NP: Stargate SG-1

Because I know everyone's on edge about the latest in my war with technology, here's the latest update.

Car stereo is still working normally. Score one for the good guys.

The TiVo is still a bit of a mess. I think the long and short of it is that one of the CableCARDs is bad. Whether or not that's because the installer did a crappy job, I don't think we'll ever know. Eventually we'll find out if not signing the work order means I don't have to pay for the visit, seeing as how I didn't get what I was supposed to. I have to jury-rig it to record properly, as it has a nasty habit of defaulting to the bad card for recording. I may just pop out the bad card and use it as a single-tuner unit until the tech shows up tomorrow. Theoretically, that should work. So, score one for the forces of technology.

Which brings us to the tiebreaker, and I am happy to report what may be a resounding victory on the PC front. My theory from a couple of days ago looks like it was right on the money. I deleted the Picasa database, and was trying to defrag the drive, which also caused the system to hang. At first I thought this might indicate a wider problem, but then I downloaded a freeware defragmenting tool that does a bit of a better job of reporting its status. It also got hung up and the machine froze on me, but the file it froze on was my iTunes library file.

That would explain why the anti-virus and defrag programs were choking. They hit the corrupt file and went boom. I think the tide is finally turning. The most frustrating part of the PC instability is just not having the slightest idea what was wrong, so breaking that logjam in my head has been very satisfying. Or will be, if it actually works.

More dispatches from the front lines as events warrant.