Random life post: For someone who teaches computer science, I seem to have an incredible anti-affinity with computers. When I was a teen, we used to joke that putting anything in my room for more than a day was a surefire way to break it - quirks just seemed to appear in anything technological I possessed. I had a computer for a few years that slowly absorbed a third of a novel, through my constant thwacking of the back fan with said novel in order to get the fan bearings realigned so it would stop making that brain-melting churning sound. More of a palliative solution than a cure, I'll grant you, but I was generally of the opinion in those days that if something wasn't working, you hadn't thumped it hard enough.

Take my office computer for example - not one I own, but one I use at the techwriting company where I work. Aside from the fact that the keyboard apparently can't keep up with my typing (or the keys need the equivilent of a Mac Truck with each press), the computer refuses to recognise the network drives on boot up until I navigate through to them. It's like you have to show the computer that it's okay, those drives are stll there, they haven't abandoned you for younger, prettier computers while you were asleep. Until you do, it refuses to access those drives. And the desktop will spontaneously stop responding, forcing a restart of the explorer.exe process, and with dual monitors, applications feel the urge to fling themselves to the other side of the desktop at any provocation.

And then there's my about-to-be-demoted primary computer at home, which has developed a fascinaing bug. Whenever the computer believes it to be 9:27pm, it BSODs (Blue Screen Of Death - the fatal windows error screen), unless there's nothing running. Then it just waits until you load something after 9:27, and crashes then. I say when it believes, because changing the time back and forth makes all the difference - it's only when the computer clock hits 9:27 that the trouble starts, and it's only if there's user-software running - regular background processes don't cause it - and it doesn't matter what software, either. Browser, office, steam, concept mapping, you name it. Different software, same result.

There's nothing scheduled for 9:27 - there's nothing scheduled at all. The Microsoft suggestions for this particular stop error do nothing. No detectable viruses, trojans or rootkits. Windows debugging tools refuse to work, and the standard DrWatson debugger usually doesn't get a chance to make the log. My google-fu has failed completely in finding anyone else with this kind of issue, or any other way to try to fix it.

And, when looking for Rootkits, the software I was using insisted my hard drive doesn't exist, or is disconnected. The one that the operating system, including the rootkitrevealer sotware, was running from. Yeah. Right.

Solution: Nuke it from orbit, reinstall. Good thing my new system arrives today.

Suggestion: Stay away from CyberLink software. Last thing I installed prior to any of this muck was CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra to attempt (unsuccesfully) to play blu-ray on my PC. Software didn't work, did weird things, was antsy about uninstalling fully and seems to be the precursed to the most punctual recurring BSOD in the history of computing. I never liked their stuff anyway. Stick to Media Player Classic.

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