rj_anderson | Please just shoot me now.

Happy birthday to me, and all that, she said in Eeyore-like tones of utter despondency.

Tonight I let the kids play games on the computer for half an hour or so, and one of them shut the computer off mid-game by poking it randomly with his toe. I scolded him and turned the computer back on, only to have the other kid cancel Scandisk on me halfway through the scan. Then I saw the oh-so-comforting message on the screen:

Windows Protection Fault
You will need to reboot your computer.

Press any key to continue...

Needless to say, pressing any key did not continue; it never does. So I rebooted again, and this time the computer would only start in Safe Mode. I ran through various troubleshooting scenarios, all of which yielded nothing. Finally I resigned myself to reinstalling Windows from the CD, only to discover that the CD drive is inaccessible.

All together, now: Arrrrrrggggggh.

So, needless to say, I am not spending the evening as I had hoped, watching The Amazing Race with my husband and then settling in for a productive couple of hours of editing. I have been forced to squander it on a fruitless attempt to fix my computer, and now here I am downstairs on my parents' machine typing this message to let you all know that it may, once more, be a couple of days before you hear from me again.

Like I said, hooray and happy birthday to me. *gloom*