I got slightly ahead of myself and started drafting my Friday night post on Thursday evening. Wishful thinking beyond belief and you can imagine what happened. Never tempt fate like me, it is just not worth the heartache. I finally got my desktop back together at 18:05 and after a final check of files began the rebuild process. Everything was going swimmingly. However, when I began to install the motherboard and graphics card drivers, this just hit the buffers. The PC would not boot up, freezing at the Windows XP start up screen, then starting to give me various blue screens of death. I then opted to do a repair install and this worked to a certain degree and all the customisation scripts ran at the end. The version I had downloaded over Christmas was Windows XP Pro SP3 Black Edition. It included IE7 WMP11 and a vast number of add ons and patches, all automated into the installation. These neat streamlined CDs are worth their weight in gold, when they work. I was impressed with the desktop background.

I resigned myself to the fact that I would not be having my desktop up and running on Friday night. It must have been sometime around 11.30pm. I opted to get into bed and watch the movie I had downloaded a few nights before. When back in Wrexham during the first weekend in November, I had noticed the poster at the cinema. It was as we walked out of Quantum of Solace that I saw the big cut out of Clark Duke. At the time I had been watching him in GREEK and he was close to my favourite character. (In this movie his character is the complete opposite of Dale from GREEK). I thought I would catch the movie when it was released in January but as usual it came and went from the cinema and I was more focused on my ski trip. So as a DVD rip was available online, I happily obliged. It was not what I was expecting but by 2am, I was too tired and with over thirty minutes of the movie left, I went to bed. I will try and watch the final part over the course of what remains of the weekend.

While the movie was playing I opted to download another ‘custom’ homebrew CD and try again in the morning. I got up around 7:45am and with a spring in my step, to face the day. After a hearty breakfast of Nutella on toast and catching up with BBC News (no Sonia Deol covering on Weekend Breakfast). I burnt the ISO image onto a fresh CD and then rebooted the computer and away we went. I also had quite a few little jobs to do around the house, take out the rubbish, drop a suit at the dry cleaners. Get things in order for my sisters. They left around 11.45am and got here at 12:30pm on the dot. I had been watching Football Focus but this duly had to be changed as my sister Samantha wanted to find something more interesting to watch. Yes, I finally had Freeview and had not ‘taken’ their set top box from home to get the extra channels. It was time for lunch, prepared by my Mum, so one of the first things we did was eat.

After pasta, I had a stack of mail to check and go through and then plan the weekend. We were going to get all the jobs done around the flat, then head into town. We were originally then going to also get the food shop done but thought we would postpone it until Sunday morning. There was quite a lot to be done and all the while I kept checking back on my PC to make sure the Windows XP install was going through. My sister Samantha and I finally put the rear cover on my chest of drawers which have been in the flat since Boxing Day. I gave a demo of the Squeezebox Boom. Tuning into an urban station across the pond which was playing, T-Pain – “Chopped & Skrewed” closely followed by Cassie – “Me & U” which really showed off the quality of the tiny speakers. We then did a little re-arranging of the room before I went through my post and sorted out what could be thrown away and kept. We had a massive clear out of boxes and things that could be moved around. It really has opened the space in the flat particularly the lounge. It was just before 3pm we finally headed into town.

We walked through Victoria Park into town, firstly going to the Pound Shop to get a few cleaning bits before heading to TKMaxx, my sister wanted to get some clothes. However in the end we walked out with some picture frames for my flat. The walls have been quite bare and I did need to personalise my space. In my lounge I now have a black and white photograph of The Palaces of Westminster opposite a canvas painting of New York City. In my bedroom I now look across up at the tranquil island of the Maldives (a gift passed on from my sister Natalie, whom was unable to make the weekend as she had a driving lesson this afternoon). We headed back and then had a much needed cup of tea. I decided to see if I could make any progress with the PC. I had tried my own nLite deployed installation CDs from the past few years but they both were no good. So I had opted to download a Corporate edition of Windows XP SP3. It took less than an hour to come down the line and although the installation went through fine the moment I installed any graphics drivers it went belly up. Even rolling back to older version of the driver had little affect. I did a reinstall and this got me working and I was quite content to use this for a while and then perhaps do a full old fashioned attended install later in month. I wanted to watch Sarah Connor but as the graphics drivers were not loaded the video and audio were not in sync, the video itself was of an extremely poor grainy quality. Not worth the hassle, so I switched off the desktop for the day and went back to my laptop. I have already arranged for my dearest friend Pav, whom as always is enjoying my computer nightmare, to bring over a Windows XP SP2 OEM CD so I can install everything from scratch. Looks like tomorrow night is going to be a long one. It is a shame because midmorning on Saturday I was there. I had WinAmp installed, I had MSN Messenger Live downloading, DivX codec had been installed and Office was next to go on. I had got so confident, that I had even downloaded Jennifer Hudson’s performance of If This Isn’t Love on Oprah from The Celebrity Network. Being a fool I am, I left the avi file on my desktop. When I rebooted the PC and it failed to load Windows, I went for the full reinstall option, wiping the file in the process. Never mind. All I can say, is wish me luck for tomorrow.