frustration central

When we were in the States, we purchased a new computer (just the tower, not a new monitor, keyboard or mouse). Not only was it less expensive because of the currency exchange, but we happened to be there right before school started, so North Carolina was having its Sales Tax Free weekend. So we have this new computer with a ginormous hard drive (19Gb!) with a spectacular graphic card (my online games never looked better!) which seemed to work just fine when hooked up to Dad's connection but don't you know, once we got home, it's been nothing but trouble.

First we had trouble getting it connected at all, which took no less than twenty-four hours to figure out. Then Steph struggled with the partitioning (tangent: partitioning is such a polarizing issue - you either love it or hate it - but Steph is a big supporter of partitioning and he has his games and documents seperate from Windows, theoretically saving them if Windows craps out). Once we got that done, we realized we'd been gyped out of a sound card - why did we not notice while we were still in the States that the sound card is integrated? Happily we can exchange it with the sound card from the old computer. Finally, I started downloading all my little programs and Firefox extentions and installing both MMORPG games and downloading the critical updates for them... and then the computer started restarting itself. Nothing terrible, only every three hours or so (very heavy sarcasm).

After it restarted again this morning and started once again filechecking one of the partitions, Steph realized that something in the partitioning must have gone wrong, so we did yet another system restore and I'm once again at square one (though, I should add, without partitions this time). If we can get through the whole day without a restart, then we may be able to contemplate changing the sound card and other time-intensive things for setting this thing up. As Steph keeps reminding me, one thing at a time.

Unfortunately, patience was never my strong suit, so I'm going downstairs to bang some pots and pans together before I take my frustrations out on this keyboard!

Update: Computer rebooted. Grrrrrrrrr.... Steph is experimenting on a solution, we'll see what happens...