I felt a sore throat coming on last night and knew chances were good that I was going to get hit with a virus of some kind. I haven’t been sleeping well lately and work has been all long hours and stress this week. So I wasn’t too surprised when I woke up at 4 am to an even more sore throat and general body aches. I took two Tylenol, chugged a glass of water, and stared at the ceiling until the alarm went off. I’ve had umpteen gallons of water since and I’ve become a walking water fountain. Hopefully this will blow over in a day or two. Until then, I feel like ass. So what did I do to help me relax? Why, I put on some John Williams, of course.

Spanish Guitar Music is all Williams and all perfection. He plays with the accuracy of a machine. The album covers music written from the 16th century all the way to the 20th. One might think that 74 minutes’ worth of solid classical guitar would get boring, but Williams picks pieces that vary in structure, style, and key to an extent that it stays interesting. It’s great background music for surfing the web, dozing off, writing for your blog , or calling Dell to complain that your laptop won’t freaking shut down.

Here’s the fix: if you have a new Inspiron 1100 that won’t shut down, go to Device Manager and click on the properties for the USB Root Hubs. On the Power Management tab, uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this POS to save power.” Also, go to Run and type msconfig. Uncheck everything except Load System Services and Use Original BOOT.INI. Then go to the Services tab, check Hide All Microsoft Services, and then click Disable All. Now reboot. Viola. All fixed.