It seems that normal service may be resumed here in the near future.

I got an email this morning from the place where I ordered a new disk.  They said it would be delivered after 12:35  The bastard was late and turned up at 12:39.

I managed to take my laptop to pieces which was a bit of a job – 17 screws in total.  Everyone says to remove the battery first but I couldn't – everything is buried under the base.  I then managed to replace the hard drive without breaking anything which is a miracle in itself, and once I had finished there weren't any screws left lying around which is an even bigger miracle.

Anyhows, I fired up the boiler and once I had a good head of steam, I lammed in the Windoze DVD.  It worked! 

First of all, it tried to grab the entire hard disk all to itself and wouldn't let me resize its area.  Fuck that!  Then it installed and started trying to chat to me.  "Hi" it said.  "Fuck off" I replied.  I had forgotten that irritating little bit of faux familiarity – I'm surprised it didn't wish me a "nice day".

Then I stuck in the Linux Mint disk.  The first thing I did there was to grab back over half the disk for Linux.  That installed perfectly and Windoze can go fuck itself with its greed..

Now I have to go through the tedious business of installing my favourite software.  Linux is no problem but I have to try to find all my old hacks and cracks licences for the Windoze shit which will be a pain.

So I'm still on my backup laptop which is grinding alarmingly and has a keyboard that is loud and clunkey.  I hate using it but it works, for the moment anyway.

I have saved myself a few hundred yoyos too which isn't a bad thing, as the nearest I could find to my current specifications was over 700 which would have left a tidy hole in the pension.

I also have a very nice new Terabyte paperweight.

I think nearly all my chickens are now hatched?