A Good Old Fashioned Computer Crash

Back Online with New Chart Up

January 15th, 2010

Yesterday, I called Congressman Joe Wilson’s office in DC to ask about the methodology he used to determine a 1.9% pay raise for 2011. As I thought, he used what congress has been doing since 1999 to help eliminate the pay gap and bring military pay more inline with the private sector by adding an additional half percent to the Employment Cost Index (ECI). I only had the question because I misread the ECI back in October; I read civilian 1.5% vice the useful indicator of the private sector reading of 1.4%. The ECI is what the president uses to determine his pay raise proposal. With the state of today’s economy, combined with an election, this should prove to be a very interesting year to watch.

I would have had the updated 2011 military pay proposal chart up sooner, but for the past two days I have been consumed with reloading Windows and all my other programs back on to my home computer. My computer crashed. How did it happen? Here is my theory, which BTW, Canon doesn’t agree with; I purchased a new Canon Rebel T1i. The camera itself is amazing, and I am very happy with it. The program that came with it, “EOS Digital Solution Disk ver. 20.1″, may have some issues. I inserted the disk and followed the directions on the screen – I don’t remember the exact wording of the prompt, but it read to the effect that my Windows .NET framework was out of date and before the program would work, I would need to complete the update. It provided me with a button to press to make it so. I pressed the button.

After a few minutes of updation (that a word?), my computer needed to be rebooted so the changes could take effect. Next thing I knew, my computer had an error message that told me to place my system disk in the drive – I did, and nothing happened – so I called Canon. The gentleman on the other end of the phone was very nice and knowledgeable, but was unable to give me any quick fixes. He did, however, help me find out what had happened. You see, my computer was now attempting to restart as if it was a Windows Professional version and not the Home Addition I know my computer has – the .NET framework that was downloaded and installed must have been it, but not Canon’s fault – he blamed it on Microsoft…

I now have completed 125+ Windows updates and reloaded all my programs. For some reason, I don’t have sound fully back yet – I have to uninstall and then reinstall the sound driver for it to work, but lose it if I reboot the computer… Also, I have lost all my email addresses and all my emails – hundreds of which are questions about the Navy and enlisting. All of the questions were answered, but I would like to somehow get them all back… any ideas?

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