Not only does Grand Theft Auto IV come out, but so does Windows XP Service Pack 3!

This may surprise some of our more intrepid readers, as I have garnered myself a reputation for being a Vista supporter one of the few who enjoys Vista. And, thus far, I’ve had no gripes, issues or complaints about anything Vista does. I’ve got myself a decent rig (Core2Quad, 4gb ram, 1tb hard drive space, 7950gtoc video card [I know, it's old, forgive me]) and can deal with the chunk Vista takes to run it.

But, for some reason, whenever an OS Service Pack comes out, I get giddy. I’m not sure why, but I just do. In fact, I think I’m going to reformat on April 29thish, if not earlier, and see how XP SP3 is. Why?

The answer comes in two parts, really. During college, at semester’s end, I would reformat my computer. First, it prevented me from getting 18 million programs installed on my computer and hardly ever deleting them (i.e., my parents). Secondly, I did it for pure pleasure. There’s something about completely wiping a hard drive clean that soothes my soul.

And the more I think about it, doing a little boot-drive Spring Cleaning usually entices me to clean up the rest of my computer. Having a rabbit and dog in a studio apartment means I usually air-can my computer once a week, but I can go through, tag some of my non-or-mis-tagged mp3’s, delete some artists/albums I don’t listen to, knock off some television shows I dont need anymore (I’m looking at you, seasons 5-7 of the Gilmore Girls [my wife got me into that show and I ate it up] and the UK version of the Office) and some games I don’t plan on ever installing and playing again.

Do any of you, my lovely readers, have reformatting rituals? Are you looking forward to SP3? Leave me a note in the comments. I read them all - it just takes some time for them to get posted is all!

Mental Note: The only thing I need to do this time around, however, is set my Outlook archive/file to save to my non-boot hard drives, so I don’t have to re-load all my POP3′d emails and whatnot.

P.S.: I’m working on my column, which is the post I thought I’d have out the other day. It’s a slow process, as there’s a lot more reading to pour over before I commit myself to it. Besides, I’ve been feeling rather in the doldrums as far as writing is concerned as of late.