Digging out…

PCs never just stop working. It seems they tend to die slow deaths that have you wondering, wondering, wondering, until… it’s kind of like cancer…

My PC, for instance, had a pretty bad worm about a month ago. Though I caught it, it never seemed to work the same after that. The web browser would take flights of fancy by itself. It would direct you to pages you never intended to go to – not interesting ones, either! Eventually, it got to be rather difficult to surf the web without the browser crashing. First, it was Internet Explorer. Then, it was Firefox. Then, it took out Windows Explorer with it!

Finally, just this week, I called in a friend of mine who knows a thing or two about PC more than I do and we put our heads together. Fortunately, there’s no virus, worm, Trojan condom, or anything like that. So, that’s good. Sadly, the worm I had did so much damage that it pretty much wiped out my ability to surf the web.

“It’s simple,” he said. “Just run the XP Repair on your Windows disk and that should fix it.”

But things ain’t simple around here. You see, Vicky and I both bought our PCs from (the now very defunct) PC Club. When we bought them, I asked if we would get our Windows software and we were assured we would. When Vicky’s PC went earlier this year, we found out that what they gave us was disk one of a multi-disk Windows install. That’s right. Disk One!

So, using my Windows disk is not even an option.

It’s not as if we can run out and buy a copy of Windows 7, being unemployed and all. But I need the Internet to do most of the work I do, including looking for work. Time to get creative.

We know someone who can get us a huge discount on Windows 7… but not until next week. That’s fine. We can wait. In the meantime, I’ve split my work between my PC and Vicky’s MAC. I just walk back and forth, from one computer to another, from one room to another… For instance, I wrote this on my PC and am posting it on Vicky's MAC! (I need my ergo keyboard for writing...) Oh, it’s a weird way to live.

But, hopefully, in about a week or so, things will be back to functioning and not quite so strange. Strangeness is just a part of life when you’re digging out.