Windows is Still Wonderful

Even though it is totally obsolete and has been disavowed by Bill and his minions, Windows XP is still running on two computers in my house. I am sure Windows 7 and 8 are all fine and wonderful, but I am not quite sure what they would buy me, and I'm unwilling to shell out 500 bucks to buy them to find out.

The other computer started complaining about printing today. Supposedly it's been doing it for months, but today was the first time I heard about it, and today we need to print some movie tickets, so I take a look. I do the basics, like restarting the computer, to see if that fixes the problem. It doesn't, so I start typing the error message into Google. I don't get even half way done and the Google already knows what I want.

All roads lead to Rome, and in Rome they know all about this problem. There is even a (virtual) guy at the desk willing to come to my house and fix the problem for me. I drag him home, but as soon as he walks in the house he says "uh, I dunno nothing about these kind of houses", and *poof*, he vanishes. Well, thanks for nothing. I go back to Rome and pick up one of their DIY (Do It Yourself) pamphlets, take it home and read the instructions.

"Locate these files" it says. There are nine zillion files in this directory and eight zillion of them fit the basic pattern of the filename, i.e. DL*.DLL. Furthermore, they are all mixes of uppercase and lowercase, so you can't tell the ell's from the eye's. Fine, we'll use the bloody search function (with the cute little puppy. Oh, look at the little puppy, he's such a cute little puppy-wuppy. God I hate this dog). Punch in the first pattern. Nada. Punch in the 2nd pattern. Nada. This is not looking good. Punch in the 3rd pattern. Nada. This is looking grim. Last try, punch in the 4th pattern. Ah ha! One file found, copy it, as instructed, to the System32 directory and press the GO button. Voila! She prints!