A dreaded blue screen. It started out simple enough, my PC didn't like trying to play DVDs from the new burner and gave me this screen. So I swapped the DVD-ROM back in to watch the video Tuesday and then tried the burner again Friday and got this message. A Dell tech got it "fixed" Friday night, the first tech hung-up by mistake? and didn't call me back. Saturday another DVD gave me the same error. Dell tech said I needed to do a repair install of XP so I did, but had to go out while it ran. Came home to find a more problematic blue screen. Next Dell rep on Sunday insisted that I could finish the repair install with the DVD-burner drive, which Windows kept looking to for the install CD. He was wrong. So I swapped out the drives again and completed the install. Something killed my favorite mouse. My video driver is wrecked (but my ISP help tech gave me an idea of how to get XP to fix it), my monitor is on the default mode and my dual set-up and color is all wrong. Dell now wants to just send me a new hard-drive fully formatted and in better shape to handle my DVD-burner. I count 18 programs I'll have to install on the new hard-drive. I protested that I'd lose my data and they suggested I put 16Gb of photos on a memory key. LMAO! And a bit PO'd at them. Now they are going to send me a whole new tower and I have seven days to plug my old hard-drive, which isn't dead, just messed up, into the new PC and copy all my files over.

I didn't expect I'd get online tonight. That software got fried too. But my ISP got it working. Probably I won't post for a week or so while I do many nights of CCS rehearsal and await my new PC. Tuesday I'll try burning some DVDs of my photos, for safe keeping. In the meantime this photo will be a place holder for the weekend and coming week.