I almost thought my main computer was gone (again). Each time it started, it wanted to check the C: disk, and every time it found various errors and then hung up completely. If I skipped the disk check, it started, but crashed after a little while. So, not a pretty sight. I am not sure how much of this came from the bluescreen problems I have had the last few days, and how much from trying to use CCleaner to fix them. But I was seriously wondering if a full reinstall of Windows was in order.

Upgrading to Win7 would anyway wipe my disk, evidently. That’s rather a big difference from upgrading Ubuntu Linux, which may take some hours but leaves pretty much everything running as before (or better) afterwards, no reinstall required for any programs. (Although it will replace some programs with newer if you allow it to.)

Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do before Windows gets as good as Ubuntu Linux. But then, I don’t use Windows because it is a great operating system, but because some of my favorite programs need it to run. Thanks to the fact that most people have bad taste in operating systems (as had I for much of my life), many programs are simply never made for other systems. Hopefully this will change gradually as computing disappears from the desktop and into the clouds on one hand and the smartphones on the other.

Well, the system is running again finally, at no extra cost, for as long as it lasts. And bedtime is approaching.

***

Good news from work: Boss says I can take my laptop home each day so I can work from home if I get sick again.  I would estimate that 14 of the 19 sick days the last year were of a sort where I could have worked from home. In most cases, I simply could not travel too far from the toilet. A 55 minute commute is a bit far in these cases, although I love the commute otherwise. With the new opportunity, my life is even more perfect. Long may it last.

I can’t convert vacation into sick days though. Norwegian law is very strict, you are not allowed to dodge your vacation! If I could, I could have reduced my sick days to zero, and at the same time gotten rid of the excessive vacation. I usually take NaNoWriMo off, of course, but lately that is not enough: Mandatory vacation has increased to 5 weeks a few years ago, and I have reached the limit of how much I can carry over to the next year.

Now that is what I call zeroth world problems! ^_^

***

Edit to add before midnight: Ordered this year’s CD (not sure if there was one last year?), from CDJapan. The beautiful (well, to me at least) lullaby that you can hear here on YouTube until the copyright holders get it removed (and thus stop more people from hearing it and buying it…)