Dell’s OS and driver CDs helped a lot. I don’t know if they still include those disks, but they should. Made reinstallation of drivers for onboard video, Intel chipset and modem very simple.

A complete format of my hard drive was necessary because trying to repair the Windows installation had errors. I think they were malware related: setup couldn’t copy a couple of dll files from the CD to the hard drive; it had an error trying to copy over iexplore.exe too.

So I started from scratch. Besides, a full format makes me feel cleaner. :)

Right now, it’s slogging through all the downloading and installing of Windows updates.

I have been dealing with two major malware infections on my desktop computer. The major components have been cleaned, but some malware has been creeping back in. For example, a search redirect: clicking on a Google search result sends me to a pharmacy web site. If I back up and click again, I get to the page I wanted.

Then this evening after a reboot, opening Firefox caused major lag and unresponsiveness. Moments later, McAfee suddenly said that I wasn’t protected. I opened it to check and found that real-time scanning was turned off. McAfee starts whenever I boot up, and I didn’t change any settings, which means something turned off McAfee’s tools right before my eyes.

That’s when I decided to drop everything and take care of this reinstallation.

Did you know that malware can actually leave “bread crumbs,” little commands that check to see if a particular malware is installed, and if not, connect to its home server to reinstall it?

For this reason, the only way to really clean everything is to repair the Windows installation.

Thus begins my art-a-day journey. I’ll be creating something every day related to a noun that I choose at random.

This project is mainly about engaging the right side of my brain in new ways on a regular basis. My goal is to get out of the rut of day-to-day activity and stretch my creative muscles. Ideally, along the way I’ll also discover new things about my creativity and find or develop skills at the same time.

Why nouns? Well, why not? It satisfies the English major in me. Besides, creativity is not often ignited by having a wide open playing field. Inspiration happens when you have boundaries to work against.

The site’s name, “More Than Nouns,” was inspired by the fact that the creative results, although inspired by simple nouns, become something more than single words.

To help me get started, I asked several friends to send me a list of nouns, one for every letter of the alphabet. I printed out their lists, cut them up, and dropped the individual words into a jar.

Here are my rules:

• I must create something every 24 hours, Monday through Friday.
• The creative project must be based upon or inspired by the word I draw from the Jar o’ Words.
• All creative mediums are fair game, but the same medium cannot be used twice in a row.

Special thanks to everyone who sent me nouns. If I get through them all, maybe we’ll move on to another part of speech, like verbs or adjectives.

Now let’s get cracking!