Halfway back from the dead

Monday morning I arrive at school, ready to write the talk on my master's project I have to give to the Social area next week. What happens when I settle in at my desk, computer plugged in and ready to go --- more specifically, what happens when I click on my Thunderbird and Firefox icons (everyone knows you can't get any work done without continual access to email and the internet)? If you guessed, "a wholelotta nothing" you're right.

Against my better judgement I took it to the IT people here, who, in addition to being super crabby even if you're one of the 10% of people who's computer they'll work on (if the department bought it), are really not Mac savvy. The dude was promoting Internet Explorer-- I don't think he's even heard of Mozilla. Geez. I'm trying to maintain a hip, smart, & corporation-hating persona here-- the last thing I need is more Microsoft. Punchline: they couldn't fix it, nor could I after spending several hours that night checking disks and permissions and lots of other nonsense. Yesterday my super Mac savvy friend takes a look and determines that it is indeed my operating system. This morning I reloaded OS X (that's like Windows for PC people) and was reunited with my beloved bookmarks. The internet was not even appealing as a means to waste time without them-- I took up crossword puzzles. Seriously. I'm halfway back in action now. I just have to figure out the magic words to make Thunderbird stop giving the cold shoulder to the 6 months of email that's hanging out in my computer.