I don't know quite how, but I did manage to get my laptop resurrected last night before I saw all your helpful comments but thanks very much for the tips - I followed them pretty much without knowing I was doing so and it was great to see, afterwards, that I had indeed done what I was supposed to. Yeah, I know a Mac is the way to go and maybe I will get one as soon as I sell the gottdumbed Honda. That story is just getting funnier and funnier, by the way.
I put a new ad up on cars.com and in the local paper about 5 days ago. I immediately started to get calls WAY too late at night (would you believe 11:00 PM) and WAY too early in the morning (like, gee, that looks like 6 o'freakin' clock AYEM to me - why the hell are you calling at this hour?) and almost all of them were foreign accents with Brooklyn area codes.
Erica, please explain that to me, if you can?
I finally got so annoyed I changed the on-line ad to include this right up front: "IF YOU ARE NOT CALLING FROM A NJ AREA CODE AND IF I CANNOT UNDERSTAND YOUR MESSAGE YOUR CALL WILL NOT BE RETURNED."
It didn't help so I turned off the phone for a few days.
I'm trying to think of a creative way to sell it now that e-Bay, print ad (2x) and on-line ad (2x) and sign in the window (2 months) haven't worked.
In totally unrelated other news, some consultant got temporarily housed next to me at work recently. He's going to be around for a few months. Which might cause me to pass out and drool on my desk because he sounds exactly like Ben Stein.