View From the Bushes

While I was gone, everyone in my group at work got a new computer. Yesterday afternoon I finally got around to setting mine up. Before I even pulled it out of the box, I could tell something was wrong. The side of the case was hanging off, for one. Once I dumped it out it was apparent that lots of things were wrong: there was a big blue 'X' on the side of the case and a little sticker on the front which told me that this computer was designed to work best with Windows 95. The upshot was that they had decided to play a joke on me while I was gone. As jokes go, it was a pretty good one.

So after I cleared that up, I started setting up the new computer. I tell you, there really has to be an easier way to switch computers. As it is it takes most of the day just to get close to where the old computer was and then another month of tweaks before it's really back to the way you wanted. One of the first things I decided to do was visit windowsupdate.com and download all the critical patches and what not. Well somehow in the course of doing that, my video driver got screwed up and when I rebooted I was doing 640x480 with 16 colors (if that). As you can tell, I just love setting up a new machine.

Of course, the big news today is the bombings in London. I think Tony Blair's statement was excellent; I can't imagine adding anything to that. I heard about the attacks on my way into work, but only during the last 30 seconds or so of the drive when I switched from the music station to NPR. The music station hadn't bothered to mention it, though they did give me a point by point rundown of everything which happened last night on "Dancing with the Stars." Pretty depressing, if you think about it.

In desperate need of a real vacation
Ross