Read this second

This one was posted after the next one and it won't make any sense unless you read ths one first. Or you can try to make sense of it, if you must. :-)

I tried the first of the fixes and it went quite well. Uninstalled the .NET stuff, etc., and installed .NET 2.0. Then I was even able to install Office 2003. But when I tried to run Word or Excel, it was revealed that underneath it all, things were still "off".

Having spent over two hours doing the above, I decided to use the Ghost image that Dell ships and start over. That went well. However, to my surprise, Dell had included a trial version of Office 2003 but it would not accept the key code from a copy the soup kitchen had! So I uninstalled it, Norton Internet Security and AOL, and started to install what needed to be done. First was Office 2003, then Total Commander, Zone Alarm, Free AVG, Win Defender, Windates, and Typeitin.

Three hours later, I was almost finished. :-) I installed the version of Tbird that I had and then upgraded, but found that upgrading created a second profile! So I uninstalled it and downloaded the latest. Of course, the uninstall hung! Jeez! I just deleted the program folder and the profile folder and tried again and that worked.

I then installed Abakt and attempted a restore of her last backup. Never having done an Abakt restore before, I set up C:\abakt_restore and restored there. Then I copied the folders to where they belonged!

Spent a little time trying to get an Abakt backup to run from Windows Scheduler but no matter what I tried, it didn't like the command line parameters.

Installed LogMeIn and Webshots and went home. I'll try to install Ad-Aware and Spybot and OpenOffice from home. Enough for one day!

Saturday, Already!!

Fast week!

Dishwasher failed. 100%-guaranteed-to-work plunger failed! Cathy's new computer has bad problems. And yesterday, my partner and I played bridge like loxes!!

Dishwasher is now fixed (loose harmonic balancer); toilet is unplugged (yay! for snakes). We're going in to TASK to fix the computer in a few minutes and the bridge was just one of those things -- probably the 3-week layoff hurt me a lot!

Cathy's new computer is a Dell DIM C521 (although the manuals call it a 9200!) and I believe the culprit is LapLink's PCMover software. This program is touted as:

Simply install the application on both your old and new computers and go! PCmover will determine which programs, files, and settings need to be moved, and when the transfer is complete, your new computer will have all the personality and functionality of your old PC - plus all of its own pre-installed software.

Sounds great, doesn't it? She keeps getting a C++ Runtime Library error message about msiexec.exe!! I have a couple of fixes to try and then I'm going to restore it to the way it came from the factory and install all her applications and then restore her data backup. So much for saving time and effort!!

The problem may be caused by a corrupt .NET Framework install, which you'll need to fix using the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (see method 2 at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922377)

There's an interesting thread at http://tinyurl.com/2fslnn

I'll let you know what happens. :-)

New England 24, San Diego 21

Go, Pats!!! :-)

That was fast!

Last night's concert was tres disappointing. It was supposed to be "Rachmaninoff the Romantic" but there was nothing romantic until the encore.

They played portions of Trio Elegiaque for piano, violin and cello. The pianist was the man who orchestrated the trio into a piano concerto with orchestra. The trio is a very and jarring piece -- Rachmaninoff was very disturbed by the death of his mentor, Tchaikovsky. The concerto was much better but hardly romantic!

They finished with Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1 which was "better" but also not what we had expected.

And for that, I missed the Eagles-New Orleans game!!! ;-)

This'll be quick!

Just to reassure you, I have not disappeared from the face of the earth!

First of all, a happy New Year to you all.

It was quite a year, healthwise, what with Cathy's back and my coronary arteries and lungs, but we're still hanging in there, better of than many our ages! I still have to deal with my cardiologist about the damned drug-coated stents, but that's for another time.

Went to Boston last weekend to see Lisa, Alan, Alisa and Sara. It would be nice if there were an hour away rather than 5 hours! Cathy's back survived the drive very nicely so that's a load off and seeing my granddaughter is worth the drive. She's reached the point in her development where she is quite articulate!

I'm enjoying my TREO, thank you. I added an Internet plan and will check the score of the Eagle's game during intermission at Symphony this evening! This is our first concert of the seasons -- Russian composers -- and we're looking forward to it.

B and D bought a 46" HDTV which makes my 37 incher look tiny, so I need to find excuses to go over there whenever there's a big game! :-)

Time to get ready to go out. Promise I'll be back in less than a month!! ;-)