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Delicious BSOD today

26 05 09 - 20:48 Yup, another windows rant. Get used it it. So as it was a holiday and I couldn't go to the store or the bank or anything yesterday I went this morning. That part went fine. Then I went to my first apainment. A nice lady with triplets had a windows vista laptop that would bluescreen after you log on with a "Registry error". Very helpful. See, windows keeps all its settings in one big database, unlike the Mac that keeps them all in separate text files. So you whack the registry, and your machine is useless. But oddly, it would boot in safe mode. So I tried various things for an hour thinking it must be some startup program or something because safe mode worked. Even made another user and tried that. No dice. Luckily she had a new flash drive that exactly fit her data, so I got to sit for TWO MORE HOURS while the Toshiba reloaded itself. It's amazing to me how things work in the windows world. Take installing a program, for example. On the Mac, I download a new program as a disk image. I open the disk image and drag the program where I want to open it from. I eject the disk image and trash it. Done. In windows I get this "installer" program I have to run. I then wait as it copies a bunch of temporary files into a temporary folder. It then asks me a bunch of useless questions like "do you want the yahoo toolbar?" which I have to say "no-no-no to, I am trying to install program X why would I need the Yahoo toolbar for?" Then it copies the temporary files from the temporary folder into the programs folder, hidden away someplace I will never see. Then it has to delete the temporary files from the temporary folder (sometimes it doesn't of course, that's why ccleaner was made) and then I have to delete the "installer" program. Why can't the installer just PUT the files where they're supposed to be? Why all this useless waiting while it moves stuff around?

So anyway, that's what the toshiba did, first it copied a bunch of stuff off two DVDs onto a "recovery partition". Then it copied the files from the recovery partition to the user partition. Then it had to reboot like three times while it loaded a bunch of drivers and things like McAfee I then had to go remove. Honestly, Toshiba, if you're not going to give me a REAL windows disk but rather some disk image crap, then at least load the drivers with everything else, not in a separate step (or three). Or let me choose what crap to install, because I hate sitting there knowing I'm going to just take off the crap you're putting on anyway.

Then of course comes the anti-virus, the anti-spyware, the ccleaner, firefox, foxit reader, itunes (you know, all the stuff to actually make the machine useable). Copy her data back, finally get to leave. After all that she talks about her Mac Mini and how she never has problems with that. You're telling me, lady. Her kids were cute though, twin boys and a fraternal girl. Bet that pregnancy went smoothly.

Then I drop off a webcam to a guy and am only 10 minutes late to my 5:00. This is, luckily, a Mac job so they just had some questions for me, no actual hardware problems or anything. Because, hey, Macs don't get odd BSOD issues if you sneeze too loudly near the machine. Oh sure, we have a thing called a kernel panic, which brings up a pleasant little sign in 18 different languages that something bad happened and would you please power the machine off. But then you know you have a hardware problem. How do you know you have a hardware problem and not a software problem? Because you are not using windows!!!!!

Then I come home to a wonderful call from my bestist buddy Andre. See, Andre's machine died awhile back in a peculiar way. It would power on, but not actually do anything. I replaced everything inside his machine but the motherboard and it did the same thing so I ordered a new one, figuring that must be it. Well, the MB arrived but didn't work. It would show me the video card that was plugged as white text on a black screen, but it never went farther. Right after that another WONDERFUL person I know named Bruce (A model citizen) sold me his machine (which is a whole other rant, believe me, I basically gave him more then his machine was worth because I knew he couldn't afford another computer and thus would be OUT of my life). So I put Andre's hard drive in Bruce's machine, and sold it to the guy. Well, apparently there was a problem there because he said it was hanging after just a few minutes. Well, I ran the thing a bunch here, so I was like, whatever. But it turned out something had happened to the primary IDE port on the motherboard, because when it was used, hang. Took the CD drives off and put the HD in its place, worked. So I just give him an IDE PCI card I've had laying around forever and that would seem to be that. No. He calls me that THIS machine has died in the exact same way his other one did. So now what do I tell him? He must have some kind of fault in his power line. I can't let his house kill another machine. Do I just tell him to get a UPS?

There was an episode of Star Trek:NG where this drunken guy says to Worf: "Every moment of pleasure must be balanced by an equal moment of pain." I think that guy was right. I had a lovely, relaxing Sunday, only one job on Monday after which I got to do some stuff I wanted to do. Then, it was back to the crap.

You may come to realize I hate the work I do. I don't hate my job- there's a difference. My job is to help people get their computers running smoothly. This I have no problem with. It's only dealing with windows I hate. Which is ironic, because if it worked as well as the Mac did, I wouldn't have as much work.

It's a funny, funny old life.

P.S. I saw a deer in my yard today!