Operating system takes up too much space

Happy belated Easter/Passover, everyone.

I've diappeared for a few weeks now, making absolutely no progress in looking for work or securing my scholarship. However, the major thing I've done so far is salvaging my digital data on my hardy old notebook, with many thanks to Mr. O.

The process has taken up most of the last few days (which is, genuinely, a lot of progress since I've abandoned this project for over 6 months; one must wonder how I've ever managed to live without a notebook). Battling "trojanic" malware is like going to war, a fulltime job. Many times I felt like kicking myself for behaving as if I didn't own a technie degree nor any computer usage capabilities at all.

Just a little over 36 months of doing the "lining up numbers" thing has left me incapable of speaking of partitions and installation procedures. I could feel my notebook's humiliation to be owned by me.

I have let my personal techie spirit down.

As of today I have completed my third re-installation. I am now familiar with free antivirus software (AVG) and this aggressive little treasure called Spybot Search and Destroy (it deserves a prize for its name, or at least a movie named after it). I have rediscovered the unnecessary luxury of online shpping, of staring aimessly at stuff I don't need to buy, of vowing to buy all the things I have seen online. I have gotten used to the hunched over posture of my sitting on the couch while simultaneously eyeing Anderson Cooper / Jon Stewart / Stephen Colbert on TV and reading Perez Hilton's latest post and resisting the crazy things Marc Jacobs is trying to peddle at Louis Vuitton.

It feels great to be a netizen again! I was up surfing and installing until 0700 hours, clocked in about three hours of sleep and then woke up to yell at my SA at the Vuitton store (it really does not take two weeks for something to travel from Los Angeles to Detroit, bla bla bla).

Regardless still, I had a decent day today: I indulged and stocked up on imported Asian junk food. The rain left and there was sunshine, the weather hit the high 50s. I had plenty of sushi. And then I decided to be one step ahead of keeping my system safe from the big, bad trojans out there; I attempted to download Service Pack 3 when I was brutally slapped with the fact that my 5GB partition could not house my operating system (OS) and all the updates/service packs Microsoft had created for it.

WHAT? Since when was 5GB not enough for an OS? This is bullshit. Now I have to reallocate my partitions and start over.

Yes, there will be a fourth re-installation after this post. If you don't hear from me for a few days, you will know it is because I am still wrestling around with Windows.

*sigh*