Technological defeat.

I have a desktop on my bench.

It has been a bad computer, intermittent flakiness, weird networking problems, slowness and other strangeness.  I finally took it away from the suffering user, gave them a working machine and put on my bench to be tested.

I was pleasantly surprised when the first test revealed that it had a stick of memory, which not only explained all it's weird symptoms but was an easy fix.

Check to see if it is still under warranty, and it is!   But a quick call to the vendor and they want me to run their diagnostic to verify.

No problem, I reboot into windows and... I can't log in.

Keyboard and mouse not responsive in Windows.

*Fast Forward 2 hours*  Every keyboard or mouse combination I have has stopped working on this damn machine.  They work *before* Windows boots, work in the BIOS and if I boot of CD they work fine.

I don't want to have to try and reinstall the OS with bad memory... just so I can install the diagnostic to get the memory replaced.

Sorta related... no matter how you set the BIOS it is trying to boot off the network card first.. Which is starting to make me thing bad motherboard, not bad memory.

Still stuck.  *sigh*

*unrelated... When I am stopping to think about something I frequently stare out my window at the lovely little park across the street.  Sometimes I see dogs frolicking, sometimes I see people busking, occasional couples smooching and picnickers ummm picnicking?

Today there is a woman sitting in her car, obviously crying, wiping her eyes and gesticulating wildly.   Her wild arm motions are what caught my eye but what was really strange is how red she was.  I mean... cherry tomato  red.  It's a little alarming, I can only hope it is brought on by the heightened emotional and subsequent rising blood pressure and not say... some as of yet undiagnosed pigment changing plague.

Bright. Cherry.  Red.

Weird, but now she's driven off.