed by 6:30.

I went to bed at 3:30.

If you don’t give a shit about how I figured out how the fuck to fix my shitty computer, stop reading here. I’ll do something interesting in a couple of three days. Promise.

Here’s what happened:
Like I said, it started acting funny as I was fixing Shaunelle’s virus-ridden computer. It was like something jumped from her computer to mine and I just hadn’t had the time to take a good look at mine since then. The main problem was that I would restart, it would take forever to load and my page file usage would skyrocket. At its worst, I had to create a virtual memory file on my external hard drive so it would get to the point where it turned on my wireless. But, after that 20 minutes of dragging like nobody’s business, it worked normally. In fact, it would run faster than when I got it (LSW4 was a gift and it came with Windows XP Media Center Edition with a bunch of useless crap I had to delete).

That made me figure it wasn’t a virus.

But, when I opened Task Manager when all hell was breaking loose, it didn’t show anything out of the ordinary beyond the astronomical virtual memory uses. So I hit the Internet. After some trial and error, I turned on a column in Task Manager and What the shit, services.exe?

Of course, there are like 18,999 viruses that create a false services.exe so almost everything online basically said to wipe the hard drive and start over. Fuck that. I don’t take the easy way out. Furthermore, nothing stood out as this being an actual virus.

Finally, I got so some tech-savvy message board where someone had my issue after uploading a Windows update and was insistent that it wasn’t a virus . Of course, he got nowhere because the Internet is for morons now and of course this pea brain with far more processing power than he’d ever need went to some free celebrity porn site and got the plague.

Eventually, someone suggested that the update was incompatible with something on his computer and he either needed to remove the program, remove the update or get a new computer. I did a search for the update to see what was incompatible, I found another board where someone was just as insistent as the other guy but there was seven pages of responses so something had to have been accomplished, I reckoned.

the guy had problems completely identical to mine. Completely. The only difference was that he had some sort of software on his computer I didn’t have. Then, on the sixth page, I discovered that I did have the software.

As I was looking for solutions for Shaunelle’s computer, I tested a couple things out on my laptop because her computer wasn’t working enough to figure out how to work a program before it unleashed a legion of demons and crapped out. I had downloaded a “portable” program I was going to transfer over to her computer on my jump drive since she lost the Internet. I discovered it wasn’t what she needed after I downloaded it to my computer and I deleted the folder. Since it was supposed to be “portable,” I figured it didn’t establish itself on my hard drive.

Wrong, wrong.

It set itself up in the registry and I should have uninstalled it like any other program. When I started my computer up, it was trying to start a program I incorrectly uninstalled and lead to services.exe freaking out. It was a rookie mistake but I was up till the wee hours fixing her computer when I did that to my own.

I had another fun moment deleting things in my registry (I hate doing that) and now everything works to the point where I can use this computer as a backup when I get a new laptop later in the year.

There are times that I’m too much of a nerd for my own good. But I do like doing this without any formal training. It makes me feel more bad ass.

&#8220It is a time of desolation, chaos and uncertainty. Brother pitted against brother; babies havin’ babies. Then one day, from the right side of the screen, came a man &#8212 a man with a plastic rectangle … I MEAN LAPTOP COMPUTER!&#8221
&#8212 Strong Bad

Yes, I have a new lappy! It wasn’t exactly what I wanted but beggars can’t be choosers. I have an HP Pavilion with this friggin’ stupid XP media edition. Luckily, I get a free upgrade to Vista so I don’t have to continually deal with the &#8220entertainment&#8221 crap this computer has. When I get some free time, I’m going on a huge deletin’ programs spree. I already got rid of &#8220Vongo,&#8221 which is something like Netflix. If I really wanted to watch a movie, I’d friggin’ go buy or rent one and watch it on a TELEVISION. THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE FOR. YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE YOUR COMPUTER FOR EVERYTHING.

But I digress.

It has a 2 gig processor, an 80 gig hard drive and 512 megs of memory. I’m probably going to upgrade the memory later; I hear it’s not hard to do that on laptops nowadays. And by me I mean I’ll go to Best Buy with one of my brothers to buy more then get him to do it because I’d probably turn LSW4 into a thermonuclear device by accident. I could do it myself but I also could could also build an airplane from a kit. But I wouldn’t get into it when I was done.

It’s been nice to be able to do things on a computer for once. It downloads quite well too. I almost wish I had something to download just to see it go so fast again. I almost literally shoved LSW1 off my desk when I got here. I think LSW4 and I are going to be friends for quite a while.

Oh, and it’s w i d e s c r e e n! Since most things, like the layout for the viaduct is set for 1024 x 768, there’s tons of white space all over the place. That works out when I have multiple things open, like Firefox and AIM.

Speaking of AIM, version 6 is a drastic change. I don’t know what I think about that yet.

I almost want to stay here all day and screw around with this. I think programs like HP Game Console and Games are going on the chopping block tonight. I’ll make free time.

But, for now, I need to get to work in half an hour so I probably shouldn’t be sitting here, updating in my undawears. Especially since our new managing editor starts today. I guess I should show up somewhat on time. Don’t expect a real update about this weekend because I just ate a lot of food and drank a lot of alcohol. Oh, and I cleaned up some freshman’s vomit. It was special and nothing special at the same time.

Since it hasn’t even been 24 hours yet, I just wanted to let you know that my mom felt sorry for me having to borrow Mandy’s laptop over Thanksgiving weekend and bought me one. Now I can use that tax return money for coke and hookers.

Cleaning weekend starts Friday. I’ll finally be here at an hour where I can vacuum. Well, I could have done it this morning if I wasn’t updating this … OK, Tyrone. Stop typing and go to work. Now. But get dressed first.