Happy to See My PC

The computer technician returned my computer today. My hard drives were formatted. He was able to retain the most important information from one hard drive, all of the information from the second, and none from the third. It was this third hard drive that caused the problems. It had some cluster problems; also, the drives motor malfunctioned. On this hard drive I had hundreds of gigabytes of information, particularly movies, series, sermons and the like. Luckily some of the movies and series I still have the originals for -- DVDs in South Africa, but the sermons I have collected over many many years. It is possible to retrieve the information, but it will cost me a lot.

In the meantime, I have my computer back with Windows XP installed. The XP-platform is still the most stable of the Windows platforms, so I don't mind it; but I have to wonder if I should not just go ahead and get Windows 7 while everything is all squeaky clean.

Platforms aside, I now need all my programs again -- original disks being in South Africa. My computer, as it is outfitted now, does not even have Microsoft Office installed, not to mention all the other programs I frequently use like Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver, Corel Draw and the like. It is also without my basic Internet browser, namely Mozilla's Firefox and all the add-ons I've come to depend upon. It could attempt going all open source. I guess that is what I'll keep myself busy with this weekend -- customizing my PC again.

That and competing in a grappling tournament on Sunday.