One Of Terry's Corners Of the Online World

A quiet day, apart from the annual "reformat the hard drive" day, which has gone surprisingly smoothly so far. I backed up several gigabytes of data onto queen_nephthys's HD through the network (which is maintained with the help of a free copy of Network Magic). Rebooted with the XP disk, reformatted my HD and installed Windoze XP. Firstly, I reinstalled Network Magic, which reconnected to queen_nephthys's PC with zero hassle. Then I had to reload the laptop drivers, Firefox, MS Publisher, Word, AVG Antivirus, VLC media player, Foobar 2000 Media Player (for mp3s), Movie Organizer (for the DVD database), SEMagic for the LJ inputting, shifting all the mp3s back from the other PC, then tried to reconstruct most of my firefox bookmarks from memory (as if that's going to work 100%).

To be honest, I don't mind losing the bookmarks too much. I'll get back to the good sites eventually, and it changes the mental picture I have of the Internet to renew the links and add extra ones with time. Now I'm waiting for the upteen googleplex bytes of data that we know as Windows Updates to download and install.

The rest of the long weekend was spent withqueen_nephthys's parents who came over to help us clean the yard/windows/diosma hedges, etc. Peter the Lollipop Man, queen_nephthys' father helped me convert the wood from the old pergola into a six seater outdoor table for the extended and rainproofed new pergola/verandah area (which is 7x4 metres). Nobody lost any fingers in the process and we have a lot of leftover wood. So we can sit out there dining with a roaring fire in the new chimnea, have people over for barbecues and in general, use the area as we've always wanted to: as another room to the house.