Not only am I sick.....

but the laptop is on its last legs. Its a shame too. The hard drive is completely shot, it seems, and so its losing a minor function a day. I backed up by Dissertation stuff onto a CD and then installed the software for this external HD I bought to fix it. As it rebooted...well...it stopped rebooting and froze at the login screen. Currently reinstalling Windows XP now....so hopefully I won't have to fork over 1300 for a new machine.