December 2009

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I got the bright idea Monday night to download (from the manufacturer's site) an updated display driver for my computer, in the hope that might do some good. It was one of those ideas that sounded good at the time.

When I turned on the computer Tuesday, all was black on the substitute monitor, as well as the original. I had some things that I really had to do on Tuesday, so I waited till today to go to see my friend Chris, the business machines guru. In the meantime, I did reconnect the older monitor to the desktop computer, to make sure the monitor was working. It was.

I figured the problem was with the driver, and knew I would need to restore the computer to a time point before the download to get rid of it. I thought connecting the computer to a newer monitor would make it be possible for me to see what I was doing. So that's what Chris and I tried. Nope. Turned out the driver had borked things to such an extent that didn't even work.

But under the brighter lights in Chris's shop Chris and I could both (barely) see the icons on the computer's own display, so Chris thought that an even brighter light would help, so he grabbed his LED flashlight. That did the trick. Mercifully, his computer, with the same operating system, was right next to where we had set mine, so I used his to find the command we needed.

As soon as I knew what we were after, we found it on my computer and clicked the things we needed to click to do the system restore. We soon saw my desktop on the monitor Chris had plugged into my machine. A happy ending, and I promise I won't try adding any more drivers!

An even happier part: the monitor we were using to test mine was an extra one Chris had, and is a flat panel one. He gave it to me, and I am loving being able to use it, because it's bigger than my laptop's own monitor but takes up very little space.

A little later, Bradley (Chris's partner) got back from an errand he had been running. Bradley volunteered to bring me and all the computer stuff home, so I settled in to visit a little. Bradley knew I needed a few things from the grocery store, so he offered to take me there, as well. I took advantage of both the ride and the excellent sales going to buy a few extra things (things I had on my list, but two of several of them).

So now I'm all set with the great new-to-me monitor, the system-restored computer, and food in the kitchen (including some food Christmas presents from Chris and Bradley that were a complete and very welcome surprise). I don't expect to need more groceries for quite a while.

I plan to spend tomorrow getting caught up or finished with several things, since I don't need to go anywhere. That feels good. So do I.

Holidailies