All the Wrong Buttons and All the Wrong Turns

This morning I finally received my new computer!

Old work computer blue-screened over the holidays. I've been using my personal computer with no access to any of my old files for the past 1.5 weeks. It's been frustrating and I'm slowly getting way behind! Not the way to start a new year.

So anyways, I've been staring at this on my desk:

So you can only imagine how excited I was to see this foreign screen: 

(says Setup is preparing your compute for first use)

Imagine my life, two hours later when the [[brand new]] computer installed all initial start-up crap, told me I needed to reboot for changes to take place and then THIS screen happened:

(no bootable devices)

Technology hates me. I then spent some more quality time on the phone with Dell Customer Service (story of my life the past 1.5 wks). This time, I wasn't too understanding. How do I get sent a broken new computer?! The techy I spoke with informed me that there 'must be a manufacturing defect or hardware issue' 

REALLY?! You don't say. 

He told me I'd have to wait 3-5 days for them to mail me a new computer. I guess I shall just sit around and wait for 5 o clock as my to-do list continues to escalate. Hopefully I have a computer next week sometime.

In more ridiculous news, last night was interesting. We've been in the house since Saturday, but yesterday (Thursday) was the first day I've driven home from work. Clearly, I've subconsciously been avoiding the work to home commute in rush hour. 

The trip home was downright ridiculous. First, let's take a look at these:

This is how far and how long it should take from home to work with some traffic (as you can see the crawling tortoise avg speed pace)

This is how long I managed to make last night's trip home. 

How? Too many highways in NOVA + confusing road signs + HOV lanes that only have select exits + this situation: 

I took a nice drive out in the opposite direction past National Harbor (always so pretty at nighttime), crossed over a couple bridges, took a second and then third wrong turn which led me to stupid accident traffic and then finally managed to end up south of my actual exit. Adventurous day. Won't be driving home today. We'll see how Monday goes. 

Happy Weekend!