OK, here we go.
It's been roughly ayear now. I was off the internet (much thanx to Laukev and worker201 for not revoking my mod status and being incredibly patient and understanding while I sorted issues out here in England) which additionally means I was basically computer free until about April. My first shipment arrived from the Army and I "set up house." Of course, to be expected, there was a certain amount of damage to some of my personal effects. Of which 3 of my five hard drives have suddenly suffered a mechanical failure of some sort (sounds like the bearings).So now I'm down to two. I pieced together another computer using some of my parts and some of BC's. The result is I have a nice lil machine here, but it's mostly BC's. Which means I have to suffer the world of XP...she absolutely does not want any form of Linux on her system Sad. You gotta keep the lil missus happy!
So I figure If I'm stuck with it, I may as well stream line it and do what I can to keep it from being too windowsish. Boy was I in for a ride...one that I am still currently on. I did the whole add remove windows components thing. How retarded is that setup. I mean why can't there be a friggin add these and have a list of things you don't have installed and remove those with it's own list of progs which are installed.
I noticed I had that annoying windows messenger that likes to run in the background and you don't know it is until someone signs on or sends you a message. So I started it and messed with the options a bit but couldn't get it to stop being an ass-hat! No problem, I'll just kick it out, my wife prefers msn messenger and yahoo messenger anyway. This is where the fun started. This conglomerate list of windows components came up and honestly I had no clue of what I was doing, so I stared at the screen for like 20 minutes trying to sort out which components I had vs had not. The checks in the boxes helped not at all. well anyway, I checked the box for windows messenger and figured, if I have it and check the box, it must mean uninstall the bitch. I then made sure all the other blocks were unchecked and hit the old go button, fasten your seatbelts and keep your body parts inside the vehicle at all times until it comes to a complete stop...apparently at this point it's ok to stick your head out the window and have it removed by a passing milk frieghter....Wrong, it was still there and now I have a new assortment of problems.
Calculator was missing when I needed it most...anyway, I've gone way more in detail than I originally intended. Bottom line is that function is a great idea, but unfortunately it had to be done by M$ and be made so simple a person with an education above kindergarten couldn't possibly understands it...Gawd I need to clear the spare room so I can set my network back up and get to plunkin around on SuSE again!
Thanx for listening
