late, and i mean, late, last night i was working on a crit and decided while i was doing that it would be a good time to run the usual checks and repairs on our machines. you see, we have 2, mine and my husband's, but we only have one of us who can do the tech minded stuff. i do mine every week, if i remember. he does his, well, whenever, and always asks what to do next. last night i just figured i'd get them both out of the way.

bad idea.

the scan disk on my machine takes an hour. no big. i got everything except the virus check done and she's all running nice and sweet now. it's an older machine, a little over 4 now (i know this because the in house service contract recently expired), with win 98 s.e., but it's always been a good machine. i've never had to reformat, i rarely have to call tech support, and it's only had a few parts replaced (all free because of the dell warranty and service contract). she's got one little problem now, but nothing major and that's pretty dang good for a 4 year old machine.

saxy's machine is on winME and i am very glad i don't use it. my machine was just finishing up the last little check and his was just finishing scan disk. it took 3 damn hours so nothing else has been done on his machine. i'll do the rest of it tonight. before 1 or 2 a.m. i may be a night owl, but i would like to be in bed before 4:30 or 5.

i could walk the hubby through the rest of it for the 150th time, but it's just easier to do myself. sometimes i wish he would just "get it" and remember all the what's, how's and why for's, but being a compusitter isn't that hard, even on his cantankerous machine (which, for some reason, keeps eating his msn messenger). just get the program going and wait for it finish. in his machine's case, wait and wait and wait and . . . .

besides, it gives me something to do when i'm trying to stay off-line and it forces me to stay off the p.c. and finish whatever it is i'm doing.

and it's in keeping with my tendency to multitask.