Windows XP is just as f*d up as the rest of the line!

I just got a call from a friend asking why his icons all turned into
little system-like things. You know, the boxes with the three dots,
etc etc. I'm like, "I don't know. Have you rebooted the computer?
Sometimes that'll do the trick." He's like, "No, but it just started
happening a few days ago so I did a restore back to August."

Hold it right there, I was thinking. No freakin' WAY a restore
wouldn't set that straight. But this guy doesn't lie to me about what
he does, so I carefully double-checked what I heard in case I
misunderstood. In fact, he had done as he said, as strange as it
seemed to me.

I told him how he might try getting one at a time back, and we
chuckled over the blatant misbehaviour as we hung up.

No more than three minutes later, he called back. "Hey, guess what?"
he says in an animated tone. "What?" I ask, wondering what else he
might have encountered.

"Well, I went into All Programs, and all those icons were like that, too."
"Really? That's just weird!"
"Yeah, but get this. I went all the way to the bottom, saw Outlook
Express, and thought, 'Hm, I've not checked email in a while,' so I
opened it. I had no email, closed it, and then there they were - all
my icons were back!" (He laughed as I gawked over the telephone.)

So, apparently Windows has a special feature where it decides to
modify all your icons for you, and if you don't like it, then you can
click its secret switch: Outlook Express.

And to think that XP is pretty much the flagship of the Windows line!!
I'm glad I've moved on to smaller and better things - Mac OS X, to be
sure. Of course, they've got their issues like anything, but I have
to say that the icons stay put. I just wish that when I highlight
something and drag it to the trash, it'll /drag it to the trash/
instead of re-highlighting part of my highlighted items. Score for
Windows in the draggy realm. I can honestly say Windows doesn't
regularly make me repeat mouse strokes... then again, Windows has so
many built-in keystroke functions that it's damned near impossible to
find anything where a keyboard won't get you out of a dead-mouse
pickle.

Still, the icons took the cake for me today!

~nv