Well, got XP loaded on my PC yesterday. That part, in and of itself, was relatively painless. But every other step of rebuilding my virtual life has been like pulling teeth.
Oops, can’t find the driver disk for my wireless connection. Gotta download it on Margie’s PC, burn a CD with it, take it over to my machine, discover I didn’t close the CD properly, go back and do that, bring it over, install it, oops, doesn’t work, uninstall, reinstall, hey-presto!
Of such tiny leaps is my virtual life rebuilt.
Biggest noteworthy thing about XP? Well, that wasn’t about XP, but from doing a scrape job on my machine. Boy, do things start up fast when there aren’t eleventy-dozen add-ons added-in.
- Got Sync-It installed to reload all my old bookmarks.
- Got my Palm software reinstalled.
- Got Office XP installed (a “bonus,” I guess).
- Installed Adobe Acrobat.
- Downloaded Micro$oft’s Java VM, so that I can run Java applets, dagnabbit!
- Set up Outlook Express for my personal mail accounts.
- Set up ExpressAssist to restore my OE personal mail.
- Discovered I can’t find that backup disk. AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!
GILTS.
Yup, that’s right, can’t find an earlier backup of my personal mail on my notebook than last December. I know I did one last fire drill. Just can’t find the dagblessed disc. Urg. More searching this afternoon.
Meanwhile, I realized I don’t have the settings for my company’s VPN server, so I can’t directly download my office mail. Bleah.
But, slowly but surely, virtual live goes on …