GAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
There are times when life is sweet and then there times that life blows chunks. This weekend was a positive vomitorium. First, I inadvertantly clicked yes instead of no to a "Do you want to install the spyware that is going to fuck your PC, and therefore your life, for a long time" dialog because I was trying to do too many things at once - do schoolwork, fix my son's PC and watch TV. With that one fatal click, my life was ruined for basically 12 hours. Because I clicked yes instead of no, I ended up with a pile of useless crap installed that I couldn't remove, some of which seemed to be removed but then came back on reboot. But worse, much worse than that, was that Explorer wouldn't connect to anything. In fact, if I hadn't of had my son's PC next to me, I would have been royally shafted because I ended up having to donwload stuff on to his PC and then copying it to mine.

I ran my virus software but it takes way too long to do a scan and I'm not convinced how good it is with Adware/spyware crap anyway based on last nights experience. Fortunately, Microsoft's new Antispyware program, which is currently in a public beta and free, is suprisingly good at cleaning up this crap (it found 47 additional dubious bits of code in my son's PC despite all the other stuff I tried saying it was clean). Sure enough it removed everything and a couple of bouts of restarts proved that stuff wan't reinstalling. BUT still no explorer. EYEBALLS ... BULGING. After searching on the web, I found instructions on how to potentially fix the problem by re-registering dlls (didn't help) or rescanning the entire system to make sure that the stuff that was installed was kosher microsoft (also didn't help). TEMPLES ... THROBBING. As a last resort, I found a couple of suggestions, neither of which were particulary attractive - reinstalling explorer or repairing the windows installation. I tried the first but that proved tricky because its almost impossible to remove explorer, espescially if you have SP2 installed. I managed it but it did no good, same problem as before. So I pulled out my XP install disk and tried the repair installation route. Twice. It crashed the first time after 40mins. MUST ...UNCLENCH......FISTS.

The second time it ran all the way through. I logged in. I loaded Explorer. It still didn't connect. MUST ...l NOT ... SCREAM ....SCARE....SPOUSE. Now I am a great believer that no matter how obscure a problem is with Windows, most if not all have been experienced before you and most likely solved. So back to Google and I eventually found a random comment in an obscure forum that mentioned something called winsockfix. God bless the persons or people who made this obscure little app because sure enough, back came explorer and all the other stuff that had slowly stopped working. Of course, since i reinstalled windows effectively (I take issue with Microsoft's definition of "repair") I am back to pre-service pack 1 so I have spent pretty much the time since 10:00am this morning re-installing XP patches (I am now up to SP2). RUBS...EYES...LIKE...A...LITTLE...GIRL.

So, my wife is in the shower and I am walking down the stairs that lead from my office to the yard (our house is two stories but seem like four when you're going down to the yard because we are on a hill) when I hear running water. Now the sound of running water round Bozz Manor is not unheard of the last couple of weeks, what with the incessant rain and all, but it hasn't rained for a couple of days and this sounds like a water flowing river-like down the hill. I look down and what do I see? Raw sewage flowing out of the bleed hole and down the hill in said river-like motive, which means the sewer is blocked. Bad but not too bad - we have a home warranty which covers such things so I call them and they contact a plumber. He comes, takes one look and tells me he needs the guys with the heavy kit and they'll be out tomorrow (Monday) morning. Still Ok. They turn up and start snaking the line and here's where things start going bad. Firstly they pull up a big clump of roots. From the sewer line. Now I may not be Handy Andy but I know that roots and sewer lines do not mix. However, he tried one more time to at least clear the line down to the main sewer but just keeps pulling more and more roots up. So not only in the sewer blocked, its obvious that its comprised beyond just a simple snake. Now I have hordes of guys with picks and shovels digging a nasty long trench down my yard.

Update:
They have left for the day - sewer is still not fixed but they have the ditch dug so hopefully it shouldn't be too long tomorrow. Its 5:15pm and NOW I have to work on the two assignments that I was going to have done tomorrow.
Like I said, GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!