"It's a real fun ladies' comedy show for ladies."

So for the last year, I've been running the release candidate version of Windows 7. The one that expires today. And, due to a series of shenanigans that were not entirely my fault, I only got around to installing the update last night. (First, I must add, I spent 11 hours backing up all my data. Except, apparently, my Firefox bookmarks, because who needs that sort of thing anyway?)

Problem was, the update didn't work. Something to do with a file that gets corrupted if you burn it too fast.

Which means that this morning, I had to pootle around the internets in search of a new copy of the file. It's okay, it was only 3gb, that's almost nothing to download. Right? RIGHT?

So that happened, and it was nice, and this time the upgrade worked. And it even saved all my old programs and data, although the programs are not actually usable, so I still need to reconstruct my Firefox bookmarks from scratch. (The really funny thing? The backup that I spent 11 hours doing yesterday? Doesn't work. I LAUGHED UNTIL I CRIED.)

Anyway, we're good to go now. Except, you know, only having about a third of the programs I consider essential for my day to day existence. Also, my bookmarks! I only reorganised them a few days ago! Help me rebuild -- what sites do you consider essential to your online and fannish existence? Good sources of Doctor Who images, for example. Celebrity image resources in general. Widgets that improve your experience on the intertrons. Answers on a postcard while I take a nap!

Maybe this goes back to that whole "The entire internet is not American" thing?

This article is a bit of a headtwist: I know that bandwidth quotas are largely unknown in the US, but I hadn't thought of them as a THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.

(Of course, part of the issue is that much of Australia's telecommunications infrastructure is too old to handle high bandwidth, which goes totally unaddresed here.)