Back Online After Hard-drive Crash

Not even 15 years ago "hard drive" was an apt description of a road trip in a blizzard. The word "crash" didn't come into play, fortunately. Of course now the term "hard drive" means something entirely different, but "crash" will bring gut-wrenching pain as much as a road trip in a blizzard stopped cold by an avalanche (sorry, no pun intended).

Last Friday the hard drive in my desk top crashed. We rushed it to the nearest Best Buy Geek Squad (35 miles away) and left it there for diagnosis and repair. Geek Daniel had to make the sad call that the hard drive was gone, kaput. Great. (not exactly the word I actually used.) My computer is my livelihood and contained 60G of documents, mostly photographs. [Gasp! Holding breath!] Yes, I did have a back-up on external hard drive of all my photos and documents!

But I lost my applications, email history, wireless network, and 5 days of productivity. Not to mention the time it will take to rebuild. Well, sometimes a rebuild means renewal. I can get quite a lot cleaned out. Ok, so a lot is already cleaned out. All those emails reminding me about new ebills, the junk mail, the AARP reminders that I am old enough (barely) to even get AARP emails --- all gone! But to my friends who sent me really cool stuff, please resend!

Let me leave you with just this thought for the day:

Be kind to your 4-footed friends, and always, always back up your files -- often!