I've gone to tech hell and back...

The worse thing to do to entertain yourself and grit your teeth is to try to figure out why Microsoft Office on a Dell laptop won't respond to any commands. So the logical thing to do is to locate the original disks... ok, look underneath the desk; nope not there. OK, go to the garage and it could be the very last box under a stack of eight other boxes... nope, not there either. But I did find a box of Palm software, so that scavenger hunt came in handy.

Whenever I lose my keys, or become perplexed , I just stop and PUSH (Pray Until Something Happens). Einstein once said whenever you get a simple answer to a very complex problem, it is evidence that God just spoke to you. Great theology and absolute truth.

So meanwhile while I'm PUSHing, I'm logging on to the Microsoft Support site which is a vast wasteland sea of words - I'm lost, so I give up - until God tells me to look in a brown cardboard box - Lo and behold, there's my Office reinstall disk and another disk with an upgrade to Windows XP Pro that was part of some Dell documentation. The reinstall of Microsoft Office didn't work as each of the programs returned a fail to respond error. Undaunted, I fire up the Windows XP Pro disk and by 3:54 AM Sunday, the install is complete and Office works like a charm.

But I have to validate the XP upgrade, so at 4:15 am, I'm talking apparently to a Microsoft call center in India to obtain a set of eight 6 digit codes to unlock Windows XP - but it is done and I'm a happy camper. I did strongly consider figuring out a way to get a Mac laptop as I absolutely love my desktop iMacG5; but that's like saying I am sick of spending $100 a month to fix my used car, so I'll buy a new one for $500 a month.

I skipped church, but God and I had some intense fellowship, as I kept thanking Him over and over:

I waited patiently for the Lord
He inclined and heard my cry
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay pulled me out of the miry pit

Psalm 40: 1-8 (also in a song by U2 "40")

Fortunately, I also have some friends that can help bale me out as I know just enough to muck around and fix PC stuff (but not at 3 am). And there is always Google!

Here's two good sources that I found via Google:
For Macs: Mac Connect
For Windows XP Advice & Information: Update XP

My fellow Palm addict and friend Michael Ashby has his own tales of woe:

"I put in my Windows XP CD and as usual I heard the drive spin up. I was closing a few applications before I shut down the PC to reboot and install when all of a sudden, I heard a "PUH" and something hit my leg hard. I looked down and saw the faceplate to the CD-ROM drive next to my leg along with several shards of what was my Windows XP Professional CD. The CD had exploded."
A Strange Thing Happened On The Way To Reformat