Slick's Computer

Last year when we got the crappy HP computer, Slick inherited the "family" Dell desktop from me full-time. I should have wiped the hard drive of all the crap I had done to it, but I never did. I just kept "patching." I even continued to use it to "run stuff" during the day so I could keep using my computer: Video software, downloading stuff...the usual. I'm a real bastard that way.

Over the last few months, she's complained about system crashes at start-up and a variety of other problems. (All while I'm playing on the sweet new system I got in November.) Since virus and spy-ware scans were clean, I let go. Then a few weeks ago she started getting major lag-spikes while we were playing World of Warcraft (WoW), even though I was running fine. Seems that the auto-updater for her virus protection kept stalling and eating up processor time. I made her quit the game and force-stop the virus software. She was "mostly" fine after that. Except it kept happening. Manual updates became a must and if I missed one, it usually came back to bite her. Then weird things started to happen with her wireless keyboard, but reboots cleared that.

Enough stuff was happening that I knew that it was simply time to re-image the drive. Again, no viruses, spyware or trojans, just a fat lot of crap slowing her down, causing the occasional BSoD and a lot of headaches. And yes, all my fault. And still, I found excuses to not re-image the drive. Until Monday night...

We were doing a relatively difficult 5-player instance on WoW with our friends when her keyboard started to act up, her system got laggy and the party wiped (twice.) She got pissed and started yelling at the computer. After a short break, I was able to plug in a crappy keyboard and reboot her. Like a man who tried to clear one more exit before stopping for gas I knew I had pushed my luck too far. Time to start walking...

So today, she got a re-image. I kept it clean too. None of my shit's going back on. It's got security software, Office, WoW & Firefox. In other words, it's just her stuff and I'm not touching it except to service it.

Unfortunately, software re-install lasted longer than expected. She came home from work and it wasn't done. She came back home from choir and it wasn't done. She glared at me both times. I offered to let her use my computer but she went into the other room to *gasp* read a book. So, I might want to think about decorating her desk with flowers to go along with the re-image.

What have I learned? Well nothing...I mean...ummm...yeah, nothing. I should know better. I recognize the error of my ways. But change? Let's be honest. Even if I try to be good, I'm sure I'll screw up her stuff in other ways along down the road.