::headdesk:: ::headdesk:: ::headdesk::

Today's run/walk: nada. Had my heart set on being outside but woke up to rain, so I went back to bed for an hour.

Yesterday's run/walk: 4.25 on the treadmill (total of 5K run, 1.15mi walk)

So. Back to that gorram new computer. I had a visit from a technician yesterday, who installed a new motherboard (with integrated video card). Swapped out towers again, powered that bad boy up, and... same monitor epilepsy issues. He tried a few things, then he got on the phone with tech support and tried a few more. End result: not a hardware problem, but a software problem. Here's an 800 number. Then he left.

After I'd logged off work for the day, I got on the phone with Dell tech support again. This time, I was to reinstall the Windows 7 OS from the boot disk. In the fullness of time, that was done, and... joy. The monitor was behaving. I then had to try to link up to the network. Uh... no network drivers. Called Dell again. I should've received a disk with the drivers. Nope. Solution: go online and download.

Now, how in hell am I supposed to go online to download network drivers when I CAN'T ACCESS THE FRIGGIN'  NETWORK?  Paul got on his computer, I got on the MacBook, and the race was on. The Dell support web site was so bobawful slow that we kept getting the connection reset, which set us back to square one. Maybe an hour later, Paul finally got the two drivers onto a thumb drive. After another exasperating experience (they weren't self-extracting, of course), he finally got the wireless connection to work.

So, starting around 5:30pm Monday evening, I finally had the damn thing up and running around 10pm. Almost immediately, it said there was an update to install. So, as I'd planned to actually keep on top of that, I let it install and restart.

The result? The monitor was hosed again. Son of a two-headed toad.

I have to say I'm now really good at wiping/reinstalling an OS now. And updates? Screw 'em.