Most people start their new year with a bang. Mine isn’t quite a bang.

Let’s see, where do I begin?

1. ?Handphone screen blacks out.
2. After installing a new antivirus software on my laptop, although it is able to boot up properly, the OS refuses to work upon logging in. The mouse works, and so do the toggle buttons (Caps Lock, Num Lock) – but nothing else does. It’s like the computer has frozen, but it’s not really freezing. I couldn’t even uninstall the damn antivirus software.

Fortunately though, my handphone could be repaired for RM150 – saves on buying a brand new handphone. Not willing to spend that money yet!

As for my laptop, well, initially I tried logging into Safe Mode but it didn’t seem to work. So I took the laptop hard drive in hopes of being able to back up my data (by using it as a secondary hard drive in another PC via USB) except… well, Dell’s laptop hard drive seems to be of a different design. It didn’t fit into my USB casing!

Refusing to give up, I finally managed to start my computer and start up in Safe Mode, and uninstall the troublemaking antivirus. It’s so ironic – it’s not a virus causing the problem, but an antivirus software.

I had already bought another external HDD though, so I immediately backed up all my data in that one.

Everything was saveable, but just that it wasn’t a very pleasant start to my new year. Perhaps it’s the new year based on the Chinese calendar that would be better for me. Let’s see what happens after Chinese New Year.

Was cleaning out my hard drive when I found this bit of trivia stashed in the recesses of my archives:

Floccipaucinihilipilification, at 29 letters, is the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary (at least it was the
last time I read the book cover to cover). The word means judging something to be worthless.