So today was supposed to be my “get shit done day”. Bill was off LARP’ing in the very cold woods, so I had the whole apartment to myself. The morning went off without a hitch. Got up, showered, went to the bank, hit the grocery store (nothing worse than grocery shopping on a saturday morning, but I was lazy this week. Bleah.) went home, cleaned up the house (and it’s just so /nice/ when I’m not embarrassed to look at my own living room…), wrapped all my christmas presents, and finished a few new non-computer art pieces. (to be posted soon).

No problems, so I check my mail…. and the net connection has crapped out. No problem, it does this sometimes. (I’m told hooking a router up to the cable modem will help with this problem - eventually I’ll get around to it.) I power down the computer, unplug the modem, and wait. Plug the modem back in. Wait some more. Reboot the computer.

Still no connection.

I try to reset my DHCP settings. No go.

So I dive into my last ditch solution, which has always worked up until now… uninstall Norton Security and reinstall. The uninstalling part goes off fine, but reinstalling…. fails miserably. Apparently, Norton 2003 does NOT want to re-install under SP2. Two failed installations later, I still have no net connection, but I am getting CONSTANT reminders from windows that I am now completely unprotected from every bad thing in the world.

My computer feels naked. Not cool.

Finally, I break down and call Optimum Online tech support. And the connection problem isn’t actually on my end. They are having issues. Bleah and double bleah. I get off the line with the nice tech and ponder my nervous feeling computer. Looks like we have to upgrade to an SP2 friendly version.

Insert side trip to Comp USA - and some gratuitous hanging out with Bill, who is back from LARP’ing and is working security at the door. I shell out some money, and come home with my spiffy new copy of Norton 2005. It installs perfectly. It also has lots of new features that look quite nice. While attempting to activate the installation (as is becoming a depressingly familiar activity with new software) I find that my ‘net connection has come back. Whoohoo!

The full system scan took over an hour. But, it now even finds adware. Spiffy. Die adware, die! (as I delete the quarantined files)

So, all’s well that ends well. Time to dive back into drawing. Yay.