Icons

Loyalty icons!

Man, this is awesome. Most of livejournal's recent additions I've been suspicious of (ads? Also: the freaking "gifts" feature. Who is really paying for a bunch pixels to show up on someone's user page?), but I forgive everything for extra icons. I have 114 spaces now, and I celebrate with Sanzo's collarbones. Because he is a pretty, pretty man.

Yet! More! Computer! Trouble!

Okay, so the current problem with my computer is that, given that I bought it used, it didn't come with a Windows CD. Therefore when I reinstalled Windows, I did it with a friend's borrowed CD, but it was for a different brand than my computer, and it hasn't been working right. The biggest problem being, whenever I tried to activate Windows, it'd crash.

In the month of time before I had to get it activated, I was trying various Windows CDs borrowed from other people or scrounged from the recesses of my parent's basement, but they inevitably had the same problem, or would simply refuse to load, protesting that "this is not the appropriate computer". No one seems to own a plain Windows CD; it's inevitably for HP or Gateway or Compaq or some other brand that develops problems interacting with my Dell hardware.

And now we've come to the point where I can no longer log onto my computer without activating it (even though I was supposed to have another five days, argh), which it still will not do. I am not about to buy Windows at the price it sells for. At least I haven't lost anything, since I knew this was coming and had saved everything on the harddrive to CDs.

I know that there are free OSs available for download on the internet. Have any of you ever used any of them? Would you recommend them?