Friday, June 22, 2007

Home Stretch

Today was my weekly test and project in college algebra. I think I did okay, but I won't hold my breath just in case. I'm holding a pretty high C at the moment, so if I can just pass today's test, make a decent grade on my project, and pass my final I'll be in good shape.

Today is Friday, which means the Friday Snippet is being hosted on a lot of sites. I'd have participated, except I haven't been writing for several weeks, I've been doing homework. I'll have to get back into the habit, but first I gotta get this final out of the way.

Some bad news: my laptop took a dive. Apparently Windows Vista didn't agree with most of the programs on it--and they were default programs that came with the laptop. The webcam was the first to go. It only lasted a couple of days after I got it. I just shrugged it off. I mean, I've never had a webcam before, why would I need one now? Except then more programs started to fail. Windows would bring up error messages saying "An error has occured. Searching for solution." Then another would pop up and say "No solution can be found. We'll notify you when one is available." Thanks, that means so much. Except then core programs started to fail. Adobe Reader failed. Then one of the core programs in Vista--Superfetch--failed, which kicked me off the internet. Then Internet Explorer failed.

I turned the laptop over to my mom to try to fix it. She ran a check and the computer had 19 programs that Vista had blocked/had errors and had failed. She tried to configure the webcam software. The window read "configuring..." and then another window popped up that said, "Uninstall complete" and my webcam software was gone forever. Then she tried to restore it back to the day we got it. It said an error occured in the restoration process, no settings had been changed. In the hour my mom worked on it, the computer got worse. My mom tried to view the Control Panel and it closed by itself and Vista told us that an error had occured so the window had to be closed.

When mom looked back at the errors to see how many there were, it had jumped from 19 to 32*. It was like a virus, but it was Vista! We sent the computer back, got a refund and now I have a Dell laptop with XP coming in the mail. It should arrive soon, and I can forget the nightmare that was Vista, but...*shudders*...it'll be hard.

That right there is one of the reasons I seriously want a Mac. I'll get one someday, but right now I don't have near enough money. Someday. Maybe after college. But for now, I'm excited to get my Dell, and get a laptop that actually works.

So...how's you week been?

Added: Also, I'm thinking about having a weekly thing I'm gonna put on here, probably on Saturdays or Sundays because those days are hard for me to blog on. I'll be posting drawings. I don't know if I'll do it, but it's in the works. I'll let you know.

*--fixed. It didn't jump to 23, it jumped to 32.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

You draw too? Fabulous!

Sorry to hear about the laptop, but really, what the hell? Vista actively disabling other programs? That's almost creepy.

Ah ha ha. That's a plot idea right there. Ooo-eee-ooo...

Hope the new comp turns up soon and you can get through the course and back to writing :)

Jason said...

Yeah, I draw. Not very good, but I draw. Mostly cartooney looking stuff.

Yeah, it was pretty funny. Computers deciding what they wanted to do, wasn't that the plot of I-Robot? Ha ha.

Thanks. Monday's the last day. Fingers crossed.

Jean said...

I hope you have better luck with the new laptop. Were you able to get it without Vista? If not, I'd be leery of a repeat experience.

Jason said...

Yeah, we got it with XP. We thought about a repeat before we bought another one. Ugh, I don't want to go through that again.

Unknown said...

Nobody should be buying Vista at this point except those willing to be test bunnies for Microsoft. It sucks it happened to you, but Vista is, despite what MS would say, still in the test phase. All new MS OS's are. XP started out like that and we all know where that started. Now XP is relatively stable. I would probably wait for another 3 or 4 months before looking back into Vista. By then there should be some significant patches to keep things flowing normally.

MS just desperately needs to rebuild their OS from the ground up...

Hopefully you learned a lesson for the future :P. Never buy a new MS OS, stick with the previous stable one :).

Jason said...

All the stores were carrying was Windows Vista and I assumed that XP had been booted out like ME and all the others are now. I was wrong...so very wrong. But, no harm done, just a headache.

Anonymous said...

could it be that your computer couldn't hold vista? Cuz if that's the case, you just had a huge system installed on a computer that can't hold it, which is where your problems would come in. Basically, it crashed, and I know it can be fixed somehow, but being an 18 year old girl, I don't know much in that area. But my dad does.
I'm really sorry that it happened, though!
Now, if Vista destroys my laptop, then we'll know there's a problem with it.

Anonymous said...

Ooo...and then I just remembered. One of my computers (mom's xp, or my vista) killed my flash drive. But I haven't spoken to my dad yet, so it could be anything. And I have had problems with flash drives on my mom's computer in the past. hmmm...it would appear I should create lots of backup for my stuff on here.

TrickyZerg said...

There's always Ubuntu.

:-)

Jason said...

I'd never heard of that until you said that. I just researched it some on Google. Very interesting. In case you haven't noticed...I'm not very techno-hip, ha ha.