Reinstalled Windows XP

Since my hard drives death was imminent I bought a new one and installed it. The old one was about 10 gigs and the receipt said I bought it in 1999. I had forgotten that I reused the old hard drive when I built my computer. The new one is a Hitachi (IBM) 120 gig drive with 8 meg cache. (Which, BTW, cost less than the 10 gig drive in 1999) I dreaded reinstalling Windows because the first time had been hell. It took a few false starts and finally over 12 hours to install. I just went to bed and let it run to see if it would actually install. It never did work all that well either. Fast user switching would crash it every time and there were other little problems, not enough to say something is wrong with the computer but just enought to say Windows XP is really not that great. I had an early release of it meant for resellers and I just guessed that was the problem.

I installed the new hard drive and put in the Windows cd. It installed in about an hour or less. Amazing. It worked like I had never seen it before. It was unbelievable. Everything works like a charm, including fast user switching. There is only one small thing I want desperately to fix. When I sign in, the taskbar is slightly taller than it normally is, the icons in the taskbar are larger, and instead of just the time on the far right side it shows the time with the day under it. I can make it larger but it won't go any smaller. When Irma signs in the taskbar is completely normal. This is the way it was when first installed, I did not touch any settings. I haven't been able to figure it out but I'll keep looking on the web for an answer. Anyway, the computer is faster and better than ever. It did take a while to download the 40 megs of updates though. And my favorite programs.

I also can't remember how to change the double click to single click. I don't remember it being such a big deal previously, I think it was an easy thing to do, I just can't find the setting. I bought Disk Image 2002 so I can make an image of the drive and not have to go through all this again. It still amazes me that it works so well now after changing only the hard drive. Maybe Windows didn't like my other drive, I don't think it was bad when I first installed it. I installed Linux on it with no problem at all and it worked OK with XP for quite awhile, I just didn't know how much better it could have been.

Janet Reno?

We went to Sams Club today to pick up a few things and over by the meat area Irma pointed out a lady and told me it was Janet Reno. Yes, she was serious. "Irma, that is not Janet Reno!" Yes. "No, it isn't. No way." Two isles over she remembered it was the accountant of a previous employer.

That reminds me of the time (still in high school) I was with a friend (Jim) in his boat on the Tom's River in New Jersey. We were actually very near downtown Tom's River and he yells, all excited, "Look, a gorilla!" He's pointing at the docks. I didn't see a gorilla, but he was dead serious. When we got closer it turned out to be an old black guy fishing off the docks. That was funny.

Jim and I had a lot of laughs in those days. I was riding around with him and we decided to go to the Twin Lights in the Highlands. It was dark and they were closed but we were just driving around. We were in the area but didn't know the exact road. He turned left and we went up this super narrow, winding road way up the mountain. It was like a one way road and it kept going up and twisting and turning and he turned into someones driveway accidently. I couldn't stop laughing, it was so funny. He backed up and started driving again and a police car put it's lights on and stopped us. I was still laughing and the more I tried to be serious the more I would laugh. He got a ticket for making an illegal left turn. You can't make a left in NJ, you have to make three rights.

One time we went into Manhattan and drove around. He made a turn on 6th Ave and all these headlights were coming at us, we were going the wrong way. He backed up and around the corner and backed into a mailbox. That wasn't so funny, but we laughed anyway. We drove into Kearny, NJ and stopped at a Diner (I think it was Arlington actually) and ate and decided what we were going to do. The dent was small but obvious. I'm not going to say what we did, let's just say it wasn't legal. It got the dent fixed though.

It's been a long time since I've seen Jim but he's the kind of friend you just pick up where you left off when you meet again. Just continue the conversation.

Everything Comes and Goes in Cycles

Here's a commentary on the heat wave and related items. Deadly Heat Wave Strikes Europe!