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Bad night, good day (with bad patches)
Peet (the Pedantic Punctuation Policeman, Muse of Lateral Programming Ideas, Eggcups-Spurtle-and-Spoonswinner, BBC Cheese Namer & Zaphodista) Started conversation Jun 3, 2005
I woke up about 4:30am with slight stomach cramps. I tried a trip to the toilet, but that didn't help, so I got up at 5am and sat at the computer for half an hour till the cramps went away. 
After that, I managed to sleep till 10am. 
I phoned 24/7 Electrical and told them that if they couldn't guarantee the return of my Humax PVR by the start of next week, to put in motion the procedure to send me a replacement. By Monday they'll have had it for four weeks. 
I headed round to Grambo's, ostensibly to see the HTML coding he'd just started doing, but really to fix his computer properly this time. 
It turned out he had the full house of faults... His motherboard battery was flat, his HDD had bad sectors, he had worms (well, the computer did! 
) and spyware. We headed out to Maplin to get a replacement battery...
The journey was pretty hellish. It takes two buses - a short 
run from the end of his street, then a change to another for a much longer run. The second trip seemed to take forever, partly because traffic conditions were abysmal, and partly because a toddler brat was standing on the seat behind me, squealling all the way and repeatedly poking me in the shoulder and back while its carer pretended not to notice.
We got the battery (amongst other goodies) and headed back. The return journey wasn't quite as bad, but it still involved a long time in a hot bus with a squealing child. 
Once the battery was replaced, I reset the CMOS and downloaded the latest versions of AVG and Ad-Aware. I ran them, and made the machine relatively safe, then installed Microsoft Anti-Spyware. Once everything was showing up as clean, I played around a little with the BIOS till the machine would restart properly, and left it doing a full-surface Scandisk. In theory, that should leave it in working order now. 
I've eaten well, had the last of the cheap 
and now I'm watching a "Dirty Harry" movie. Things are looking up. 
I'm expecting a visit from Douglas tomorrow afternoon, and I've arranged a shopping trip with George for Sunday. 
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Bad night, good day (with bad patches)
- 1: Peet (the Pedantic Punctuation Policeman, Muse of Lateral Programming Ideas, Eggcups-Spurtle-and-Spoonswinner, BBC Cheese Namer & Zaphodista) (Jun 3, 2005)
- 2: dragonqueen - eternally free and forever untamed - insomniac extraordinaire - proprietrix of a bullwhip, badger button and (partly) of a thoroughly used sub with a purple collar. Matron of Honour. (Jun 3, 2005)
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