In which exciting things should happen

With an empty nest (again, having had a child home for the long weekend), one must make one's own excitement.  And today, I am going to restore my computer to factory defaults.  Or at least start.  First, to make a nice backup of all my data.

Why, you ask?  Because it is being fractious.  In June, Firefox began crashing when my husband opened the Facebook website while he was logged in.  (Solution: use my computer account) A few days later, Firefox began crashing when I opened Facebook while I was logged in. (Solution: Use Chrome)  And a few days after that, my beloved Service Dog Project webcams at Explore crashed Firefox (Solution: Watch them via Youtube)  And a day after that, playing any Youtube video began to crash Firefox. (Solution: Use Chrome)

Things worked in Safe Mode.  But who wants to always use Safe Mode?

Then, the upgrade to Win10 would not happen.  I wasn't particularly thrilled to discover that it crashed after 3+ hours of downloading.  And that each re-try required another 3+ hours of downloading.  Seven tries later, I gave up.

Windows Explorer randomly crashes.  Windows Media Center will not open.  Windows Media Player crashes when I try to play a DVD, as does the MPC-HC program I downloaded to try and get around that.  And opening the Microsoft Support Pages crashes Firefox.  That just smacks of irony. 

Bleagh.

A quick scan for viruses goes fine.  A full scan hangs at the 3 hour mark somewhere deep in a ~Windows folder.  Twice.

So ... I have ALL sorts of information jotted down.  I have passwords saved, product IDs located, and apart from the hassle, see no problem with giving myself a Brand New Computer that is a Blank Slate and seeing how that goes. Unless, of course, a computer guru yells TRY THIS FIRST before I get fairly started on the restoration project.  

I've decided the hassle is relative.  How much time have I spent trying to solve the above problems?  LOTS.  Lots more than if I had just done the factory default thing back in June when Filius was around to do it for me. 

In other news, we may have a new street-to-house sewer connection by the end of the day on Thursday, and I am finished with the baby layette AND the project after that.  Today, Vinterbar is on the docket.

And early next month, Bandit is having his teeth cleaned and some loose teeth dealt with.  We also found out that his rare episodes (1-2 a year) of goose-stepping and tripping over his own crossed feet are most likely atypical isolated cerebellar seizures.