Aha! Solved the mystery of my grumpy computer…the hard drive died today and the computer would no longer boot up. I freaked out because I thought the whole of My Documents was lost- along with the 40 page third manuscript I’ve been working on but had no hard copies of – until I remembered I’d backed up two weeks ago. Then I stopped hyperventilating. I took it to a computer repair wizard (or as I call it, the PC Whisperer) and he said, yes, the hard drive is dying, lifted it to his ear and shook it, and got it to boot up one last time so I could copy the files over to a new laptop (goodbye, majority of grant money!) On the plus side, the new laptop is pink and superspeedy. If anyone wants a nice, three-year-old laptop with a dead hard drive, give me a whistle! Selling for cheap….
PS The PC Whisperer says the most common thing for 2-3 year old laptops to go is the hard drive. So remember your backups, all ye who bought laptops in 2004!
On the plus side, my father and brother made it through their respective eye surgeries swimmingly. Hoorah!
And, may tomorrow may be a less stressful day. Health and happiness to all!
PS May go see Hairspray tonight. Need an escape from reality for a bit…
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
Felicity
Oi!
My laptop will be three in a few months 🙁
As of today, he is getting a battery replacement. But now you have me worrying about the hard drive 🙁
Was yours a Mac or a PC? I can’t remember.
Peter
My laptop is three, too. Hmmm . . .
“The PC Whisperer” — you have a TV show idea!
jeannine
Dear Felicity, The computer is a Toshiba Satellite M35X. Don’t worry – just back up 🙂
Peter – good idea! If all you had to do to fix a computer was to shake a computer and listen to it, it’s pretty magical.
Responsible Artist
Mine is three years old and having hot flashes. I do worry. I mostly back up but there always seems to be something I can’t recover. And the Apple laptops have gone up a lot since I bought this one, but oddly enough, my income hasn’t.
Nurse Fusion
Good thing your poems are so amazing — won’t be long to find a taker on your project.
3-Day Novel Contest 2006 officially killed my last laptop. It was 4 years old and cranky.
Anne
I bought my laptop in the spring of 2003! So far the hard drive hasn’t died yet (knock wood…) though I am more and more fanatical about backing everything up. The keyboard, on the other hand, is very much on its last legs — and everything is decidedly slower than it used to be. (I can relate!) I’m hoping to buy a new one this summer….
jeannine
Thanks Julie! And Leslie and Anne – good luck and remember to back things up…