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Made one of those cartoony icons. Not bad at all! I set it as my default since I was getting tired of the old one.
Had the day off today for the 4th of July, which is the nice thing about working at a university rather then retail, where I would have had to work today as well as the 4th. I think I hit that time in my life where I simply refuse to go back and work any job where I don't get two days a week off (preferably in a row) and all major holidays. Though with the job market as rough as it is, I'm wondering if I might have to re-evaluate my search criteria.
Found out last week that if I decided to leave, they'll pay me for the vacation time I didn't take. So I can either give myself some buffer time in between quitting and the new job, or I can put the cash in savings and save it up for another time. Considering that most places are looking for someone to start asap, I don't think the buffer time is going to workout. But I'm getting way ahead of myself as I've not found a new job yet. Still, it's nice to know.
Over the weekend I've been fixing the computer. It started acting poorly a couple of weeks ago. So I did all the normal maintanance on it and while I got it to run faster, it started signaling hard drive errors whenever I would turn it on. So I ran some tests and found it was failing the SMART test and it tossed me an error code. Took this information to Gateway and they recommended me reinstalling all my shit. So, I did that. Lost Norton somehow. And all my MS patches. Before I could get it back, caught something like 6 trojan horses, one of which destroyed an important boot file. Computer shut down and wasn't coming back up. Called Gateway again and they suggested I - heh heh - reformat the hard drive. Funny how they started telling me how to make a boot disk online. Yes, that would work if I could BOOT THE FRIGGIN COMPUTER TO BEGIN WITH. But I had a boot disk already, so no problem there. But you'd think they'd ask me if I had access to another computer or if I were able to get online - SOMETHING. Oh well.
So this weekend I reformated the hard drive and re-installed everything. Not very easy, as getting those damn MS patches takes forever on a phone hookup. Norton is gone and can't be reclaimed without shelling out more money for it. The computer runs HORRID without those patches. God, things have changed so quickly. Never had problems like these with my laptop. I managed to dowload most of the updates, but there are still a few that keep failing. But at least the computer runs smoothly now.
Ditched Norton and downloaded AVG, which is working very nicely. Doesn't take up as much space as Norton and does a better job. I think after the 30 day trial I'll buy it. Also finally got ad-aware and spybot s&d to download. And that's helped the performance tremendously.
All this and the hard drive is still signaling errors. So it looks like Gateway needs to send me a new hard disk drive. They better send someone out rather than tell me to ship it back. I SO look forward to the joys of re-installation once again. They better have everything that comes with this model updated and installed, is all I'm saying. . .
Had the day off today for the 4th of July, which is the nice thing about working at a university rather then retail, where I would have had to work today as well as the 4th. I think I hit that time in my life where I simply refuse to go back and work any job where I don't get two days a week off (preferably in a row) and all major holidays. Though with the job market as rough as it is, I'm wondering if I might have to re-evaluate my search criteria.
Found out last week that if I decided to leave, they'll pay me for the vacation time I didn't take. So I can either give myself some buffer time in between quitting and the new job, or I can put the cash in savings and save it up for another time. Considering that most places are looking for someone to start asap, I don't think the buffer time is going to workout. But I'm getting way ahead of myself as I've not found a new job yet. Still, it's nice to know.
Over the weekend I've been fixing the computer. It started acting poorly a couple of weeks ago. So I did all the normal maintanance on it and while I got it to run faster, it started signaling hard drive errors whenever I would turn it on. So I ran some tests and found it was failing the SMART test and it tossed me an error code. Took this information to Gateway and they recommended me reinstalling all my shit. So, I did that. Lost Norton somehow. And all my MS patches. Before I could get it back, caught something like 6 trojan horses, one of which destroyed an important boot file. Computer shut down and wasn't coming back up. Called Gateway again and they suggested I - heh heh - reformat the hard drive. Funny how they started telling me how to make a boot disk online. Yes, that would work if I could BOOT THE FRIGGIN COMPUTER TO BEGIN WITH. But I had a boot disk already, so no problem there. But you'd think they'd ask me if I had access to another computer or if I were able to get online - SOMETHING. Oh well.
So this weekend I reformated the hard drive and re-installed everything. Not very easy, as getting those damn MS patches takes forever on a phone hookup. Norton is gone and can't be reclaimed without shelling out more money for it. The computer runs HORRID without those patches. God, things have changed so quickly. Never had problems like these with my laptop. I managed to dowload most of the updates, but there are still a few that keep failing. But at least the computer runs smoothly now.
Ditched Norton and downloaded AVG, which is working very nicely. Doesn't take up as much space as Norton and does a better job. I think after the 30 day trial I'll buy it. Also finally got ad-aware and spybot s&d to download. And that's helped the performance tremendously.
All this and the hard drive is still signaling errors. So it looks like Gateway needs to send me a new hard disk drive. They better send someone out rather than tell me to ship it back. I SO look forward to the joys of re-installation once again. They better have everything that comes with this model updated and installed, is all I'm saying. . .
