Nietha.net

I’ve been meaning to blog about my computer issues (that I finally resolved yesterday morning) but griping for the length that would be necessary seemed like it would be taxing so I kept putting it off. Now I’m writing this in lieu of going to sleep. I swear I get more done by avoiding something else I should be doing. =)

I’ll try not to go into nitty gritty details because I don’t want to write 50 paragraphs (that I’m definitely capable of), so I’ll just say that it took me DAYS to finally reformat because my computer was so slow I could only burn DVDs at 2x which meant more than 30 minutes per disc. I burned 14 DVDs and one CD which was spread out over multiple days cause obviously I could only burn when I didn’t want to be on my computer and honestly I’m on my computer that much. I also had to garbage one DVD as it got an error during the burning process so I restarted (which took forever), did a speed test measurement and it said I could burn at 1.3x. With my actual options being 2x, 4x and 6x. I hoped to hell that I could just finish backing up what I needed to and thankfully I only wasted the one disc.

The organizing leading up to the burning also took a fair bit because once I get organizing… do I ever organize. Plus it’s hard not to look at all the pictures and all the videos while you’re going through them.

I also spent 2 or 3 days troubleshooting my slow PC issue - although I investigated a few avenues, they were (not surprisingly) all dead ends. And when your computer is as slow as mud like mine was, it takes forever to restart. 75% of the time, while booting up, whatever generic plug and play process that recognizes USB devices wouldn’t even kick in meaning it wouldn’t recognize my mouse until I manually made the introduction of “hey Mr. PC, meet Mr. Mouse”. Yeah. I could have changed my address to Frustration Avenue.

In the end, it’s probably a good thing in the long run that I didn’t discover the root cause as I bet my procrastinating lazy ass probably wouldn’t have reformatted if I got my PC up to speed again. I now wonder if maybe it was something as simple as a needed defrag, which I actually didn’t try, but I honestly believe it was a virus I couldn’t find because the issue literally popped up overnight. I had been downloading stuff and my computer had been on for a few days without a restart and I think somewhere in that timespan I did take my firewall down for a bit for some reason or other. I did (and do) have Windows installed on its own partition, which I assume helps shield it from defrag issues of my main drive. Regardless of whatever perceived benefits, I like it for the organization factor.

Anyways, I’ll never know what the issue was and again in the end I’m better off for having to be forced to reformat. Hooray for a seeming-like-new PC (especially with XP Service Pack 3, Firefox 3, and the lack of tons of files everywhere). Boo to having to reinstall everything, restarting 5 million times and still not having everything up to snuff. Where the hell’s that snuff term come from.

So, that’s my abridged version of venting. I’m almost surprised I wrote about this topic at all because I’m bad like that with my blogging - I’ll get as far as a title and 2 or 3 sentences and be like, “I’ll just write about this later” and save it as a draft. I have 6 drafts just sitting there, people.

As for this title, it signifies that I got iTunes installed today and copied over all my mp3s that I had backed up on 4 DVDs. I was without music for 2 days, although I did listen to my iPod at one point. Now I’m just bummed that I didn’t think about my iTunes info, ie my playlists, my song ratings, my play counts, etc. Actually I’m not even sure if there’s a way to save that stuff, but there should be, so if I missed out on that feature then I’m really disappointed in myself. If it’s not feasible to do so then I’m really disappointed in Apple. I can always find somebody to be disappointed in.

Oh, also, let me say I’m not all that impressed with Dell’s “resource CD” for drivers *rolls eyes* but I digress. I’m just happy it’s for the most part over and done with. Today I need to get Windows Media Player 11 installed so I can get my Momento picture frame up and running again.

I’m excited about the prospect of being able to - *gasp* - play Guild Wars, listen to iTunes AND have Firefox running in the background. Seriously, I could only run one of those at a time for more than a week.

The last day or two before reformatting I gave up on iTunes and was just listening to Last.fm’s player… which is supposed to tailor music to your tastes, as determined by your playing history. I’ve had Last.fm tracking my music for 2 years and the shit they thought I’d like was a scary revelation… either shows they’re missing some key ingredient required to meet their admirable goal, or just proves how varied and complex each person’s music taste is. Regardless of which it is, I still like my music page.

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Now playing: Daniel Powter - Bad Day
via FoxyTunes