Death Screen

Yesterday when I got to the museum, K told me she had some bad news for me. Considering I can't be fired or lose pay, I couldn't really think of anything too bad that could happen. =P Then she told me maybe I should sit down, and that I shouldn't kill the messenger. Lol! Apparently, she was trying to make it sound more awful than it actually was so that I wouldn't be upset. {Which actually worked.} =)

D had turned on the computer I use for scanning and editing archival photos to do a backup of it and then change some things. The computer, however, had different plans.

Enter: blue screen of death.

Computer completely crashed. Well, not completely. Some of the files were still there, others were deleted. Random, right? The database I was getting information from to add to the photos (metadata: date, location of the photos) completely got "fried." All of the photos that I had been scanning, editing and adding metadata to for the last...2-3 months was gone. *sigh*


It gets better. D had to completely replace the hard drive, add some RAM and reload the operating system. We had been using Vista on the 2 volunteer computers, but they didn't have any more codes to load Vista on any others. What did they have codes for? XP. So now, we have XP on both volunteer computers. Not so bad, right? I mean, XP has far less issues than Vista...


Do you have any idea how DIFFERENT XP is from Vista?!


Instead of going back to the recently deceased and revived computer and dealing with what was no longer there, I decided to start working on my easier organization project. All I needed to do was print out some labels on the other volunteer computer and go label some maps. Easy peasy, right? Wrong. D had loaded XP on this computer the day before. But apparently, no one had reloaded the printer on it. *sigh* On Vista, you don't need the driver CD. On XP you apparently do because when I tried to add it, I got this hilarious screen.

Floppy. disk. Seriously?!?!?! Bahahahaha!!! Does anyone still even own floppy disks?! Or computers that use them!? Congratulations XP, you are officially outdated. I won't even start on how insanely...different Microsoft Office is on XP. FAIL.


After that, I decided I'd attempt the computer that deleted everything. First, I couldn't remember where to go to access the scanner. Then, we had to find a program to edit the photos that wouldn't change their file size or dpi. I swear, if it wasn't one thing yesterday it was another. While D was trying to figure out what program we could use to edit photos (that we had the CDs for) other than the evil Photoshop Elements, something more hilarious than the floppy disk screen happened. I don't know what he clicked to try to edit the photo, but Windows opened it in this handy program that we've all been familiar with since childhood:

Yes, Paint. I died laughing!!! Paint?! You gotta be freakin' kidding me!!! I have absolutely no idea what the heck XP paint was gonna do to help us edit a photo, but that's what we got.... 


Luckily, we figured out how to edit the photos so that I can do what I need to do. It seriously took up 75% of my afternoon there though. I barely got anything done. I still can't believe I'm having to revert back to XP. FAIL. D says that the museum is supposed to get copies of Windows 7 soon, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd just like an upgrade to a computer system that I don't have to revert back to high school knowledge to operate. 


K joked that it might be BYOC (bring your own computer) soon. I told her I'd be totally okay with that. I own a Mac. No random crashes, viruses, trouble editing or finding information for me! 


Reason number 5,989 I own a Mac. =)

Please excuse me while I hug my computer. Hehe.


Here's hoping all of you have a computer problem free day especially if you own a PC! ;-)