OK. From what I last said: everything went to hell. As soon as I tried to get the Live drivers working, my primary HDD died. I thought it might just be a hiccup. I made yet another request of Trav, and we took my primary, and secondary HDDs to his place. For what we thought would be a simple procedure.

Wrong again. After determining that the primary HDD was completely fragged, Trav and I disassembled it. What we found was a little strange. The head somehow managed to take a good gouge into the platter. I really can't guess how it happened. It's not as if I kicked the rig while it was installing. Some stupid failure. Whatever it was, it meant I wrote off a relatively new HDD. I tell you all now: don't buy a Maxtor. I thought their only issue was running hot. Egg on my face. So next was getting my backup drive cleaned for a new instance of Windows on it. It would be simple.

Right?... WRONG! So just backing up the data should have been simple. Just actually accessing the drive seemed to give Trav a big headache. I just wish that I was a little more technically minded so that I could have helped him out a bit more, but all I served was a vigil, and as a warming implement: increasing the ambient temperature as things got more and more futile. In the end though, he was able to salvage the data. Thank God. At least the site map and a few other personal effects were saved. After successfully recovering the data, which happened midnight, Trav and I traipsed back to my place to get Windows working again, drivers and apps in tote. Yet another cut and paste job with no possible hitches.

With electronics? Who the hell am I trying to fool?!

After another game of Sonic Shuffle in lieu of installation, (we actually managed to finish the game, and unlock all the characters during the problems,) we decided to tackle whatever problems Windows was having installing in the morning. Of course, stupid me asks Trav to wake me up whenever he was ready. I almost fell out of bed when he bashed on my door. I forgot the Beesley alarm system *slaps forehead* After a good shower, and cobwebs aside, got back to work. After leeching diagnostics equipment for the good ol' Quantum Bigfoot, it turns out that the drive is seriously damaged sector-wise. So there goes my backup drive too. I was left rigless. RIGLESS!

A few days of television and board games drove me to murder. A cathartic experience where I proceeded to disassemble the reassembled primary, and secondary drives. Messing around with the high powered magnets for a while was a decent distraction. Thankfully my saviour came in the form of a slouched, large footed Port drinker. Mark delivered me from a rig deprived hell with another big foot. Laugh.

This is where everything turns around.

So just before my primary corrupted, I managed to find my old ICQ number. This isn't normally a celebrated event, but it least gave me the earliest number in my peer group, and that's some sort of warped status symbol. That aside...

So the drive Mark gave me actually had Windows on it, and not to tempt fate, I just left the OS on there from fear that it would just die on me like the others. So I manage to get everything bar the DVD-ROM working, which Trav did in a matter of minutes, then I find out that my Net account expired in the morning. Of course, this was just icing on the cake, because I subtly managed to get Dad to change providers from SENet and their sub-par All You Can Net service, to the far superior iPrimus "whatever the hell the account is called because I was far too eager to wear it in like a good shoe to listen to the guy on the phone". So now I have no excuse not to do as much as I bloody well want online.

Which also means that I'm ready and rearing to go with the TFM LAN IV. Old school goodness... actual gameplay... having to cook my own food... well two out of three ain't bad. And don't let it be said that Mister Simon Cole isn't charitable. He offered to get me a free pizza. It's worth mentioning. I of course, am far too proud to take his money, but will aid in getting the venue ready.

Now, I will be able to thrash out some review relatively simply, but unfortunately I'm yet to find my copy of Photoshop 6, or the drivers for my scanner, so a comic will occur at my nearest opportunity. I'm not sure whether I should apologise or not after this horror week. But now, everything is good la la la la la!

I'm off to recover lost links and games. Stupid corruption.