Yesterday, my rampaging children tripped over my network cable and knocked it off the door jam it was so securely draped over. What should I do about that, I wondered. I know! I have some of those cable hook doovits that you nail in. I used them for twinkle lights at Christmas. Easy peasy! Sensible too.

Off I trotted to dig out my hammer, and the pack of doovits. Cools, found them in the garage under an iron and some toilet duck. Because that’s where we all keep our tools.

Back up stairs, get a chair to stand on and check all four of it’s legs are attached make sure it’s secure. Up I got. The plan was to run the cable across the top of the doorway, never to bother anyone again. Right, line it up, and start hammering.

Then the universe started laughing at me.

Hammering.

Hammer harder.

Surely it’s secure by now. Let go.

Watch the doovit tumble to the floor.

Get off the chair, retrieve doovit, examine hole it made.

Is this wall made of metal or something? Nope, looks like wood. Sure hope there aren’t electrical wires behind here. I’m sure to pop through at any moment.

Try again. Hammer. Hammer harder. Hammer so hard I worried if we had ceiling mice who would come for revenge.

Let go.

Watch doovit tumble to the floor.

Get off the chair, retrieve doovit, examine hole.

Still wood. It got slightly deeper though – like a fraction of a millimeter.

What the fuck.

Examine doovit. Hmm, perhaps this soft plastic is impeding the nail’s progress. Push nail through all the way, and try again.

…..

Watch doovit tumble to the floor.

Try again with just the nail, no plastic doovit. Hey, this seems to be working. Kind of.

Get back up on the chair with the doovit. Scratch nose with hand holding the hammer. Ow. Examine glasses for damage.

All good. Hammer the living fuck out of that bastard.

Falls to the floor.

Fine. Be like that. I’ll just choose a different spot that’s probably made of different wood.

Hammer like there’s no tomorrow, because frankly, I’m sick of this.

Still can’t get it in very far, but it seems secure-ish.

Move the chair over and start on the next one.

Hammer, hammer, drop drop. HAMMER FUCKING HAMMER HAMMER.

Hmm, seems secure. After all, the other crappily done doovit is holding.

Get down, and wonder how to arrange the excess cable length and take it around a corner.

Turn my back to contemplate.

Both doovits leap out of the wall and onto the floor. Cable drops with a splat.

(This part is optional) Drop to the floor and wail and cry and have a tantrum. Get mocked by family.

Decide hammering nails is too simple for a mighty brain such as mine, and make a note to request my brother do manly things next visit, like thread my cable through the walls or ceiling, or just use his non-defective hammer.

Balance cable back on the door jam where it was before, and ask the kids nicely not to trip over it. Because that will work so well.

About two years ago I bought a super powerful laptop. Now it can really only do internet surfing and word processing without overheating. It can’t even run a flash game on Facebook without falling over. Things came to a head last week when it crashed hourly, the USB ports stopped working, and both the web camera and card reader stopped responding. Getting it to talk to other systems on my network was a lesson in futility.

I wanted to run out and buy a Mac. Not because Macs are better than PCs, but because they’re shiny and that’s what bloggers do when their system shits itself. Macs & blogging seem to go hand in hand.

What I did instead was slap it into submission using my mighty powers of paintbrush poking and CD insertion.

The paintbrush was a dry, clean one I used to clean dust out of the fan and exhaust grill. I could have blown into it, but I’m single. I don’t have to blow anything if I don’t want to.

Before you attempt to format and reinstall Windows there are some things you should do.

• Put aside at least half a day of your life
• Download your drivers
• Back the fuck up. If you want a file on your system, you’d best copy it to an external or something:
• Your bookmarks
• Photos
• Documents
• Resume
• Important emails
• Saved passwords
• Find your Windows cd. Preferably Windows 7 because it’s shiny and betterer. If you intentionally install Windows 98 I will smack you.
• Make a cup of coffee. Or a thermos full.
• Put on a movie for the kids/send them on a treasure hunt for something you didn’t really bury
• Make a snack

Then it’s just a matter of putting in the Windows disc, letting it boot from it, choosing to FORMAT and not repair (because you’re probably too far stuffed for that), and letting it do it’s thing.

When it’s finished rebooting a zillion times, and finished downloading updates a zillion times, you get to install a zillion drivers.

Don’t install a driver just because it exists. Do I need a fingerprint reader? Do I need to use my tv capture card? Nope, that’s just silly. Why run something I have no interest in?

Then install your various software applications like Office and Photoshop. The kids will probably come inside and hassle you while all this is happening, but no biggie, just throw a single chocolate bar into the bedroom and shut the door behind them. They’ll entertain themselves, Thunderdome style.

Hurrah, your system is all fixed! Hooray for clicking blindly! Hooray for not writing down the passwords to the important things, like the router which is holding your firewall hostage. Hooray for only being able to check email on your phone where it was already set up because whoops no idea what that password is either!

And if it’s not fixed after all that, then you can go buy a new one. Which I will. With the insurance money from the future ‘accident’ this laptop will have, at the hands of a very frustrated ‘burglar’…

*Don’t mind me, I just have Mac envy.