Or not. <\/p>\n
Nothing drives me close to being stark raving mad like a computer problem. It seems as if when that happens, everything else has to stop until the problem is resolved; and really let me tell you, I definitely have other things to do.<\/p>\n
Last week my trusty laptop, upon which I have relied several years for a great many things, started giving me the following message when I booted it up: “Disk failure imminent. Back up all data.”<\/p>\n
Maybe it was that new defrag program I had tried. Or maybe the laptop is just old. It has served me well four years, maybe almost five. The techno geeks in my life, and I call them that with due respect, all tell me that this is about the useful life of most laptops.<\/p>\n
So late last week I went to my friendly local office supply store. The previous Sunday in the Star Tribune I noticed they were having a laptop sale. Yes, from time to time I have been known to still read a newspaper that’s actually printed on paper. Anyhow, at the store I found a wonderful whiz bang HP laptop with a 17 inch screen, Windows 7 and all the trimmings. <\/p>\n
I brought it home and went to work configuring it for my personal use. That means I installed Eudora for my email, Word Perfect for my word processing, and an old version of WS-FTP so I can update my web sites when I finally get around to it. There’s a lot of different stuff about Windows 7 that takes a while to figure out, but I really was doing OK.<\/p>\n
I enjoyed that laptop for about all of 72 hours until yesterday afternoon, when it seems to have electrocuted itself. First it started turning itself off for no reason. I took that as a warning sign, plugged in my portable hard drive and managed to back up most of my stuff before it breathed it’s final breath. After shutting itself off abruptly several times, it finally refused to boot up at all.<\/p>\n
So this morning I tried to return the dead laptop. Fried hard drive was the diagnosis. All they would let me do is trade it for another one. So now I’ve spent my whole morning trying to get another one up and running to my own personal specs. I’m trying to be gentle with it, but I want it the way I want it.<\/p>\n
My apologies for not responding to my email for the past day or so. I hope to have that up and running again shortly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or not. Nothing drives me close to being stark raving mad like a computer problem. It seems as if when that happens, everything else has to stop until the problem is resolved; and really let me tell you, I definitely have other things to do. Last week my trusty laptop, upon which I have relied … <\/p>\n