So how did I spend my Saturday night this week? Well, I did something that I haven't done for at least five years... no, I didn't run 5 miles or stay out all night drinking... I stayed in the office and did a Windows 2000 installation from scratch. My Western Digital hard disk manufactured in 2003 died, which was highly unexpected, and I couldn't get to the CD Rom so I let it languish for a month or so (this is not my main machine). But one of the reasons for using that computer is that it serves as a backup for my main computer, and all of a sudden I got the fear of God in me thinking about what if my much older main machine died? I had to back up. So I bought a new hard drive, called my friend Richard Abel who reminded me that maybe there was a CMOS setting that was preventing me from seeing the CD and lo and behold that'w what it was, so I was in business as I had a Windows 2000 cd.

In the old days I would always install my operating systems, Windows 3 and even 95 were relatively simple affairs, not to mention all the DOS installs I did in the 1980's... But since Windows went the NT route with 2000 and XP, I figured that it would be too complicated and I've simply bought machines with everything installed.

Well, it turns out that with plug and play, and all drivers available for download on the net - things are simpler than ever! Even though I couldn't find my drivers disk, I was able to go to the Compaq website, find my model number, dowload all the drivers (from my other machine), load them onto this one (I had my boot disk fail on the machine I am currently typing on), load the operating system, add the drivers, and then, after everything was working (video driver, network drivers) I was able to go onto the internet and get the google toolbar, picasa, all the MS Windows upgrades to win2K, redownload Dreamwaver to go onto the web and adjust my website (www.selectmailbrooklyn.com), and I'm in business and better than ever. The machine is A LOT faster because of the vanilla installation. No Hewlett Packard bullshit programs, or Microsoft or AOL junk - just what I need.

I know this may not sound like a lot to you, but I'm real happy I can still do this!