Ctrl-Alt-Del-ARGH!!!!!

Some days I really, really, REALLY hate computers.

Today's Really Stupid Problem started innocently enough when I made a completely mundane request of my computer: print a form from a web page. Normally this occurs almost immediately and I move on to other things. This time, nothing happened. I checked all my connections and didn't find anything suspect. So I opened up Print Manager (PM) to see what it had to report on the status of the print job. Nothing out of the ordinary, except PM was under the impression that the file was printing, yet the printer was most definitely NOT doing any sort of printing. It didn't even look like it was thinking about printing. It was just sitting there like a bump on a log, except with pretty LED buttons all lit up like things should be working. So I sent the file to the printer again. And now there were two jobs stuck in the queue not printing. So I told PM to delete all print jobs. PM continued to display the canceled job with status (deleting-printing). And continued. And continued. So I told it to delete again. And it continued to say it was deleting, but never did it. Liar!

After much cursing and bitching, and attempting to stop the delete process using Task Manager, and restarting the computer, and reinstalling the driver, and a whole bunch of other crap, the frikkin' file was still in there, NOT being deleted!!!! So I uninstalled every damn bit of the HP software. Then I deleted the printer completely (which got rid of the print job that wouldn't delete, my only success out of the whole afternoon). Then I reinstalled the HP software. Then I plugged in my "plug and play" printer. And...

Nothing happened. Nothing at all. My computer SHOULD HAVE recognized the new device and automatically installed it, but FOR WHATEVER STUPID REASON chose to completely ignore it, as if HP and MS are having some ridiculous feud and refuse to acknowledge each other's existence. I went from having an installed and formerly functional printer, to having an installed printer that wouldn't print anything, to not having a printer installed even though it was CLEARLY connected to my computer. I give up.

I need a drink. Or a Mac. Or both.