Wednesday 19 January 2011

Involuntary Silence

At one point this month, it seemed that everything I touched broke.  The Toy kept revving strangely every time I changed gear.  My mobile phone had a temper tantrum.  The files I needed to use at work?  Crashed. 
And the laptop, my computer, refused to load my profile.  Instead, I kept getting this weird message, "The User Profile profile service failed to logon" and then it would return to the log-in screen.  This happened the day we were going away for New Year.

It took some frantic internet searching to find out what had gone wrong:  Vista has a bug where it renames your profile as a backup and then tries to create a new copy.  Except that the new copy has nothing in it to load.  There is a solution:  you have to change it all back.  If it happens to you, here is the discussion board that helped me - you need to read the entire thread though.  And it does work. 

I've spent the last week cleaning up the laptop:  deleting old podcasts, running a backup, creating a restore point, running a registry cleaner.  Things aren't perfect when I login the laptop takes ages to load and I get dozens of "xxxx Service Failed.  Windows is checking for a fix" messages.  Even the service that checks for fixes failed!  I'm at a bit of a loss about what to do next.

Anyway, while it wasn't working, I started to compose a New Year post.  It seems a bit to late now to give it a post on its own so here it is:

Getting my head around 2011

Happy New Year!  Did you do anything special to celebrate?  We went to friends.  How was your Christmas?  Have you made any resolutions?  How did last year's go?  I promise to have a Sit-Rep up on last year by the end of Sunday.

Over the last two weeks, I've eaten too much, drunk too much, cooked, knitted, watched 50+ episodes of CSI, broke the laptop, visited the Imperial War Museum, gone to the football, attended 3 Christmas meals, attempted to fix the laptop, played with the Best Dog In the World, gave blood, shopped a little, caught up with friends, de-stressed, snuggled with DH, etc, etc.  I am so glad I booked the week off before Christmas and that my employer closes between Christmas and New Year.  I was knackered and tired and (probably) had another dose of shingles.

The period between Christmas and New Year has always been a special time for me; a time for reflection and day-dreams and making plans for the future.  This year it seems like everyone is getting on that band-wagon: everywhere I look, I'm getting the same message "New Year; New You".  (It even appeared in the subject line of emails from two yarn stores. What on earth is that about?)   So far, I only have one New Year's Resolution:  to get fit.  

It's incomplete, but I hope you get the idea.

Oh, and the problem with the Toy?  Needed a new clutch.  

- Pam

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