Trilobytes in My Electronics

I did not fall off the edge of the earth; I just had a computer crash. As I sat in front of my screen last week, darkness descended. Somewhere in the depths of a computer brain, a power supply failed. The monitor went black, the hard drives stalled, and nary an electron moved within. After trying to replace the supply only to find cable incompatibilities, a new box was purchased, speedier and with much more memory than the outdated corpse. Luckily, the hard drives were not damaged, so all my stored information remains available, albeit with a huge reinstallation curve.

Vista is not my friend. My printer is not supported. My old software (such as Photoshop!) doesn't load. Word is the new, improved version, with all the wrong defaults and things that don't work as before. Even trivialities like Adobe reader must be downloaded anew, and not at the location the system suggests, which will put one in limbo for eternity. It took almost an act of God to stop Norton from hawking its anti-viral services; it seemed pretty viral itself to me, reviving itself repeatedly, even after being told no. How annoying that HP checks as often as possible for new updates of invisible doodads it deems so critical that they take priority over anything I might be doing, giving me echoes of the crash by suddenly shutting me down -- without saving what I was doing. I'm turning off automatic everything as fast as I possibly can find it. I loathe computers that try to think for me.

As if that wasn't enough, my almost new Canon copier that I use for tear-aways won't even come on today. And I still don't have the notebook completely recovered from its journey to warranty heaven for a complete mindwipe to get it working again.

The trilobytes are definitely after me.