Valerie is engaged!!!!!!!!

March 11, 2007 on 9:58 pm | In just photoggin... | 3 Comments
woohoo! details to follow!

ok..i’ve been without a real computer…

March 5, 2007 on 7:20 am | In just photoggin... | No Comments

for 4 days? going on 5? i’m starting to get jittery - haha. my life has been consumed with trying to fix my computer, which while i was showing someone how to right click and upload to smugmug - suddenly went to the blue screen of death - and the message upon rebooting was “please insert proper boot device and press any key”.

well, i did that…and i did that, and i did that one more time. after around 2 hours, i figured i could go into the bios popup and select the hd to boot from - even though this WAS set properly IN the bios itself. such is life.

so in an effort to fix this highly annoying message - i thought to myself, self…you should just reload your operating system and this will fix a host of other little problems that don’t amount to much individually, but if something is wrong and you have to fix it - you might as well dig in with both feet and just do it.
well, that was my first mistake. my second was not installing the operating system to a scratch disk, if i had done that, i could have saved myself from almost 48 hours of loading, reloading, reloading, almost getting there, being slapped back to the ground…almost getting there, and finally admitting defeat.

i can’t for the life of me figure out - why the operating system reload was insisting on service pack 2 - since the original install disks didn’t have it. i should have been able to load the system, THEN apply sp2, but NOOOOOO, not happening, which presented it’s own set of problems. i did successfully get the system installed 2 times, which by successfully, i mean, i had internet, and the tv worked and the windows shell actually looked like it was supposed to. both times, i was able to get up on the net…..actually download updates - and then wham!!! reboot - to an endless cycle of blue screens of death. now keep in mind…i loaded and reloaded probably over 30 times during the weekend, if nothing else, i am determined. i even managed to create a slipstreamed disk of my operating system and sp2, no easy feat. that didn’t work. well, it did, but after the reboot i got BSOD. i copied off the files it wanted during installation and put them on another cd - that almost worked, but again, after installing updates - BSOD. occassionally, after the re-install i would get a really weird thing - like absolutely no graphics card..which i supposed could lead one to the conclusion that it was the graphics card that was failing to begin with…but gosh..that’s for the computer guru up there in computer heaven to figure out - cause this machine was laid to rest yesterday. after having the issues i did trying to connect the 500gb sata drives to the mb - and that entire debaucle…it should be grateful i just didn’t drop kick and punt.
so anyhow, over to fry’s….new mb, chip, mem, graphics, etc., after spending an afternoon with g-ma. we spent the evening putting the new stuff into the old box and of course, nothing like this can go without a hitch - yep, i did it. i picked up the wrong graphics card - so i have to go BACK to fry’s this morning and get the correct one. then i’ll cross my fingers and hope mikey is online so he can so expertly help me thru setting up bios, etc.

it was pretty funny last night - had the laptop cranked, mikey on skype and gb and i installing the parts. so anyhow, i’m left to cleaning this morning! eww!