A bit of a nightmare . . .


I opened up my laptop this morning as I had a couple of things I needed to do before R*** came home. To my total surprise and annoyance, there was that little box at the bottom right of my screen, telling me that my computer needs to restart to complete the update process. I thought it sensible to do it straight away. After about 10 minutes, the system began to start-up again. But what was that? A pop-up message telling me that my profile had failed to install and was advising me to sign out. This was duly done and the start-up continued. My laptop is always slow to start so I wasn’t worried.

That is when the trouble started. My desktop screen had changed. All my usual icons had gone, only to be replaced with some random ones. It actually made to screen less cluttered which is not a bad thing. I then had to check that a document had been scanned and I needed to print it. This is when the real nightmare began. All the documents I had saved seemed to be missing. Everything for the funding review had gone! Months and months of work were nowhere to be found!

I headed straight to Google, but that produced nothing helpful. After about an hour of frantically pulling out what little hair I have, I decided to search for one of the documents. To my amazement, they were still on my machine, only in a TEMP folder. It seems that when the profile failed, any saved stuff was moved into this temporary folder. All I now needed to do was to move the files back into the main part of the storage area. This is going to take some time.

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After a lot more hours on Mr Google things are still not right, but better than first thing. I’m not holding my breath that everything will get back to ‘normal’, this is Windows after all.

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I continued with the Googling and profane language when some of the basic apps just wouldn’t work. then hidden on one of the Microsoft ‘help’ pages I spotted something. It appears that I was signed into my machine with a temporary login. The puzzled look on my face got more and more contorted as I scrambled about looking for my normal login. I found it and signed in using this profile, and everything opened up as normal. Everything I had lost was back in the correct place.

I have to admit that the foul language did not lesson very quickly and I was still more than a little angry about the whole experience, but all is good again (until the next time!)

Not as bad as expected . . .


As weeks go, last week was no different from the usual, although the cafe was (as usual) closed for the Bank Holiday, so Monday was a holiday. I find it unusual, that on possibly one of the most lucrative days on the calendar, the business closes, whilst the other coffee shops are open. But they have their reasons I suppose.

The biggest event of the week was my niece’s wedding. We have never met her husband to be, although we were aware of him. She is about 5 foot tall and very slim and he is getting on for 6 foot and is very large. Large to the point of being obese, but that has nothing to do with me. They are both well suited and seem very much in love.

They had a civil ceremony in a local event venue called The Engine Shed. It literally was an old railway engine shed in Wetherby but is now a much used local ‘party place.’

Then © disused-stations.org.uk
Now © confetti.co.uk
Ready to eat © Tony Huby

It was a good, if a bit of a long, day. The ceremony was at 11:00, but we were asked to be there at around 10:30. I think this was to ensure that the obligatory latecomers didn’t disrupt any of the proceedings. The ceremony went according to whatever plan was in place, and it was quite emotional for the groom, who bravely struggled with his own personal vows, but it all came good in the end.

It took no more than 20 minutes for the service to complete and we were then told that photos were to be taken outside. this was the first of the, shall we say “boring bits.” It took about an hour before all the formal pictures had been taken and we could go back into the warmth. The ‘Wedding Breakfast’ was served and it was a good meal. Then came the speeches and by half-past 2, the first part of the day was complete.

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The evening session was due to start at around 17:30, so time was spent in the bar trying not to get drunk. I was our driver, for a change, but I had a plan, that if I did feel that I couldn’t drive home, we could always get the local bus. Thankfully the price of the drinks prevented me from drinking more than I should.

© RockChoir.com

The session started with a performance by the Rock Choir, which was excellent. They sang around 6 or 7 songs, all of which were favourites of the bride and groom. Then we were ‘treated’ to the sounds of the ‘Disco!’ The ‘DJ’ could only be described as a cross between Greg Wallace and Ross Kemp. He liked the sound of his own voice, as the volume on his microphone was louder than the music he was playing. And the music . . . he seemed to like playing all those tunes that Dad’s dance really badly to (ABBA for example) or those rubbish tunes that are designed to get people all doing the same moves such as The Macarena. Supper was served at 20:00 and it was a choice between a rather dark looking chicken and rice offering and Macaroni Cheese with a small corn-on-the-cob. By this time I was completely passed it and needed to go home.

It was a good(ish) day, but thankfully there will not be another one in the near future.