I haven't really talked about my computer set-up on this blog, but I did ramble a lot on my personal weblog (Fading Whispers). I own an HP dv9700t customized laptop and I've put it through its paces by installing & uninstalling a bunch of software on it. The past two days, I noticed something weird: my User profile folder has suddenly become a "protected system file". Right now, I can only see my User folder under C:\Users if I uncheck "hide protected system files" under "Folder Options" menu in Vista. Also, when I hide system files (which now includes my user profile!), any searches I make on my computer exclude all files in my User profile!! I'm really upset about this and having to view ugly system files everytime I use my computer. Searching the web hasn't really helped much so I'm doing as much backtracking as I can i.e. uninstalling nonessential programs which may have triggered some weird protective mechanisms in Vista. Of these programs, I've uninstalled MikTex which was a monster (a whopping 1.33GB on my system). I expected that kind of consumption from a program like Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0. :) I have a feeling that the solution to my problem will be ugly. Wish me luck. *sigh* Talk about annoying.

In better news, I've begun playing with SnagIt more and I can't believe that all I've used it for is simply excellent screen captures and short video. I'm having so much fun with the callouts, accents etc and I have a feeling I'll be putting up a lot more screenshots of things that go wrong. :) In yet other news, there's a $500 Kmart giftcard up for grabs. I love the freebies so go ahead and enter to your heart's content. Thus far, I've entered ShoeMoney's and Julia Roy's.