20XP6
2005-03-22,

"Spring is sprung, the grass is ris; I wonder where the birdies is?" A timeless classic from my dad, that one.

I spent the evening yesterday doing some light grocery shopping for the short week, and wrestling with drivers. (I'll continue after you get that image of Dale Jr. and me in a scuffle while wearing flame-retardant jump suits with oil company patches all over them. Shaken out of your head? Good, let's move on.) We got a new hard drive (a 200GB whopper, which I reeled in using only my bass-fishing rod),

Editor's Note: What's up with the sports references?

onto which I loaded, finally, my copy of XP that had been waiting expectantly for about a year in my gadget cupboard. I had it in my head that I was going to clean up our current one and do a fresh install there, but time for that kind of project never manifested. (And after hearing the horror stories of trying to install XP over an active OS as an upgrade, a new HD was called for).

All was well until, of course, it came time to install the video drivers, which, after doing so, resulted in the computer freezing every time at OS startup. No explanation, nothing. So I spend he next hour in SafeModeLand trying to figure out what the problem was, and getting to the try-anything phase - the computer equivalent flicking switches and turning knobs until the thing starts doing what it's supposed to do. For some reason, reinstalling XP seemed to do the trick. ATI drivers have never but caused me the troubles. Maybe this will be the one time that the video card will be 100 percent functional with the system. Cross your fingers, kids.

So the old drive is going to become the music/video/photo storage bank, which I might just tie in directly to the entertainment system. This concept may verge on awesome, as the plan to digitize all of our CDs is on the docket of Things To Get To When The Insanity Subsides Somewhat. Get a couple of CDs in a day or so, and I should be done in oh, I dunno, a year and a half? Piece of cake.

We're heading to Washington D.C. for the weekend, leaving Very Early, hopefully to be there by lunchtime. If all goes well, we might even swing up to Baltimore and check out their aquarium, which is supposedly quite good. One thing Cleveland still lacks is an aquarium. There used to be one here long ago, but it shut down for some reason. Pity. I remember enjoying thoroughly as a kid. Heck, we don't even have a Sea World (or equivalent) any more. Where am I supposed to get my shark tank and jumping whale fix?

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