From Twitter 08-05-2009

• 07:34:49: RT @boyshapedbox: Phil: "really? 2girls on a private plane with Bill Clinton? How EVER will they thank him."
  
• 12:07:51: RT @tug: Save water - pee in the shower http://tr.im/vyt6 Makes sense
  
• 15:02:15: @hygienestudent good luck! hope the results are fine.
  
• 15:02:57: @thatsam so where's the pic?
  
• 15:06:01: @fonsus i sympathise. i have lost two or three of them. as a diabetic, i don't feel it. keep it clean and go to ur GP for advice.
  
• 16:31:45: @mrtweetlovesyou ok, thanks
  
• 17:35:35: @urbanbohemian: Is there a queer gamer geek foodie singles cruise out there that you HAVE heard of?
  
• 20:26:19: @besskeloid haqve fun! i may be in Manky myself in September. HWMBO's away in Singapore so I need to go somewhere...
  
• 20:30:01: @RobertFischer perhaps they have swine flu...did they sneeze?
  
• 20:31:40: @besskeloid it would be nice to be back, even for a weekend. when i know which dates i'll let you and nicky tan know...
  
• 20:32:53: @hygienestudent sorry to hear it. hope it gets better.
  
• 20:37:15: @taccuosti Definition of "gross": you kiss your granny goodnight and she slips you her tongue. I think you've discovered a new definition.
  

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Today's trying time

HWMBO's hard disk packed up last week. Very sad, really, but the computer and harddisk are about 7 years old so it was time. Most of it has been saved, so losses were minimal.

But, we probably couldn't afford a new computer for him, so what to do? I had several relatively new SATA disks, but no SATA DVD-RW drive. The old computer has a SATA controller on it, but it won't handle SATA and IDE drives at the same time.

The solution was to get a SATA DVD-RW drive (they are really cheap now, around £30) and put the SATA 500GB hard disk and the DVD drive into his machine, and re-install Windows et al.

Well.

I ended up buying two DVD-RW drives, one from Misco, one from PC World, because the Misco drive didn't arrive on time (I was out buying the other one when it arrived—they left it at the church, which they probably weren't supposed to do. But, hey...)

Got his computer open, removed the two drives, installed the new ones with the new cables, vacuumed it out, and closed it up again. Then started the real fun.

I have a Rock laptop which now runs Ubuntu v9, rather than Windows. So I used the installation disk from that to install Windows XP Pro on the Dell desktop and its brand-new drive. Of course, the installation went OK, but the computer couldn't see the Ethernet port. Thus, I had to download the driver (into a thumbdrive attached to my computer) and then install it on his computer. We were then connected to the Internet. Of course, there was XP SP1, SP2, and SP3 to install, plus a shedload of other patches, most of which needed a reboot. During this time HWMBO came home. Thank goodness he wasn't here when I was trying to install the rest of the stuff. I was swearing like a trooper.

We finally got all the updates installed, as well as Firefox and AVG Free. That was enough for today—we went to the Well as a reward.