ACT ONE
It all started when Teacher’s trusty Palm Tungsten died. After a short period of mourning Teacher replaced it with an iTouch. I was bummed because we’d had matching Palms and matching Toshiba laptops, but couldn’t justify getting an iTouch just so we’d still match. Don’t freak, our matchy-matchy stops with technology – you’ll never see us in matching plaid shorts and polos.
Life was happy in technology-land until one fateful night… Teacher plugged in his iTouch as usual before going to bed, but when he opened his laptop the next morning there was nothing. No glowing screen to welcome him, no chirps, whirrs, or other sounds of life. Nothing but an awful dark silence.
The computer ER – aka J.J. Electronics – worked valiantly, but in the end there was nothing they could do; the diagnosis was a blown motherboard. I’m no hardware whiz, but I know that the words “blown” and “motherboard” in the same sentence are a bad thing. A VERY bad thing. For the cost of a new motherboard and labor we could get a brand new laptop, so that’s what Teacher did. Not only did he get a new laptop, he got a free iTouch too! Since he already had an iTouch he gave the new one to me and we were matchy-matchy again!
Life was happy in technology-land, until one fateful night… I plugged in my iTouch as usual before going to bed, but when I opened my laptop the next morning there was nothing. No glowing screen to welcome him, no chirps, whirrs, or other sounds of life. Nothing but an awful dark silence.
Once again the techs at J.J. Electronics tried valiantly, but once again the diagnosis was a blown motherboard. J.J Electronics was able to recover about 80% of my data, but the most important things – the ones I’d kept in folders on my desktop because they were most important – they couldn’t get.
I was devastated. My entire life was on my laptop. Amy & Kids Co photos, records, forms, site graphics, etc. Zany Zebra photos, website graphics, records, etc. Family photos since 2005 including Z-Man, Little Guy and Peanut’s birth and baptism photos. Records for band and handbells, the list goes on, and on, and on. Of course, I didn’t have any back-ups; it’s on my To Do list but I never seem to get to it. If you don’t have back-ups STOP right now and make some – I’ll be here when you’re done, promise!
Teacher knew how upset I was about what I’d lost, so he worked his magic and found a solution online. The man is a search engine god – he can find ANYTHING online, no matter how obscure! Teacher bought a hard drive thingy I warned you I wasn’t a hardware whiz and hooked my hard drive into it. Voila, all my info was there – even the stuff on my desktop! I was beyond grateful, and found a suitable way to thank him. Nuff said.
Next task – finding me a new laptop. Teacher was probably tired of me using his every time he turned his back, but he never complained. I fell in love with a PURPLE Dell, ordered it and waited impatiently for it to arrive. Finally, after about a gazillion years, my new laptop arrived! Did I mention it’s PURPLE? I hooked it up to my old hard drive, moved all my data over and was back in business!
Life was happy in technology-land, until one fateful day… just four days after my new PURPLE laptop arrived I began to suspect that it was possessed. It would randomly try to spit out a disk that wasn’t there, making a zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee! noise continuously. The only way I could get it to stop was to shut down, and everyone knows you can’t use a computer when it’s shut down. Finally after playing shut-down-start-up numerous times, the zha-zha-zhee! died down to occur only randomly. It was annoying, but workable. Unfortunately, the next time I put a CD in the drive, the poltergeist swallowed it and refused to spit it back out again.
To be continued…
