Difficult weekend

I had an arm-length "Honey Do" list this weekend and I didn't accomplish any of it.

The two major items on said list were to clean our mini-van (three kids, even one being an infant, are rough on a vehicle) and run a radiator flush through my car. I woke up Saturday morning intent on getting those two things knocked out. Still getting the groggy out of me, I logged onto my computer to check mail, etc. That's when the weekend went downhill.

My computer decided it no longer wanted to talk to me. The keyboard was refusing to act in a civil manner and the mouse was all out of sorts. Initially, I was able to run my anti-virus and anti-spy ware programs, but to no avail -- the computer's ailment just kept getting worse. To the point that it would only boot up about 1 time in 5.

I ran through every diagnostic I could, checked everything I know how to check and came to the conclusion that whatever the problem was, was beyond my ability to fix. So I was faced with a couple of choices: Pay someone to diagnose it, buy a new system. Well, we're not a large area and most computer places aren't open on weekends (and because of school and my wife's things we really can't have our computer down very long). The only places that were open charge around $70 just to look at the thing. Then you have to worry about getting parts and if you can do the work or have to pay them to do it. OR, just pay a bit more and get a new system. I did the latter. I was able to cannibalize most of the parts from my old computer: ram, DVD burner, and the old hard drive.

I slaved the old drive and pulled our old information from it and reformatted the thing. I believe that the processor was going out on our old computer, but I don't know this for a fact. Anyway, it took me almost two whole days to do my diagnosing, part hunting, giving up and buying and then reinstalling/setting up. Hopefully I'll get to some of that Honey Do during the week.