i'm yao, and i saved christmas.

yes, my family's IBM-compatible computer was having problems of late. constant hard drive churning and periodic crashes rendered the PC almost all but useless. however, unlike janie porche, i decided not to go out and buy and apple computer. instead, i decided to format the hard drive.

at first, i looked up directions on formatting hard disks as i knew that the process could get a bit hairy. but then i remembered that real men don't need directions! so i threw caution to the wind, along with the directions, and proceeded with the formatting.

formatting the hard drive only took several minutes. then, installing windows took about half an hour of mindless clicking. however, after answering several thousand senseless windows questions and booting up windows for the first time post-formatting, i was flabbergasted to be greeted with a VGA (640x480) display comprised of a mere 16 colors! alas... i had neglected to install device drivers for the video card. so i opened up the computer case to figure out what video card was installed and downloaded the appropriate drivers.

after getting a nice 32 bit color, 1024x768 display, i wanted to relax to some music. after playing a few songs, i quickly realized that the sound card needed drivers as well! the same process had to be endured with the physical inspection of the card and downloading of drivers.

so i did spend christmas downloading drivers, but it was a worthwhile experience.