the fuckup fairy comes to visit

Phew... I've had the laptop for all of a day and I already had a "Program Error".

Nothing to do with Vista (shut up Tom :P)... it was decidedly an "ID-Ten-T" issue (which actually only really works when you say it aloud, then write it down... oh, never mind).

I wasn't going to actually do anything with the laptop, I'm not sure why exactly... probably because I was having "Post Major-Shopping Trauma" and if I didn't turn on the laptop then I could live in the land of denial a while longer.

I had planned on watching a movie this afternoon, but I kept looking at the laptop box, and thought that I could just switch it on, maybe fiddle around with it for a bit.

And that was at about 1pm... and now it's after 7pm (and for the record I did type this up on the laptop, then uploaded it on the clunky old piece of crap). It's so sleek and fast and bright and shiny and gorgeous... and not half as ugly as I suggested it might be yesterday... it's "functional". Tragically I had to put in a "computer name"... which lead to much thought (okay, a couple of minutes worth) about what to call my laptop... because what's the point of being able to allocate a name for something if you can't be cute about it.

Which is why my laptop will now be referred to as Beast (possibly The Beast, or Little Beast, depending on my mood). Sad I know.

Anyway, I fiddled around, plugged in the external hard drive that J bought me (which is called Betty... on account of the fact that it's black... you know, Black Betty... see, sad squared)... and woohoo I have access to all my porn important files again... and all my digital photos... woohoo.

I am a little annoyed with the whole "Google Desktop" thing... I mean do I really need something that tells me the weather and the time and has news feeds and randomly scrolls through images and has a Google search... I mean, really? But I haven't gotten rid of it yet... I kinda wanna see what it's like when connected to the interwebz and I've configured it properly (which I haven't bothered with yet... like with a number of things on The Beast). But mostly I think it's going to have to die.

Interestingly the keyboard is better than I thought it was going to be... I'm getting up some decent speed... the only downside is the trackpad, which although I'm getting the hang of, still isn't anywhere near as easy to use as a real mouse (it's going to be interesting in Summer though, since Beast does get a little warm after he's been on for a while, and resting my palms on the case while I type is going to be lovely in Winter... but could get annoying when it's hot).

Oh, and did I mention that the computer has a fingerprint reader... yup... the ultimate in completely pointless randomness... groovy as hell, but I really have no idea how much I'm going to use it. Or for what for that matter.

Anyway, on to the screwup... which would be me *waves*.

I installed Photoshop, which worked beautifully, and I fiddled around and made some Benzo related wallpaper and whatnot... was very proud of myself... and then I made the fatal mistake.

I screwed around with the Preferences... I didn't really do anything out of the ordinary, but I changed the Scratch File settings, then exited from Photoshop and rebooted it.

"Photoshop has encountered a program error"

That's never good...

So I tried uninstalling it, then reinstalled... and... nothing. Same error (which is just plain old annoying, although I think I know why it screwed up now)... and no Photoshop *cries*. I went looking to see what files I could find that looked like they had been updated recently... but since it's Vista I'm still getting used to the file structure and can't just throw myself around the backend like I would do with XP.

I was very close to that point of hair pulling, teeth nashing, wailing and suchlike... and I went back and forth between Beast and my old computer, and really didn't get anywhere. Then I remembered the Interwebz! Surely I couldn't be the first person in the history of the universe to have this problem. Which I wasn't... in fact the solution was right there on the Adobe website.

The only problem then was the fact that the files I needed to update/change weren't in the location they were supposed to be (which I'm thinking could be the reason why the files weren't uninstalled, because the program didn't know where to find them)... in fact that location didn't even exist. And the Vista search thing isn't particularly useful (or I have no idea how to make it do the stuff I needed to do)... so I just went around and around and around and around and around in the file structure, even after I'd turned on the hidden files option.

Thankfully I did keep plugging away at it, trying different options and paths and locations... and eventually I found the right file. Woohoo! So the short version of the story is that Photoshop works again and I may well have shortened my life by about an hour an half due to abject panic.

Now I really want to get online with The Beast... especially since it's so fast and shiny and lovely and my old computer just looks and feels more and more and more annoying and slow. No, scratch that... it IS more annoying and slow!

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