reload reboot reload reboot reload reboot

tonight i spent hours and hours wiping and reloading the hardrive of my laptop. eventually i won, because here you are reading about it. i guess some important piece of software or registry or compy karma got sizzled, which made it impossible for the computer to "go." with my limited compy skyllz, the only way i could fix it was to start from scratch. meh.

the compy loved it. it got to make bar graphs and ask me questions and play around in DOS a little bit. compy was totally living it up.

i, on the other hand, was not living it up. this process, it turns out, is one of the most mind-crushingly boring experiences you can imagine. i tried to spice things up with some high-quality boob-tubular entertainment. no such luck. tonight, tv choices consisted of dancing with the stars, olympic figure skating, american idol shoot-yourself-in-the-head-boring eliminations, and a rerun of the only episode of this year's CSI i've actually seen. so there i sat in the middle of my living room floor, ignoring american idol and cradling the body of my laptop as it joyfully reabsorbed XP. i was tempted to run out to the street for a mouthful of gravel to suck on, just to round out the experience.

but i have to say, there were some little rewards. this oozing plaque of icons and settings and preferences had slowly built itself up on my compy, like some kind of nasty creeping skin disease. wiping everything clean gave me a chance to fix stuff i had meant to fix for months.

but it wasn't enough. when compy finally finished putting its brain back together, i logged in and quickly discovered that compy hadn't just replaced windows. oh no, it had totally wiped the hard drive. at first glance, no big deal. this is a laptop, and most of my important files were safely stored on señor compy grande, our bigger, cooler, non-breaking-down desktop. but i lost all my outlook stuff. this is the killer. i don't care about the old e-mails, but the calendar and contact list were pretty much priceless. putting it all back together is going to be about as much fun as giving myself a lice treatment.

nevertheless, it's late now and the hardest part is over. eventually american idol made us both so antsy we put in napoleon dynamite, which is like the 40oz malt liquor of entertainment--cheap, easy, and guaranteed to drain your brain. the movie is over--even the wedding scene at the end--compy is going to bed, and as soon as this post is published, i can go to sleep in sweet peace, too.

tomorrow, we reinstall office.