"Some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." - Albert Camus

I didn't give the whole story last night because... well, frankly, I wasn't sure I believed it.
When I was out to see the progress on the body Pat asked how the chassis work was coming. I told him it was all done and gave him the details. I also told him I'd be getting the engine back today. He said that when I'm done I'll have a very nice car worth $10,000 - $12,000. I was incredulous, to say the least. But he's got a lot of cred when it comes to cars and their value; it's his life. He doesn't pay to go to Barrett-Jackson because they comp him, complete with free drinks.

Today I picked up the engine. I'm near giddy with excitement! Steve went through the details with me and my money was well spent. It's got new pistons & cylinders that take it from 1200 to 1383cc, has a fresh crank & cam, ground valves and reconditioned pushrods, case savers, and the whole thing is balanced to the gram. His reputation is clearly well earned.

Steve and I talked about the rest of the work I'm doing, including converting it to 12v and a fresh air heating system, all new brake system, new wheel bearings and seals, etc., etc. He said that when I'm done I'll have a valuable car. I told him what Pat said yesterday, $10-$12k, and he said, "Oh yeah, easy."

I'm flabbergasted. I figured half of that. I bought it for $2,500. Yes, I'm spending significant money to get the body and engine done by pros but even with that, and buying good quality bits and pieces as necessary, I should come out well ahead. Not that I'd sell her. We'll have been through too much together.

Never mind the backstory, about two months ago I upgraded Pam's netbook from Windows XP to Windows 7 via a download from their site at the cost of about $110. It took over two hours and involved the standard head-banging-against-the-wall frustration of any interaction with Microsoft. Approximately 30 days later Pam got a message saying they needed to verify she was using a legit version of 7, so she should enter the product code. It said we could locate that code on the bottom of the machine, except no number of tries at entering that code worked. A: ignore that scary message and soldier on.

We repeated that three or four times over, about once every 10 days. Then last night she got a message saying Microsoft could not verify the authenticity of this version of Windows 7 and the machine was being disabled.
WHAT???
Is this 1984?!
Blue screen of dead.

I was up at 2 this morning (it happens) and spent 90 minutes using my Mac to navigate through Microsoft's site looking for answers. I think Dante got his inspiration from trying to get answers from their help pages. But an hour and a half later I *think* I understand the problem. The product code they want is on the back of the packaging that the Windows 7 disk comes in...
unless you downloaded it!
In which case you do not HAVE a product code because you don't HAVE any packaging.
Because netbooks don't have any drives it's unlikely anyone would upgrade through any means other than a download. Microsoft apparently doesn't care about that little detail. And they couldn't come up with a way to look at the hard drive and see for themselves it was legit. They can shut the thing down but they can't see that I downloaded it from their site!

I have ordered a restore disk from eMachines ($21) that should arrive in about 5 days. And that should wipe 7 off the machine and take it back to XP.
How does Microsoft stay in business? It's hard to tell if they're incompetent or just don't care about their customers.
Big Brother is alive and well and living in Redmond, WA.