so christmas has gone wonderfully so far, the kids enjoyed hp as expected, and saxy is working on something of a holiday dinner for us. it's not the usual holiday dinner i make because we honestly couldn't afford cornish game hens and all the extra fixings, but we're content because we've had a god day and we're going to have dinner together, and it's been a very nice christmas for us. the kids get to work on their chores and the cleanup for when kitten and linnorm come, and i decide to go play around on the computer for awhile. nothing unusual for a saturday.

until the computer crashes and reboots with norton's errors and my ad-aware program like missing and several fonts completely screwed up.

now, i'll admit, i shouldn't complain too much - my machine has been a good one and has had no really major malfunctions in the 5 or 6 years i've owned it. i've never had to reformat, only needed tech support a few times, and only needed new hardware now and then that was originally covered by my service contract so came up free (this is not the case now - i never got a notice when my contract was coming up due so i couldn't extend it, so now any repairs/replacements are at my own cost).

but this pissed me off and i'm almost positive that norton's was the culprit. i came on and tried to open a program. when i got the "resources are low" warning, i opted to reboot. as i shut down programs, things began to illegal. this has all happened before, and never caused any issues with the machine so i wasn't worried about it. but when it booted up, i got an antivirus initialization error. twice.

i still wasn't majorly worried. a few weeks ago the live updates failed and i figured that problem was kicking in and all i would have to do is uninstall and reinstall. so i spent the rest of the afternoon uninstalling, defragging, and scan disking the drive to reinstall. while the machine did its thing, i finished up the office cleanup and finally got my stacks of paper filed. finally i get to reinstall and, of course, must reactivate the software. well, this time it won't reactivate. i get told i've reinstalled the software over the allotted number of times i'm allowed to.

excuse me? i paid for this piece of shit software and had to do at least 3 reinstalls because live update wouldn't update right after i got it. then again not too long after that. i finally get the sucker to work and update and 6 - 9 months later it goes kaput again and i have to reinstall it because it won't update yet again and i've exceeded the allowed number of installations? I PAID FOR THIS SHIT AND I CAN'T USE IT BECAUSE NORTON'S LIMITED MY NUMBER OF INSTALLATIONS?!?

to add insult to injury, i can barely read my screens (turns out some majorly important fonts got corrupted - thank goodness i keep backups or know people who have backups i can use!), my clock got switched, and my screen resolution whacked out as well. i know it could have been worse. i've heard of others who have had their machines made completely inoperable by norton's, but it was working on my machine. it tanks and it takes part of my machine with it? unacceptable.

the good news is that my important files are safe. the better news is i got everything pretty much back to par, except for the norton's which is currently running inactivated until i decide on a new antivirus program and install it. i have 14 days. mcafee is sounding real good right now. i don't care about the utility programs anymore - i'll run the windows stuff. but i need good antivirus protection and will do some checking before i pick something out and install it - and get rid of norton's once and for all.

other than the machine crash, the rest of our evening went well. the cats made a point of turning their backs on the hp movie, but also made the point of begging some treats from saxy while he was cooking. so they got their canned food dinner, the dog got a bit of our chicken, and the kids talked to saxy's mother for a bit.

if all we have is the machine tanking, and not tanking irreparably, i can deal with it, even if it does leave me a little miffed.