Cabin Fever and a Dog named Patches

I have not seen or spoken to a human (2 phone calls excepted) since the blizzard hit. Nonetheless, I am happy and entertained. 70 inches of snow fell in the Wind Rivers, about 10-12 inches here. It is soaking slowly into the ground-the happiest of circumstances. Roads are pretty clear to judge from the traffic and I will go to town tomorrow though I can make it another day comfortably.

About 10:00 p.m. last night I decided to see if the USB modem would work on a Toshiba laptop I have had for several years that would deliver a blue screen error anytime I tried to connect to the Internet, thus rendering it an expensive doorstop. It was a sweet and compact little machine, but useless. It blew a blue screen about three times and I decided to do some deep cleaning in "safe mode" in a do or die effort. I got it to work! It had not been updated in several years. At 4 in the morning I was up to Microsoft patch number 61 and Service Pack 2 was a way down the road. I would never have thought what a cobbled together patchwork Windows XP is without this experience. I let it run while I dozed and finally got to Service Pack 2 around noon. There was only 482 MB of space left on the hard drive at this point so I unpacked the portable hard drive and took all my pictures off the Toshiba giving me about 3 gigabytes of unused space. The Toshiba is a far more convenient size to travel with so I am glad to have it back in order. I just hope Verizon doesn't cut me off for too much use of the aircard at one time. I am going to explore Linux as an alternative to Microsoft.

I have enjoyed the Final Four-my money is on Florida, but I like Ohio too.