Computers Must Die

This is not an epithet. It’s a fact. Just as all living things die, so do some non-living things. I found this out yesterday as the hard drive of my laptop took its last dying gasps and collapsed in a mushy pool of ones and zeros. Now here is the problem: I run two Internet businesses and I am a freelance writer. I need my laptop! But even worse, it expired rather suddenly (as is their wont), and I, yes stupidly, had not backed up my data. Shame on me. The only saving grace in this whole debacle is I have a Guy. Everyone who uses a computer needs to have a Guy. This is the person who can accurately diagnose, and lo!, even repair, these finicky little boxes of silicon and electrons. If you don’t have a Guy, you’ll screw something up, or pay way too much for repairs. It’s very much like having an automobile – you need a Guy for that too, or you end up paying $938 for a new Fetzer valve so that your cylinder manifold can ovulate.

Anyway, my Guy, who is a neighbor, pronounced the drive dead on arrival, and told me I needed a new one. He was somehow able to salvage some of the information stored on it, but not all. I’ve lost some writing, and a bunch of saved emails (invoices and such), but he saved about two-weeks’ worth of keyword research for some websites I’m working on. He is also attempting to retrieve even more data using the obvious technique (I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me) of freezing the hard drive in his kitchen freezer. I’m not lying. That’s what he is doing. He also searched his online supply resources and found a new, warranteed, drive for about half of what either of us expected. It should arrive in a few days, and he said he would help me put the whole mess back together so that it doesn't look like C-3PO on Cloud City. (I'm such a geek) This is good because I would probably have rammed my rom or done something incestuous to my motherboard.

All in all, it could have been worse. I’ll have some work to do to get back to where I was, but, as the governor of California has said, “I’ll be back.”

The moral of the story? 1.) Back up your data, 2.) Get yourself a Guy, or you might end up with a gross of Fetzer valves and no ovulating cylinder manifolds and, 3.) Just in case, always leave some room near the Turkey Pot Pie for your hard drive.

FYI: he found the cheap drive on newegg.com in case anyone is looking for hard drives, motherboards, or Fetzer valves (try swanson.com for the turkey pot pie)