My computer is still broken. I tinkered for an hour or so, managed to screw up a couple of other things, nothing important. It's all to do with drivers. Very annoying little files. A couple of vaguely identified bits of hardware reckon they need a driver but they're so vaguely identified I can't work out where the driver might be. One is PCI Communication Device and the other is PCI Mass Storage Device.

The most irritating part is that the plug-and-play program doesn't tell you what the driver is called. It knows it if it sees it, it's just not letting on. So what I've been having to do is go through all the CDs that might possibly be relevant -- for the motherboard, the Sparq drive, the sound card, blah blah blah -- looking for folders that may have drivers in them and being told "No, the driver's not in there, try again."

On Friday I'll have time to call the computer shop for some help. Tomorrow I've got a trip to the dentist for one filling to be repaired. I love my dentist, Callum, he's cured me of my fear of dentists. I have terrible teeth, mainly because I didn't look after them but also because I was alway too scared (and too skint) to get them fixed. They were full of fillings and a total mess until one time when I was on the dole in London I got the worst ones capped, in gold, for nothing. Now I'm more careful and most of the work Callum does is repairs or replacement crowns.

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.

English Teeth, Happy Teeth!
Always having fun
Champing down on bits of fish
And sausages half done.

English Teeth, HEROES' Teeth!
Here them click! and clack!
Let's sing a song of praise to them -
Three Cheers for the Brown Grey and Black.

-- Spike Milligan (RIP, sadly missed already)

It's not just English teeth, kiwi teeth can be just as bad. I blame dental nurses -- there was a dental clinic (aka murder house) attached to most schools, staffed by a kindly young woman in a starched white outfit and a red cardie. When I first started going she had a foot-powered drill ... very slow, excruciatingly painful. Later she had a whizzy electric drill, but there were still no painkillers. Big thrills were being allowed to mix up your own filling with a little glass pestle and mortar, and being given a cottonwool fairy for being "good", ie not kicking her.

These dental nurses drilled everything in sight, everyone had fillings.

Ooop, time to go home. More later.