It took about 3.5 hours to upgrade from Vista 64 to Windows 7 64, and when it was done it had:
- nuked most of my Quick Launch items
- replaced few surviving little icons with huge, more ambiguous looking ones
- Forgotten how to connect to the Internet
- Moved Quicken from Program Files to Program Files (x86) which munged its shortcut.
- Deleted my Thai and Hebrew language packs (they had to be re-installed through Windows Update. WTF? The installer couldn't have done that automatically? Lame with lame sauce.
- It did not lose the language bar, showing Thai keyboard mapping was available even though it wasn't.
- My wallpaper image was changed from stretch to centered, which loses about half of it out the edges because Win7 like Vista is too stoopid to fit a 4288x2848 image into a 1280x1024 space without screwing up the aspect ratio. BTW the default wallpaper setting for Win7 seems to be a slide show of the whole directory from which you snagged the image. Not my idea of a practical implementation of wallpaper.
- saved my custom sounds theme as "howeird" and replaced it with the defaults, which it named "howeird (modified)(modified)". There is also a "howeird(modified)" in the list.

I stumbled upon the fix - I was able to log into my home network router, so I knew the NIC card was okay. Rebooting didn't help so I took the PC out of DHCP mode and hard-coded a known-good IP address into the TCP/IP properties, which Win7 immediately barfed at and set the machine back to DHCP, got an address assignment, and suddenly we were back on the Internet.

There is no more quick launch bar, everything is now task bar. This means when you right-click on something and tell Win7 to pin it to the taskbar, it floats it to the right of whatever app tab is down there, you have to drag and drop it to get it over to the left. When you are running that program, the icon goes away until you close it again.

I'll have to time bootup and shutdown, but shutdown seems much faster, bootup not so much.

Edit Add: Bootup took 4 minutes 48 seconds from zero to fully functional. About 15 seconds of that was waiting for Outlook to auto-launch. So no improvement over Vista there.

It's a lot of work emptying out and dismembering an automated litterbox full of urine-soaked crystals which got caught in the rain. Usually the crystals absorb several times their own weight, but not after 2 inches of rain. The litterbox is under an overhang, but the wind was blowing. After I cleaned it out I replaced it with a neater style of litterbox, one which has a hood. It joins one which was already out there, which I also changed the tray on, managing to pour stinky crystals all over the deck when the bottom of the garbage bag turned out to not be there.

The good news is now I have a matched pair of the non-clumping, non-messy ones and after a lot of work with a dustpan, brush and trowel and the occasional application of Clorox cleaner, the balcony is usable again.

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On the way home from work I stopped off at Fry's for an inexpensive laptop carrier for the work laptop, as I now use it every morning to call in from home to the daily manager's manager's meeting. I really don't need to be there, but it's only 15 minutes and it is kinda fun to use their Webex app which coordinates the phone and the laptop. I also got a spare power adapter for the laptop, one of those universal ones, which I'll keep around the apartment. And Fry's also had a nice lunch pail, I've been looking for one to replace the old workhorse I've used for the last 5 or so years. Cisco's gone to a stingy mode, pop and munchies are about 25% more expensive in the machines than retail, so I bring my own.

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Thought about buying Windows 7, but thought I needed to wait till some cash transfered from my savings because yesterday EDD sent me a little slip of paper saying that I don't get any unemployment check because last week I earned too much money. This is despite the fact that I won't actually get that money till November. They don't care, unemployment stops as soon as you start working. But when I got home today, there was a check for half my usual unemployment, covering the week I was not working. So maybe tomorrow I'll get the upgrade. Or maybe tonight.

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And now I have to go downstairs where I have some writing space and write out a couple of condolence cards. One of my brothers-in-laws lost his father, so I have cards for him & my sister & their son, and one for his mother. His father was 91, and in poor health for a while. He used to play trumpet in Broadway musicals, and though I only met him once, at my sister's wedding 25+ years ago, I liked him, and thought it quite a small world thing that we both played trumpet.

Yetserday work was wall to wall meetings, today will mostly be reading all the docs harvested from those meeetings. It sounds worse than it is:
- Started the morning taking a 7-minute drive from my office to the place where I'll be helping build a lab. Met a very valuable member of my group (S) who is one of the field experts for the project.
- Back to the office for a TOI (transfer of information aka brain dump) from H, one of the original testers
- Drove 6 minutes to security to get my badge
- Quick break to take a package to the PO
- Back to the office to meet with S and U (U is my team mentor) about planning the lab
- S left, H joined us to continue the TOI
- H left, S returned and N, the project lead, joined us to answer U & S's questions from our earlier meeting
And that took us up to after 5 pm
- Back to my desk to answer a message from the contract agency & organize my email

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Still installing apps after the clean install of Vista-64. Nero is taking a long time. Now that I have a badge, I don't need to get to work by 8:30 for the admin to let me in, so I can do a litle more this morning than the last few days.

Had a network glitch last night, Comcast lost DNS connectivity, none browsers could not find web sites. Had to reboot the cable modem.

( cut for geekiness )
In other news, last night I hauled out my stage makeup kit (a simple bright yellow plastic tackle box) and bagged 3/4 of the items in there which I will not be needing for the show. Lots of clown white, which I needed when my hair was courtesy of Just For Men or Nice 'n Easy. Several small bottles of spirit gum and a handful of latex fake wounds which they were used to affix. A bottle of scar liquid. I'm thinking maybe howbearca wouldn't mind The Governor having a nasty-looking scar. Hmmmmm. Maybe I'll put that back into my kit and try it tomorrow night.

Must wrap this up and go to weekly staff meeting. Lots of work to do today.